Friday, January 28, 2022

Puerta Calero Marina, Lanzarote, Spain

We had a busy day today, starting on the veranda with some more of the Ethiopian coffee that Steve brought with him.

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At 10:30AM we headed to Arrecife to find the Customs Office. Someone had told John where to go, so we followed him there.  John and Jens in John’s rental, Dennis and I in ours.

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We ended up at the Arrecife Police Station, where no one was of much help. Not much English spoken, along with the typical cop attitude, we were sent in circles. We eventually took it amongst ourselves to go to the marina, which was in close walking distance,  to ask around there where we needed to go for customs. First stop was the “Information” kiosk, not much information was found there. On we went, subsequently John asked an obvious boater if they knew where we should go, she directed us to the Marina Office. The people in the office were very helpful, sending us about 5 miles by land or 200 meters by sea, to the shipping port, where the customs office was. John also was able to get the same address from the marina manager in Puerto de Calero, which we were able to put into our phones for GPS directions.

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Eventually we found the right office in the right building, and we got our passports stamped and off we went.

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Dennis and I headed to Avocet to organize whatever we coud. John and Jens went in search of a new third cooler and a gaff for fishing. We planned on meeting at the boat later. I dropped the car off at Villa Azule for Steve and Victor to use and Dennis and I headed to the marina. 

We went through a lot of the provisions already on the boat, throwing out some obviously bad items, opened out-of-date products, small black bug riddled pasta and rice, and rancid oil. No real surprise, the boat has been sitting for months.

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John and Jens soon returned with the cooler and gaff. It was decided that John and I would stay on Avocet, cleaning and organizing, while Dennis and Jens would go to the supermarket for provisions.

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James, one of the mechanics from the marina, with John, changed the filters and went through the operations of the watermaker. It was running late, for James, so John and James agreed to meet in the morning to test and calibrate the operation of the autopilot. 

When James left John and I got a lot done- we cleared the decks of all unneeded items. The big plastic jugs filled with diesel from Avocet’s tanks, which had to be emptied before the seals were replaced, needed to be poured back into the tanks. We took the anchor from the bow and put it into the pit along with the gas generator, duffle bags, linens, excess lines, amongst a whole lot of other stuff.

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Dennis and Jens filled their car with an absurd amount of food. It took well over an hour to find homes for all the food on Avocet. With every little cubby, hanging net hammocks were filled. It was getting late and we were hungry.

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The Upper Deck closes at 10PM and it was 10PM, fortunately over the 2 weeks that John was in Puerta Calero he had forged a great relationship with the staff there and were well taken care of even though it was past there normal hours. Steve and Victor met us there. We finished our night with some food, beer and talk of tomorrow’s anticipated departure.

Our hope is to depart tomorrow afternoon. There are some final systems checks to be done, as well as topping off our tanks, getting bottled water and ice.