Distance sailed today: 96.5 NM
Total distance sailed: 96.5 NM
Midnight GPS position: N 27.47 W017.54
Wind: Variable
Sea state: Slight
“French plastic boats, good. French electrics, bad.” Skipper Steve Dewhurst on a certain model of catamaran.
STOMACH STATE:Feeling better, but still a little queasy.
We are now on the southern and most remote of the Canary Islands, Hiero, in a marina called Puerto De La Estacia.
This was not a scheduled stop at all.
Basically, the boat has been giving us too much grief – we had to stop to make repairs and sort out what was going on. At 8am this morning, we arrived at a marina at the south of Hiero, the one below. However it was not very well sheltered from the strong Atlantic swell, and along with the fact that we had to moor up to a high concrete warf did not ease Steve’s concern that we might damage the boat if we stayed there.
A local kindly told us about another marina, recently completed, that we would be better off mooring at. This was about 15NM to the north, into the wind. We had little choice, so we set off again.
The boat that we are on is a new Lagoon 420 catamaran. The company which makes the boat is a French company, Lagoon Catamarans. The 420 model is a 42 foot hybrid. That is, the engines are electric. When the batteries are fully charged, the boat wil run at full speed for about 30 minutes. With the onboard diesel generator running, the boat will run at half speed for as long as you have diesel.
Half speed into the wind today was slow going. We were only managing 2 to 3 knots. Steve and Ellie were wishing that Lagoon had just forgotten about the electric engines all together and put in some reliable grunty diesel engines.
We did make it to the other marina however, and were happy that despite the fact there was only a big concrete warf to moor to, the marina was well sheltered from the strong swell. The plan is to stay here two days in order to try to fix the noisy port side motor and the navigation lights that mysteriously are not working.