Nov 9-25: Las Palmas, Gran Canary Islands

We have arrived! Our last destination on this side of the Atlantic, our last destination before St. Lucia! After a slightly rough but surprisingly speedy trip from Morocco to Las Palmas, we are now "parked" on the catamaran dock until Nov 25. Oh my, there is so much to do! Not only do we need to finalize things on the boat, such as get the SSB radio going, need to do the provisioning for 5 people for 3 weeks (even though we hope to arrive around day 16 of the voyage), need to get pet documents ready for import to St. Lucia, there's also the ARC program that started yesterday. There's seminars, dinners, cocktail parties, Happy Hours, and so on and so forth. We already had our ARC safety check done yesterday, you would be proud of us. And so that you don't worry too much about us during the crossing, here are some of our safety measurements:

• Life jackets for everybody including spray hood, tether, crotch strap, light, whistle etc.; 
• Jack lines on board to use with the tethers; 
• First Aid Kit;
• Raymarine life tag for the night watch to wake everybody up in case of a man overboard (MOB) - and for Chester; 
• ResQLink and SeaLink for Rolf and me (personal locator beacons); 
• MOB Lifesling with whistle and light;
• MOB pole with ring, whistle, drogue and light; 
• Liferaft for 8 people; 
• Grab bag with emergency water, flares etc.;
• 6 normal fire extinguishers plus two automatic ones in the engine compartments plus one behind the electric panel and one in the battery compartment; 
• Fire blanket;
• Rigging cutter;
• High power search lights;
• All kinds of flares;
• Emergency tiller;
• Storm drogue;

and so on...
And don't forget, we'll have a doctor on board as well (Richard). I think we are very well equipped!

Our Atlantic Crossing will start on Nov 25 at 12:30pm Las Palmas time. We will not only have our usual SPOT on board to send you location notifications via this blog, you will also be able to follow our course on the ARC web site, details on that will follow.