October 2019

Graciosa is such a nice island. They tried to preserve besides nature also the local culture. Only one small fishermans village, lots of beaches, a couple of vulcans and dessert. I walked across the whole island. In the South beautiful costs.

In the middle a desert.

And when I first approached the island while sailing, I spotted a long beachline in the North. The beauty of it is, there is no one around. It is like a total uninhabited island.

But it turned out to be a very long walk. By the time I came to this beach, I had already done about 20 km and I had to do another 8 km to reach the village again where Dave had invited me for a supper on his boat. So totally worn out I arrived at the fishing village.

I met Mattia on Daves boat.

A young Italian guy Dave had picked up trough a website. He became my first crew member. Besides assisting me he is a very good cook!

We sailed to Calero, a place where I could find a technician to test my navigation system. There was an affordable very luxury marina and we could use the fresh water to clean the boat.

We discovered the island Lanzarote by car. We visited the South where lava created lots of caves and tunnels. Here at Hervideros.

We wanted to visit big caves. These appeared to be one of the highlights of the island, so very busy, but Mattia discovered an even larger one without any visitors! To give you an impression. In the image you just can see Mattia. We did go for a couple of hundreds of meters in and it was pitch dark. I did notice no difference with my eyes opened or closed.

Lava landscapes are so beautiful.

In the North we had a beautiful view on La Graciosa, The island I first arrived.

Since there are several beaches in the bay we anchored and we toured around.

We picked up Mike. I met him trough a website. His first day was not a good start. When we picked him up with the dinghy, the waves where quit big and we became soaky wet. But Mike, he had all his luggage on board, some of his electronic equipment did not survive this trip.
The first we did, was going through all the safety measures. Mike wanted to test the automatic lifevest.

Mike is an Astrophysicien, so he can tell us a lot of the beautiful skies we see at night.

Now the team is complete and we sailed our first trip to Fuerteventura. A very calm sea, so we had to motor some. I picked a spot on the South coast, Morro el Jable, but it turned out to be a very bad spot and we had to move. Here Mike cleaned the underwater body.

We stayed only for a day. Did some shopping and on the way back with the dinghy, some people called us from another boat to join them for a drink. Two French couples.

The next day we left for a two night trip to Tenerife. Mike has lived there for a while and said it was a very beautiful island and he loved to show us some wonderful places. A very good sailing trip from which Mike said he had never experienced such nice sailing before.

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