This should have been my easiest trip. Unfortunately, I didn’t pay enough attention to the weather, or rather I didn’t think enough about the likely effect of Spain’s highest mountain on a south wind. South winds are unusual here, and the pilot book warns that they can bring unsettled weather.
Expecting the 100 mile trip to take around 20 hours, I left Santa Cruz de Tenerife at around 1pm on Friday 24 November. My friends took a photo of me leaving:
I had always planned to go around the north coast of Tenerife, and didn’t change my plan despite the unusual weather conditions. For the run up to the north east corner of the island, I had fairly steady winds from the south west. Here are some nice photos:
After rounding the headland to head west, I got becalmed. Thinking this should be short-lived, I decided to motor through it. However I ended up motoring for a good four or five hours in total, as the island was obviously completely shadowing me, even five to ten miles off shore. With a cruising speed of not much over three knots, progress was slow. I’m also not too keen on motoring long distances, as the engine is elderly and I’d rather just use it for entering and leaving ports and not risk wearing it out.
There was a warning of things to come before dawn on the 25th. I could see dark clouds building in the west, and regular flashes of lightning. The wind started to blow from the west so I started tacking, aiming to make enough ground westward to clear the western point of Tenerife on a long tack towards Gomera and, hopefully, more favourable winds.
Unfortunately the wind built further and further, and then I was hit by a full squall. I tried to heave-to (essentially stopping the boat and holding her balanced in the water), but I’d lost steerage way from the force of the wind, so I dropped the mainsail and ran under genoa alone, reefed down to a scrap by this point. As dawn broke, I was faced with very strong winds from the west and pretty rough seas, with 50 miles between me and La Palma. I tried tacking into the wind but it was pretty hopeless. There are no suitable ports that I know of on the north coast of Tenerife, so I ultimately decided to run back east. In retrospect I should perhaps have tried again to heave-to so as to lose less ground, but for all I knew the wind could have been set like that for days, and running back towards Santa Cruz seemed like the best option at the time.
As it turned out, I got to virtually the same spot that I had been becalmed in previously, and got becalmed again. This was in the afternoon of the 25th, so I had effectively lost near enough a day by this point. I didn’t want to motor back to Santa Cruz, so I just took the sails down and drifted for a while. I took the opportunity to siphon some diesel out of my big gerry can and fill the tank, which I accomplished with surprisingly little fouling of the ocean.
After an hour or two, the wind finally started to blow, and from a more favourable direction, allowing me to run down towards Gomera. After a pretty unpleasant experience, this was a great relief, particularly when I cleared the western point of Tenerife, by quite a distance in the end, into open ocean. After a very brief calm spell, I was finally able to set a direct course for La Palma, probably around midnight.
The wind was quite weak at first, so I took the mainsail down as it was constantly backing and filling, which gets the boom swinging. I also had a few short snoozes. Reducing sail turned out to be fortuitous later as the wind started to build again, gusting to 25 knots or so, from roughly the south west. In the approach to La Palma I was again sailing under a tiny scrap of genoa, with fairly rough seas running more from the south. But this final part was actually pretty uneventful. The approach to the harbour and marina was straightforward, and I got settled quickly into one of many available berths. The marina isn’t particularly well-sheltered in these conditions, so the boat moves around a fair bit in the berth, but they are currently in the process of installing a surge barrier in the entrance, which should improve things a lot. This feat of engineering may happen while I am here; they are just waiting for the gate to be shipped from mainland Spain.
I should almost certainly have sailed around Tenerife to the south instead. It would have taken me further, but would have been a lot quicker. I ended up wandering all over the place to the north of the island. Some of this will be evident from the blog map, but because the tracker only sends a satellite ping every three hours, the map doesn’t really show the full extent of my wanderings. I’ll try to get an image of my track from the chartplotter at some point and add it below if I can.
La Palma is very steep, and much greener than the other islands. I’m really looking forward to getting into some forest for a change, although I’ll have to cycle up some very steep hills to get to it. I didn’t manage to get out on the bike at all in Tenerife, as I had too many boat jobs to do, but I’ll definitely be getting out on the roads here and should get some nice pictures.
I’m going to be flying back to the UK on the 12th. I should be in London at some point that week also, so I should be able to catch up with lots of folk, which I am looking forward to. Get in touch if you want to meet up.
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