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.