Well here we are tied up in another marina! In another backwater, everything pleasantly laid back and town is two minutes walk away, and looks very pretty, once past the seafront monstrosities.
The passage started badly with it not only raining, which the Fin from the next boat said was lucky! (he had come over to help me slip my lines) but the engine stopped soon after starting ( while I was still tied up fortunately) it took me about ten minutes to work out that fuel was not being picked up from the lower tank, so I switched over to the upper tank and all was well; telling myself I would empty out part of the lower tank and clean the fuel pickup on route. Got the sails up fairly quickly, especially as the navy boat on exercises was coming back into port, and sailed off into the blue, around here the sea is incredibly blue. We managed to sail for all of 24 hours before the wind died and we were drifting so engine on for the rest of the passage, during which I did undo the feed pipe from the lower tank only to find it had cleared itself as I had left both tanks turned on, must have been an airlock, the engine did not falter during the rest of the trip.
When we were about half way there were ominous clouds coming in from the west, we still had sails up in the hope of wind, but even the weather satellite showed something not nice, so I double reefed the main and took the jib in to its double reefed position, when the front caught up with us there was no wind at all in fact the sea looked like treacle in the moonlight, so I shook the reefs out before morning, but still not enough wind to sail at more than 2 knots. We tootled along at about four knots and entered the harbour at Santa Cruz at about 8am, it gets light at about 7am, I knew the entrance to the marina was at the far end and could see masts, but could not make out the entrance until very close-to, the marina captain waved me over to a berth immediately, worrying as I had all lines set for tying up at the reception berth and the finger he was beckoning me to was inevitably on the other side, luckily I always have one rope and fenders out on the other side, just in case, so we got tied up without too much palaver, I even managed to squeeze her in first time without ripping out the side of the boat on the other finger!
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| Santa Cruz about an hour out |
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| Street in Santa Cruz |
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| another street |
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| Marina from the town |
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| Look two Snow Whites! |
Hay two boats up is a steel boat called ‘Snow White’
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