Remaindered

The morning after the Atlantic Odessey set off for the Caribbean, we  flew to London. So counter-intuitive. The traffic coming into Arrecife airport in November is almost all from northern European cities - Oslo, London, Moscow, Glasgow. Not hard to understood why. Gatwick airport at 4 pm - dark, wet, cold. But we hadn't come to London for the weather, had we? Nothing we were looking forward to needed a swimsuit or a pair of tanned legs to enjoy.

But before I get stuck into tales of the city (and, more to the point, sort through Alex's hundreds of photos), here are a few snaps of the rally in departure mode - we may never be flies on such a wall again.

Remind me, whose idea was this?

One of the HRs on our shopping list in 2011 turned up in Lanzarote.
She was called Lily back then, now goes by the name of Strangetrader

Australians Andrea and Rob (right) own Strangetrader - we enjoyed their company

They breed 'em tough in Norway

The climax of the week of Cornell-led preparations was a liferaft demo and a simulated helicopter rescue in the sheltered waters of the port.  Superimpose a 3 metre ocean swell on this scenario, add strong wind (in addition to the down draught of the helicopter), factor in large quantities of fatigue, distress and perhaps serious injury - and make a note to yourself. Stay out of trouble. The family will thank you for it.

Orange is for emergencies - smoke flare and liferaft (below)

Gather round people, and look at this stuff you never want to have to use

Jimmy Cornell (left) and the handsome boys from marine rescue

Circling the target

Man coming down the line - follow his instructions

Hauling up the cage - it fits two

It'll go like a shower of shit, says Alex - seems kinda open though

Team Sweden - all young and buff

The hoteliers from La Rochelle who are fleeing a sinking France

Off home

Jimmy meets the press

His camera is attached to a drone 'copter above the departing fleet.

Rallying around on Lanzarote

People often ask us if we're crossing the Atlantic with a rally. Usually they're thinking of the ARC (the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers). Alex crossed the Atlantic in 1989 as crew on an ARC boat. He had a ball. So why aren't we going with a rally?

Enki in Lanzarote marina

For a couple of reasons: first, the ARC leaves Las Palmas in the third week of November to get people to the Caribbean in time for Christmas. We think (and so do lots of others) that November is too early to go. The trade winds are not well established. December is a better month and January better again, we've heard. Second, we're not clubby, not party animals (though people who've known Alex is his younger days might beg to differ, he "don't do it no more", as the Old Dogs say). The rallies are social. Lots of gatherings. You get the big flag to fly from your spreaders, and presumably the tee-shirt and the hat, and you're part of the gang (or family, as I've heard it said this week).

Atlantic Odyssey rally boats (and below)

We're right in the thick of rallydom here at Lanzarote, and guess who's the star turn? Old Mister Jimmy Cornell who started the ARC in 1986, and then sold it on. Cornell Sailing (a family affair) is having another go at rallies. The Atlantic Odyssey is in its second year, and sets out on Sunday from this marina. Jimmy (he's always Jimmy) says he's trying to revive the spirit of the original ARC.  There's no racing division, just cruisin'. The reason there are so many kids floating around is that families get a 50% discount on the registration fee ("we're making money just on the docking fees by going with the rally," my Russian neighbour told me. She and her husband have an ugly big catamaran which they share with one very small blonde person, aged two-ish). It's a pretty attractive offer even without kids if you sign up early.

Family crossing

Rally kids at the marina

Rallies are business. Jimmy is a businessman. I don't want to be cynical.  I admire the man. He's got an eye for an opportunity, for sure, and his ego can get in the way of a good seminar, but he's achieved an awful lot in his lifetime, and at 74 he doesn't seem to be slowing down. This summer he took his new boat to Greenland and the Arctic circle. When the engine cut out suddenly and a GoPro camera on a stick revealed rope around the prop, Jimmy got into a dry suit and dived into the Arctic water to attack the tangle. And I worry about Alex being on the wrong side of 65!

Our engineer

His working drawings for the spare autopilot

There are a fair number of old sea dogs kicking around the world's oceans who've done as much or more sailing as Jimmy Cornell.  Romantic Sea Dogs, let's call them. They like company in small doses, and their boats are usually not cut out for women.

Sailing by Arrecife

Jimmy Cornell is different. He's a kind of evangelist.  He seeded the rally concept, and his books (most significantly World Cruising Routes) have kept the Cornell brand alive. He and his son Ivan have just released a new pilot guide to the world's oceans. He's indefatigable in his outreach. Some people think he's ruined "serious" cruising, that he's infested the best cruising destinations with herds of boats who hurtle through at speed, taking photos from their mast-cams and seeing nothing.

