Welcome to the Maunie of Ardwall blog

This is the blog of Maunie of Ardwall. After a six-year adventure sailing from Dartmouth to Australia, we are now back in Britain.

Sunday 28 October 2012

Photos of the passage to La Gomera

The red-sky-in-the-morning signs were all there for the last few days in Porto Santo as the gale approached but as we left the harbour on Thursday morning we had a beautiful rainbow behind us:


There was relatively little to photograph on the voyage - no dolphins and very few vessels but as we approached Tenerife and La Gomera at sunrise we had a brilliant view of Tenerife's volcanic mountain La Tiede in the half-light:


Having eaten very well on seafood at a local restaurant whose dining area was half room, half cave (the place was dug into the cliff) we collapsed into our bunk and slept the clock round. The weather is really on the odd side here, as well as at home (we've read about snowfalls in the north east) with rain coming though and high humidity. The mountains behind us keep disappearing in thick cloud so this isn't the day to go exploring inland but we hope that tomorrow will be better.

Looking forward, there's more interesting weather heading our way so it doesn't look as though we'll be moving from here for a few days. This is the forecast chart for Wednesday:

We're right at the bottom of the map, just below the '1004' and right in the path of the dark blue rainfall. So our recent theme of sailing then hunkering down to wait for the weather to clear seems to be set to continue! We just hope that all these strange weather patterns will sort themselves out before the start of the ARC in less than a month's time; we have no wish to be the first ARC to beat to windward all the way to the Caribbean.

3 comments:

  1. Dearest Pugwash and Staines, yes, there's a reason there were dolphins about.......I was back up here using my flippers to clear the bloody snow from the garden. Absolute nightmare. The bonfire out the back was a snow stack! Now thankfully it has disappeared as quickly as it came but it bodes very naughtily for the next 5 months.....grrrr and brrrrr.....
    Yours, snowbound (for 1 day) of Weardale.

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  2. As long as you remember to shut the door on the wood-burner, we're sure you'll be fine! Hope the weather warms up a bit before 'proper' winter arrives.

    Warm and humid here but no sunshine - just lots of rain, so very like Somerset really.

    Best wishes,

    G&D

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  3. Glad to see that it is going well!

    Somerset is just cold and wet!

    Hope you are both well and enjoying life on the open sea?

    Love to you both K

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