You may have noticed from Los Cristianos harbour, that I have a new hobby, making models and have just finished 2 very impressive looking full size ships.

The grey metallic looking one is the Academik Sergey Vavilov, an Oceanography vessel, built in Finland in 1988 for Russia. It has charted the waters of the Arctic and Antartic and is taking a short break on it’s way to the next survey.

The four mast tall ship is the Kruzenshtern, built in Germany in 1926 and repatriated to Russia after World War Two. It is the second biggest of it’s kind in the World, 114 metres long with a tallest mast of 51.3 metres and a top speed of 17 knots. Don’t be fooled by the canon hatches down each side, they are just for show. I had some trouble painting the tricky corners on this one and if you look carefully you will see that I ran out of parts and used a Spitfire propeller for one of the cross masts, but a decent effort, if I say so myself, although it cost me a fortune in little tins of Humbrol paint.

The Kruzenshtern is filming and will be around Los Cristianos until October 19.