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The day before we left Lanzarote the boat had another deep clean. The laundry was done, the oven was scrubbed, bilges cleaned, engine inspected and food stowed away. It was a little like Christmas when I want everything to be perfect for the big day, which, for me, would be us arriving in Puerto de Mogán in Gran Canaria. The culmination of years of daydreaming during crap jobs and 18 months planning.

We left Lanzarote the morning of the 8th September in glorious sunshine, pointed the boat in the right direction and started on the final 140 nautical miles to Gran Canaria. Our long planned resting place for the Winter. The North-East trade winds, typical of subtropical climates like the Canaries, are the prevailing winds, and as such, once you have set your sails then you are pretty much good to go.

Having a lovely, steady sail and being on a beautiful broad reach was lovely and I proclaimed I was going to make a quiche. I made the pastry, rolled it out, blind baked it and then filled it with softened vegetables, ham, eggs, cream and cheese mixture and then carefully put it in the sparkling oven. And after 8 hours of perfect sailing on one tack, and for no other apparent reason than boredom or that he had been left alone in the cockpit for an hour, Lee changed tack. Without discussing it, mentioning it or giving any warning our lovely, steady, comfortable sail instantly became like a scene from a floating version of Hell’s Kitchen.

Now most boat ovens have a gimbal, which means, generally speaking, the oven stays level while the boat is heeling over. But only to a certain degree. About 25 of them normally. Then if you are heeling over more than this the oven will stop swinging while whatever is inside will continue to follow the motion of the boat. Like my quiche. That food famous for being solid in it’s uncooked state. What you normally do when cooking at sea is release the gimbal latch, see if there is sufficient space for the oven to swing nicely or see if it whacks violently against the side of the hull. You then decide what you are going to eat.

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By now I was sliding sideways across the boat trying desperately to get to the oven, which was banging, hissing and spitting angrily every time my lovingly prepared quiche wacked against the back and then the front of the oven, spilling out of the pastry onto the red hot oven sides, but every time I reached it the boat would lurch violently to the other side, sending me with it.

At some point Lee must have realised I was slightly upset. I don’t know if it was me politely and quietly asking him why, after 8 hours and for absolutely no reason did he feel the need to change our course. It may have been me calmly and nicely asking him if he realised I had spent an hour the day before cleaning the oven, and had just spent another hour making lunch which by now was either welded everywhere inside the oven or had escaped from the sides of the oven door, was now crossing the cabin floor and was heading rapidly for the compartments where the batteries were stored and another one where all the dry baking goods were stored. Or it may have been when the whole, expensive, brand new Le Creuset quiche tin, fresh from the hot oven along with the baking tray it was now forever stuck to went winging past his ear at speed narrowly missing him, closely followed by a tub of protein powder with the gentle suggestion Lee made his own lunch.

Either way, all I know is the Atlantic ate the quiche, my husband is a nob, I need a new quiche tin and we quickly returned to the previous course we had been on.

We carried on our merry way, now back on a comfortable course and 24 hours after leaving Lanzarote we arrived!! We had sailed past the famous lighthouse and dunes at Maspalomas, seen lots of hotels built into the side of mountains and pretty little houses perched on the sides of cliff faces. It really did feel like we had arrived at a holiday destination. It was awesome.

We rounded a gentle curve and finally saw Mogán. It was just like the pictures!!

This place is so popular it gets booked up a year in advance, which was exactly what we had done. I radioed in. They ignored us. I tried again. They ignored us again. They saw us and shouted at us. Lee shouted back we had a reservation. They told us they had no idea who we were. Lee repeated we had a reservation. They repeated they had no idea who we were. This continued for a few more rounds. It may have been easier over the VHF but the Marinero had chosen shouting above a busy port with all the associated noise, throngs of tourists and with a ferry coming in alongside as his favoured means of communication. I carried on putting fenders and lines out and then took the wheel while Lee phoned the office manager, re sent the confirmation email and receipt of payment. We were then greeted like old friends and were told they were expecting us…but had no space.

After an hour we were eventually invited inside the marina and could hear a muffled shouting from the Marinero. Unable to see where it was coming from I scoured the marina with some binos only to see some short guy waving at us. He was cunningly hidden within the ferry queue of about 100 tourists and he was pointing at something in front of him which clearly wasn’t a space. We crawled slowly down the narrow trot to the place he was waving at and Lee pointed out that the 5 foot space would not fit our 14 foot girth. The Marinero declared there was plenty of room. After a rather well executed 5 point turn with a few inches to spare on each turn and without speaking a word, we made our way slowly back out into the main channel to have a think.

Our boat has prop walk which means when we go astern, for about 6 boat lengths the boat just kind of does what she wants. She also has a high freeboard, which means the wind catches her easily and can make her change direction mid manoeuvre. This makes it awkward at the best of times even with plenty of space and bow thrusters. Here we were, about to med moor for the first time ever, against a wall, into no apparent space and being watched and videoed by about 100 people. Plus the voyeurs now thought we knew what we were doing after our previous, rather professional looking manoeuvre. Gotta love sailing.

There wasn’t much we could do so we slowly mooched down towards the other end of the harbour, went astern, waited for Diablito to settle down and then reversed all the way back down in a nice straight line and back down the tiny trot. Lee aimed us at the non existent space and after some hard revs astern we squeezed our way into the gap and that was that. People started clapping and cheering us and taking photos. The marinero smiled at us, helped us finish mooring, and we opened some fizz. Unbeknownst to us, mooring up here against the wall is normally accompanied by crashes, swearing, loud voices, marineros shouting, occasional bans from ever entering the port again and general, all round chaos. We just pretended it was normal for us. As you do.

And so, after 1885 nautical miles and a lazy 7 weeks of travelling down from Portsmouth we arrived in Gran Canaria.