The Passage:
We chatted with some local sailors to get the skinny on how to best negotiate our egress through the straight, for westbound traffic like us the weather and tides count for a lot. Get it wrong and you will have a very bad day on the water, there’s a lot going on in this little gap. We did as instructed; waited for some easterlies and then left a couple hours before the tide in an attempt to get most of nature’s forces on our side. This meant a 5:00AM departure, so the night before we dutifully set the alarm, went to bed early, and tried to sleep while the wind tried to keep us up with haunted sounding moans and howls.
It was cold, dark and windy so the next morning we both bundled up in everything we owned. Leaving harbour in the dark of night and threading our way through sleeping giants anchored in the harbour created an exhilarating expeditionary feel. Even at this ungodly hour there was enough traffic to keep us both up and in the cockpit on collision avoidance duty. With ships everywhere lit up like Christmas trees it was sometimes tough to tell if they were anchored or slowly underway.
We left the harbour, tacked into the Straight and immediately felt the currents strange effects on the surface sea state. With a few hours of following wind and seas pushing us along at 6 or 7 knots we made great progress before something began to change. The wind was the same, our wake sounded the same, and the water rushing past our hulls looked the same; but it somehow felt like we were trying to sail up a big river. Before long we had the engine running and both sails up with 25 knots of following wind just to make 3 knots of headway. After two or three hours of this we were out of the bottle neck and into the eastern mouth of the Straight. The strange conditions lost their pull on us. The sun was up over the horizon but was struggling to push any light through the overcast sky resulting in a cold grey ominous looking morning, and it was time to cut across the shipping lanes. We watched the lights, timed the gap and cut a hard left. We were broad reaching on a port tack now and the Med shot us into the Atlantic like a cork out of a bottle. Slapdash flew south on our rhumb line at a comfortable 8 knots. By the time the sun burnt through the scud we were through the Straight, across the shipping lanes and settling into our sail so Jaime went off to bed to rest up for her shift. I sat outside burning my bottom lip on a steaming hot mug of coffee. After six months of finicky sailing in the Med this steady wind and long rolling Atlantic swell felt incredible.
The next few days passed without incident. We had steady light to moderate wind which behaved itself by staying aft of the beam where both wind and wave belong. It was our first big ocean passage since we sailed from Sri Lanka to the Maldives in April and we wondered how it would feel. Fortunately we fell into the routine of our passage cycle without difficulty, slept well and had a good time.
 |
The only real excitement happened on the morning of day four shortly after Jaime woke me up for my 6:00AM shift and went to bed. She had been hugging the limit of a port tack for the past three hours. Instead of needlessly waking me up or attempting a night time jibe on her own wisely held the course and waited for daylight. I went outside and received her no-look-pass right away. A jibe would get us onto a nice heading but instead of waiting a few minutes to fully wake up just went ahead and sheeted in the main, changed course, brought the boom over and began trimming the sail; just like I’ve done a million times before.
The mistake I made was lazily reaching aft from the cockpit with my hand between a dodger support bar and the traveller. When I pulled the pin to adjust the traveller the boom swung over and pinned my hand between the block and the dodger bar.
The safe way to do this would have been to simply reach around the dodger bar keeping hand and arm out of the way in case something like this happens. That’s the benefit of retrospect but at the time I was mainly concerned with un-skewering my hand. I pulled on the main sheet with my free left arm to take some pressure off the boom and managed to yank my hand out. The bad news was that I could see the bone just below my wrist, the good news was it was intact. Jaime heard the commotion, came out to see what was wrong then nearly fainted when I showed her the bone in my hand to prove that it wasn’t broken. We did our best with what we had to patch it up, and that was it. Happy ending, cheap lesson
Lanzarote:
We arrived in Arrecife on October 13th. We pulled into a nice little harbour that Roger from La Palapa had told us about. It looked good but there were no free moorings and our anchor wouldn’t set on the rocky bottom. We reluctantly motored a mile north into Puerto de Naos.
Naos is a lot of things; totally protected, crowded with ancient looking liveabords, and totally disgusting. We snuggled in between, behind, and in front of a bunch of boats, dropped the anchor and wondered if we would ever see it again. It was that kind of place. We didn’t even bother launching the dinghy and stayed on the boat instead. We cleaned things up from the passage and enjoyed a nice long sleep so the surroundings didn’t bother us but in the morning we left right after coffee. Fortunately the anchor came up without any trouble and we decided to head south and check the mooring field one more time on the way by. We got lucky; another boat was leaving just as we arrived so one of the prized moorings was free for about five minutes before we scooped it up and settled in. We were moored behind a huge promenade that protected our cove from the swell. The water was clean and clear. It was a nice setup so we decided to take our time there and explore.
