Being a Sunday, Elaine enjoyed a very lazy morning just for a change, while Roy enjoyed a long morning walk then cooked breakfast on his return. Given that we are trying to eat all our provisions that are not needed for our Atlantic Ocean crossing, he did well in cobbling together a delicious omelette served with bacon. There will, however, still be items we can use as emergency supplies, although a top up on a few additional items is still needed too. It’s a fine line between having too much food for this passage in particular, but worse, having too little, a rather difficult balancing act because we’ve never had four people to feed on passage and we’ve never gone without a freezer, the latter due to the fact that we’ve decided to go pescatarian to accommodate the lowest common denominator and avoid preparing different meals at one time.

The single yacht task undertaken for the day was to swap out the starboard after head (aka toilet) with the forward head so that Justine and Paul don’t have to deal with a leaky toilet when they join us. Well, that’s the hope anyway!

Afterwards we walked along the waterfront to the “nearby” mall, a 6.5km round trip, which included a reconnaissance in the vicinity of the marina, finding a number of restaurants and cafés, as well as the all important self-service laundry facility, all of which left Elaine exhausted though. Unfortunately the walk to the mall wasn’t even worth it, although a coffee and baked delight was enjoyed before returning to Paw Paw.

It’s fair to say that, what we’ve seen of Las Palmas thus far, it is definitely the only grubby place we’ve seen in Spain and Elaine doesn’t do grubby!

Back onboard we whiled away the rest of the afternoon, in the comfort of our air-conditioned interior, watching a lighthearted series Roy had downloaded at some point during our travels when we had wifi, the air-conditioning necessary due to the scorching temperatures and higher humidity we’ve had since our arrival on Gran Canaria. Thankfully, the nights cool down significantly, forcing us to reach for our duvets; quite an extreme actually.

With Elaine being completely over walking another step, we settled on watching the Springboks vs France World Cup Rugby match onboard and what an electrifying match it was. Both teams played exceptionally well, but South Africa managed to win the game in the latter part of the second half. We thought the previous quarter final between Ireland and the All Blacks was a battle of the Titans, but this unbelievable performance by both sides was phenomenal; the best rugby we’ve seen and a delight to watch. That said, it definitely made for a far more enjoyable experience with a more professional and fair referee overseeing matters.

Today was a flurry of activity from the minute we opened our eyes, getting up early to take advantage of the calm winds to unsock and resock both the gennaker and the spinnaker. After breakfast we then put the dinghy in the water so that Roy could undertake a few diesel runs to top up our diesel tanks and fill our diesel jerry cans. Once that was done, we hauled all our dirty washing to the laundry facilities and enjoyed a coffee and very fancy baked delight at the Pier 19 restaurant, while we waited on the cycles finishing.

Back onboard Paw Paw looked like a Chinese laundry, but we definitely weren’t paying to use the dryers, given the €8 we paid per load to use the washing machines, the most expensive we’ve ever paid at twice the price of Gibraltar and we thought that was expensive. Of course, unlike other parts of the world with coin operated machines, the biggest challenge here was getting the correct amount of change, since there was no change machine or coins available at the marina office.

Afterwards we filled the water tank, washed the starboard topside, which had got marked by one of our freebie fenders, picked up after we found it floating in the middle of nowhere and removed the dinghy engine, lashing it to the outboard engine mount, something we’ve never had to do before, but our new engine doesn’t sit very well against the davit when the dinghy is lashed, noticed on our passage from Gibraltar. Of course, this was never going to be a simple task after we discovered that our very expensive stainless steel lock wouldn’t unlock so that we could actually remove the engine. We’ve lost count on just how many times we’ve had to cut a lock off with the angle grinder and this time was no exception. The final task of the day was to lash the diesel jerry cans.

It was early evening by the time we’d completed the tasks earmarked for today, with the exception of a visit to the local chandlery in the hopes of purchasing the additional parts we need, including an engine blower, a head pump and two struts, the latter giving up the ghost in the anchor locker while we were in Isla de Lanzarote. Oh my word; when does this end! We think Paw Paw knows we’re trying to get rid of her!