We arrived in Las Palmas on the 17^th October after our mainly becalmed leg from Gibraltar. Upon our arrival, on the first couple of days we took advantage of Jacques and Nick still being around to help with boat repairs; this included removing the forestay in order to service the foresail furler and make minor sail repairs – as they say – many hands make light work!

As well as this, a job near the top of our agenda was to learn about Las Palmas, as we were going to be spending a lot of time here! Sailor’s Bay (a sailors bar with a great atmosphere!) became our new local and Rolnautic became the local chandlery just down the pontoon, we had an unfortunate feeling that we would be spending too much time in each!

Soon enough Jacques and Nick were gone and Helen had flown back from England for Josh’s birthday; cramming her luggage with as many birthday presents as she could get away with! This caused a search to be held at Bristol airport when the X-Ray machine saw small packets inside small packets – which turned out to be nothing more sinister than the Percy Pigs! Josh had a fabulous birthday and went on a Segway tour with his dad around the old town, weaving between pedestrians and racing down the seafront! Our guide, Lucien, surprised us at the end with an invite to his wife’s birthday beach party the day after; an opportunity we couldn’t miss if we wanted to party like a local. To cut a long story short, we went there with a few drinks and some food and ended up returning to the boat after 2:30am after having a great time (we believe)!

As the ARC events started, our sailing adventure really gained momentum, meeting new sailors every day, hosting and joining boat parties and learning about the local services for boat provisioning etc.  A 3 day visit from our friend Chris was very welcomed and we made the most of it with a mandatory trip to the local rum distillery, a deep sea fishing trip and a visit to the sand dunes down south.

Once most of the ARC boats had arrived, we set about finding / meeting some World ARC boats as we would soon be sharing our HUGE adventure together! We are fortunate enough to have met some fab people so far who we can’t wait to share time with!

After all the seminars, sundowners, tapas nights, dress-up nights and safety checks, the time had come to depart; the 19^th November had finally arrived!