Anticipation and Adrenalin - Madeira to the Canaries 13th November 2003
It is 3am. The night is so black that the faint glow from the instruments
almost dazzles you. The deck moves violently, and you have to hang on to prevent
yourself from being thrown around, or worse, overboard. If you are thrown
overboard there is no-one to see you. You are in the Atlantic, 100 miles from
the nearest land. People are attempting to sleep below, relying on you to keep
watch. The wind kicks viciously, and a wave comes over the side, drenching you.
Behind the boat, a black billowing storm cloud obscures the stars. Over the
horizon comes a sail of flaming gold.
You start, what is it? Why doesn’t it show on the radar? Have you been asleep to
miss something so large – or are you asleep and dreaming? It is actually getting
bigger as you look at it. Its coming straight towards Intrepid. Now its even
higher – it must be at least 100 metres high, huge flaming golden orange. It’s
crescent shaped, just like a sail. There has been no notice of anything like
this. Who should you alert? What should you do?
The full crescent lifts right off the surface of the sea. You suddenly recognise
it for something you have seen thousands of times before – but never from this
perspective. The colour is slowly changing to silver. No need to wake anyone.
One hour more on watch before you wake the next person. This time you are the
one to see the moon rise. This is why you are here. Perfect!…………………………………………….
Sunset on Sunday 19th October had come at 7.30pm, just early enough to show the
huge bulk of Teneriffe, unquestionably a volcano, edged in the golden orange of
the setting sun, although still 55 miles away. We had left Madeira on Saturday
at 10am, and the wind, once away from the effects of Madeira (wind always bends
around islands and headlands, and so you can never be sure which direction it is
coming from until you are well away from them), blew from the west at about 20
knots. Ocean winds are much steadier than over land, and this wind continued to
blow for the next 36 hours. We hardly touched the sails as we skudded along at 7
knots or so, covering 162 miles/day, with only ourselves for company. I cooked
roast chicken for dinner, then slept while Nicky did the 9pm to 2am watch, then
woke me for the 2am to 7am. 5 hours is a long watch, but with the only other
person asleep in the aft cabin, the person on watch has the run of the rest of
Intrepid, and we can make tea, read a bit etc. We usually reduce the amount of
sail we have up before night, so that if the wind increases, Intrepid is still
well balanced, but with the waves from almost behind, the motion was not easy.
We passed right between the lonely Salvagem islands on Sunday morning, a bit
larger than I had reckoned, but still a bleak pair of rocks, the larger one some
160 metres high, 1 mile wide by ½ mile long, 100 miles from any other land of
any description, surrounded by assorted other submerged and semi submerged
rocks. There is supposed to be a warden on the island to check our permit, but
with the 20 knot wind, any anchorage was going to be tenuous at best, and we
imagined the poor man watching what was probably the only boat he would see that
day pass on without stopping, (as had the 3 boats before us).
We are now some 200 miles further south, and the temperature is noticeably
warmer, the more so when the sun burns away the clouds, and Intrepid races south
in bright sparkling weather. We have only seen one 1 other boat in 36 hours, and
perhaps 2 or 3 birds, a few more round the Salvagems. We do odd jobs, write,
read, cook. I cook paella for dinner at 7pm, just as the sun sets framing
Teneriffe, then the wind dies and we start the engine. When I get up at 2am the
lights of Gran Canaria are clearly visible from 30 miles away, and we adjust our
speed to get in at 7am which is first light. The stars are brilliant, and I am
reminded that the British Observatory is now in the Canaries, because there is
too much light in the UK to see the sky clearly.
The rising moon always manages to catch me out, its quite heart-stopping at this
moment when its on the horizon, and its quite my favourite sight at night. This
time it is almost flat on its back, rising in the east and within half an hour
its well up in the sky, its familiar silver now glistening a path across the
almost flat sea towards Intrepid, its bright light overcoming the stars one by
one. A cruise liner and container ship glide slowly past, each on their
schedules, my mobile phone springs into life, and I am really pleased to get a
message from James that he has successfully completed his solo bike ride from
Southend to Bath this weekend (which must have been tough). We are back in touch
with the world and all’s well.
Gran Canaria is the largest of the Canaries, shaped like the head of a cat
looking at you, with the capital, Las Palmas on the right hand of the 2
peninsulars that look like the ‘ears’. We slowly motored down the 4 km long
jetty that protects the huge harbour from the east, (Gran Canaria is the major
trans-shipment port to/from Africa), avoided a swiftly exiting ferry, and nosed
our way to Pedro’s fuel dock in the marina. Pedro is something of an institution
here, he has been fuelling boats to cross the Atlantic for the last 30+ years,
and he organises a dinghy race just before the ARC (Atlantic Rally for Cruisers)
that descended into chaos last time we went, but was messy and fun. Sure enough
Pedro was there to meet us himself, (although the marina staff weren’t there
until 9am), and the Port staff advised us to find our own choice of berth at one
of the 4 pontoons to the north of the marina which (together with the quay) are
reserved for ARC boats. We chose Pontoon 16 (which we had last time in 2001),
and a kind Brit called Russ from a Sigma 38 called Steamy Windows helped us with
ropes. There were about 8 other ARC boats on the pontoon – and about the same
number of NARC’s (non-ARC boats).
