Before
leaving Tenerife, we sailed over to admire a ‘super (motor) yacht’ that was
anchored nearby. One has to admit that
it was impressive – even though it did not have any sails!
The
wind picked up once we entered the Wind Acceleration Zone between Tenerife and La
Gomera. From then on we had an enjoyable and invigorating 20-mile
sail.
As
we entered the harbour at San Sebastián, the capital of La Gomera, the cloud over Tenerife
lifted and we had our first view of Mount Teide. For all the time we’d been in Tenerife the volcanic mountain had
been obscured by cloud.
Entering San Sebastián harbour, we had
our first view of
Mount Teide (in the background) since arriving in the western isles
The harbour in San Sebastián, in which the marina is located, primarily services the only
commercial ferry and cruise liner port on the island. It is said to be the finest
natural harbour in the Canaries.
We’d been to La Gomera before. The first time was in 1998, when we picked up, fitted out and delivered a
brand-new Jeanneau from La Rochelle to San Sebastián for Club Sail – a sailing
school and charter company based, at that time, in La Gomera. While there, Mike picked up a 4-month
delivery of an American Brewer yacht across the Pond, through the Panama Canal
and up the Pacific coast of North America to San Diego.
On
our second visit
to La Gomera we spent Christmas and the New Millennium’s Eve in the
marina where we provisioned prior to leaving on our first Atlantic crossing in Island
Drifter.
This
time our
objective was to explore the seventeen known anchorages, many of which
are accessible only by sea.
The
marina is situated on the edge of the very pleasant town of San Sebastián where
there are still some interesting, albeit renovated, buildings, particularly
Spanish Baroque and Moorish style pantiled houses with shaded courtyards and
balconies.
San Sebastián’s, and indeed
La Gomera’s, principal claim to fame is that it was Christopher Columbus’s
final port of call before his historic crossing of the Atlantic in 1492. He called in to La Gomera to provision, fill
up with the island’s excellent water, and, allegedly, to visit an old flame
Beatrice de Bobadilla.
Church in San Sebastián where Christopher Columbus and
his crew are alleged to have attended mass prior to their historic Atlantic
crossing in 1492
La
Gomera, the second
smallest of the seven islands in the archipelago, resembles a sphere
with deep ravines that radiate out from the centre, fertile green valleys with
steeply terraced slopes and dense dark rain forests leading up to its central
peak – which is invariably covered in cloud.
A road rings the National
Park at the island’s centre with spurs
of differing quality off to its three ports, major rural villages, sundry
hamlets and half a dozen black sandy beaches from where some local fishing
boats still operate. Because of the
barrancos (deep ravines) there are no coastal roads although there are
traditional tracks that have now been developed as hiking trails. And very good
ones at that!
Longer-term visitors and
the numerous day visitors go to La Gomera for the scenery, the tranquil relaxed
atmosphere and way of life. The more
energetic have access to some of the best hiking opportunities in the Canaries;
most of the rest use the excellent bus service if they want to see the island. While a small inter-island airport has
recently been built, most visitors still arrive in San Sebastián by ferry or
cruise ship.
La
Gomera also has two
(smaller) secondary ports, (with adjacent anchorages), backed by pleasant holiday resorts: Valle Gran Rey to the west and Santiago to the south. Each is full of
local boats on moorings. The respective
harbour masters are, however, usually happy to let visiting yachts stay
overnight on the inside of the harbours’ concrete breakwaters (which act like a
cheese grater on GRP and fibreglass!) and to charge them more for each night’s
stay than they would pay in the excellent private marina (with facilities) in San Sebastián!
Valle Gran Rey, also known as Puerto de Vueltas, the larger of the
two secondary ports, lies at the mouth of an impressive valley around which a
large German holiday town has developed behind the port. An enormous outer
breakwater was added to the port ten years ago for use by ferries, but no
regular service has commenced and it is ‘out of bounds’ to visiting yachts. The
breakwater does, however, provide some considerable protection to the adjacent
anchorage.