Branded by Cornell

I can't comment. We'll see for ourselves. Just because we're not travelling with a rally doesn't mean we're not part of this herding phenomenon. We all carry the same cruising guides, mostly stick to the same routes (the ones described by Cornell) and thus often end up, after a big day's sailing (or several days) in a crowded anchorage. Which some people love, and others don't.

There are about 35 boats in this Atlantic Odyssey rally. Nothing particularly fancy pants. A mix of monohulls and catamarans, average length about 45 feet, I'd guess. We've chatted with a fair few rally people, and they're people like us for the most part, exhibiting the same confusion about comms technology, asking the same questions about provisioning, expressing the same worries about sleep patterns at sea etc. Ordinary people who want to cross an ocean in their own boat. Remarkable, really.

Mmmm....where are they going?

But at the other end of the marina, there's another little group which has quite a different flavour from the Cornell rally. I see no support staff with logos on their shirts, no advertised seminars or cocktail parties, and the type of craft is quite distinctive. Small and very basically kitted out. I can't decide whether the rally flag they're flying is for real, or if it's a spoof. They keep to themselves. Their cockpits are tiny, and they huddle, or burrow down into the dark recesses of their cramped saloons. Let's call them the New Romantics. They're young, of course, and there are a few of us older people who'd trade our washing machines and Nespresso machines for the years they got ahead of them...and the strength and flexibility of their bodies. But perhaps not the space on our bigger boats.

The New Romantics (and below)

This young Frenchman doesn't do a bosuns chair

Aboard Enki, preparations continue - Alex has wired up the spare auto-pilot (now that's something a New Romantic probably isn't carrying, but we're glad to have), and we're gradually getting our heads into gear for the long passage ahead. "Life at sea is not an extension of life at home. It requires a change of mindset." (Jimmy). Being in the Canaries is doing some of that work for us. For centuries this archipelago has been a stopover for ships sailing en route from Europe to the Americas, a place for transients. The marina, as so many marinas are, is a world unto itself - somebody thought it necessary to open a Burger King, for example. But outside the marina there's Arrecife, a quiet town which seems rather detached, rather disembodied. It's a little bit eery, but also quite beautiful behind the bare volcanos.

The tidal basin at Arrecife

Market day by the church

Before go to sea however, we're going to dive one more time into big city life. A week in London. Airfares from the Canaries are cheap with the budget airline Easyjet, and we've got time to do this. One last look at the great museums and galleries which have given us so much pleasure during these years in Europe. It's a long way back there from Australia.

Straight out, then turn left

Enki on the Spanish side of The Rock, ready to roll

Morning breaks late; high tide is already 2.5 hours gone

The road map of the straits

These guys are not moving - yet

Gibraltar lies behind us

We've finished, it seems, with the Mediterranean. Goodbye Greece, goodbye Turkey. Sob. People do come north from the Canary Islands, they do enter the Med through the straits of Gibraltar, but realistically we won't be. We've made the call. We want to cross the Atlantic this season.

Atlantic contenders at Marina Lanzarote

At the Marina Lanzarote, that's hardly a novelty. Everyone else does too. That's why they're here. We're in the company of ocean-going boats. A surprising number are multi-hulled, especially along the pontoon earmarked for participants in Jimmy Cornell's Atlantic Odyssey which leaves Lanzarote on November 16.

We haven't seen a lot of catamarans in the Med - it's too expensive to moor them, I guess. But the Caribbean is famous for its anchorages, and at anchor nobody's multiplying length by breadth to arrive at a number of euros which must be handed over for the privilege of getting out of the swell and the weather. Then the spaciousness of a cat's living quarters will come into its own. We'll be glad to stop chanting Enki's vital statistics too - "length 15 m by beam 4.5 m". Not just because Enki's a big girl, and costs accordingly to park in a marina but also because there are many harbours along the coast of Spain and Morocco which can't and don't cater for boats over 12 m long.