 |
Arrecife is an unpretentious city (why does using the word unpretentious feel so pretentious?). They have an active small boat sailing community. Flocks of dinghy sailors and lasers were zipping through the mooring field all the time, and there was a little club on the quay for guys who don’t want to get their feet wet and prefer to control colorful little model sailboats by remote control.
 |
‘El Charco de San Gines’ is a salt-water lagoon in the city centre surrounded by cafe’s and fishermen’s houses. We weren’t far from the Castles of San Jose (now a Museum of Modern Art) and San Gabriel (the Archaeological Museum). A 20 minute walk took us to Columbian and Dominican neighborhoods, and the little local bars there served the best fried chicken and patacones we’ve ever had, and the massive Dominican ladies always gave me an extra piece.
 |
The Grand Hotel dominates the skyline in Arrecife. It’s one of many weird developments here that seem way too bloated for the little island to support. There were a lot of fancy buildings, whole neighbourhoods in fact that were seemingly thrown up with a ‘build it and they will come’ approach. The Grand is a massive 5 star hotel complex without enough occupancy to cover operational costs. It worked out well for us though; the Pool Bar was stunning and we usually had it to ourselves. The glass walled elevator whisked us up to the rooftop bar where stunning 360 degree views provided a nice backdrop while we plucked away using the free wifi and sipped inexplicably cheap beers (same prices as the dodgy fried chicken bars).
  |
We spent a couple of weeks slumming it in the dodgy districts, and hobnobbing it in five star luxuries like our personal pool and rooftop terrace.
At some point a low pressure system moved through. Those in the know went around the corner and hid out in the dirty but sheltered Naos. We were among the 4 boats that were not in the know. By 9:00AM things were getting a little sporty with full swells roaring through the mooring field. I had dove the mooring when we first arrived and was impressed with the hardware; a massive chunk of concrete with commercial sized rigging. The day before the storm I dove it again and attached a second line from our anchor cleat straight down to the concrete block as a backup. Conditions were forecast to improve so we decided to just ride it out.
We couldn’t leave the boat unattended but there was no point in both of us suffering so Jaime took the dinghy and spent the day on shore. I hunkered down on the Slapdash prepared to spend an uncomfortable day being paranoid about breaking our mooring and smashing to bits on the sea wall.
Then a boat beside us broke free. Fortunately the owners were on board and quick enough to get the engine running and bash their way out to sea before breaking up on the rocks. I exchanged waves with my neighbours who, also out on their decks, were watching this before heading back into the cabin. Somehow despite the noise, pitching and rolling I managed to sneak in a nap. I woke up to an Arabic sounding battle cry, ‘loo-lo-loo-lo-loo-lo! , so went outside to see what was going on.
A 30 foot monohull on the mooring in front of us had broken loose and was heading straight for us. I imagined it hitting Slapdash, and both of us tangled up, being pulverized on the rocks behind us.
With no dinghy I could only stand lamely on deck with a puny fender waiting for the inevitable crash. That’s exactly what I was doing when off in the distance I saw the bearded French guy racing towards us. He bashed through the waves and without even a glance back at me slammed his little dinghy straight into the bow of the rouge boat. He bounced back and nearly flipped over, but the impact pushed the boat off its collision course and I watched it spin past only ten feet off our port side. By this time some friends off another boat had arrived on the scene in their dinghy. I tossed them a line to tie the boat off to our stern. The boat was moving fast though and by the time they retrieved the line we were 6 feet short. The boat was closing fast on the gnarly looking lee shore. I managed to point out the free mooring behind us with some tactical shouting and arm flapping. The two dinghies raced off ahead of the boat and waited at the mooring like they were fielding a pop-fly. Somehow they managed to tie it off on the way thereby saving the little boat from being granulated against the rocks. We later learned that the Arabic sounding battle cry (loo-lo-loo-lo-loo-lo!) originated from the powerful lungs of a former opera singer on a neighboring boat. Her warning had carried over the storm and pounding surf after all other hoots and whistles had failed. Unfortunately I didn’t get any pictures of the dramatic rescue, but here’s an unfortunate shot of that same mooring a couple days before the storm.
 |
Conditions eventually settled down and the next day I had an opportunity to re-balance our boat karma by rescuing somebody’s dinghy. Jaime caught a glimpse of it as it flew past our window and I was the first on the scene. I chased it down, tied it off and bashed back up into the wind reuniting it with its rightful German owner. The guy confessed that he had seen the dinghy too, and considered rescuing it but when he got up on deck discovered that he didn’t have a dinghy anymore. A second glance confirmed it, the dinghy he was considering rescuing was his own.
