All go on Adina as the ARC starts

It’s been a busy time recently on Adina.

Fishing with Henry and Frank

Our last visitors before heading across the Atlantic were the Mace family – Paul, Caroline and their three boys Frank, Henry and Stanley. Tom is proudly Godfather to Frank and Henry. We squeezed a lot into their weeklong stay doing fun things like fishing off the boat, hiring a car to see the island, running riot at a water park, several barbecues, even more ice creams, bike riding, playing rugby on the beach, and all loaded with an enormous amount of laughter. We do miss the charming little chaps.

Thank you for visiting us – it meant a lot.

Once they had left we turned our attention to getting Adina ready for the Atlantic crossing. We are doing the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) which involves 280 boats heading off to St.Lucia, leaving on 24th November. While we have slowly but surely been getting Adina ready since January, we’d also prepared a comprehensive list of everything we wanted to do to service the boat before heading off. It was time for action!

Working on the sails

The sails all came down, were serviced and went back up. We serviced the engine ourselves changing oil, replacing filters, topping up coolant, cleaning air filters, and then just to make sure even got an engineer to do some professional checks 250 hours before they were needed. Same for our generator and water maker, checking each with a fine tooth comb. Down below Susie literally re-packed the boat. Away has gone all our chinaware, out have come covers for the table, chairs etc.. The cupboards cleared ready for our crew to store their things. Drinks and more dry food for the crossing have been stowed, meat ordered from the local butcher. You’d think battle had commenced!

In between this we got new neighbours – Tim and Claire on their stunning XC boat called Ghost. They soon invited us round “for a sundowner beer” and we merrily sat enjoying gin and tonics until 3 am. Tim had locked down the bilges containing his bottles of gin but unlocked them to retrieve more. We like them a lot!

Working with Jerry on the spinnaker pole

With sore heads we serviced 7 winches, stripping them all back, cleaning and greasing them. We had a full rigging check done and pronounced to be healthy by Jerry the Rigger, a great chap who visited us when we were still in England. New LED lights are now on the mast head, Susie fixed our annoying water tank leak. The list goes on – we just want Adina to be in the best shape possible.

More in between amusement included a ‘shout-out’ by DJ Neil Fox on Magic FM as one of our crew teaches his son. Not that Foxy did himself any favours as he slipped up by calling Lindsay “Mr Cunningham” just at the end. We understand he’s still not been let off the hook but we definitely appreciated the mention on radio! Here’s the clip…

Our very good friends Sarah and Donal from Milpport II, who we spent a lifetime in Gibraltar with, arrived. Similarly the man who taught me my Yachtmaster, James Pearson, was working for the ARC. More drinks! So good to see all of them.

And finally the ARC officially opened last Friday with a party laid on by the Las Palmas town council. It was certainly quite an opening with a show which included some traditional dancing following by lots of scantily dressed individuals swinging themselves around poles – a carnival theme! We need one of them to go up the mast!

Radio interview with Susie answering in Spanish!

The organisers of the ARC, World Cruising, mentioned they had been following our blog (rather touched and thank you!) and asked if we would like to do some media. First up a local radio station interview. Not a problem – indeed I even volunteered that Susie had done radio before and can speak Spanish. We turn up on the day and poor Susie is faced with answering all her questions in Spanish while I enjoyed a translator. I think she’s just forgiven me! But great fun.

It’s hard to keep your breath right now but no denying it – we are having a very good time!