It’s all a waiting game!…
by Tom McMahon – Deckhand aboard Sea Dragon.
In the last blog post I mentioned that we were still on land, because we where waiting for a vital part to arrive here, in Lanzarote.
I am pleased to say that the part has now arrived, meaning we can go back in the water shortly. What stands out is how long it has taken for the part to arrive. The reason? The weather. The town in Maine, from which the part came was recently run over by the tail end of a tropical storm.
I feel that what this serves to illustrate, very succinctly is that we do in fact live in a very interconnected world, and one where Mother Nature still has the final say.
Now we have managed to do a colossal amount of polishing with all of our waiting around which is a wonderful thing to achieve. Thing is, polishing is not something you can write an exciting blog post about.
Instead I wish to show you what we have been up to when not polishing:
To start with we as a crew were invited to Suzanne Van Der VeeKen @oceanpreneur’s book launch. This book focused on how to catch a ride on a sailboat. The book also points out how this can serve to reduce the impact we have on our world as a whole.
Suzanne Van Der VeeKen – Ocean Nomad
As a part of this book launch we where treated to an exclusive screening of ‘Vanishing Sail’ a film to document the traditional building methods of sailing boats in the Caribbean. Important because the traditional methods and values of boat building are at risk of being lost. Learn more here.
As I mentioned at the start of this post we are still in Lanzarote which is probably known world wide for its British tourists. What it is not as well known for is its long tradition of wine production. “When in Rome” as they say, so we went to a vineyard;
Bodega Rubicon, in the La Geria area of Lanzarote
(one of the oldest wineries on the island)
And tried some of the wine:
which because Lanzarote is a volcanic desert island came with its own cactus garden:
and no desert would be complete without camels, so we visited the volcano of Timanfaya on a camel.
So these are just a few of the things you can do around Sea Dragon when not sailing, and this is before the science research has even begun!
Talking of sailing we’re not to far off the transatlantic passage, so by the time you read this we will be afloat, in Tenerife, receiving our intrepid crew and in my next blog I’ll be able to tell you more about some of the other things the Canaries grows…