I've been doing a lot of anchoring as of late. In fact I am at anchor now, just having finished a sumptuous dinner of sausages, spuds and green beans. My mother would be proud of me. The correspondence has been put to one side. The emails done, I thought I'd write a little bit about the sailing I have been doing recently. After all this is boatdiary.com. As of late it looks a little like holidaysnaps.com. I should not jest. I just spent 5 days or so extensively photographing Graciosa Island. More back filler. But for now a photograph and a diary entry on the day.
I was reading a book recently of a single-handed race back in the early 60's. These guys basically bashed there way through storm after storm, no gps, no radar, no radio(receive only), and all in small leaky wooden boats. The account made me take note. I live a very comfortable life indeed. That said one is still constantly reminded to be wary of the sea and take nothing for granted.
The Canaries for me have been comparatively very kind. An uncharacteristic south westerly got me to the North end of Fuerteventura recently and I only had a 17 hour beet to the very northern most Island of the archipelago, Graciosa, an Island I know well and love. As I type this I am now mid way down Fuerteventura again having ridden the NE trades back down. With sailing timing is everything and so far, knock on wood, I have been very lucky. The NE trades, which can blow a constant F4/F5 have been temporarily shut down for an exploration of the south east coast of Fuerteventura. More on that later I am sure.
Sorry I seem to have verbal diaries tonight. What I wanted to talk about was anchoring and trip lines. Well you know something. I'm hacked off with trip lines. The end of it is I got the anchor stuck under a rock in Graciosa, and was the trip line any use. No it was not! I manage to free the anchor by reversing out 180 degrees from the way the boat was set at anchor. The other night I was in Puerto del Rosario, in an undesignated anchorage, not knowing what could be down there I decided to go with the trip line, again. (Sorry, or those that don't know a trip line is secured at the "hook" end of the anchor so you can pull it out backwards if it gets snagged, failing that you have to send down a diver if it gets stuck or abandon it). Well this morning I woke up with no trip line! It had drifted off in the night. My knot from the night before was obviously not good enough. In fact as the anchor went down I remember thinking that trip line looks like it is wrapped around the anchor. Hmmm. Ah it will be all right. Wrong!So here I am in another anchorage where the pilot recommends the use of a trip line. Hmmmm. I will miss my trip line. 10m of fancy braided rope with a genuine buoy on it. I think it's going to be some old 3 strand and a milk bottle from now . . . tonight we are at anchor with no trip line. Which brings me round to the whole issue of trip lines. I sailed into Corralejo harbour without a pilot. I had some good electronic charts of the straights and a depth sounder which I judiciously used once pocking around the boats on their moorings. Well I anchored, and got a pilot from a friend that read, Beware the ground is fowl, trip line recommended. I spent the whole week worrying about it. Mainly because I had a special guest arriving. I was on a mission to impress. But, when it came time to pull up anchor and leave, everything was fine. This trip line business had got me thinking. When I anchored in Graciosa I knew there were rocks in the anchorage, "I'll use a trip line because I'll be coming in at night", I thought. Good thinking Broso. I'm about to go around in circles on this one. The trip line was useless. If there is a moral to the story it is sometimes you can spend too much time worrying about something you've only read about in a pilot book. It's time to go to bed.