Madeira, and on to the Canaries

Greetings from Lanzarote, the easternmost of the major Canary Islands. We arrived about a week ago, after about 10 magnificent days on Madeira.

Madeira is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been, with knife-edged mountains covered by rich, green forests. The interior of the island is veined with levadas, which are channels built to move water from the high, wet parts of the island to the drier lowlands. There are walking trails along side most of these, and they provide access to some eye-popping scenery. We rented a car for 4 days, and we got out early each morning to view the sunrise from some new and exciting spot.

Our first glorious sunrise was from the summit of Pico do Arieiro, Madeira's third highest peak (1,818m). Our poor little car struggled to get to the near-summit parking lot, from which we had an easy stroll to a lovely vantage point.

 

 

 

After sunrise, we walked along the knife edge to the northwest...

 

 ...and then drove down to the northeast for our first levada walk.

  The next morning we started near the eastern tip of the island...

 ... then drove around to the north side of the island, and wound up looking back at that same knife edge near Pico do Arieiro, but from the west, across a sea of clouds.

Our last morning with the car found us traveling west along the southern coast, then north again for the 25 Fontes (25 fountains) walk. It began with a long descent, followed by a long, gradual climb over the course of 4 hours back to the parking lot, with multiple waterfalls along the way.

We might have stayed longer in Madeira, but the Funchal marina is not the best base from which to explore. It's well-located, but there are bars and clubs all around, which play loud dance music (thump thump thump) until the wee hours (4AM). Not very restful. But we can imagine going back to Madeira, getting a quiet room on the north side, and then hiking our legs off for a few weeks.

From Madeira we sailed to Lanzarote, a 3 night trip. We had originally planned on stopping for a night at Islas Desertas, a small clump of islands southeast of Madeira, but we left Funchal too late in the day to get in before dark, and the anchorage we were targeting is entirely without navigation lights, and full of rocks, so we decided to skip it. 

 

Leaving Funchal

Sunrise at sea

We made landfall just before dawn outside of Puerto Calero, a marina on the southeast coast. We anchored for a few hours to get some sleep, then popped in to the marina.

Puerto Calero is a long way from anything else on Lanzarote, and we were (frustratingly) unable to rent a car at all. I rode my bike 20km north into Arrecife to do some shopping, but otherwise we didn't leave the marina. We spent the time doing boat projects; Katy installed bug screens on our windows (we've been increasingly found by mosquitos at night), and we FINALLY ran the necessary cable from our nav desk to the SSB tranceiver in the aft cabin so we can get our long range radio working. Once those were done, we moved on to our current anchorage at the southeastern corner of Lanzarote.

This schooner arrived just before sunset and anchored off our stern.

This morning we went ashore by dinghy to explore.

Tomorrow we plan to move closer to town (Castillo del Aguila) to shop; we're actually running low on fresh food. After that, we will work our way west across the Canaries. We hope to take dive classes on Tenerife and finally get our scuba certification; it's become increasingly clear that we need to be able to dive to perform some of the routine bits of boat inspection and maintenance. Besides, it's fun!

We're still expecting to cross the Atlantic, starting in December, and landing in the Caribbean in January. We'll keep you posted...

Hose fittings for cruising in France (and Europe?)

This note is about a seemingly trivial, yet surprisingly important, topic - what hoses and hose fittings should be aboard a boat cruising in Europe? 

When Katy and I started cruising aboard Idril, we had a two collapsible hoses and a slightly-broken spray nozzle, all brought from the U.S. in the pallets of boat stuff we shipped before Idril was complete. We immediately discovered that the U.S. hose connectors are not QUITE the same as the (metric) hose connectors in France and England, and so they leaked when we tried to use them. 

To remedy this, we visited Jardiland, "up the hill" in Cherbourg.There we discovered the Gardena hose fitting system.This system allows hoses and accessories to be easily connected and disconnected with a simple push-pull action.  There's a huge variety of fittings available, and we soon had:

• A replacement for the collapsible hose that we brought from the U.S. and a shiny new multi-setting spray nozzle.
  
  
  
  
  
• A more substantial hose that we reserve primarily for filling our water tanks; we only use it with water supplies we consider fairly clean.
• A two-stage water filter gizmo that we use to filter all of the water that goes into our fresh water tanks, regardless of source.
  
  
  
  
  
• Various connectors and spares.
  
  
  
  
  

I also purchased a short length of good quality hose that I can use to construct a "U.S. to Gardena" adapter, once we get to the U.S. and have access to U.S. hose fittings.

These fittings got us through most of the summer 2021 cruising season.Most marinas provide conventional screw-type faucets (for which we had the fitting); some provide a permanently-attached hose with a bare end, into which I could insert a "bare hose to Gardena" fitting.

