On Hocus Pocus

We began to plow through the many and varied jobs involved in a long ocean crossing. Supplies had to be bought and we also needed an exit visa stamp in our passports as we were leaving the E.U. Dave had hired a car to facilitate this process and we had to make several shuttles from boat to supermarkets to shift the mountains of food. Of course it was then down to our two " supply officers" to stow it all.

I had been up the mast to retrieve a broken main halliard and had unfortunately made another sacrifice to the sea gods of my glasses, luckily I had another pair. Lynne and I had been to Los Christianos on the bus, really just for a look around it turned out to be suprisingly nice down by the harbour it even has a real beach with sand!

We had an enjoyable afternoon exploring and discovered a great chandlers amongst other things. We would later

Return with Dave and Carol to buy rope to fashion a new main halliard, Dave was also taken by a glass bottomed bucket.

This would come in handy for inspecting anchors etc. In clear tropical waters, also could conceivably be used to retrieve glasses. This turned out to be sadly optimistic as the waters in the marina were a bit cloudy and very weedy.

We enjoyed a meal in Los Christianos in a small bar overlooking the spot we would anchor in a few days time whilst waiting for a part to be delivered.

We had a lovely evening drinking and eating burgers while watching the sun go down.

The trip to Samta Cruz proved interesting not least as the passport control office was very effectively camouflaged and proved quite difficult to find. However persistence and doggerel Spanish proved up to the job and after a while we were the proud possessors of a piece of paper with all our passport numbers etc. On and a suitably impressive array of official stamps.

Santa Cruz looked to be very interesting particularly the old town. However we didn't have a lot of time as we had to return the hire car. We were surprised however by a group of trees on the main promenade that had been 'knitted'

This particular one had rather a nice nautical theme.

Also while in Tenerife we had arranged to meet some old friends, one of whom " Fliss" had been living on Tenerife for 13 years so was a valuable source of local information. She worked as the manager of a Japanese restaurant and we had a lovely meal there along with Ron Atkinson the ex England manager.

Soon the jobs were down to single figures.

Await spare part for generator.

Splice new hard eye in main halliard ( Carol came in invaluable here with her knitting and weaving skills )

Find English tea bags

We decided to test out the new trade wind rig on Hocus Pocus, this was a twin headsails arrangement and it turned out to be very effective on a short sail around to Los Cristianos.

We had sailed here to await the delivery of the replacement water pump for the generator. We anchored just off the breakwater opposite the beach at Los Vistas. 

Dave kindly ferried Lynne and I ashore for a meal with our old friends Geoff and Gill ( parents of Fliss ) and we only got a  bit wet. However the meal in Domingos restraint was very memorable.

The following day was a national holiday and the spare part was still stuck in Santa Cruz. Fliss was on the case with the teabags and Dave and I were looking forward to the trip to cape Verdes.

Later we got a phone call from Fliss to say she had cleaned out Iceland and we were now the proud possessors of 3600 tea bags, PG Tips to be precise. So we took the dinghy to the beach to meet and collect them.

Gill was having her hair done and we all met up for coffee.

Meanwhile a large cruise ship had anchored just by Hocus Pocus and was ferrying its passengers ashore. We managed to get wet again carrying our precious cargo back to the boat but luckily it was just our clothing that got soaked!

It made a very brightly lit neighbour that night, we were also joined by two other boats , one yacht and a square rigged ship. It was getting quite crowded!