29th June to 1st July 2018
We anchored just outside the mooring buoys in about 7m depth. The anchor held securely first time and didn’t move while we were there. Lots of room and the bottom looked sandy most of the way up towards the beach. We were wondering why the anchorage was so quiet and underused for the first 24 hours or so after arrival.
The beach to the West of the village has a nice mix of soft sand and pebbles, ideal for digging I am told. All the reports say that the village is Lanzarote as it used to be before the tourism – and it certainly looked that way. We didn’t visit on our first full day at anchor as the kids were enjoying freedom and the beach. Theo had claimed the beach to the extent that he was growling at passers-by to scare them away – he often seems to think of the quieter beaches as his/our territory.
In the afternoon we did a few general jobs on the boat while the kids played duplo and other assorted games. I built a frame over the dinghy davits to hold the flexible solar panels horizontally – we have noticed that as we move further South, and Summer arrives, using the guard-rails to hold panels vertically isn’t working as well (as the Sun is overhead for more of the day). So, we now have a couple of panels on each side, and four over the dinghy. That should do.
The next morning the North-East trade winds set back in, the swell built and fairly quickly the anchorage became uncomfortable. That explained the quiet and how few mentions it had got in pilot books and on the internet. The forecast was for more of the same, so we finalised our next destination, a very short sail away, and set off for another lovely sail. Charlotte started off helming with Hector asleep on her lap wrapped in a sheet, a technique which might not appear in any sailing manuals but seemed to work pretty well for us…
