Life in Las Palmas

Johanna

N 28° 7.643', W 15° 25.510'

Feels like we just arrived, but I guess it's been a while when I last wrote anything.

We like the place we got here in the marina. We are right next to the office, so we think this spot is very safe. All the officials and harbor police coming and going. The shower/toilet building is also very close and there is only a few people using it so mostly we have hot water while taking a shower. We kind of have a long way to go everywhere but we think the extra kilometer (one way) is just good exercise.

We also enjoy being next to the reception pontoon, so we see all the boats coming in. There is also a service station on the other side of our pontoon and they sell very good fresh bread in the morning.

Our old reflex camera stopped working a few months ago in Bayona. Here we finally bought our new Canon 100D. The next  photo is one of the first test pictures I took with it. By now we only have the kit lens. We already know what lens we want to have for long distance photos, but it's such a new product that none of the stores have it yet.

Our estimate for the height of this mast is about 60-70 meters.

The boat carrying this mast also has pretty big fenders :)

Here is our biggest project at the moments. We are replacing all the three hatches on deck.

We have been working a lot, but we also always have time for our friends. First we had our Scottish sailing friends Ruth and Pat visiting us, they took the bus from Pasito Blanco. Then we have had some Finnish people visiting us, who are here for just a holiday.

Last Friday we had our old friends Auli and Hanski vising us. They also took the bus, their boat being in Puerto Mogan. They have this great plan to sail to the Antarctica.

These boys we met for the first time in Brest, France. Here they are setting sail for the Caribbean. I just have to admire these guys. Four young men chasing their dream to sail around the world.

Finally in Las Palmas

Johanna

N 28° 7.643', W 15° 25.510'

When we were still in Europe we kind of thought that we'll be in Las Palmas in November or December. Well, what's an other month more?

Sailing from Tenerife was nice and easy for a change. We sailed close hauled for the whole way. 

Our windvane was doing the driving. When wind is shifting a lot, the windvane is much better than the autopilot. Sails have to be trimmed a bit better, but then it's easy when we don't have to worry about the wind shifts.

In the evening the wind stopped and we motored the little way we had left. This was a good test for our newly fixed autopilot. It worked perfectly. So hopefully we don't have to do any hand steering for the next decade or so...

When we left Santa Cruz, we motored out of the harbor. Our speed was not good. When we motored the last miles to Las Palmas we were missing at least one knot.

It was late in the evening when we arrived in Las Palmas. We anchored outside the marina for a few reasons. One, it's easier when you just want to go to sleep and do nothing onshore. Two, we might have to pay for the night we spend in the reception dock, even thought we don't use any facilities. Three, we wanted to know where our one knot had gone. 

After breakfast I took out my mask and snorkel and jumped to the almost filthy sea. Water was quite dirty looking, so it was no pleasure swim.

When I took the first look under the boat I saw the problem. There was lots of thin rope around our propeller.

I'm very bad at diving and I'm actually quite afraid to dive under the boat. So we made me a tool out of boat hook and bread knife.

This is the largest part that was in our propeller. Lucky for us it wasn't stronger so we still could use our engine.

After freeing our propeller we moved to the marina. We got a place that feels very good to us. We are right next to the reception pontoon, so we see the boats coming and going. The nearest shower building is a few steps from our place and so is the nearest mini market (gas station) to buy fresh bread in the morning. And the best part, we have a very good wi-fi connection.

We have started to do the boat work we have been planning to do and I think in a couple of days we are at full speed.

The weather has been good, mostly sunny. Sea temperature is about 20 C and the air is about the same during the day. In the sun it's actually pretty hot.

New Lewmar windlass

timo

N 28° 7.643', W 15° 25.510'

When I bought Iiris I was told that the 15 years old Lofrans windlass is broken. Previous owner had been very satisfied with the Lofrans windlass, so I tried to order the same device from Finnish distributor Maritim. They promised to check the availability. Weeks passed and nothing was heard from Maritim. I visited them and I was told that there are some problems with Lofrans and it was impossible to order anything from them.

This was becoming a major problem. Reliable windlass is one of the most important equipment on a cruising boat.

Previous windlass had 1000w power and we have 10mm chain. With these specs Lewmar V3 seemed like a good choice.

Installing a different type of windlass means welding a plate over the  the old holes on the aluminium deck. This costed me more than I expected. New cover plate was bent to fit the deck. I had to make a padding of teak under the windlass.