The ARC is something of a ‘good news, bad news’ story. The good news is that it
helps organise 250 sailing boats to cross the Atlantic in such a way that we can
provide mutual support, and also provides advice and bureaucratic fast-tracking.
The bad news is that if you are not with the ARC you are not only excluded from
all this, you are at times moved from the berths that are reserved for the ARC
boats. So NARC’s are understandably anti-ARC, and to some extent they are right
because even without the ARC organisation, many of the boats would provide
mutual suppport and advice anyway, and creating the ARC has turned the whole
thing into a bit of an exclusive club which is the reverse of the orginal
concept. On this occasion our enjoyment of the ARC atmosphere and contacts
prevailed over egalitarianism.
Las Palmas is a big city and our folding bike is really useful as many of the
shops are a mile away, and even the toilet and shower block is ½ mile away.
Well….its useful for me, as Nicky can’t ride a bike and has to walk. We raided
the 4 local chandlers for boat bits, and the central market for some really
fresh fruit, all from different Canarian islands, including bananas, lemons,
oranges and avocados as well as the more obvious tomatoes and lettuce, hosted
various boats for sundowners most nights, and searched Las Palmas for a sports
bar to watch the Rugby World Cup which is going on in Australia.
On Sunday, the day of the England/Samoa game, we thought we had arranged for a
local bar to be open with the TV on at 0915 when the game started, but
unfortunately when we arrived, the patron had overslept, and the bartender was
not prepared to wake him to wake him up. A motley bunch of people from
neighbouring yachts kept turning up and we started to get text messages from a
friend in UK on the score, which initially showed 10-0 to Samoa. open up In
desperation we went to a 5 star hotel which we figured must have satellite TV,
and I asked on behalf of 10 blokes and 1 girl to book a room for 2 hours. They
must have thought we were from the royal family or a football club, suffice to
say that from the raised eyebrows we got the massage that they don’t do that
sort of thing in the Canaries………..
They did point us in the direction of an Irish Bar, which mind-bogglingly was
shut even for the Irish game against Argentina, (and therefore we suspected only
Irish in marketing, not in substance), and finally resorted to the refuge of the
computer nerd, and went to a games parlour which had internet coin in the slot,
and ‘watched’ the England game via the Planet Rugby website text commentary
(with 1 minute delay). We cheered and shouted and groaned, but it really was a
bit like drinking a pint of no alcohol beer, more frustration than satisfaction,
even though it was better than nothing. We carried the party through lunch to
dinner at a nearby Chinese, and finally discovered a bar that lured by promises
of enormous purchases of beer at 9am next weekend promised they would open for
the next rugby rounds. We shall see……
Our BBQ bolted onto the back rail is in use most nights, and the day before we
left to go to UK for a 2 week pre-ARC visit, we discovered we still had lots of
meat uneaten, so we had an impromptu end of pontoon party with kebabs, gate
crashers, and a brilliant star lit cockpit to sit round.
We flew to UK to see family, and managed to see a few friends (not all
unfortunately), and had James to stay at the the Cruising Association’s
Limehouse Basin cabins which are only 1 mile from Tower Bridge, then with Bob
and Cindy whose fine boat is in St Katherine’s dock, even closer (although the
guy protesting for improved access for Dad’s disrupted our travel a bit). We
journeyed to Essex, Surrey and Oxford in a zig zag pattern, finally having to do
a bit of home-spun garage breaking at night to get into the lock up garage in
Bath where we leave our car when we are way. The key was somewhere else, (I
know….) and a rather bemused (but very helpful) local Bathian (?) helped us to
finally lever it open, we tried to explain all the noise to neighbours (not very
successfully I am afraid), and James drove us up to London along the M4 at what
seemed like 100mph, (probably only 95 mph).
After a fair BA flight to Madrid, Iberia managed to close our ‘connecting’
flight before we arrived, even though the plane was still on the ground,
explaining that our luggage would not make the transfer and for reasons of
safety and security they could not allow us to travel without our luggage. We
argued to no avail, waited 4 hours in Madrid, arrived in Gran Canaria and queued
for our luggage only to find that in spite of all the protestations, our luggage
had come on the earlier flight. I suspect that our connection had closed early,
and safety and security were only a convenient excuse. Air travel is faster than
boat, but at 1200 miles in an eventual journey time of 14 hours, (average 85
mph) James would beat Iberia Airlines if he could only drive over water.
We arrived at Intrepid at 1130pm, to find that we had chosen our crew well.
Bernard and Beryl had arrived at 8pm expecting to find us on the boat, but had
transferred to the bar, a party was in full swing on pontoon 17, interboat
romance was in the air, the newspapers we had brought from England were eagerly
snatched up for news of the latest scandal and sport, and we were off to a good
ARC build-up.
As I write, it is Thursday 13th November, we have completed about 15 of the 20
tasks we aimed to do before the start to make Intrepid as safe and as
comfortable as we can. The first of the excellent ARC seminars has started, our
rig has been inspected, we have had a thorough safety inspection, (both passed),
and we have a full programme of events in the 10 days before we set off.
We send best wishes to everyone, those we met in our short visits and those who
we were unable to get to see this time, I will be writing brief but more
frequent emails as we cross the Atlantic so let me know if there is any
particular aspect you would like to know about as we go across – I cannot
guarantee fish, but will do my best to describe anything else.
Andy and Nicky Gibb Thursday 13th November, Gran Canaria.
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