Domestic prep before we leave for the Canaries

Ah, Morocco. When we checked into Gibraltar, we nominated our next port of call as Rabat. We had Morocco in our sights well before we left Turkey. Got the guidebook, got the charts. But as the week drew on, and we waited for the swell crashing onto the coast of north Africa to subside (entry to the port of Rabat is barred with swell over 2 m), and then we waited for high tide to line up with sunrise so we could safely exit the straits of Gibraltar without being swept back by the incoming tide and with the benefit of daylight to cross the shipping lanes...well, we realised how little energy we had. Not enough to "do" Morocco in a week. And did we want to anyway? Did we want to catch a train to Fez for a couple of days, and all the while be watching the weather, knowing that it's as difficult to get out as it is to come in through the shallows and across the bar which protects river-bound Rabat from the pounding Atlantic?

We kept it simple. You can't do everything. You do what you can, and move on, gratefully (sometimes the cliches help). We scratched Morocco, as we'd scratched Tunisia. There will be better times to visit North Africa, we told ourselves.

The sun on its way down under

So that left us with a direct trip down to the Canaries. It's a bit over 600 miles from Gibraltar to Lanzarote, the northernmost of the Canaries (well, not quite, but Lanzarote rather than Graciosa is the first feasible stopover). We didn't hurry. We kept sailing in light winds, we enjoyed the first night of smooth seas (I don't think I've ever slept so well between watches), and when we got caught at the centre of a weak low pressure system, we kept our heads. Keeping our balance became more difficult as the swell rose and then got all confused with the wind, and by the last - and fifth - night, when the forecast northerlies really started to pump we were almost used to the rocking and rolling swell. Almost. Alex had trialled a few sail configurations, and I'd learned that the boom brake is something you have to actively engage. All useful stuff.

Running before the wind - try it this way

There's never a good time for a gas regulator to spring a leak

Odd cloud formations, and the barometer continues to fall

This was as flat as it got...slept well that night

The biggest menace down this coast however is fishing nets, so we kept about 50 miles offshore. Alex dodged the only tuna net he spotted (how long is it, he asked himself - 2 miles, 3 miles? what do those flashing lights tell me?). Others have not been so lucky with nets. But it's not just nets. Patricia and Didier, a charming French couple we met in Benalmadena, got unlucky with 10 m sheet of plastic (the polythene film that covers hothouses down the coast of Spain). It wrapped around their prop.  Their sprightly crew, Serge and Marcel (both over 70), dived on the mess with a bread knife, but still, Maskali came into port under sail. This is something we hope to never do again, by the way.

Happier times - Maskali's new boom arrives at Benalmadena

When we're on watch we're constantly monitoring marine traffic  - tankers, passenger liners, cargo ships, ferries, fishing boats, other yachts and power boats. All except the very smallest craft are identified clearly on the AIS (praise be to its inventor).  But there are things you can't see which can tangle a boat up in knots - a random piece of plastic submerged just below the surface will do it, even a plastic bag, and then there are fishing buoys, and loose strands of net, all potentially treacherous to a boat's sensitive underwater parts. Better to be lucky than rich, is one of Alex's favourite sayings.

Why does a butterfly alight on a boat 40 miles offshore?

To be dinner for a bird....which then dies on the boat 40 miles offshore

So here we are, in the Canaries. How long has Alex been talking about "getting down to the Canaries"? This is the start of what he's been wanting to do for a quarter of a century (yes, he's that old!). What we've been doing until now is, frankly, much more to my taste. But I'm okay at sea. I'm better at sleeping than I used to be, and I'm better at doing a few other things too. Not enough yet, but  I learn quickly when I need to learn. Alex generally is on top of everything. He'll say otherwise, but I'm continually surprised at how much he sees that I don't. He's always looking around the boat, thinking ahead. Helps not to be reading, of course.

We know there are people who worry about us - "the thin woman and the man who is prone to be flat on his back", as our friends Dale and Joanne put it in a recent email. We understand why it's hard to have confidence, to trust us on our boat. But honestly, it's ok, people.

There are many eager youngsters floating around looking for a free ride to the Caribbean. If we meet people we take a liking to, and whose experience we think will enhance our trip, we will consider taking on crew. We know it will ease anxieties. But there are other considerations too. Like our sense of adventure, and our own competence.

Hove-to off the port of Arracife, waiting for opening time of 0800

Dawn visitor - he flew into Alex's chest before dropping to the deck

Then there's the boat. You couldn't ask for a better boat than Enki. She's high maintenance, but she's worth every dollar (make that dollars, plural) we've thrown at her. We look at the company she's keeping in Lanzarote, and we know she's up to the voyaging ahead of us. Very much so. It's up to us - the thin people - to make sure we are too. Which is another reason why we skipped Morocco. We're playing it safe. Very safe.