Canary Islands – three days of sailing

Off to Tenerife

We left Gran Canaria with a fresh breeze and full sails to make the roughly 50nm trip across to the southern point of Tenerife.

Leaving the lee of the island and entering the acceleration zone on its NW side we immediately got walloped by 25kt of wind. Lazy sailing with that much wind required a bit of a scramble to reduce sail but, with two reefs in both the main and genoa, we managed to get back to that happy state.

An hour or so later, however, we were able to shake out one reef and settle into the best kind of sailing: unremarkable and untroubled. In the fading light of the last hour of the day we dropped anchor in the lee of the impressive Roca Roja on the SE tip of Tenerife.

Here we passed a quiet night rolling comfortingly on a gentle swell that crept in around the rock.

Next stop – La Gomera

The following morning, we skirted along the southern coast of Tenerife with a good breeze on our tail, pushed through the overfalls at Punta de la Rasca and, boom, just as if a door had slammed shut behind us, we crossed into the lee of the island and completely lost all wind.

At first, we remonstrated with ourselves thinking that we should have gone further out to sea where there might still have been wind but, soon enough, it became clear from the glassy sea surface that stretched out to the horizon, that this wouldn’t have helped. Oh well, engine on.

The bonus for us though was encounters with short-finned pilot whales; once as we drifted slowly over the transition to deep water off Tenerife and then again when we crossed back into the shallows of La Gomera.

Spectacular but rolly anchorage

Arriving in the lee of the island of La Gomera, late in the afternoon, our task was to find an anchorage that offered a bit of protection from the annoying swell that came washing around the southern side of the island. Unfortunately, La Gomera is all but round in shape, rimmed with cliffs and precipitous rocky slopes, and as a consequence offers very few protected hidey holes with good holding.

We had decided to chance our luck in a cove just past Punta del Espino, however, as we passed Punta de Chinguarime we saw two boats already anchored there in what had, on the charts at least, looked subject to the swell. Surprisingly, they didn’t seem to be rolling too much, so, helm all the way over, we wheeled around and decided to give it a go.

This turned out to be an interesting spot in several respects. The first was the very dramatic scenery with sea cliffs riddled with volcanic caves and a deep, almost glacially carved, valley that ran directly away from the shoreline to the island’s summit hidden far above us in the clouds.

Cave dwellers

The second was the denizens that inhabited the caves. When we first arrived, there was no one to be seen ashore but, a short time later figures began emerging from the caves and slipping from one grotto to another. Closer inspection revealed that many of caves had rock walls built in their entrances or camouflage-patterned tarpaulins stretched across them for protection.

These were clearly long-term residences of what turns out to be a careful selection of hippies from a variety of European sources. As the shades of night crept in, tiny pinpricks of yellow lamp light began to illuminate the inhabited cave mouths and twinkled there for a few hours before one by one blinking out.

Gusty winds

The final note of interest was the sudden and vicious katabatic wind that ripped down out of the valley in the early hours of the morning. We were pretty sure that we hadn’t moved but, upon going on deck to check on things, one of the neighbouring boats seemed to have got a lot closer than before. Perhaps we were just swinging in different directions but it seemed reasonable to up and anchor and relocated, just in case – nobody’s favourite 0200 activity.

Final destination El Hierro

The next day we crossed from La Gomera to El Hierro. This crossing offered a little bit of everything sailing wise – calms, fresh breezes and good sailing – but ended with an absolute sleigh ride with 24kt of wind and a 3+m following swell that had us come skidding into the calm behind the seawall at Puerto de la Estaca in very much a Blues Brothers’ tyre-smoking, spinning arrival.

The fact that Pto de la Estaca’s seawall is about 20m high and has wind-socks on top is a pretty clear indication that these were not exceptional circumstances for this spot. No matter how wild the conditions outside were, it was deliciously calm inside the double walls of the harbour with just a small, steady swell creeping in to rock the boats. A nice spot to be for the next little while!