Upon arrival in Roscoff, in mid August 2021, we encountered yet another variation -- the "Gardena only" tap. This has a female Gardena fitting, and the flow of water starts (ready or not...) as soon as you insert a male Gardena fitting into the tap.

Luckily, we had just the fitting, and a valve fitting for the business end of the hose. Hooray!

Here's the crucial subset.

 

Salcombe to Fishguard

After a month in St. Helier Marina on Jersey, we got up bright and early on May Day morning and finished preparing the boat for an overnight sail across the English Channel to Salcombe. We would be "buddy sailing" with another Garcia Exploration 45, "Snow Gum", crewed by an Australian couple, Carolyn and Rick. We crossed the sill at St. Helier just before 9AM and headed out into the Channel, with Snow Gum close behind.

If you look at a chart, it seems as if you could just take a straight line from the western edge of Jersey (off La Corbière) to Salcombe and sail right across. The reality is quite different. There are strong tidal currents to contend with, as well as (obviously) the ever-changing winds (or, often, lack thereof...), rocks to be avoided, and shipping lanes (technically "traffic separation schemes") to be crossed (by law) at right angles. So our path to Salcombe is pretty wonky.

We were both on deck for most of the day, and around sunset I went below for a nap, leaving Katy on watch. We swapped places at midnight, just as we were about to pass the southwestern end of the traffic separation scheme. 

There was a lot of traffic, almost all of it much bigger than Idril - tankers, container ships, ferries, and fishing vessels. Our AIS provides us with excellent information on the ships around us, but we still have to keep a careful watch visually and via RADAR. Some ships (notably military vessels) do not broadcast their locations via AIS, and fishing boats have been known to turn off AIS if they have found a particularly fruitful spot. Nonetheless, AIS is a huge help. We've found that giant ships will happily alter course a degree or so to avoid us - as long as we give them enough advance warning. A typical VHF radio exchange might go something like this:

"Big Ship, Big Ship, Big Ship [using their name, of course], this is sailing vessel Idril, sailing vessel Idril, on channel one six, good evening, over."

"Idril, this is Big Ship. Over."

"Big Ship, Idril. It looks like we will be close to you in about a half hour. What is your intention? Over."

"Idril, Big Ship, we see you on AIS and will alter course 2 degrees to [port/starboard] to pass [in front of/behind] you. Over"

"Big Ship, Idril, thank you very much, have a pleasant watch. Idril out."

I got Katy up around daybreak (early at this latitude...) and we shared the cockpit for the rest of the trip, with me dozing a bit. We arrived at the entrance to the Salcombe estuary around 9AM, and were tied up on the visitor pontoon by 11. Snow Gum arrived shortly thereafter.

The next 3 days were filled with very satisfying walks around the Salcombe coastline: to the north, the south, and inland to the sheep meadows above the visitor pontoon.

 

We also had fun walking around town.

 On Thursday, May 6th we left Salcombe at first light (5:30am) and sailed to Mylor Yacht Harbor in Falmouth -- a place we know very well from the month we spent there last summer, having our electrical system tweaked. This gave us a chance to do laundry, re-provision and finally get our bikes shipped off to Gocycle for service. Once we had a decent weather window, we took a short hop on Tuesday, May 11th from Mylor to a mooring in the Helford River -- also familiar from last summer -- before taking off two days later, on the 13th, for the Isles of Scilly.

We had some excitement on the way to the Scillys -- our gennaker halyard failed. The halyard is the line that we use to hoist the top end of the gennaker, our primary light-air sail, to the top of the mast. The line has two parts -- a very strong inner core, and an abrasion-resistant outer braided sheath. The sheath failed, apparently at the point where it was gripped by the clutch on the mast, and the inner core slipped down inside the sheath.  This allowed the top of the sail to drop about 3 meters or so, bringing the bottom edge of the sail dangerously close to the water. We were zipping along at a good clip past Lizard Point, the southernmost spot in "mainland" England, with somewhat rough seas. Had the sail really dug in to the water, we would have damaged at least the sail.

Luckily, Katy reacted immediately, unfurling the solent (another of our foresails), stealing the wind from the gennaker and easing the pressure on the line. We were then able to safely lower the gennaker and lash it to the lifelines on the port side of the boat. In the rough seas and stress, I (Jerry) got increasingly nauseous, and eventually blew my breakfast all over the port side deck. Yech.

 We later discovered that a photographer on Lizard Point had captured the boat  moments after the failure, just as we had gotten the solent unfurled.

The beginning of the recovery operation

The gennaker lashed to the port lifeline

 We arrived at The Cove, a quiet (and familiar) anchorage off St. Agnes in the Isles of Scilly in the late afternoon. We got the gennaker properly stowed, cleaned up the side deck, and turned in early. 