When the weather finally settled down a couple of days later I decided to celebrate with a nice boat bath. I geared down, soaped up and dove in. The instant I was below the surface Satan tasered me. I surfaced fighting the urge to scream, splashed back to the boat and called Jaime. My arm felt like someone had flayed the skin off it from armpit to elbow and then rubbed habanero peppers, salt and nail polish remover into the wound. Suspecting that the soapy-naked-man-bawling look may not be that attractive I tried to rinse off and hold back any blubbering until I was inside.
Maybe it was because she just felt bad for making me dress my own bloody wrist wound on the trip down but Jaime was an excellent nurse. She poured me a drink, retrieved our industrial strength black market pain killers from Sri Lanka and calmly looked up ‘jelly fish stings’ in our trusty Captain’s Medical Guide (which covers everything from childbirth to decapitation).
In the meantime I watched ropy looking welts rise up and blister on my arm. It looked like I had been branded. I’ve been stung by jellyfish plenty of times but this was something extraordinary. The pain lasted for hours. In a week the sting scabbed over and then eventually became impossibly itchy. Considering that I was naked at the time I do of course realize how lucky I was and that it could have been much, MUCH worse. Most of it eventually cleared up but now (two months later) there are still these clearly visible marks where the tentacles burned the deepest.
 |
We left Arrecife on Oct 31st to finally meet up with Roger in Las Palmas. We hadn’t seen him since Greece and were excited to find out if his wife Aimee really existed or not. We suspected that she was out of his league and that he had made the whole thing up. Fifteen miles later as we were passing through a 6 mile gap with Lanzarote on our right and Fuerteventura on our left, the engine conked out.
We had a good sail going but there was 25 knots of wind and we were a little worried about our proximity to the now lee shore of Punta Gorda. The symptoms were the same as a clogged fuel filter, but since I had just completed a full servicing in Arrecife that didn’t really add up. For the next couple of hours we tacked back and forth while I tried a few of the more obvious remedies. Nothing worked and although we could restart the engine, it would only run for 5 minutes or so before dying again. We wanted to carry on but a quick look at the charts showed that Rubicon Marina was right beside us.
Yes this is a sailboat, but is it really prudent to pass up a safe harbour only 3 miles away in exchange for an overnight 100 mile open ocean passage? We decided to make the safe call and tacked our way up into the harbour. We called the marina on the VHF to let them know we were coming in with limited maneuverability. Despite their guarantees of course nobody was around to provide assistance when we arrived. Fortunately we managed to come along side without any trouble and after getting squared away at the office our engine ran just long enough to get into a slip. We sent Roger an email that night with the news that we would not be there in the morning. He was not surprised.
We took the afternoon off and explored the new harbour, bumped into some friends and eventually found 4 or 5 boats that we knew were here. The marina was very protected, had a pool and a couple of grocery stores. With the several bars and buddy boats in the neighborhood we couldn’t have really picked a better spot to break down.
The next day I got on with things. After spending a few hours checking all the easy stuff again I decided to quit kidding myself and turned our nice tidy cockpit into a jobsite. We emptied the lockers, pulled off the engine panels and spread out the big job mat. When the engine ran it ran perfectly. Then it would choke out and die, clearly a fuel problem but what?
WARNING: The following paragraphs contain geeky boat talk and may not be suitable for some viewers:
The next ten days went something like this; it wasn’t the fuel so it must be the filters. It wasn’t the filters so it must be the fuel lines. It wasn’t a clogged fuel line so it must be an air leak. It wasn’t an air leak so it must be the injectors (which involved ironically; a trip back to Arrecife to have the injectors serviced). It wasn’t the injectors so it must be the return line. The return line was fine, maybe a clogged vent on the fuel tank was creating a vacuum. Nope. I explored each theory but every test yielded the same result. Governor? Fuel pump? Guess again.
 |
The mystery managed to stump seven or eight different sailors whose combined experience totaled over 100 years. I was scouring manuals and books, even Skype conferencing Roger from time to time for remote support. The one thing everyone seemed to agree on was fuel delivery, but what? I started over to see if I had missed something. I spent each day with my head in the engine and each night commiserating with my support group.
 |
During one call to Roger he began questioning me on lift pump operation. I described the starting sequence and something didn’t make sense to him. The sentence that finally began to unravel the whole mystery went like this;
“You have confirmed that the lift pump is operating because you can hear it priming the system when you press the pre-heat button, but where does the lift pump get its power from once you let go of the pre-heat switch?”
Great question, I had no idea.
