La Palma

Sailed into the port of Santa Cruz de la Palma at 1030 yesterday (sorry I didn’t post this then!). After a 7-day run down from Porto it was great to have a break! It was an easy sail though, the only negatives being two days of very light wind. This slowed me up quite considerably. The trip was 849 nautical miles, just under a thousand land miles.
What a difference it makes coming south! It suddenly got a lot warmer – even at night the temperature inside the boat wasn’t going below 18. How great it is not to feel cold!

This is a small, quiet island – it’s not Tenerife or Gran Canaria. The town is modest in size and attractive, cobbled streets and many old buildings, a couple dating back to the late 1500s and early 1600s. Tourists are conspicuous by their absence – the handful of foreigners here seem, like me, to be in the marina. So COVID is clearly having quite an economic impact here – some restaurants are closed and touristy shops are empty. The island is Level 1 on a 1-4 scale for the Canary Islands, so bars and restaurants are open. The only COVID impact is a requirement to wear face masks in all public places, including on the street, and there is a 12-6am curfew. So this feels like a liberated zone!