More La Gomera with Jop and Mim

With Jop and Miriam we sailed back around to the anchor spot in Valle de Drand Rey. As soon as it was dark enough, Seb and Jop donned head lamps and cast fishing lines over the side. They didn’t catch anything but we saw some amazing iridescent fish with seemingly glow in the dark skeletons hovering around the boat. Amazing looking creatures. We spent two days in the bay heading to the beach, scrubbing the bottom of the boat and zipping about in the dingy.

On our way back from Valle de Grand Rey to San Sebastiaan and we heard the welcome zzzzzing of the trawling line. After a scramble to slow down the boat, get cameras, gloves, buckets etc. Seb slowly reeled in the rapidly wriggling line and there appeared an absolutely beautiful bonito of approximately 3,3 kgs. Seb was careful to be as humane as possible with the bonito and performed the bloodier tasks at the back of the boat. Emma was fascinated by the process but she did remark “Papa, I don’t think I like fish anymore” when he was finished.

Back in the marina that evening we dined on cucumber and tuna sushi followed by grilled tuna fillets. This was honestly one of the very best fish I have ever eaten. It was a slow meal eaten in the cockpit under the stars.

We also managed to get some important things done during Jop and Miriam’s visit. Seb and Jolp spent two days puzzling through the installation of the new autopilot. During our underwater scrubbing session in Valle de Grand Rey Seb had discovered that the anode (soft metal that keeps the adjacent metals from corroding) around the engine propeller was loose. We thought we would need to take the boat back to Tenerife and haul her out of the water to fix it – very bad, time consuming and expensive news. Fortunately, Jan-Bart from the Victory has a lot of diving experience and offered to swim under and take a look. Over the course of more than four hours and a lot of puzzling he and Seb were able to unscrew the propeller and replace the anode. They concluded the tasks justly happy with their work and almost hypothermic. Finally, Miriam and I spent an afternoon designing and building a mosquito net for the cabin entryway.

On our last evening with Jop and Miriam, Jeroen and Luise were kind enough to babysit and we went out for a tapas tour of the San Sebastian cafes. As we sat dipping our bread and potatoes in mojo sauce and drinking ice cold beers at our Berlusca, our favorite café, a small group of people started singing, playing the guitar and moroccas just next to us. We spent the evening slowly eating through a variety of delicious dishes , drinking wine and swaying to the ballads of La Gomera.