Come to the Canaries they said…..

Come to the Canaries they said, the weather in the winter is lovely they said.

We’re hoping it will be but it sure isn’t today! Being proper mariners we have of course been watching the weather forecast for a bit so today wasn’t a surprise. We knew unless things changed we’d be going nowhere. So as I write this it’s day 1 of our adventure in the Canaries and we’re still at our start point, Marina San Miguel.

As I am a proper mariner I use a couple of smart device apps, the main one being pocket grib and as a backup PassageWeather, Predict Wind and Windguru. Generally the information is reported back by fetching a GRIB file from a publically available source providing weather data an hour old. The forecast is presented as pretty little arrows with tails. Really simple, the wind direction is the direction of the arrow and the tails tell you the strength, a big tail is 10 knots a little one is 5. So two big tails and a little one is 25 Knots. For Pocket Grib rain is reported as a blue background, dark blue means it’s heaving it down. Today’s forecast is shown below. Hence we’re going nowhere!

No problem, first time in Tenerife we’ll go and explore. Here’s where it proves that whilst we might be smart mariners we are very dim land lubbers. Despite the forecast I decide to go walking in shorts, a long sleeved top and flip flops. Ellison was similarly attired. Neither of us took anything waterproof. All’s well for a start as you can see from the piccies, bit grey but dry and fairly warm.

Fortunately we made it to a bar after about 45 mins walking, ordered some lunch and we were still there 3 hours later because of this…

Eventually it stopped (ish), we’re back at the boat and making plans for tomorrow. Great forecast for Gran Canaria (15-20 Knots) 50 NM down wind. As advised I called to make a reservation in Puerto de Mogan. Full. Thought about Las Palma but it’s 70 miles so would mean leaving or arriving in the dark which we don’t fancy first day out.

So we’re off the Capital of Tenerife, Santa Cruz. 35 miles North East. Should be a beautiful beam reach sail (side wards wind).

Must be Gin time Ellison