We arrived in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria Island, at around 4pm just in time for the marina to get back from siesta! We'd forgotten we were basically back in Spain. It was an excellent trip and the guys even caught a fish. Nothing special though, just a bonito. We refuelled and checked in - sort of - no passport stamps or anything?! They found us the last berth in the marina right behind the fuel dock. The ARC Atlantic Rally boats were all in prior to their crossing on the 10th. It was a very full and busy marina. The Australian couple, Tim and Kylie, who we met in Andtrax were there joining the ARC so we had a lunch with them and their crew before the departure. Peter and Max got the hot water mixer fixed with a made up part from a very good local chandlery (it had failed just after fixing the element!). Our Volvo parts we had ordered for the next few services arrived no problems. We met Alex from the ARC who is going to be one of the co-ordinators in St Lucia for the World ARC, so that was good timing.

Kylie came out with us on our dinghy to watch the ARC fleet leave, including her husband and two friends on their boat. We had talked her in to changing her flight to see them off. We dropped her ashore later that day after a bottle of champagne to fly off to a yoga retreat. She's re joining them in Grenada.

The passage from Las Palmas to Cape Verde was uneventful. We passed through the ARC fleet the second and third days out which gave us something to relieve the boredom of an uneventful trip. We arrived just after the lead boats. The advantage of moving at a constant speed in a straight line! But of course using a lot more fuel than any of them.. One of the boats landed a 160 kg kingfish! We caught nothing. We saw lots of dolphins two days in a row at sunset, one pod was about 50 of them all jumping from wave to wave around us. Two even did that cute "souvenir tea towel from Hawaii" double jump!

We left Las Palmas having seen nothing of the island except the marina! Some people stay and cruise these islands and make the Atlantic crossing later but we are trying to get home for an early December wedding - if possible - with weather etc.

Our arrival in Cape Verde saw us immediately on the fuel dock getting 3000 litres of diesel. This included filling the bladders on deck just in case. We then anchored out as the marina, predicably, was full of ARC boats.

Mindelo in Cape Verde is a basic little town. Peter and I had the usual weird check in and out experience we've come to expect in these sorts of places. Go here, wait there, oh no not there, there and the man is out at the moment etc etc. Finally, after the port police and immigration were actually found and paid cash(?!) we asked to do both check in and out at once and leave in the morning!

Shaunagh tried to provision but ended up with mostly tins of things - the fresh fruit and veg were very limited. There may have been a market one day but we thought to keep going while the weather was good. The ARC boats were here for another week so we decided to get ahead of them.

We caught up with Tim and co on Vaihere who are in the ARC. They had a problem with their GPS at some stage and did a circle and shredded their spinnaker! They are now trying to get their nav systems looked at and maybe get a new spinnaker - in a week. The next 12 days are down wind so if they can't get a spinnaker it will be hard for them.

The passage to St Lucia was 11 days, 2096 nm. By day two we had caught 2 small mahi mahi and had fish and chips for lunch. Peter and Max did an engine service on both motors on day 3 which went smoothly and took about 2 hours per engine.

We settled into the watch, sleep, eat, watch, sleep eat etc routine quite quickly after the last two legs of 3 and 4 days. We all do a 2 hour watch each at night and by day Shaunagh is off as she does lunch and dinner so Peter, Max and I do 3 hour watches. There are one or two funny watches that don't quite fit the pattern, but basically we all get 6 hours off each between watches. We eat lunch and dinner together and sort our own breakfasts out.