18 January 2015. Las Palmas, Gran Canary, Canary Islands, North Atlantic.

We spent the first 4 days in Morocco doing sail repairs, by hand, and general clean up and maintenance on the boat. Anneleize and Jabez were great sewers, learning how to zig zag stitch with two needles going at the same time.

Philip went up the mast to check the rigging and to replace the top mast light that went out during the passage.

We drove to Marrakesh to pick up our new crew member, Heidi, Philip's sister. She arrived intact after a marathon flight session from Capetown to Amsterdam to Morocco. While she was with us for a month, we played tourist, especially around Morocco.
We traveled to a small oasis town called IGMIR. We drove 3 to 4 hours from Agadir, in a south easterly direction, though rock, dirt, more rock and just in general rock. And then, all of a sudden, we see a palm tree, one of those fabulous date palms that provide dates in the middle of the desert, and we arrived at the bottom of a valley carved by erosion, wind and rain.
Of the 600 inhabitants, a friends' mom runs the only guest house, and we stayed with her. We visited the local school where the 8 children ranged in ages from 3 to 12 years. The children study at the little one room school in the mornings and at the mosque, in the village, in the afternoons. Omar, the teacher, wrote Anneleize, Jabez and Heidi's names in Arabic.

The sail from Agadir, Morocco to Graciosa, one of the 8 islands of the Canaries, was, more or less 210 miles. We had lots of wind, no wind and then more wind making for a bumpy and noisy trip. We arrived in the morning, dropping anchor in Playa Francese and happy to have the boat still. We launched the dinghy and the shore party of Anneleize, Jabez and Heidi went to find Stefan, who would be arriving in Graciosa by ferry in the afternoon.
Stefan joined the boat for his first night at anchor, and for the rest of us, a full night of sleeping without the need to do night watches.
The next day we left the boat on anchor and  had a walk on Graciosa, which is mostly what one does. There are one or two roads in the one village on the island, but otherwise, most people who come by ferry walk to one of the beaches for the day. Philip spoke with some locals during lunch to find out a sirocco was coming, winds from the Sahara desert, which would make our anchorage dangerous for Abracadabra.

We high tailed it back to the boat, put the dinghy on deck, stowed everything and pulled up anchor for Arrecife, on the south east side of the island of Lanzerote. By the time everything was put away and our anchor was up, it was almost dark, so we had a busy night sail south, along the coast, with the lights of the various villages and towns as company. We arrived around 4 or 5am and dropped anchor in the commercial harbor, moving into the required marina after a few hours sleep.
With Heidi and Stefan, we toured the Cesar Manrique foundation, which is basically Cesar's house,  carved out of the volcanic lava fields. He is no longer alive, and his house has since been turned into a museum. The design and flow of the house, or at least the portion the public is able to view is a stunning masterpiece of what one can achieve, if only you have the idea. Some people look at the lava flow and think, just a bunch of rock, while others look at it and decide to build a house.

As we were spending New Year's eve in Arrecife, we managed to be interviewed by the local television station, Telecanaria, as an example of how some of the peoples of Arrecife being in the new year. This is the link address : http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/telecanarias/telecanarias-31-12-14/2936043/
The transmission is in Spanish, and it is in the middle of the program, more or less, if you search Abracadabra, you may find it.

We left Arrecife to sail to Fuerte Ventura, an island just south of Lanzarote, leaving mid morning. The winds changed as we were sailing and when we arrived at our intended anchorage in the afternoon, we decided against it as it would be rolly in the night and uncomfortable. So we sailed back to the southern tip of Lanzarote, near Playa Blanca, and had a lovely quiet evening, after a rigorous day of sailing. The next afternoon we lifted the anchor for Gran Canaria.
Sailing through the night, we were able to see the glow of Las Palmas' lights from 40 miles or so at sea. It seemed like we might be sailing to New York city, the way it looked in the dark. We had our sails out, goose wing, or wing and wing, as it was a down wind sail.
We spotted the red and green of the harbor entrance through the backdrop of millions of city lights, including differentiating stop lights from harbor lights. What we couldn't figure out were the lights of the 5 or 6 oil rigs, with maybe 15 to 20 floors of lights, and in places that weren't mentioned in any of our information. It was only when we entered the harbor, and came close, could we see that these were oil rigs on huge ships, drilling for oil, within the harbor walls, and some outside of the harbor, but close to shore. The looked like a cruise ship, but with almost christmas tree lighting.


Heidi and Stefan have flown back to South Africa from Gran Canaria, and we prepare for our week or so sail to the Cabo Verdes islands. 850 miles or so.