Category Archives: Passages & Crossings

Pollo or Raviolli

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When Continental asks ‘Pollo or Raviolli?’ by all means choose Raviolli. That had to be the worst airplane meal of all time.

Chillin on the Madrid airport,waiting on the last leg of the airplane flights. Newark to Madrid was only 6 hrs. We had exit row seats with lots of legroom, but only 2 inches of seat recline. Very little shuteye is going to make for an early night tonight.

Luckily we had euro left over from Greece earlier this year as the pulse machines don’t like my card again. This summer it worked in Greece but wouldn’t work in turkey. According to the my bank turkey wasn’t a trusted country and there was nothing they could do. Figured Spain should be okay, no? Oh well we’ll survive.

Beer is cheaper than diet coke, so you can guess what I had for breakfast with our left over euros.

It’s 40 degrees outside but 90 in the airport terminal.

The journey begins

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Wow how much stuff do we need? 3 checked bags, one over the 50 lb limit. @ 69 lbs, two heavy carry ons and we are on our way(and we even left the blender at home). Travel jitters and anxiety of the long journey are in full force. Just keep reminding ourselves that we are off to get OUR boat and if you are gonna do something, you might as well jump in with both feets.

Our flights are Austin, Houston, Newark, Madrid, Gran Canary.

From the spot track Sugar Shack is already in Las Palmas waiting in the harbor for us. The weather is looking good for the first few days then winds are switching around to coming from the west on Thursday or Friday so we’ll probably head south towards the Cape Verde islands before turning west to the sunny caribbean. Looking forward to that!

Arrived H-town, uneventful short hop of a plane ride. Probably takes more time to load than fly those 200 miles. Planes are really full with the holiday travelers and the fewer numberof flights. So that means families and lots ofcarry on baggages. I was surprised that the Bass Pro Shop in the Hpuston airport didn’t sell shotguns. It’s Texas and hunting season after all. I suppose TSA would would frown on that

A Woman’s Perspective – Arrival to the Canary Islands

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Matt suggested we get a rental car so it would be easier to cart our provisions back and forth to the boat.  Of course that meant that Matt had to drive as locals drive on the opposite side of the car and on the opposite of the road.  Even though he get’s his right and left mixed up he still drives better and navigates the island with ease.   We saw the last group of the ARC leaving as we left the airport and headed to the marina – which was totally cool knowing that we would soon be sailing across the Atlantic with them.

 

Matt’s eagle eye spotted a large Carefore grocery store on the top of a hill (he recognized the name from a previous island shopping excursion).  We made a mental note of the exit and location so we could come back and shop there.  This town has a lot of one way streets, and funky round a bouts which adds to the difficulty to driving on the wrong side of the road.  It took us awhile to find the marina as there is only one entrance which is below the freeway with no clear signs.   Maybe they are trying to keep the “riff raff” out by keeping the entrance a secret, but too late – we found it J

 

The marina is super cute.  We saw some stores (provisioning, bakery, hardware, clothing) and little cafés with people eating and sharing coffee on the side walk – so European, I love it!  We parked near the fuel dock to see if we could find the boat and Matt spotted her across the Marina – it was so good to see her with our own eyes.  We were armed with a VHF radio that we were going to use to call the boys on the boat, but we didn’t need it once we spotted her.  We decided to head over there without notifying them.  Not that we were “sneaking up” on them or anything, we were just so excited to get aboard that we hustled back to the car to get to the boat.

 

Really strange dragging three large suitcases, a water tight bag, backpack and purse down the dock to our boat – is this really our boat?  But even stranger was asking Marvin (the previous owner) and Ron for permission to come aboard our own boat.  I have to admit that they didn’t seem to even notice that we had a small menagerie of luggage (or they hid their surprise well).  Introductions were made and unpacking began immediately.  Matt opened up one of the large, overweight bags and started unloading boat parts, 5 lbs of peanuted M&M’s for Ron, my 2 bags of ginger snaps, and other miscellaneous necessities.  Ron warmed up some pizza for us as we unpacked and chatted the rest of the night.