Next I drilled the holes for bolts and the windlass. It was an unpleasant surprise to find out that the holes were not in correct places. The drilling template was not in scale. I should have checked it, but I was still trusting Lewmar quality.

After I had enlarged the holes to fit, the device was in its place. Luckily the drilling template differed only a few millimeters.

In the first test we pulled chain out of the box. There was a tiny twist in the chain which stopped the chain for less than a second. This minor twist caused the shaft to bend remarkable.

I complained about this and got a new deck part. This time the drilling template was in scale and the serial number far away from the previous one. We hoped the new one was manufactured at a different factory than the previous.

When we anchored the first time on our trip the same happens. Twist in chain and bend shaft.

Naturally I complained to Maritim but haven't got any answer.

After less than a half year from installation the windlass motor is already rusty. It is clear that this device will not last for 15 years.

The deck switches were installed at the same time. The other one must be from old stock and the new must be build from the cheapest materials you can get. That rusty one, less than half year old deck switch, doesn't work any more. 

I think the same is true with the shaft. They are using less expensive stainless steel, which is too soft for this use.

I tried again to ask Maritim about the situation. No answer!

It is clear we cannot continue our trip with this Lewmar V3 windlass. However, at the moment I don't know how to proceed. 

We can't trust our Lewmar V3 windlass because it is built from cheap materials which cannot bear forces used in anchorage. These materials also get corroded by the sea water.

So we are back to square one, we have to find us a new windlass.

Christmas-time activities

Johanna

N 28° 28.042', W 16° 14.639'

We had a beautiful Christmas weather. Very sunny, calm and warm.

In Finland all the kids get their presents on Christmas Eve. I guess Santa Claus knows where we are from, since we had received a delivery in the evening while taking showers. We must have been good, we got just what we needed. Some underwear and flip-flops :)

On Christmas day we did some easy work. Nothing that would get our hands too dirty. Our dinghy has not been used for at least a year. The dinghy is not very old, but the outboard has maybe passed it's prime years. 

Anyway, the dinghy is holding it's air and the outboard started like always. It just needed a couple of pulls and there it was running like new. Some people talk about gasoline going old, but we don't really believe it. This gas has maybe been in a canister for a few years and there were no problems.

In the evening we had a nice Christmas concert right here in the marina. Local symphony orchestra was playing and there were thousands and thousands of people in the audience. Organizer of the event is the Port of Santa Cruz with other sponsors. This year was the 20th anniversary for this event. 

We had already planned on sailing to Las Palmas without our autopilot working, but we are always entitled to change our minds. We were not very keen on hand steering and couldn't trust the wind to be good enough for our windvane. So we decided to try to get the autopilot fixed here.

Yesterday at about noon we walked to the nearest chandlery "Nordest" which seemed more like a rigger. After a couple of phone calls he found us our hydraulic pump. After a few hours it was delivered to our boat. What an unbelievably good service! 

This morning it didn't take Timo very long to install the new pump. Even the previous pump was 20 years old, all the fittings and measurements were the same.

In the dock everything seems to look good. We believe everything works just great when we finally get to use it.

Now it looks like the wind is against us at least for the next couple of days. When it's not, we'll finally head for Las Palmas.

One of our self steerings is fixed

Johanna

N 28° 28.042', W 16° 14.639'

Today was time to take a look at our windvane.

The stern of the boat is not very easy place to work at, so we took the whole thing to our fore deck.

The problem was very small. It was the thing that I actually tried at sea, but there it was too difficult to see and fix. The bearing had, for some reason, moved a few millimeters. We hammered it back to it's place and remounted the windvane.

There it is! Rudder blade and shaft happy together :)

An attempt to fix the autopilot

timo

N 28° 28.042', W 16° 14.639'

When I had slept enough I started to study our noisy autopilot. 

First I started reading manuals. Our system is quite new to me. Some stop cocks are transposed because of the lack of space, but my father-in-law's drawings were clear enough.

I tested the inside steering unit. I filled up the hydraulic liquid and released the air from the cylinder, after that it worked. However this didn't stop the banging.

I separated the pump and valve box from the motor. When running the motor the banging was still there. This was bad news, because the electric motor is probably the most expensive part of the whole system.

I was curios about what was causing the noise. I took the motor apart.

Bearings and brushes had nothing wrong with them and the coil seemed ok.

When I reassembled the motor I noticed that one of the four magnets was loose. It was glued to motor outer cover by magnetic force. Every time the motor changed direction it clashed to one of the bolts that were holding the pack together. 

