The boat is a beehive of activity tonight as our last crew member, Doug, has just arrived from the States, and banter goes back and forth. We are now our full crew of seven and are on the dock in Las Palmas; not a normal dock, though that we expected to be on by tonight, but the reception dock...we arrived here yesterday, one day ahead of the start of the ARC, the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers, or so we thought...turns out the start of the Cruising divisions of the ARC has been postponed by 2 days, so where we expected to have plenty of dock space all to ourselves after the departure today of 238 boats, only 34 yachts (27 racers, 7 cruisers) started, leaving the other 200+ clogging the docks and the restaurants in Las Palmas.

Lucky thing that we had been cheeky enough yesterday to just park ourselves up on the reception dock of the marina office and with a bit of sweet talking in Spanish, they let us stay the night...and now another one...guess we'll be here tomorrow night as well. We had a pretty straight forward trip from Palma, where we left last Sunday after several days of crazy preparations. It was a relief to get out on the water and away from land! We did some wicked sailing the first night, with 30-35 knots on the beam and just aft of the beam, but the fun didn't last long and we were soon back to motorsailing. Relaxing at least.

Italiaaaa!!!!

Very quick update from Malta...after a fantastic cruise around the Gulf of Napoli, taking in Napoli, the islands of Procida, Ischia and Capri (stunning!), Positano on the Amalfi Coast, we set off from a water drenched Napoli (one of the biggest rain and thunderstorms we've witnessed passed over Napoli on Friday night, stadion lighting was nothing compared to it!) on Saturday morning joined by two of our good friends and crew from the UK.

Been great to sail with them and spend some time together!

It has been a trip with a bit of everything: rain to start with, beautful sunshine with nice winds in the Messina Strait, heavy thunderstorms that made us take shelter in Syracuse bay, lots of wind, no wind, confused seas, wind all over the place...

We arrived last night around 9pm in Malta, happy to be here!