23 September 2026 – Ready for departure

As I post this blog, all our known boat jobs are done, and we are ready for departure. Now, it’s just a matter of waiting for the right weather window. This drone photo was provided to our neighbour Tom a few weeks ago.

The planned route south to the Canary Islands is just under 600nm. We always “plan” for 120nm per day, which means this trip should take us “about 5 days”. The landfall anchorage is “to be determined” and will be a function of what the wind conditions are like at the end, and what time of day we may expect to arrive. If it is late at night, in darkness, we can either “heave to”, basically stalling for boat for several hours, or push on for another 40-50 nm to the next anchorage. To be determined. At the moment, we are watching for just the right weather for A. our escape out of the Gibraltor Straits (here we need light easterly winds, no wind, or even light westerly winds) and B. Our sail south to the Canaries (here we look for medium strength N, NE or even NW winds).

I can report on a few more things we have checked off the list while here. The first was the acquisition of new eBikes. The battery on Diane’s eBike died, and a replacement cost over 400 euros, nearly the price of a new bike. We visited the local Decathalon store, looked at their inventory, and bought two new HillMiles Mile2 eBikes online. They are lovely to ride, very comfortable – but regrettably much heavier than expected, and we will probably have to stow them “on deck” covered in tarps. Oh well.

Since we have a new Highfield Classic 310 hypalon dinghy, we contracted with Gregory Arnold at Cardinal to get new chaps made. In only two weeks, they had made up a very nice set of chaps for us. These are very good people to work with. They communicate well, are very timely and produce excellent products.

Making these dinghy chaps involved two stages – first preparing templates.

Secondly fitting the chaps, and securing them to the dinghy.

Here is the final product.

We also contracted with Cardinal to do a “rig survey”, giving us piece of mind that our standing and running rigging was fit for the upcoming ocean passage. Here, Juan climbed the mast, crawling over all the components – and then later producing a very well documented report with dozens of photos.

A few days later, we followed up with one issue, and sent Juan up the mast again to attend to the ends of our spreaders, and spreader boots. He re-attached SS seizing wire to fix the standing rigging in place with the spreader ends, and then re-attached the spreader boots to protect a sail, should it make contact.

Following up the issue I had with “stale gasoline”(requiring an expensive repair), I purchased some gasoline stabilizer additive (and added it to the fuel tank and the jerry can) and installed a fuel/water separator, in accordance with the suggestions of the Suzuki manufacturer.

Also, I changed another two solar panels.

In 2009, I installed two 130W panels in parallel, while we were in Beaufort. These panels have served us well over the past 17 years, and as you can see from this chart: gave us a maximum power of 209W and a maximum yield of 660Wh.

Basically, in the same “footprint”, I was able to install two 210W bi-facial panels, in series – and these are giving us a maximum power of 361W and a maximum yield of 1390Whr. These numbers will increase even more in the summertime. Our total solar installed wattage went from 1840W to an even 2000W.

Another unplanned but “nice to have” improvement involved the outboard motor hoist. Our routine is that I am in the dinghy installing or removing the motor, and Diane is on deck operating the actual lift. Normally, this isn’t too hard because we use a “block and tackle” system so the load is not too much, but, when we changed to the Suzuki outboard two years ago – we got an outboard that was just a little bit longer, and a little bit heavier than the previous one. We have used this system many times over the past month, and finally took the time to consider and execute an improvement. The upper lift point of the system was where it is attached to this outboard motor “crane”.

I considered that the simplest solution involved A. increasing the size of the double block and B. raising the lift point. Again, Cardinal came to the rescue and cut a triangular chainplate and welded it to the crane. Problem solved. The outboard motor is now much easier to hoist over the rail.

In the last days, I pulled out our bag of “jacklines” (safety lines run aft to bow along the deck). It has been 6 years since we last had these lines on our deck, and removed them after arriving in Turkey, in June 2020.

Now – we are waiting for our weather window and stocking up with groceries.