As we sailed out of Funchal on a 25 knot wind, whilst other boats came to shelter in the harbour. Tyrian is sturdy, she feels stable and is always safe. I am finally learning to trust that when she is healed over, she will not roll over. My irrational brain still wonders though…
We sailed south to La Gomera in 48hrs. After midnight the evening we left, Finn and I heard a Mayday. We checked our AIS and could see only one other boat close enough. We have relatively short VHF radio’s range. We radioed, but received no response. So, being good sailors, we turned around and headed towards them. At about 2 miles from them, they finally responded and were not in-trouble, but thanked us nonetheless.
We turned around and headed back towards the Canaries. We arrived in La Gomera at 2am and decided it was safer to anchor in a Bay than attempt a night docking in a marina unfamiliar to us. Early morning we motored to Marina La Gomera, San Sebastian. La Gomera is incredible, hot and mountainous. The mountains are beautiful and forever covered in cloud.
Again, the folk you meet are just interesting and you notice, this is a community, there are different people from all over the world, with different interest but one common goal, the exploration of the sea.
Some have infinite time scales, they sold their homes and said goodbye to the normal ways of living. Others like us, have a finite time scale. Some are older just retired and others young, there are solo, couple and families all ready for the adventure. We made contact with other Ocean Cruising Club (OCC) members and heard many great stories.
There were many different events on every weekend, we celebrated Halloween for 5 days and did loads of boat maintenance.
We left La Gomera and sailed toward Santa Cruz de Tenerife, this was meant to take 18 hours but it turned into a 30 hour difficult sail. Archie and I were sick for almost all of that journey which left Finn doing the most of the shifts. We enjoyed Tenerife as Donald and Fran came out to see us and we spent a glorious 10 days in a house, with a kitchen, bed and washing machine!
