Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Tenerife !

We landed on the Spanish island of Tenerife, one of the Canary islands, after three mostly normal days and nights at sea after leaving Porto Santo. We are actually only about 200 miles from the coast of Africa but probably won't make it over there since Africa is the opposite direction of Florida - our ultimate destination.

Here is what Tenerife looks like to beer-starved sailors
Big rocky coast with Santa Cruz on the left side of the photo
Now that we are in Spain we have to learn all new words except for cervesa and vinho tinto which are the same - thank heaven!

We had some minor excitement on the way over. One night while on watch I (Tom) had ANOTHER squid plop onto the deck. I saw it flash by and looked around for it but we didn't find it until the next day - too late to save and too late to eat. It just laid there on the deck looking up at us with its big squid eyes ...

Then, the next day, I was cooking dinner and looking out the window by the galley and I saw something odd float by. I ran up and we looked at it and thought we saw a sign of life. Pat turned the boat around and we fished it out of the water with a boat hook. It turned out to be a honest-to-goodness sea turtle caught up in some fishing net and line. It was hopelessly trapped until we cut the netting away. He looked at us with his big turtle eyes and said thanks and Pat tossed him overboard where he promptly dove down and swam away.

Pat and the sea turtle - Pat is on the left
Tenerife is a good sized island with an island population of around 700,000. We are in a marina in Santa Cruz which is the co-capital along with Las Palmas, where we are going tomorrow for a couple days to visit our sailing friends at another marina there.
Our mast is in there somewhere!
A striking feature of the Santa Cruz waterfront is their municipal auditorium and concert hall - it is really a WOW when you are up close to it.
Is it me or are we in Sydney, Australia?
We visited this very old micro-fort but it seemed to be closed.
I hear you knocking - but you can't come in ...
It's always fun to make friends at dinner. Here is Rene, the owner of the Italian restaurant where we ate a couple nights ago. Among other things (Rene was a great talker) he told us how he came to own this restaurant. Rene is from Venezuela and on a visit to Santa Cruz he had to visit the Venezuelan consulate. This restaurant was for sale, he bought it, and the rest is history.
Our host - Rene Cotogno
This is all it took for Rene to own a restaurant!
Much like Portugal, Spain has lots of monumental architecture and a host of statues. We liked this one that we found one night while walking to dinner.

Plan B to Florida - wind - but no waves
Here we are at dinner a couple nights ago. We are usually among the first ones at all the restaurants and often have to wait for them to open. We like to eat around 7 PM and lots of restaurants don't even open until 8 PM! It is not uncommon for us to leave around 9:30 and the dinner crowd is just hitting full swing.
Is is me or does my head look small?
 We go by this square and fountain every time we come into the city - it's a great park and it's surrounded of course, by bars and cafes.
Santa Cruz at night - as if we haven't seen enough water ...
That's it for now. Tomorrow we take the fast, wave-piercing Fred Olsen ferry over to Gran Canaria for a visit.

This ferry goes 38 knots!   Hey Pat - can we take this to Florida???

1 comment:

  1. Pat, John has your silver beard beat by at least two inches. Thought you might like to know.

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