After a really late night, albeit that the clocks went back and we gained an hour, neither of us felt too clever on Sunday morning; Roy from too much partying and suffering from his first major hangover in years and Elaine suffering from sleep deprivation. Apparently, though, the crew from Lost Abbey were feeling far worse for wear, given that they continued the party after we had said our goodbyes in the wee small hours of the morning and certainly looked under the weather when we saw them at Sailor’s Bay café just before the ARC+ parade and opening ceremony. The parade, however, was very festive and certainly had us getting very excited, since our turn is less than a fortnight away.

Given our lethargic mood, we enjoyed a very lazy day. Besides Roy spending time testing his Anchor Plus application after all the new Apple software releases for the various devices, we also had a long chat to Justine and Paul to touch base with them before their arrival, following which we enjoyed a barbecue for dinner.

Yesterday, with our body clocks all messed up with the time change, Roy walked to the mini-market to get us freshly baked croissants for breakfast, following which we walked to the HiperDino supermarket to get the last of our passage provisions; the emergency supplies, stopping for a coffee at the Sailor’s Bay café on our return to the marina. All that remains now from a provisioning perspective is the fresh produce, which we’ll purchase with Justine and Paul a few days before our departure. Although we won’t be cooking and freezing any meals for this passage ahead of time, given that we’re all going vegetarian to accommodate the lowest denominator of dietary requirements, there will be some preparations required to chop up ingredients and package these per meal prior to departure.

After sanitising and stowing our purchases, we wrapped up our day watching the first of two PredictWind webinars offered by ARC 2023.

We also noticed the arrival of the SSL Gold Cup racing yachts and the various participating teams of a competition designated as the ultimate challenge for sailors, by officially crowning the World Champion of Sailing Nations. Like the major World Cups in other sports, the SSL Gold Cup is an “equal opportunity event with no social, geographical, financial, or cultural discriminations”. The conditions are the same for all teams, with identical racing boats, the SSL47, and training made available free of charge to all teams.

40 teams, each comprising 11 athletes, amongst them Olympic medalists, will be competing in the SSL Cup Finals held here in Gran Canaria, including the world's top 24 sailing nations in the SSL Ranking and the 16 teams who came through the Qualifying Series.

Although we both had a very restless night last night, Roy still went for his morning walk, but this time to do a reconnaissance of the large Carrefour supermarket on the island, in the hope of finding a few “luxury” provisions to help provide some variety to our passage meals.

After breakfast, we then set about our trek around the various hospitals in search of a COVID and/or flu shot for Elaine, since we were unable to get feedback via email. Although we knew this would be a frustrating undertaking before we started, it was made worse by the total disregard the hospital staff had for Elaine, compounded by their rude, dismissive, degrading attitudes.

While be able to access readily available, excellent, inexpensive healthcare for everything Elaine has needed during our circumnavigation since Australia, up to and including Türkiye, from doctors to specialists, blood tests, x-rays, medication, vaccinations, you name it, that has certainly not been the case since entering the Europe Union. On the contrary, Elaine has struggled to get the simplest of care like her blood tests done, procure the odd medication and now getting a common vaccination has become a challenge. We’d hoped that Gibraltar would have been able to provide the latter, but to no avail unfortunately. Our last chance was here in the Canary Islands.

While Elaine still has not had either shot, she eventually managed to secure an appointment for next week to, at least, get the COVID booster, but she’s not entirely convinced something wasn’t lost in translation. She’ll know soon enough.

Shockingly, every European country we’ve visited coming through the Mediterranean was unable to provide any care for Elaine, calling into question which countries are truly the first world countries of the world, able to provide appropriate, timely healthcare without any problems.

What we’ve found alarming too is the availability of antibacterial hand wipes and gels or rather, the total lack thereof. We’ve visited numerous convenience stores, supermarkets, pharmacies, etc, in every country since leaving Türkiye and have received the same answer: “Sorry we don’t have”. With Elaine’s supply dwindling, she’s had to ask Justine and Paul to bring these items with them, in the hopes that they are, in fact, available in the UK.

It’s fair to say, these are all challenges we definitely weren’t expecting to encounter in this part of the world.

Back onboard we watched the second of the PredictWind webinars and caught up on the videos showing the South African Springboks arriving home this morning to a wonderful welcome. Elaine’s brother, Laurence, was actually at the airport, so we received a firsthand account of the celebrations. Very special indeed.

With the shorter days, darkness ascends rather quickly these nights, but that meant the trick or treat goblins, ghosts and fairies were out early. Happy Halloween everyone!