LOG n.11 - What a WEEK!

11.2.2026 1115, Puerto Mogán, Gran Canaria

 What a week. What a damn week. The first nights on an anchor in Mogán were rough as hell. Genuinely reminded me of those 30+ knots of wind and 3m waves on the way to Gran Canaria. All my porcelain and glass kept smashing in the cupboards. For my body, it sounded like the world was ending, even though my mind realized that it wasn’t. Human bodies are not used to considering boats, and that breaking glass sometimes does not equal life-threatening danger. Due to that, I couldn’t sleep. Not due to the glass—I stuffed my laundry into the cupboards—but I couldn’t even walk. The waves are fine if I am going somewhere, but on an anchor? No thank you. But we had no other choice; we needed to wait outside Mogán, and the marina had no free space because of the pontoon repair. 

Funnily enough, I really stretched my leave because of the changing of the batteries and said to myself that I am going to properly clean on the anchorage as the mariners started disassembling the pontoon with me still on it. Bless them, they actually did me a favor by leaving me there for a bit longer to prepare at least a little bit. 

But hey, I was wrong—I didn’t get to clean, quite the contrary—the swell created much more chaos than there was when I left. It calmed a bit the next day, and the marina was still full, so I just moved closer to the marina, away from the biggest swell. 

Whilst going onshore with my cat and kayak every day to work on the lazybag and related items, I tried to make the chaos smaller every day, bit by bit. The swell prevailed, though.

Anyway, that was Friday afternoon when I came unexpectedly earlier than the original plan. Luckily so. I was supposed to leave for Las Palmas on Saturday, where my friend was arriving to help me with sealing the deck. Oh boy, was I wrong. 

So around 4-5 pm, I go outside for a bit of fresh air, haha, and I see these people trying to get out their anchor and circling around. Suspiciously monitoring them, I get myself to ask if they need help, to which the crew of youth replies that their windlass didn’t work. I wanted to help, but they started to get dangerously close, and as I ran to my bow, trying to prevent any damage, their midships took out my pulpit, leaving me in shock and tears, on which note a certain youngster, probably trained in preventative care or dealing with stressful situations, started trying to direct me to calmness with the sentence “Calm down, don’t panic.” Or something along those lines. I was in awe and screamed back "What the hell don't panic, this is my home!"

Even though these people had an engine on, no one appeared to do anything on the helm. There most definitely was a person, but it seemed that they were not moving. I don’t know what happened on that boat. This is what I saw.

I managed to release my snubber and therefore start letting more of my chain out to get further away from their boat, so they would stop slamming me. So I did that, and they slid with their 12mm chain on my starboard side, so with their chain tangled into mine, they started pulling both of us into the rocks that were there to protect the beach from the waves. At this point, this hull would be hitting mine from the side if me and the “stressful situation trained” kid wouldn’t be pushing the hulls away from each other, at which point this kid starts telling me “You’re doing so well. Keep going!” Which left me speechless for a moment. Like what the actual hell? This guy, though probably having the best of intentions, severely misread the situation. I remember feeling a lot of things in that moment, but it was such a cocktail of emotions that I couldn’t point one out. And it was not a nice harmonious cocktail. It was Long Island Iced Tea.

Anyway, at that point, I am screaming “Cut your fucking chain!” To which they reply “We know, we know!” And then they start cutting their chain, and then they cut it and leave to port, leaving the chain dangling on mine. They tried to reproach again; I asked them for the phone numbers and screamed at them to not get closer to my boat. I needed to dive with the line 5m underwater to tie a rope around the 12mm chain so I could pull it out on my bow by my hands. They also asked me if I needed help when I was pulling their chain out of mine. That was very laughable. But they gave me their phone numbers. Apparently, they tried to get the space in the marina but then decided to leave. Also don’t know what happened there. And for now, I don’t care.

So that had me startled a bit as my plans got severely interrupted. My friend came to Mogán, and as we couldn’t touch the deck before the insurance claims went through anyway, he had a vacation on the beach as I was dealing with this situation. Good for him.

Now we’re in the harbor. Waiting and recalibrating. All “bad” is good for something. In other words, there’s no bad. I see life in all shades of colors; my black/white era is long behind me. 

Luckily.

No, luck has nothing to do with that. It was a lot of work.