 

Arriving at The Cove

The next morning we got up early and went for a walk on St. Agnes, including a stop at Troytown Farm for a breakfast of ice cream, and a visit from a very insistent bird.

Then -- back to the boat, and a shift to New Grimsby Harbour, between the islands of Tresco and Bryher. 

Passing "the cow", north of St. Agnes

We were waiting for good winds for the next leg, to Milford Haven in Wales. We spent the days walking mostly-familiar coastal paths on Bryher, re-visiting Tresco Abbey Garden, and resting up for the 118 nautical miles to Milford Haven.

We left New Grimsby in the late afternoon on May 19th, in stronger-than-expected winds and chop. Katy took the first night watch at 11pm, while I snoozed until 3am and we swapped roles. Around 5:30, shortly after sunrise, I realized that the boat was surrounded by dolphins. Magical! Click for video.

The wind was unfortunately fading as the sun rose, and we wound up motoring much of the rest of the way to Milford Haven, arriving midday.

 

A friend has called Milford Haven "the Detroit of Wales"; it is a pretty industrial port, with a major LNG terminal and plenty of commercial shipping traffic. But we did get in one nice walk.

But once we got another weather window, we were eager to press on, and on May 22nd we left Milford Haven at the 9am lock opening and headed for Fishguard, through the first two of a series of somewhat tricky passages -- Jack Sound and Ramsey Sound.

The blue line is our track

As we move north into the Irish Sea we will increasingly encounter very strong tidal currents, as water is shoved north and south between Ireland and Wales. Katy is now putting significant time and energy into making sure that we arrive at key choke points near slack tide and with favorable winds. Jerry, on the other hand, is a slacker.

Hard at work in the cockpit

 We anchored in Fishguard for 2 nights, with one brief trip into the town. It was a lovely place to be anchored, well protected and surrounded by modest cliffs.

Most signage is now in Welsh, with English second

We left Fishguard just before sunrise on Monday, May 24th, and sailed to a Marina in Pwllheli, our next staging point. I'll write about that, and our further progress to Porth Dinllaen and Caernarfon, in another post.

On the move again - but first, a recap of Jersey

 Idril is once again on the move. I'll try to catch up on where we've been, but it will take several posts, rather than one big one. I'll start with Jersey.

As noted earlier, we left Cherbourg midday on April 2nd - the day our already-extended-once residence permits expired. We timed our departure for a fair current through the Alderney Race and arrived at St. Helier, on the channel island of Jersey, shortly before dusk.

The sill at the entrance to St. Helier Marina

 

After 11 days of on-boat quarantine in Jersey our "Day 10" COVID-19 test results came back negative, and we were free to leave the boat. Relief!

While in quarantine we were visited (at a distance, of course..) by David and Angie Jeffs, fellow members of the Ocean Cruising Club, who noticed our OCC flying fish burgee on our port spreader. Their apartment overlooks the St. Helier marina, so they have a great view of all the comings and goings of the port. Once we were declared COVID-free they served as our personal guides and trip advisors to Jersey. They took us around the island in their car (along with their cat, Dimanche, who walks on a leash). Some of the sights:

Noirmont Point

La Corbière

Faldouet Dolmen

Dimanche at our lunch stop

David and Angie also served as local pilots for a day trip in Idril around the entire island. The tides in Jersey are such that you can leave the St. Helier marina and turn east, sailing counter-clockwise around the island with a fair current for almost the entire trip. We had light winds and sunny skies, and got to see the whole coastline from the water.

Our route around Jersey

Aboard Idril

Angie and David have two boats of their own -- a 60 foot barge on which they cruise the rivers and canals of Europe, and a 28 foot Westerly "bilge keel" boat named Breton Girl for sailing around Jersey and coastal France. They took us for a lovely day sail aboard Breton Girl.

Prepping Breton Girl for sea

While in Jersey we also got our first doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Yea!

 

We did a lot of walking, especially along the rugged northern coast. There is excellent bus service throughout the island, so we could take a bus to the start of a walk and back from the end.

We also did a bunch of bike riding, sometimes as a way to get to walks that were not so easily reached by bus. Some of the sights were quite whimsical.

On May Day morning we said farewell to Jersey and sailed overnight across the English Channel to Salcombe. But that's a story for another post.

For more pictures, visit:

• Jersey - the beginning 
• Angie and David take us around Jersey (with Dimanche!)
• Sailing 'round Jersey with David and Angie
• Sailing Breton Girl 
• Walking the north shore of Jersey
• St. John to Rozel 
• Farewell, Jersey. Hello, Salcombe.