From Gran Tarajal it is a short sail, just over 20 nautical miles down to Morro Jable on southern Fuerteventura. We have been there once before, at the beginning of 1990. At that time, they had just started building large hotels by the beautiful beach. We’ll see if we recognize the place now.

We get a nice sail along the coast down to southern Fuerteventura and we sail past the large area of light desert sand that covers a large area across the island. The famous Sotavento de Jandia beach is located here.

As we approach the southern end of Fuerteventura, we see that there are many more hotels here, even on the beach at Playa Matoral which was completely undeveloped in 1990. The lighthouse at the end of the beach at Morro Jable was also not there, it was built the following year, in 1991.

The port in Morro Jable has also been built since we were last here. It does not have room for so many visiting boats, and the two temporary pontoons that were in the outer harbor do not have contact with land. When we get to the port there is no free place for us and instead we anchor outside the village.

We get two wonderful days in Morro Jable. In addition to walk in Morro Jable village looking for things we recognize since we were here last, we have time for a bit of other things as well.

Nowadays there is a nice promenade along the water from the village almost all the way to the lighthouse. 32 years ago, there were only rocks between the village and the long sandy beach. It looks like the whole beach has become wider, maybe they have added more sand too.

Our favorite restaurant from 30 years ago is still popular and when we go to have lunch there, we are lucky and a table becomes free just as we get there. Now the restaurant is called La Laja and serves many different fish dishes. Perfect, we like that.

The food is good and the location is fantastic, but we don’t feel that the restaurant is as cozy and genuine as it was then. Maybe it’s like that when you relive something, everything changes and so do we.

The two days we are here we have great weather with clear blue skies and a nice breeze from the sea. There are just enough tourists here, not too many and not too few, absolutely perfect in our opinion.

Light shining in the water

We have some nice calm evenings with just a little swell and almost no wind. It produces impressive reflections in the water from the lights on land. The evenings are warm so we sit out in the cockpit until late and enjoy ourselves before it’s time to crawl into cabin to sleep.

Late one evening we see a light down in the water approaching the boat, as it gets closer, it splits into two and then a third light lights up under the water.

It must be divers! They stop and move around the boat for a while and then they seem to follow our anchor chain for a bit. When they reach the anchor, they continue a little further out before it is time for them to turn back. They come back about the same way and we see the beam of light slowly moving towards the shore. Before they come out of the water, the lights go out and we lose sight of them.

Soon it will be time for ARC 2022 to leave Las Palmas and sail to St Lucia in the Caribbean. We want to be there to wave off the boats together with some of our friends from ARC 2019 who are also in Las Palmas now.

Up next

Now there are almost 200 ARC boats inside the marina in Las Palmas and this means that just as many other boats have had to leave the marina. Either they have found a place in another port in the Canary Islands or they anchor outside the marina. The only possibility to be with the boat in Las Palmas right now is to anchor. So we have to hope that we find a spot where we can anchor Sally in Las Palmas.

Las Palmas, here we come!