By: Melissa Patel

Hiten and I arrived in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria on November 3 to give us almost three full weeks to prepare as crew for the Atlantic crossing. We currently have an AirBnB about a 10-minute walk from the marina, primarily for sleeping and cooking. Our days are spent learning as much as we can about the lovely boat we know as SV Welcome, helping with projects, exploring the local markets/shops and testing ingredients and meals for the passage. We’re really enjoying getting to know Donna and Jay (even more) and we’re looking forward to officially moving onto the boat on November 21. The ARC officially departs Gran Canaria on November 23 along with 144 other boats. And we’re expecting it will be about a 16-20 day passage to St. Lucia, depending on winds, weather and seas.

For context, Gran Canaria is 130 miles west of Morocco and Las Palmas is the most populated city in the Canary Islands with just under 400,000 people. It’s the 9th largest city in Spain, with most of the population being born here. A significant portion of the economy revolves around the commercial port, and it is well known as the starting point for many transatlantic sailing events, including the ARC and ARC+. We were surprised to learn that there are actually eight islands and several unpopulated islets that make up the Canary Islands. After spending a few days with Donna in Las Palmas, she left the boat yesterday to go explore and hike on some of these other islands. We may try to explore a bit ourselves, but time is already flying by with only two weeks remaining.

The city marina is rather large, with capacity for over 1,300 boats. For comparison, that makes it just smaller than San Diego Harbor in California! But, even with this much room, the fuel dock and adjacent harbor are being used for overflow as there just isn’t enough space to accommodate the demand at this time of year. It’s quite a sight to see the mix of commercial boats, fishing boats and local leisure boats, along with the 200+ rally sailboats with their ARC flags on full display. Space will start to free up soon as 86 boats depart tomorrow for the ARC+ (an extended crossing that stops in Cape Verde and ends in Grenada). This should hopefully give us the opportunity to move over to “the wall” where most of the other Oyster ARC and Oyster World Rally boats are currently berthed. The proximity will help us get to know the other Oyster owners and crew members, who are already becoming a very tight-knit community that continuously helps and supports each other.

This first week has been great! We’ve really enjoyed every moment, including meeting all of the various support teams that have come aboard to proactively check and adjust many of the systems. They happily answer our questions and allow us to listen and learn as they work. As lifelong sailors and boat owners, Jay and Donna have been meticulous in identifying issues and keeping a detailed punch list. And fortunately the maintenance teams found and fixed a few issues as well. This gives us a lot of confidence that as much as possible has been identified and addressed before our departure, enabling us to have the best chance for a smooth journey ahead.

Last but not least, as we’re charged with provisioning for the crossing, we’ve been busy taking an inventory of provisions on the boat and testing recipes in our AirBnB kitchen with various local brands that are mostly new to us. We are thankful that the daily fresh market is a 5-minute walk from our apartment and that we can procure high quality fruits and vegetables there. And, Jay and Donna have kindly allowed us to borrow some items from the galley to make our job easier and to familiarize ourselves with what we’ll be using longer term. So we’ve had some fun making hummus, macaroni and cheese, spinach-cheese egg bites and chocolate chip-oat bites. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be making batches of lasagna, homemade pasta sauce, gazpacho, vegetable bullion, freezing fresh fruits and much, much more. We definitely want to make sure that we have great meals planned and prepared to keep everyone healthy and happy on our voyage across the Atlantic. Stay tuned as we share the progress we’re making on the boat and in the kitchen!