On the way to Saudade

Right, we’ve just put on the album Miss Perfumada by Cesaria Evoria, because we’re almost out of Spanish waters.

Tanneke and Kommer Jan arrived on Saturday evening after what was a pretty long flight. Lovely to see them again! We had three evenings of truly wonderful Spanish food in random, good-looking restaurants. Selection criterion: are there enough Spaniards eating there too? The food here is much better seasoned than in Portugal, we have to give them that. And I now understand the whole “Mañana” thing a bit better: they do turn up today, but they only bring half of it. It took until Monday before I had the dinghy complete; the Honda coupling did surface in the end.

On Saturday Tanneke took KJ in tow to the supermarket, where they spent almost three hours shopping. It was delivered on Monday morning. This is the new trick I picked up from another skipper: let the crew do the provisioning, then they can never complain that something’s missing. That the coffee capsules then turn out to be the wrong type, well, we’ll just have to live with that ( (Dolce Gusto doesn’t fit in a Nespresso…)

On Sunday the ventilation in the aft cabin was finally installed as well (years too late). For years I’d been putting it off, not wanting to drill screws into the material and then end up with such an ugly thing. But it’s simply too hot in the aft cabin, which I use on this trip when there’s crew aboard. And on top of that I actually managed to get the Kabola diesel heater going again, adjusted the ignition and cleaned the flame sensor. Sven, the friendly mechanic from TCN who do the maintenance in the Netherlands, had given me instructions for that. It still wasn’t running properly, so I bled the diesel injector as well. It seems to have worked now, and I understand a whole lot more about these heaters again. If you’re not technical you’d better go cruising on an extremely simple boat, or it’ll all end in tears.

One of the downsides of where we were moored, stern-to against a quay where every day crowds of cruise passengers walked past, is that several times a day someone had a question or a comment. Then you realise that our boat, with the cockpit right at the stern, isn’t meant for mooring like that; they can look straight into the whole boat, and they did so quite shamelessly. And then there are the youngsters looking for a (preferably free) berth on board. So KJ and I are pretty surprised when, on Sunday evening, while we’re still sitting in the cockpit for a last drink, two very blond young Dutchmen ask whether this is a KM boat. Yes indeed, and how do you know that? Turns out they’re two of the 7 (!) crew members on Guanara, aka ex-Tulip, a huge 88-footer that was also built at KM. Naturally we offer them a Brouwdok Double IPA. Nice lads.

This morning we were up early, and I was itching to go, so off I went to hand the gate pass to Piet. I’d run into Piet on the pontoon on Saturday; he spotted Harlingen on the back of my TSRH 2022 shirt and he was originally from Friesland, so there’s an instant connection. He and his wife are on a three-year circumnavigation via the barefoot route (Panama - French Polynesia - etc.) on a JPK 39 “Just Fantasy”. That’s a very fast boat, I’m curious how they’ll feel about it at the end. Back to our departure: fit the dinghy on the stern, install the Watt & Sea, done. I have to say, there are a few things about the dinghy I definitely like less, but it does fit more nicely on the stern.

We left in glorious weather and after half an hour we were far enough out of Tenerife’s wind shadow to hoist the sails. We’re now sailing beautifully in 15-16 kn of wind at 155˚, making 8.5 - 9.5 kn. Unfortunately the wind won’t help us this nicely for the whole passage; tomorrow it’s going to drop off quite a bit.

Until Mindelo, where we hope to arrive on the 23rd.