Island Drifter
on inner breakwater at Valle Gran Rey with the old town in the background and
the harbour full of local boats on mooring buoys
Puerto de Santiago
is a smaller fishing port on the south coast. Its compact old town and harbour
are overlooked by the 5-star Hotel Tecina which occupies the clifftop to the
east of the bay. Nearby, the new inter-island airport has recently been built.
We pulled on to the wall in
Santiago in order to sit out an overnight southeasterly gale. It was not
comfortable! We were fortunate in only
breaking two mooring lines and sustaining some superficial damage to our
gelcoat! Our fenders must, however,
have felt punch drunk in the morning, by which time the gale had blown
through. With the benefit of hindsight,
we’d have been less uncomfortable in the anchorage off the town frontage.
Island Drifter
on Santiago’s inner breakwater ‘the next morning’ having sat out a
southeasterly gale overnight
Most
cruisers we’ve met dismiss the option of anchoring in the Canaries – with the
possible exception of anchoring off Graciosa or Papagayo in Lanzarote. There
are good reasons not to anchor. In the best traditional anchorages marinas have
been developed, ports have been created for ferry and commercial traffic,
breakwaters have been built around smaller fishing harbours, and mooring buoys
proliferate in the remaining open anchorages.
Unlike in the other
islands, however, there are many good anchorages in La Gomera. Admittedly none of them has the level of
protection, sometimes of 360°, that we enjoyed when in Norway, although they all
have good holding in 5–12 metres in firm black sand.
Gomeran anchorages are
only suitable when the wind is from a specific direction suited to that
anchorage or, for day stops, if the weather is ‘relatively’ settled. Cruisers who anchor overnight have to watch
weather forecasts carefully and keep alert – but that soon becomes second
nature. No different really from
anchoring in the Scilly Isles.
We
made a point of visiting all seventeen anchorages in La Gomera and stopped in
many. The paragraphs immediately below on the anchorages give a general
overview of what, in our opinion, are the best.
Before
breakwaters were built at the three main harbours, yachts were advised to move
to the north of the island for shelter at the onset of a southerly gale. Today, few people would elect to quit the
shelter of their port or marina in such circumstances. If nearby marinas and ports are full, lying
in the shelter of the cliffs off the north coast of La Gomera is still a good option.
The
wide, rather uninspiring bay at Playa de Valle Hermosa and the more colourful one
at Playa de
Hermigua are the two principal traditional northern anchorages in La
Gomera. Each should be avoided as an anchorage in the island’s prevailing
northerly winds. They are each,
however, amazingly calm in southerly winds and have good holding in shingle and
sand. Both are connected by road up valleys to their respective rural towns
that bear the same name.
The anchorages in the south,
with the exception of the two adjacent to the secondary ports, have nothing, or
almost nothing, ashore. What they do
have is dramatic cliffs and scenery and they provide a very relaxing quiet
break from ports and marinas.
The
four anchorages
on the southwest coast of the island (i.e. from Valle Gran Rey to Playa
de Santiago) provide shelter from winds from the north to the northeast. That at Valle Gran Rey (see both above and below)
benefits from both its surrounding volcanic seacliffs and the town’s enormous
outer breakwater. It also has the
convenience of being adjacent to a
vibrant, quality town and resort with good transport by bus throughout the
island.
The anchorage at
Valle Gran Rey seen from the port
(Island Drifter can ‘just’ be seen in
the far background)
While at anchor outside the
port, we
initially dragged badly over rock and sand until advised by Brian
Jackson on a live-aboard yacht nearby as to where the best holding was.
Thereafter, we had no problems. Brian also helped us when our dinghy, with
outboard motor on it, was flipped over by a freak gust and had to be stripped
down immediately and dried out before the engine would start again. Fortunately we reacted quickly and hopefully
there has been no long-term damage to the engine.
Our neighbours Brian and Benedikte on his 1948 Classic wooden French-built boat anchored off Valle Gran Rey’s port
Two
of the other southwest
anchorages located to the south of headlands also provide good
shelter. Playa del Eres, which lies at the mouth of a barranco in a cove
surrounded by volcanic hills south of Punta Becerro, is arguably the most
scenic.
