Thurs 11- Executive finally left early this morning. We spend all morning working through jobs on Skyelark still hoping that we can reduce our rent costs by doing so. What neither of us realised till almost lunchtime is that Huw’s phone has been on silent the whole time and someone had been trying to get hold of us to offer us berths on his boat! Not only that it turns out to be Paul from New Dawn, the Halberg Rassy both Adam and Will are already planning to go with.

Funny how things turn out!! Anyway he eventually catches up with us by speaking to Will on the mini bus and then coming over (he’s on anchor) in his dinghy to talk to us. We get on pretty well, Will has already vouched for us and Adam is on hand to do the same. He seems quite happy that we all know each other and get on still. He invites us back to see his boat and meet his wife, which we agree to after we’ve cleaned up (Bernice has been head cleaning – that’s the toilets to you non-sailors – and Huw has been steel polishing). Post lunch we get to the boat (New Dawn) and meet Chris, Paul’s wife. He is Danish, she is from Belgium, and their boat is registered in Luxembourg. They seem really nice and we all get on well – we obviously had to take them some flapjacks which did the trick as they offered us definite passage to the Caribbean via Cape Verde there and then. Excellente!!! Chris won’t be sailing over, she’s not keen on long passages so it’d just be Paul and us four. Such a lovely boat. We can’t believe our luck, there’s no hesitation obviously. We arrange to move on board on Monday along with the lads – they’ve delayed till then cause the boat is at anchor, Will has work still at the ARC office and then there’s the dinghy race Sunday to consider. But a great result. We still have to pick our t-shirts up which obviously we won’t be needing now but they’ll come in useful next time we need to pimp ourselves for a ride :0) . Tonight is the 1st night of the WOMAD festival in Las Palmas. It’s just along the waterfront from the Marina and it’s on for 4 days. We decide to wander down, to get out of the Marina if nothing else and check it out. Adam comes with us. It’s pretty busy and we all think it’ll be a good night out over the weekend and that we’ll be back. Get this – it’s completely free and open to the public. Every time you recycle 10 beer cups you can go collect a free t-shirt!! That’s definitely a challenge to come back for.