The Longest Hour

Enjoying the Jardin de Cactus

Hot on the heels of Ben and Ash, my sister, Lucy, came out to visit us in Arrecife.  Lucy stayed aboard Firebird with us, which was the first time we have had a visitor for more than an overnight stay and it worked very well.  The forward cabin used to be a double berth, but we have converted it into a storage area for our clothes.  It was small anyway, and contains the heads, so was never a particularly great cabin.  Luckily, Firebird has a trick up her sleeve and the amazing table in the saloon can be lowered on its telescopic leg into a comfortable, generous double berth.  This is where Sis slept and the fun of having a sleepover every night outweighed any hassle of having to make the bed each day.  With three people below decks, you have to take it in turns to stand up, or else you spend all your time shuffling past each other, getting nothing useful done while performing some sort of badly choreographed dance for zombies.  Once you get the 'one person standing' rule sorted, though, it's perfectly comfortable.  Sis even went so far as to say that Firebird is spacious "as long as everyone is lying down".  We appreciated the sentiment, although you could probably say the same for a coffin.

Tapas at Casa Firebird (on Lucy's bed!)

Geography geek loving the volcanic rocks

We had a really fun week together and managed to squeeze in just the right amount of sightseeing without making the stay too hectic.  Thanks to Sis' fluent Spanish sweetening the lady in the tourist office, who didn't seem overly impressed with the usual calibre of tourist she deals with, we discovered that we could buy a ticket for entry to multiple attractions.  This made the already reasonable prices dangerously close to cheap.  I would recommend this approach to anyone doing a similar visit to Lanzarote.  The best part of having this combo ticket is that we essentially got free entrance into the Jardin de Cactus (Cactus Garden), which meant that we set that as our destination when we hired bicycles for the day.  We otherwise wouldn't have bothered going as it didn't sound that good on paper, but were very glad we got to see it.  The garden is really pretty, peaceful and interesting to look around.  It made the perfect place to recuperate in the shade with a coffee before turning homeward bound.

Surrounded by geology.  It doesn't get better than this

Exploring salt pans with Andrew and Juliet

An interesting twist to the week involved possibly meeting our first mitchyboyandgirl fans.  It turned out that Lucy's work colleagues, Andrew and Juliet, have an apartment on Lanzarote and were out here on holiday.  We met them one day for a picnic on the beach.  Once we had got the measure of each other in a well populated public place and could be fairly certain that neither party were crazed psychopaths, Andrew and Juliet invited us over for dinner, before which they took us on a tour of the surrounding area and showed us an interesting salt pan, which we weren't sure was still operational, but concluded that it probably was.

What happens when you put three teachers together in a room?  They do crosswords

Kate star gazing. She says she saw
Tinie Tempah and Bruce Willis

When I say that they are fans, don't imagine hysteric teenage girls fainting at Beetle concerts, instead, imaging someone casually saying in passing that they enjoyed reading the blog.  It's hard to say whether this was merely classic British politeness or not, but we're racking it up on the scoreboard anyway!  I don't like to assume that anyone other than our close friends and family is mildly interested in reading about our adventures, as that seems somewhat self-absorbed, but it certainly felt good to hear that the blog might be providing entertainment to a wider audience.  The hospitality that we were shown in Andrew and Juliet's lovely apartment was certainly fit for internationally renowned authors, even if we're not.


Kate and I spent a day more in Arrecife after Lucy flew home, which we used to prepare Firebird for setting to sea once more and on the morning of 24th April, we cast off and set sail for Gran Tarajal on Fuerteventura, some 60 NM south of Arrecife.  The forecast was for 20 kts NE, which we assumed meant slightly stronger, as it usually seems to be that way and it's safe to assume so in any case.  Once out there amongst it, we were in about 30 kts of wind and an uncomfortably close-spaced 2 to 3 meter swell from abaft.  Luckily we were heading with the wind and so the ride wasn't too bad.  With so much wind behind us, we certainly made good progress.  In fact, it was our fastest journey to date.  Kate said the technical term for the wind and sea state was "lively", which she said conveys the fact that it was a fast, slightly hairy passage, without admitting to any fear.  I'll go with that.

Kate in the Jardin de Cactus

Lunch cooked on our amazing BioLite (stick-burning stove)

One phenomenon we have come to rely on when sailing is that the final hour of the journey will be the longest hour of our lives and, amazingly, those sixty minutes actually last about four hours.  Whether it's the wind gods having a laugh, or an unamusing coincidence, what happens is that we will be doing, say, 6 kts with 6 NM to go, so one of us will say "Yay, only an hour to go".  Then, after some time has passed, we will get curious and check our speed and remaining distance again.  This time, whoever checks, will announce, with slightly less enthusiasm, that we are doing 5 kts, with 5 NM to go "Great, only an hour to go".  We both scratch our heads and wonder whether we imagined it already having been only an hour to go.  Next check, 4 kts, 4 NM, then 3 kts, 3 NM, by which point we're getting seriously fed up.  We should have been there three hours ago and yet, contrary to all the formulae we remember from A-Level mechanics, we're still an hour away from our destination.  On this journey, though, the last laugh was on the wind gods because as the now feeble blow died even further, the sails started to flap around pathetically and our speed dropped to 2 kts at 2 NM range, I pulled a shiny secret pendant from the lanyard about my neck.  Brandishing it towards the skies, letting rip a throaty, rumbling laugh of triumph, I inserted the magical pendant into its hallowed, snug-fitting receptacle, forged with unrivalled craftsmanship in the fires of Mordor, or possibly mass manufactured somewhere in China.  With the slightest twist of my wrist, the beast that sleeps beneath the floor was awoken and, miraculously, the never-ending final hour of the journey was reduced to a swift 20 minutes, courtesy of Rudolf Diesel.

Kate feeling lucky at Gran Tarajal