A Happy New year sailing in the Canary Islands

This New Year could not have begun in a better way…

Back to my old lifestyle… on the 31st of December, I flew out of Barcelona to Tenerife to catch up with my NZ bro Jon, his sister Monzy and other friends for a 10 days sailing holiday. I first caught up at the airport with Dan and Ludo. I had known Dan 2 years ago when I crossed the Atlantic and went back to the DR to visit my friends. He was sailing with Derek, another American guy and they had come to stay at my place in Las Terrenas for a few days (see an older entry in 2008…). We had caught up again in France to catch up with Jon’s parents and bro Paul later in the year, then last year when he sailed with Ludo, a very nice French guy on Ultima Noche and they spent a few days in Barcelona. Funny to catch up every time in a different place!

I was stoked to see Monzy, my little sister I had not seen since I left NZ in 2007… still the lovely and smiling face I remembered of.

We had a ball, first had drinks on Double Bruyn for midnight

then went to a party organized in a small village for the 31st of December in San Andres where we danced all night, mostly on Latin music. Monzy turned to be hooked on a blow up girl and did not want anybody else to touch her as if she belonged to her… which was obviously not the case… she was pretty smashed, as we all were and it was really funny to watch her holding tight to her new friend...

We all slept on Jon’s boat, Double Bruyn, the 8 of us, as Jon had 2 English mates staying till the 2nd and a Belgium girl, Valerie, sailing with Jon... no need to say it was a big mess inside the boat, with everybody’s stuff, the 3 girls sleeping in the Vberth, some sleeping outside, others on the floor…

Another guest was to come over on the 1st of January, Richie, another NZ mate I had not seen neither since my departure of NZ which brought the number of guests on board to 9!!! On the 2nd, Oli and Kevin went back to England and I went for a nice walk along the shore with Monzy, Valerie and Ludo. It was cool to have a little bit of exercise and see the surroundings. Lots of paragliders were having fun flying above us as we were walking.

We ended up in a nice small village, really peaceful, quiet with nice houses and lots of tropical plants and veggies growing in private gardens.

On the 4th of January, I had my first stunning sunrise… one of the big pleasures for me when living on a boat… amazing, simply magical… I did not dare to swim naked as I did on the 1st when everybody else was still sleeping as Dan and Jon were on the deck and I did not want them to get horny hahaha…

Off we were to sail to Fuerteventura… hurrah! We had awesome sailing conditions, nice wind, perfect direction, flying at 7/8 knots… I felt really happy to be there, steering the DB, feeling the wind in the sails, loving it, pure freedom and happiness, sailing on a beautiful sunny day with good mates.

Val, Ludo and I did the first watch during the night and had the privilege to see the moonrise… I was blown away, first thought it was a cruising ship with lots of lights on the horizon then realized it was the orange glowing moon… fantastic, lots of stars in the sky, could put a name of many of them as I had learnt them during my last crossing and it was like catching up with good mates!!!

After 24 hours sailing, and a grumpy Soph fell out of the bunk on the floor when the boys tacked without prior notice getting her sleeping bag and only dry jeans wet… we finally made it to Morro Jable, tied the boat and went to sleep at 5am…

The next 2 days were spent just relaxing, going into town, staying on the beach, chilling out. I bumped into a kitesurf instructor Herve I had know in Les Saintes, funny how the world is small…

A cool place Morro Jable, nice cafes and restaurants along the shore, not like Jandia, the beach further on which was really a wholly set up place for tourists, mostly German and you could feel in the air: ‘shop till you drop’! Mostly families and old people, not exciting for us hahaha!

I had a nice walk near where the DB was tied with Valerie... poor Val who had to follow the crazy Frenchy, cutting across the hills to reach the top of the mountain, sweating and getting some colours! But it was worth, the view at the top was pretty nice and we had a really stunning sunset on the way down... well done Val!

Richie left on the 6th to London to sort out things and we were down to being 5 on DB.
We rent a car on the 7th to discover the island. Unbelievable dry island, really volcanic, you drive miles and miles in a barren landscape and suddenly get to a developed urbanization all green and tropical, and right after that, back to the desert! Impressive… never saw anything like that before! We stopped in a nice small town with a black sand beach, thus not quite developed.

Then, as we were reaching the top of the island on the east side, the sand dunes caught our attention as well as the color of the water, really stunning…

Further along, a nice bar was worth a stop, for the look out, the style of construction and the thirst we all had! Many kitesurfers and windsurfers were having fun on this very windy day, so jealous!