Sailing away from
Playa del Eres anchorage on the southwest coast – scenic and isolated but with
good holding in winds from the north to west
The anchorage at Cala de la Rajita
is accessible by road and has a few old houses set back from the beach. It
once was the site of a now-disused fish canning factory. Its old jetty still
remains relatively intact and provides an option for going ashore by dinghy
when the surf is running. The anchorage
lies under a very high protective cliff south of the headland of Punta de la
Darme.
The anchorages on the southeast coast
from Playa de Santiago to San Sebastián generally provide the best protection
from winds from the west through to north.
That at Playa de Santiago,
at the bottom of the island, lies just off the town’s beach and close to the
port, but does appear to suffer, as does the port, from swell when there is an
element of east or south in the wind.
Even so, as previously mentioned, we would, with hindsight, have
anchored rather than gone on to the port’s wall.
The
best natural anchorage on the southeast coast is undoubtedly that at Playa de Chinguarime,
which provides protection from the NNW to the NE, as a consequence of the shape
of the headlands at either end of its bay.
Anchored in Playa de Chinguarime – a well-protected cove
where the high volcanic cliffs are riddled with caves inhabited these days by
naked hippies!
We refrained from
joining them!
The anchorages at Playa de
la Roja and Playa de la Guanche are both protected to a marginally lesser
extent than Playa Chinguarime by headlands to their north. They each provide
good shelter in NW through to NNE winds.
The
anchorage at Playa
de la Roja is completely isolated. It doesn’t even have a track running
to it and the nearest road or habitation is three miles away up a very steep
barranco. Tucked neatly into a cove to
the south of Punta Gorda, it is protected from the prevailing winds by steep
headland cliffs to the east and volcanic mountains to the north and west.
Island Drifter
lying comfortably at anchor off Playa de la Roja – behind the headland of Punta
Gorda
The Playa de la Guanche
anchorage is only 3 miles south of San Sebastián, the island’s capital, and yet
it exists almost in a different world.
By coincidence, we met up again in this anchorage with Gareth Thomas who
runs sailing courses in the Canaries in the winter and in Malta in the
summer. We’d last seen him when we both
left Lanzarote in heavy weather two years ago on our respective ways
north.
We felt that the other anchorages on La
Gomera were well suited to day stops or even overnight if conditions were
settled. While having their own attractions, they lacked the protection in
strong winds of the alternative anchorages on that coast. A good example is the
anchorage, in the same bay as Playa de la Guanche, albeit it in a separate cove, of Playa del Cabrito
(Goat beach). It houses an attractive, low-level, well-landscaped upmarket
private hotel on the edge of the beach.
We
are now back in the marina in San Sebastián and are about to depart for the island La Palma, from
where we’ll sail south to El Hierro, the smallest and most westerly island in
the Canaries archipelago.
Di's logbook tells me we made landfall at San Sebastian at 0200 on Saturday 13 September 1980. On the 14th we moved on to Los Cristianos. Somehow, all those years ago, we never stopped anywhere for long. Probably cos we were skint! Another interesting read, guys.
ReplyDeleteWe're sure San Sebastian looks a lot different now to what it was in 1980! It's a great place and you'd have enjoyed a longer stay.
ReplyDeleteNice to see pictures of ID in the anchorages. I recognise a few of the places from my brief trip there with the Lord Nelson in January-San Sebastian and Valle Gran Rey in particular (the latter was visited on a coach tour though!) El Hierro was my favourite though- enjoy!
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you. Both we and ID enjoy dropping the hook in nice locations. You'll have gathered we've been "anchorage bagging" on this trip! Have changed CQR for a Rocna which seems to hold better in that it doesn't turn on its side if the boat direction changes and pulls straighter. Looking forward to El Hierro again, although La Palma is probably our favourite island.
DeleteWow, a whole host of anchorages in la Gomera. Sad we didn't make it there either, will have to save it for our next trip! We are missing the Canary climate already, have had to dig out shoes, jumpers and raincoats here in Portugal!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the advice regarding clothing! We'll dig out our fleeces in readiness...
Delete