The Canaries at last!

We spent 4 days in (mostly) sunny Lagos and set off for Lanzarote at 9 am on Monday 4th June. The weather was kind to us on the majority 4-day sail down and we sailed on a broad reach, with winds between F3 and F7, all the way until the last day when the wind deserted us and we needed help from the iron sail! We arrived in Puerto Calero, Lanzarote at 12:30 on Friday 8th June.

A particularly magic moment came on Thursday afternoon – we spotted a whale blowing about 200 metres off our starboard bow and a few moments later we were joined by a large group of dolphins playing around us, the whale crossed our bow about 50 metres ahead and immediately after that a turtle paddled past us just 2-3 metres away; all this time shearwaters (very apt) were circling around us!

We have booked our flights home for Friday 15th of June and, in the meantime, we have hired a car and we are acting like tourists, seeing some of the island. We hope to return to Shearwater for a week or so later in the year for some more sailing around the Canaries, but we do not plan to continue our trip until January 2013, when we expect to cross the Atlantic to the Caribbean.

Shearwater at Puerto Calero