There was some hope. By gluing the loose magnet back, the motor might work.

The loose magnet was the inner one, that was difficult to clean for gluing.

After the glue was fixed I trusted that the motor was ok and we had saved a thousand euros.

Luckily I didn't have time to spend that money. Motor started ok, but it was slow and started smoking. Smoke test failed!

At first when we got this problem, the hydraulic pump motor changed tune, before it started banging. It might be that the motor started heating and the heath caused the magnet's glue to soften and fail.

The motor has had moisture on it, because it was covered with thick rust.

Anyway we must order a new pump. (Or a drive unit as they call it.) Our current one is Robertson RPU150. The replacement is Simrad RPU160. (RPU = Robertson Pump Unit) 

We hope that Simrad has kept the good quality. Broken pump is now twenty years old.

Many brands have given up any quality at all. They are riding with the old brand and draining the money out for investors.

Well, I will write another blog about our new Lewmar windlass, when I get angry enough. That will be all about the quality.

One goal achieved

Johanna

N 28° 28.042', W 16° 14.639'

We kind of thought that we left all the excitement to Madeira. So much did we know.

For once the weather forecast was near perfect, 15 to 25 knots side wind. It was also just a couple of days for full moon, so the nights would not to be very dark. This time all these predictions actually became reality, but...

After a couple of hours nice sailing, our autopilot started to make very bad banging noise. There was no way we could dare to use it like that. 

Well, no problem. We do also have a windvane. We haven't used it yet, but I know my parents used to use it a lot and it's just perfect for good and strong side wind. The actual reason we haven't used it yet is that we have improved our power production so much that we have had enough power for the hydraulic autopilot. Both of us have trimmed the windvane but it has always been my dad who has set it up in the beginning of a leg.

We had actually promised ourselves that we finally try it on the way from Madeira to the Canaries, but the storm changed our minds. When we left the partly destroyed marina we did not want to risk the rudder blade of the windvane. The marina was still full of floating debris and there was no way of telling how much submerged rubbish there was hidden below the surface.

But anyway, we slowed down and I went down to setup the rudder blade. There were still some other minor things we were not sure how to setup, but we decided to start from one thing and then work our way to the next thing.

I did get the rudder blade and the shaft connected, but I couldn't get the locking pin in. We thought that the reason for unsuccessful setup was the heavy seas. We did have quite a swell. So we motored for more than an hour to the lee of Ilhas Desertas. There it was nice and calm. Still no success, but now I saw what was wrong with it. The shaft did not go deep enough into the rudder blade. The bearing was moving a bit, it was not as tightly around  the shaft as it should be. I tried to bang it upwards, but everything just stayed the way it was.

We had to make a decision. One option was to go back to Quinta do Lorde and get the autopilot fixed there. We didn't know what was wrong with it so it could have taken a while to fix it and get the spare parts. And then we might have to wait for the good weather again. So in the worst case scenario we might end up spending an other 3 weeks there.

The other option was to go on and hand stear all the way to the Canaries, about 270 miles. This did not sound like fun, but we used to sail offshore races in the Baltic Sea so we did know that we could manage. And you know, we would not need to concentrate like we did while racing. It would be just enought to go about there where we were heading. 

So much did we know. It was probably the hardest 48 hours we have ever sailed before. When racing, we always had the crew to keep us company. Now we were just all alone in the dark. One was sleeping and the other one was stearing. The nights were definitely the worst ever, even though we had the full moon. Back in the old days I used to solo-sail a lot, but I don't think I've ever felt this lonely at sea.

We were so exhausted that we couldn't eat properly, we couldn't brush our teeth and for some crazy reason we still couldn't sleep well. All we did was drink coke and eat chocklad and salami slices to keep our energy levels up.

Notice the slices of salami in my hand :)

La Palma would have been the closest island to go to, but the wind direction was better for Las Palmas in Gran Canaria. And the difference was not that much. About 40 miles before Las Palmas the wind picked up and changed to head wind. We did a very quick decision to divert to Santa Cruz de Tenerife. When we arrived in Santa Cruz we were dead tired but very happy we did not go back to Madeira.

Our goal for this season was to reach the Canaries and here we are! Now we continue to do the boat work we did not finish in Finland, because we just did the things that were essential to get us here. And then we now have some extra work that came up on the way. 

But don't worry, we are not going to work too hard. We take it easy and  enjoy life while getting things done. If you go back and look at my blog that was written a year ago you see that we have everything pretty good now. We can actually go outside in shorts and t-shirts!