Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canaries
18–23 October 2026
How we got here: Two Nights South to La Palma
Funchal, Madeira → Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canaries
Lifted the anchor off Funchal in the early evening without any trouble and headed south. Once clear of Madeira's wind shadow we quickly picked up the prevailing northerlies and set course for La Palma. It started as a beam reach, eased into a broad reach, and before long we were running dead downwind, goose-winged once again. We made good progress the whole way, back in the same four-hours-on, four-hours-off watch rhythm we'd settled into on the passage from Vigo to Porto Santo.
One strong shower caught us by surprise, but otherwise the weather was kind to us.
Coming into the commercial port of Santa Cruz de La Palma, a high-speed ferry called us up and asked us to keep close in to the shore so it could get past — an order we were happy to obey. After waiting for the marina gates to open, the staff met us on the pontoon and helped us moor up in gusts of 30 knots. Nothing unusual here, it turns out: this marina is known for being windy.
What we did here
The marina in Santa Cruz de La Palma turned out to be a nice one, with good facilities, and after two nights at sea we spent the first few days simply recharging. We enjoyed the restaurants in town, and one day we walked from the marina all the way up to Pico de la Nieve on the rim of the Caldera de Taburiente (see the hike below).
We also made a start on a bigger boat project: installing our new lithium batteries.
