A Winter’s Pause
Thursday, Sept 30, 2021
Latitude 28o 28’ N
Longitude 16o 15’ W
Santa Cruz Marina, Tenerife
A Winter’s Pause
Pete and I arrived in Santa Cruz on Monday morning the 20th of September. By that afternoon Pete had found a COVID testing center and passed his required PCR test. By Wednesday morning at 4:30 AM he’d stepped off the boat with a hug and started his long voyage home to Truckee, California, where he’d been away for over two months. I promptly went back to bed and then got up as the sun rose to begin 10 days of boat maintenance and exploring Tenerife in anticipation of wife Kay’s arrival this coming Saturday, Oct 2.
The Santa Cruz Marina is a great facility for visiting yachts. Not counting the showers and laundry, a three hundred yard walk over an AstroTurf lined pedestrian bridges places you directly in a small park with a large circular wading pool that you’re not allowed to wade in, imposing guardian statues, and a tall crucifix emblazoned tower at the entrance to the city. Beyond that, the city is Spanish architecture, wide boulevards, narrow streets, and lush parks with numerous outdoor cafes, restaurants and upscale stores. It feels like a young city, with ubiquitous selfies and skateboards whizzing by at alarming speeds. The women are stylishly dressed. The men, not so much. The language on the street is primarily Spanish.
In contrast, an hour or so bus ride down the coast to Costa Adeje on the South side of the island and you’re surrounded by a host of languages, mostly British, and the vendors along the boardwalk all speak some form of English. My first thought upon stepping off the bus was “This was a wasted trip,” but after my initial disdain, I concluded that Kay and I really should visit Costa Adeje and have an overpriced umbrella drink or two at the tourist trap that was pumping out Tina Turner and the Allman Brothers, so we could get an afternoon buzz and gaze out over our fellow tourists sprawled on the grey sand beach.
And at the other end of the bus line, far from Costa Adeje, and only five miles North of Santa Cruz, is the subdued beach Las Teresitas, far removed from the madding crowd.
Given the two choices of beaches, the outdoor market, the restaurants, the cafés, the parks, and just walking about, we should have no problem passing the time in Tenerife until the 13th, at which point Kay and I will move Lillian from the Santa Cruz Marina up the coast to the Anaga boatyard where she’ll get lifted out of the water for the winter. We then fly back to Boston on the 15th of October.
I expect it will be a relief to turn over the responsibility and maintenance of the boat to someone else for a few months. There remain several repairs that need to be made before she heads back out to sea, but the intent is that those will all be addressed by Anaga by the time I return in January, 2022. After restocking consumables, Lillian will then be ready to head out to sea with the next crew. Next leg: 3000 miles back across the mid-Atlantic to the lesser Antilles, most likely via Cape Verde. Until then, it will be life back on land. If all goes as planned, I’ll resume sailing and the blog in 2022. Meanwhile, wishing everyone a happy, healthy and prosperous end of 2021.