We had lunch in Lazares, another small place serving homemade meals. Most of you know how greedy I am and how much I like good food. This was unbelievably good! A delicious soup with veggies, chicken and white beans, then a goat stew, exquisite also... the only drawback was the effect of the white beans which turned out to give me one of the biggest shame of my life later on in the pub when something really alien came out of me... oh shit......... never again will I eat white beans :-)))

More ready for a nap than a trek, we still made it to the top of the small volcano which was at half an hour walk. The view from the top and the crater were worthwhile.

We ran all the way down to the bottom as the rain was falling on us… we got wet but I had a lot of fun running under the rain! Back to the car then, we drove and reached the west coast and discovered a lovely place,

had a yummy hot chocolate and watched the sunset, Jon finding a good opportunity to be dirty…

After a few drinks at the pub and a Karaoke session,

we ended up in a nice bar, joining a group of girls for a hens night… that was really fun, the music was great and we all got boozed and danced all night till the bar closed… so funny to watch the pictures afterwards and see our faces of alcoholic!!! Lots of dirty dancing, hot hot hot…

Ludo drove us back to the boat and we kept on dancing on the DB. Then Jon got carried away and decided to go sailing… at 4am… absolutely pissed… so hilarious. I did try to stop him and tell him we would go after sleeping but there was no way… he started the engine and both Ludo and Valerie woke up asking what was going on… we all cracked up… and I finally convinced captain Jon to stop the engine and forget his sailing plans. Then DJ Jon played us a few more songs before he gives up and lets us go to bed… man, what a night!!! It was wicked, so much fun and good memories…

On Saturday the 8th, after slowly emerging from life again, we did some shopping and sailed up the coast.

We set off around 5pm and had a stunning sunset…another one in paradise…

The plan was to sail up north around the island to take me back to Tenerife… we quickly saw that was going to be really short… the wind was pretty light and we finally did not reach our destination, stopping at night, not knowing really where we had anchored… we had a yummy Spanish omelet for dinner with a tasty Ribera del Duero wine and a very quiet night!

After some delicious crepes for breakfast, we started sailing again and quickly enough realized there was no chance for me to reach Tenerife in time with such wind conditions so decided to stop in the afternoon at Gran Tarajal’s harbour.

We moored the boat and went into town, a really nice and small one, very quiet, with a wide black sand beach. Fortunately enough, I managed to find a cheap deal to fly out of Fuerteventura on the Monday to catch my flight to Barcelona. We were all stoked to be able to stay and chill out in this lovely place. We did some groceries and Valerie cooked us a yummy chicken curry. We even found for Jon in a Chinese bazaar a dance ball to hang on the boat with different lights like in a discotheque… he was over the moon! We went out for drinks and planned to have a big night as it was Saturday night and my last big night in the island… not choice bro! We were all tired, struggling to stay awake, went to the dance place where there was nobody, had a few drinks somewhere else, went back, still nobody, started dancing a bit, on salsa mostly so boring for many of us (not me I love it!) and went back to the boat around 2am…

Not so bad as the plan was to go sailing for my last day so we all woke up early, set off for a cruising sail along the coast. Again, wind conditions were pretty light so we did not go far and anchored the boat in a nice place. Dan and Jon went spear fishing but came back 15mn later, trembling with cold, as they had only shorts and tops on, no wet suits… they did not see anything worthwhile so we all set off again, back to Gran Tarajal, under the rain… the last part of the sail was the most exciting one as squalls were coming and going and we had a fun last hour nicely sailing at around 7.5 knots.

The sun was back again and we had an entertaining beach volley session till dusk. It was so much fun to play with the boys, running all over the places, full of energy and playful! The last sunset was absolutely breath taking…

Good pizzas, nice wine, a desert, and back to the boat for the last night. We did try to watch a documentary of Planet earth but failed to see more than the first 10mn, all of us being really worn out.

That was it, a nice last sunrise,

a nice breakfast prepared by the lovely Dan on my last morning, yummy mango and nutella biscuits… and I was on the bus to the airport, leaving my friends with regrets… I must admit that for the 1st time since I am living in Barcelona, I did not want to go back home… it was so good to be free again, sail, play and party with mates, not knowing what tomorrow would be made of that I would have been keen to stay… and go back sailing with them, till Cape Verde… and Brazil… this is life, all good things come to an end and I had a fantastic holiday. Thanks Jon again for inviting me on board, thanks Dan for all the dancing, for your kindness and affection, thanks Ludo and Val for playing with me… it was wicked. I love you all and hope to catch up with you later, wherever you are.