| Pentanemos in Las Palmas |
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From: Andrew Jones Sent: 19 November 2009 16:29
To: Pentanemos CHPSC Blog.
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Subject: 091118 Las Palmas Blog
Las Palmas- Getting Ready
It’s been a funny old 10 days as preparation has taken 50% of the time and 50% of the time has been getting involved with the Arc festivities. Las Palmas itself is very disappointing, although warm and sunny, it is very dirty. Yesterday a huge commercial oil slick covered all the moorings in crude and with the occasional hard down poor we keep seeing dead cockroaches floating in the harbour. This coupled with rude marina staff, extortion by the “swindleries” (chandleries) and lazy fellow sailors pumping out black tanks rather than using shore facilities this place is not ideal. However, saying that, we have not had so much fun since we left Wales. The buzz for the event and camaraderie among crews is awesome. Nights have included fancy dress, guitar playing amongst the group and general top banter. Will has lost his keys 4 times so far and has had to swim back to the boat every night (early morning). He has also got a little competitive…. betting every one that we will beat them across including a swan 60. I do like his optimism. The funniest thing so far has been Pedro’s dinghy race across the harbour which has been going now for 28 years. Pulling some of our new friends together who are sailing on yachts ranging from Sadler 25 to a £3m Oyster 80 (whose water tanks weigh more than our boat) we made a twin cantilevered hull catamaran with a bowsprit using spinny poles and storm jibs. During the race our helm Alan jumped off mid race to swim over to the all Swedish girl boat to ask a girl out and successfully got a date and a kiss. As for myself I have never had so much flour and muck thrown at me at my life. Although it all ended well with us winning a trophy I think we won but the presentation was all in Spanish.
On the sailing front we have made some alterations. Firstly the new autohelm bracket has arrived with Neil and our tiller is now armour plated and looks like the terminator. I have had a third reef put into the main (which they charged over the top for), a cooler box (cold beer and coke hurray!!), all the winches have been serviced, the bottom cleaned and the hull and stainless polished. She looks good! We now also have restocked on Reggae Reggae sauce and mint sauce sent by my mom. We have also been safety checked, passed first time and nominated for best boat prepared to cross the Atlantic. I am very proud and I am sure Pops would be too.
On the down side our ration packs have been stopped in customs and I am unsure whether we are going to get them on time. Also our gas bottles are too small to be filled with local butane and Neil has spent a day walking the town and now has set off back to the airport to try and refill them there. To top it off yesterday I found a cockroach on the boat - nightmare. Subsequently we have sprayed the whole boat with very powerful stuff which had me hallucinating that I was seeing cockroaches that are not there. Last night we also had a scary experience, coming back from the shower we saw our next door neighbour and Will were both brandishing fire extinguishers as the dodgy shore power had made smoke come out of the charger. A fire is the last thing we want!
Somewhere along the way we have coupled our boat with the ‘Girls For Sail’ team who are raising money for cancer and surprisingly are all girls! We are heading to their party tonight but first we are to have dinner on a bowman 40 cooked by Jamie Oliver’s chef Dan. Life is so hard!
Now loaded with 374 litres of water bottles we are a bit lower in the water but nearly ready to go. I hope the next blog will be daily updates from the boat. Also keep an eye out for “Yachting Monthly” in February or March (able to purchase in Jan or Feb) as I have just had an interview with them as our story and boat has caught their eye. Pentanemos is becoming very popular here all good fun.
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