The top of Tenerife is over 3 700 meter high. We saw it sticking up over the clouds from very far away, and it provided a very nice sunset as we did the final stretch into the port of Santa Cruz. You see the top just to the right of the setting sun in the photo above.
Over all this was a very nice crossing. We sailed a total of 661 Nm with an average speed of 7.78 knots. Not too bad in my book.
The start was a little bit rough, in the aftermath of the small but powerful low pressure that we waited for before we left. Then the winds turned to north and became rather stable. We did have an accident initially, with the newly mounted wind generator. It stayed up for about half an hour before the supports broke and it fell into the water. Looking at the supports afterwards I realized that they were really stupidly designed. Too bad I didn’t think about that first. I guess I still put too much trust in the manufacturers of this type of stuff. Lesson: Never trust a smiling installation manual!
As you can see in the photo below, the supports had end brackets that were attached using just a small set screw. You can see how the set screw has worked its way into the support tube as it came off. This will be redone using screws that go through the support and can’t slide.
After this incident we had rather smooth sailing all the way to Las Palmas. In the dark hours just before arrival we had a floating piece of fish net caught in the starboard rudder. I cut away most of it during the night, and in the morning when we arrived we were able to remove the rest without having to go diving:
The marina in Las Palmas was completely crowded with the yachts gathering for the ARC Race, so there was no room for us. The city itself didn’t feel very inviting either, so we decided to move on to Tenerife immediately. It’s a bit weird to go out to sea again after you have just arrived at your goal, but it actually felt quite good this time!
So now we have arrived in Tenerife, in the company of the YCCS Transatlantic Superyacht Regatta, and the Swedish Navy training ship “Gladan”.