Octopus: Lanzarote

We arrived in Lanzarote on Tuesday, yet again we had to motor most of the way here!! They hardly ever have winds from the South-West in this area but we had it right in our face all the way from Gibraltar. The good thing was that we made the decision to stop off in Morocco for more fuel, it turned out to be a great place to visit and well worth returning to in the future. Having not planned to go to Morocco we didn’t have a courtesy flag so I had to make my first flag; as we were on the approaches to the little fishing port of Essaouira I was painting on the star and was finished just in time. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the Bazaars and took in the ambience of the place. We would have stayed for longer but we felt we wanted to get to Lanzarote and have time to prepare Octopus for the Atlantic crossing.

Mike and Brian were great at crewing; the children enjoyed spending lots of time with their uncles. Mike helped out with a few jobs on board and Brian was great at entertaining the children. Lizzie and Susie went off exploring with them and went to see a volcano and rode on a camel. We were sad when they had to fly home on Saturday.

The water-maker is now installed and Chris is in the middle of installing the SSB radio. We have now added lots of bits and pieces to Octopus, some necessary and some ‘home’ comforts. We now have a great audio system for music and audio books, we have given up on the gas cooker as it only heats to 150° and have decide to go electric. Octopus now has a decent sized name on her sides and bow.

The marina complex where we are staying has a swimming pool which the children are making good use of, unfortunately the weather is wet and windy just like at home, only a lot warmer. We are blaming the weather on the El-ninio affect and hoping it doesn’t affect the trade winds too much as it’s high time we had the winds with us.

On Tuesday we are off to do the touristy thing. We are hiring a mini-bus and driving around the island, Susie and Lizzie are going to show us the best spots to visit as they have already done it. We will then go to the hyper-market and get our supplies.

We had our first accident on board when we were in Gibraltar. I had rigged up a swing on the fore-deck using the spinnaker halyard, the children had all been using it for a few days quite safely when Victoria, for some reason only known to her, decided to undo the halyard and release the jammer holding it while Tom was still on the swing. Poor Tom ended up with a very fat lip and a chipped front tooth.

We now have some new crew called Ruth and Rob. They joined us on Friday and think that sailing with six children will be great fun!!!!! They are a bit more experienced than Katy and Justin and seem very easy going. We are planning to start our passage on Wednesday if the winds are right. We are now thinking it will take us four weeks to get to Barbados. We may yet spend Christmas at sea!