September 28 – October 14, 2020; 3201 nm and 573 days after departure from La Rochelle.

Yes! The marina Tazacorte is not only pretty, calm and presenting itself in a familiar atmosphere, it is absolutely quiet. Almost no noise at all. In our first night we woke up because it was so calm! The boat didn’t move at all, it felt like being on the hard. Even our scale works as it should for the first time since living aboard!!! Just amazing after being used to the rough and super noisy marina in La Gomera. But the best part was that we were woken up by the unusual noise of a crowing rooster. A rooster! In a marina! Half asleep my subconsciousness brought us to a chick farm with a pond hosting Altimate. Me picking fresh eggs from the happy chickens and El Capitano milking happy cows😁… Ok, after some days we figured out that there were several rooster and chicken living in the banana plantation up the rocks. Tazacorte is surrounded by plantation and even next to the marina is a banana field. Now we’re of course used to our almost noise free surrounding but we still appreciate the gentle atmosphere. It did get a little hot sometimes because there’s hardly any wind and the sun was showing off, heating up Altimate. A good reason not to procrastinate our sunshade project anymore!

So apart from nice long walks, exploring the island with the car we were busy for several days with finishing at least half of our sunshade protection.We also had fun with lots of sailor friends and some invitations. Ingalill and Tb the Swedish couple spoilt us with a nice dinner on their beautiful Najad “Fleur 4”. Our Dutch friends headed off to El Hiero but not before serving us a nice supper on Calypso at anchor. That included a lovely story which was connected to the soup they made and a pick up service from and back to Altimate in their rib.

I don’t know how but the time always seems to fly by. Our booked 4 weeks here in the marina are almost gone though it feels we only just got here. In between our lazy, busy and fun days we were also thinking about future plans. Without the virus we probably would have left already to the Cape Verde islands to stay there for a couple of months and then head off to the Caribbean. Nowadays we keep changing our mind almost daily. Lots of countries were (and still are) closed. One of our ideas was to stay in the Canaries for the winter and then head back to Madeira/ Porto Santo. Stay there until maybe April and then sail to the Azores for the summer. Before it gets uncomfortable come back via Madeira to the Canaries. All presupposed Portugal and Spain stays open for sailors.

Now, after talking to some friends who already did the crossing to the Caribbean (in corona times) it draws us more to go there. Some islands created a so called “bubble”, where boats can sail within the islands once being tested negative or finished quarantined. They have also organised the arrival for the boats very well. E.g. tests are 3 times a week and it takes a day to get the result. If you’d be in need of food or water help is provided. That means one would have to wait max. 4 days for the result and then one would be free to sail within the bubble. To be fair it is similar organised in the Azores at the moment but we do prefer the higher sea water and air temperatures. Yet the most important part is the huge amount of anchorages in the Caribbean versus almost none in the Azores.

After being almost a year now in the Canaries with as well only a few nice and not swelly anchorages we tend to do the crossing. If we do so, we will leave end of January/ beginning February depending on a nice looking weather window. But who knows? At the moment Corona is spreading like hell in every European country and we don’t even know if we can visit our families for xmas this year.

Being desperate for a nice anchorage we have planned to sail back to the best anchorage in the Canaries. It will take us two and a half days of sailing to reach Playa Francesa in La Graciosa island located at the north east tip of Lanzarote.