LinoCat

of course NOT! But usually i do not post these pictures. But here are some with her crying because she is sad, angry and furious because she was not allowed to do something.

There is a lot of debate about this marina. When i talked to other sailors there were always confusing and conflicting messages about this place. Also more questions than answers. Even in the Imray pilot books the information was outdated. This information is from 24th September 2009 when we were here with our Lagoon 380S2 catamaran. I called them the day we arrived in Tenerife as soon as i had cell coverage. They speak english and were very friendly. Without asking they gave me the information that we have to pay port and light tax for the first night and that this would make the first night expensive. 100EUR is a lot of money for a 38feet boat. From then onwards it was only 34EUR which is OK. This still seems to be the only marina in the canaries asking for this tax. But when you keep the receipt it should be valid for one year. The approach during daytime is easy, you should call Santa Cruz port control on VHF12 before you are close to the harbour. I suggest doing it when already 2-...

We saw the lights of Tenerife already at night and in the morning we could see the mountains. We apporached the island from north with the direction towards Santa Cruz, the second biggest city of the Canary Islands with around a quarter million people. We came into a so called "acceleration zone" where the wind was up to 25knots. When approaching the commercial harbour you need to call port control on VHF channel 12 and ask for permission. The Marina Atlantico is then at the end of the south bassin and is well protected besides wind from the south. Since we had northerly winds it was perfect. In the marina the wind was calm with 8 knots. Once you are close to the Marina you call the Marinero on channel 9 and they directly guide you to a berth. There is no reception pontoon which is unusual. I will write a special report about this Marina since it is often discussed. We then did a small walk into the center which is only around 5-10Minutes away and has a pedestrian area with ...

For Lani it is sometimes tricky that she is not allowed to walk alone when we are at sea. But the good thing about a catamaran is that the boat issailing upright and not heeling, so she can play sitting outside or inside. We just need to male sure that she is not directly sitting in the sunlight. When it is too windy we do not let her play with water, which is her absolute favorite. She loves to guess what people are drawing, she enjoys songs and kids lyrics and typical childpay things. Whenever we reach a Marina we make sure that she gets enough opportunity to walk.

inoCat sailed the night and the Wind went down from 20 knots to 7knots. The night was uneventful besides a ship "not under command" floating in exactly our course. So we had to change the course for a while. Another freighter passed us 0,2 NM (1 NM= 1,852km)away. I watched a DVD on the Laptop (Rescue Dawn with Christian Bale)and in the morning we had breakfast like always. The we changed course after passing a traffic separation zone and we brought up our Parasailor, the big blue sail for downwind courses. We noticed that the sail has a small hole at the lower end and so we brought it down again. We now only have 25Miles to go. We want to enter the Marina in Santa Cruz called Marina del Atlantico. We have heard a lot of mixed things so i am curious how it will be. Be sure to read about it later :-)

We caught a nice Mahi Mahi, maybe around half a meter long. It would have been a nice addition to the menu and we just had it reeled in. I already grabbed the fish and then we gave him some Gin. We always do that before it gets killed. But then he literally jumped off the hook and he was gone. So be carefuel, somewhere in the Atlantic there is a drunken fish swimming around. We hope he can make it....

This morning i brought the rental car back and paid the marina fees. It was only 81 EUR for the monster large berth we had. This was the cheapest price for 3 nights so far and due to the fact that this marina is huge and even has a swimming pool this was a cheap stay. Food at Lani´s Grill was good. Yes that´s right, that was the name of a restaurant there. I bought a new broom to clean the boat but even the new one still needs a person to use it. I am disappointed. When do they invent one that can do it on its own? Then we visited Andy and Kate on board their Leopard 46 Tulliana and had a chat and a look at their boat. Very nice and some smart ideas. A lot more space than our small 38 foot boat. Then at 13.00 we went to the fuel dock and put 126 liter diesel in the tank. The liter only costs 68cent here. So that was also cheap. We left the marina and had almost no wind the first 30 Minutes and then a southerly with 8 knots. Knowing that this must still be a local wind we wait...