Back at the boat a multi meter revealed that the lift pump was receiving a full 12 volts when the pre-heat button was engaged, but once the engine was running (and the pre-heat button was no longer being pushed) the pump was receiving low and somewhat erratic voltage. When I jumped the lift pump with a lead straight from the battery the engine ran perfectly on the first try. Finally! The smoking gun that had been eluded us all this time. We had a wiring, terminal or ground problem and nothing more. Fortunately there was a spare lead at the dashboard which I was able to use to supply the correct voltage to the correct places. This was sorted out within a day and Slapdash was back in business.
Despite being incredibly frustrating at times there were several positive aspects to our unplanned sojourn. As previously mentioned there were a lot of friends kicking around, we had been bouncing around with a couple of the boats (Pegasus and Imagine) since Indonesia and finally had the chance to get to know them. We met new friends and created more memories with long time favorites Stu and Sandy off Heartsong but didn’t discriminate between new friends or old when it came to making a nuisance of ourselves by borrowing tools. I had the opportunity to show off my search and recovery skills by diving for (and finding) a lost purse. It was a fun diversion and the rewards (plenty of beer, a nice red cooler pack that I had my eye on and best of all ‘hero status’ on S/V Evergreen,) exceeded my input. Just don’t tell them that.
 |
Although I’ve monopolized the log with boring engine talk, Jaime was hard at work the whole time. The sympathy pains she was feeling for my greasy hands and skinned knuckles resulted in gleaming stainless, oiled teak, washed and waxed hulls and several dinner parties which we both attended and hosted. At one Jaime presented me with this aptly named bottle of “Chit On” wine. If you can’t see it in this shot the rest of the label says, “Seth has been… Chit On by a Westerbek but Beeker loves him even if he can’t show it”.
 |
The boat was magically provisioned and meals magically appeared when I forgot to eat. Jaime stoically faced greasy hand prints, gratuitous ass crack, my foul temperament, and the daily destruction of our cockpit while I developed a fetish for bikinis and curlers. Looking back at it now, I realize that I had the easy job. It was effort squared and then some, an incredible bit of teamwork.
 |
It goes without saying that we were relieved to hear Beaker (our engines name) purr like a kitten on November 17th when we left for Las Palmas. Instead of hating the sound of the engine running while we sail like we usually do, this first extended sea trial sounded like Beethoven’s 3rd symphony to us. After a half day we were satisfied that all was well and shut him down and fully enjoyed the following wind and sea scenario we had.
Wind fluctuated between 12 and 18 knots and the swell stayed behind us the whole way. The only problem we had was trying to rein Slappy in so that we wouldn’t arrive in the dark. By the time Jaime woke me up for my 6:00AM shift land was clearly visible and we were closing fast. I let her sleep as long as possible until we were well within the harbour and needed to take our sails down. We found a great spot, dropped the hook in twenty feet and rewarded ourselves with a shot of Baileys in our coffee.
I don’t know but your fetish with the curlers and bikini’s is VERY understandable… enjoying the website and the media….
Posted by Monty | 31. Dec, 2011, 1:29 pma bit confused re weather, i just pulled a grib for las palmas and it shows 15 to 20kts out of the NE for the duration of the grib. what are you looking for?
happy xmas!
Posted by roger | 23. Dec, 2011, 1:45 amIf the wind AND the waves would get together and agree on a direction we would be much obliged. We’re just little and 20′ waves in the face is a bummer. Santa is sending NE waves soon. I know it! Miss you Palapers. Merry xmas!
Posted by theslapdash | 28. Dec, 2011, 11:53 pmso a bit confused on the blog re weather, just pulled grib for you shows 15 to 20 kts out of NE for the durration, what are you looking for?
happy xmas!!
Posted by roger | 23. Dec, 2011, 1:43 amLuckily the ass wasn’t too Hairy on the Canary yellow boat. I wonder if his name was Harry?
Posted by Lorry | 21. Dec, 2011, 4:06 amHeinrich. Hiney-rick. HA! Don’t let Jaime lose with the laptop.
Posted by theslapdash | 22. Dec, 2011, 11:34 pmJassper?
Posted by Lorry | 23. Dec, 2011, 1:13 amI got nuthin’. I think you win this round. Jassper is perfect.
Posted by theslapdash | 28. Dec, 2011, 11:57 pmAnd are those beads on his Maxi-Pad thong? Pink, white, yellow – they may also be a candy string. Wow, I may have zoomed in a little too close. Do you see yellow spots before you go blind?
Posted by Lorry | 23. Dec, 2011, 1:18 amI may need to worry about you Lorry. I wouldn’t recommend zooming in on a dude’s backyard, no matter how tanned it is. You’ll be messed up for life. Sorry naked guy. But it’s true.
Posted by theslapdash | 28. Dec, 2011, 11:55 pm