June 2015

Hi everybody, Captain Bonzo here

How time flies – after our last update from Las Palmas, crewmate Kieran arrived , ready for the trip to Fuerteventura and Lanzarote – and after weeks of poor weather, he brought the correct wind with him as well (and a load of spares – THANKS!! And also thanks to Bradford logistics and transport, who coordinated and still is coordinating logistics for us in the UK )!

So, with the correct wind and weather sorted out by Kieran, we set off to Fuerte and had a great crossing – as some of you may know, Kieran is on a first name basis with the fish in Christchurch bay and is well respected as a regular food supplier – BUT not on this crossing, much to relief of all on board....

One day plain sailing to Morre Jable and another tacking up the coast to Gran Tarajal was all we could muster in the 10 days Kieran was with us – the typical Canarian strong wind meant we stayed put for a while.

K was off back to the UK and A&C explored Fuerte until there was no more to explore – time to go – up to Lanzarote via Puerto Rosario, then Rubicon (caught a tuna on the way plus enough Mackerel to supply our neighbours as well) and onto Arrecife.

Having made friends with Raffa and Kati on Illusion, a number of evenings were shared over a bottle of wine or two – and the conversation in a mix of Spanish, English and German, just to properly confuse our brains....

The plan was to spend some more time in La Graciosa in the north of Lanzarote before laying up and leaving Ari B in Arrecife marina in the water for the summer – this wasn’t the preferred option, as lifting a boat out of the water in a safe boatyard is always better, but in the Canaries, this is very expensive, so we decided to leave her in the marina. That is until we talked to Harald and Beate from Taniwani. They have a Najad 49 and often store her in the boatyard under the runway at the airport in Madeira,  which is a great place protected from sunlight, rain etc and super secure (being on airport property). Since Madeira has lots of mountains, but not much flat space, they simply started the runway on one piece of land, finished it on another, and bridged the valley between, resulting in a monumental space underneath the actual runway, some 70 meters high! Where there’s a will there’s a way it seems – in any case, it’s perfect, so we looked for a weather window to cross, while we were waiting for Kieran to join us – which then was delayed due to a PEBSAM with his diary (pebsam = Problem Exists Between Seat And Monitor).

In any case, we spotted a small window that promised light N winds on the first day then NE winds (which is what we needed to cross in a NW direction). Guess what. Northerly wind all the way – which means hard on the wind for 300 miles or 3 days and 2 nights with winds from 15 to 30 knots and a 2m northerly swell. As it turned out though, this was really the only window there was - despite the fact that this is the recommended time for a passage to Madeira and the weather data suggests that an average of 32% of all days have NE wind – we haven’t seen any for 4 weeks.....

Didn’t even catch a fish although flipper and his mates turned up on the last day to have a laugh at our attempts.  Did I mention that Carla lost the fishing competition she had going with Mark (sportfisherman extraodinaire). Told her not to take on a profi – he’s catching tuna over 800lb and all she can manage is a 8lb skipjack! And mackerel. She’s pretty good at catching mackerel and makes awesome sushi with it.

Kieran was lucky is all I can say – this was very hard on everybody and after arrival in Madeira a lot of sleeping was done.

So here we are in Madeira in this beautiful anchorage, relaxing and working on the boat (while the northerly winds are still blowing) and waiting for K to arrive on the 8th for a week or so – weather forecast is good, so we’ll hopefully do a trip to Porto Santo and the Islas Desertas (any guess how many villages are on those?) Also looking forward to meeting up with Keith on Harmonii, just returning from his Atlantic circuit via the Azores and therefore completing his 17th Atlantic crossing (this one single handed again) – a bottle of bubbly is waiting.

Then it’s time for lay-up preparations and we will lift out on the 22nd June, storing Ari under the airport with me, (the Captain) on guard duty  while he crew flies to the UK for the summer. Got Pip to keep me company.

In that context, this is the last update before the summer break and we will re-join you in October/ November.  The crew is looking forward to meeting up with many of you in the summer.

Ari  B out

Captain Bonzo & Pip

Alex & Carla