Ellen Macarthur Trust

Landed in Lanzarote

Landed in Lanzarote
 
Thursday 26th November, Marina Rubicon, 12.00 noon.
 
 
We landed at Arricife airport bang on time at 1215 hours on Tuesday 24th.  It was my first Easyjet flight and I was impressed.  I hate flying; being transfered from my wheelchair to the plane seats on undersize aisle chairs and being manhandled by sweaty, garlic breathed ground-crew is never a pleasurable experience but Tuesday's flight wasn't too bad. I was allowed to sit in the front row of the plane (first time ever) so they literally wheeled my wheelchair into the plane and lifted me across so there was no need for the aisle chair episode though I was still subjected to the sweat and garlic - and the male helper wasn't much better either.
 
We were met at the airport by Rotarian Wolfgang Knuts from the local Rotary group - we've been invited their Club for lunch tomorrow.  They had kindly arranged transport to the marina by wheelchair accessible taxi which was an unexpected surprise.  First stop was to collect the keys for our apartment; I've taken a small ground-floor flat about 1/2 mile from the boat which gives us the flexibility with sleeping, washing, cooking etc. whilst we finish getting the boat ready. I was a bit concerned about door widths - I'd been prewarned that they might be a bit narrow but was pleasantly surprised to find I had just enough room to get around. The only difficult room is the bathroom so this morning's shower was taken on the patio, sat in a plastic beach chair with Susana throwing buckets of warm water over me - not a pretty sight.
 
Impossible Dream is moored in the lovely Marina Rubicon. She's been here unoccupied for about a month now so it took the afternoon of the 24th and all day yesterday to make her look a bit more presentable.  Having tidied up the ropes outside, Susana set about cleaning up after the delivery crew - the mouldy bread setting off my involuntary gag reflex.  Anyhow, ID is now looking much cleaner inside; tomorrow we set about cleaning the outside.  We are only 100 miles off the coast of Africa so, when it rains, everything gets coated with this fine layer of orange sand from the Sahara but nothing that a good hose and scrub won't clear.
 
Internet access here is poor to say the least.  We get spasmodic connection so I'm only managing to send/receive some emails. If you email, please, NO ATTACHMENTS unless essential.  I'm writing this with no guarantees that I will be able to upload it - fingers crossed.  I had hoped to Skype Elaine / Tim - I've manged it twice, briefly, but neither time with the webcam so we've been relying on the mobile phone which is horrendously expensive. I bought a cheap Spanish Pay-as-you-Go mobile yesterday to make local calls. It was only 29 Euros. But the reason for telling you this is because it took nearly 30 minutes to purchase, I had to present my passport as proof of ID and sign 3 separate declarations - all just for a phone you can walk into any phone shop in the UK, buy and walk out in minutes with no need to prove identity. Don't get me wrong, I think proving your identity is a great idea - why then, when us Brits are living in one of the most terrorist-fearful nations on the planet, is our government not protecting us in the same way as the Spanish - if terrorists/criminals in the UK are taking advantage of unidentifiable, cheap, Pay-as-you-Go mobile phones, without the need to show identity at the point of purchase, then perhaps it would be wise to change the rules.  OK, that's Geoff's "High Horse" of the day. Rant over.
 
We have just one essential job that must, at all costs, be completed by mid-next week at the latest.  We have a satellite communications dome arriving from the USA imminently (it was at Madrid airport yesterday). It will be this device which will allow you to see footage on the BBC during our voyage - it will also give us internet communication across the Atlantic which means I will be able to update my blog and Twitter.  I can not overstate how important this piece of kit is. The one problem we have is going to be attaching the unit to the boat in such a way that it does not drill holes into the boat and it can be quickly uninstalled when we get the other side.  We have an engineer coming this afternoon to give his advice but, after a lot of teeth-sucking, he's already stating he is busy and has very little capacity in his workshop. On top of that, the island shuts down on the 7th and 8th December for a 2 day fiesta - we leave on the 10th.  And once this unit is fitted, we then need the software engineers to fly out from the UK to train us to use the kit - wish us luck.
 
OK, lunchtime now. Susana has been sorting out all of our Christmas stuff (presents and decorations) this morning and is currently in the forward hold where she is rooting through our food supplies (she's been there a long time and has gone very quiet); yesterday we managed to find the peanut M&M's and the Jaffa Cakes, my worry now is that she's found the Maltesers - Happy Days!!!!