Well, here we are in la belle France. I'd like to say we're now tucked up warm and safe from the fearsome tramontane and marin winds, but as I write, the boat is bouncing around on the pontoon and the wind is screaming through the rigging.
It's been a busy few weeks. I’ll try and summarise.
Valencia is a lovely city and good to get around on bikes - except for the slippery bits of paving! The main river through the city has been diverted and the old river bed is now a long narrow park with grass and trees, footpaths, cycle tracks and lovely old bridges with many access points to the city. There are beautiful old buildings as well as state of the art modern stuff, particularly the City of Arts and Science.
After I fell off my bike I went into shock and had to lie on a park bench, trying not be sick and looking like a wino. Next day, Andy was allowed out shopping on his own, as I was resting up my bruised knees and elbows. He left my bike locked to the pontoon and forgot to take the other lock. He’d bought some jubilee clips at the “ferreteria” (iron-mongers, not ferrets) so jubileed his bike to the fence outside of the supermarket. When he saw his bike being lifted he made a heroic leap out of the check-out queue and managed to wrest it from the thieving senora. He has no idea what the stream of Spanish assaulting his ears meant, but it probably wasn’t, “Okay, it’s a fair cop, gov.” When he turned round he was being watched by three of the supermarket staff who thought he was running off with goods unpaid for!
We also had a very very good and cheap vegetarian Menu del Día at a Naturista restaurant we found. Everyone kept their clothes on.
We left the huge America’s Cup marina, only to find our engine cooling intake had stopped working about a mile or so out. We carried on under sail while Andy took stuff to bits. He put it back together and it still didn’t work so we SAILED back into the marina! It was our finest hour, short-tacking past the Oficina del Puerto and back into the mooring we’d just left. Luckily there weren’t many other boats coming out at that time of year. Anyway, Andy realised he’d put it back wrong, and when he put it back right, it worked. I think we’d just picked up a plastic bag over the intake. If we’d just turned it off and on again, without taking it apart, it would have worked!
We mainly just stayed one night at strategic marinas as we made our way along the coast, staying when the weather was unfavourable. We left Ametlla de Mar after one night, only to find the wind coming down the Ebro valley was untenable. About Force 6 gusting up to 7. It all went horrible and we decided to go back into port, the UV strip ripped off the genoa and flapped like a wild thing. The next day we discovered we’d lost a boathook. We had to wait until mid-afternoon the next day for the wind to drop enough for us to get the sail off and sew it up. Not entertaining. It took hours of backbreaking stitching spread out in the car-park, but it’s still holding up now.
Barcelona was too big and busy for me. We did art and culture. What is it with the Spanish thing of people dressing up and pretending to be statues for money? Does it happen elsewhere? I’ve seen it all over Spain, but nowhere else. La Rambla was full of them. Andy still doesn’t get Picasso, despite spending hours in the Museo. Gaudi buildings look much better in the photos than in the flesh. They are amazing and different. La Familia Sagrada is just astonishing. But is it nice? I don’t think so. Had an expensive but good veggie meal, spoilt by the fact they served it all at once, soup, main, etc, and in disposable paper and plastic plates and cups.
We have sailed past some lovely coastline. It isn’t all high-rise development. There are some lovely cliffs and caves and a lot of hills, mainly limestone, but the Pyrenees took the biscuit for scenic attractiveness.
Had a day in shock after going into Palamos and being charged a stonking 44.40€ for one night in the winter season in a pretty small boat!! Most places we’ve paid between 10€ and 20€ a night at this time of year.
The Golfe du Lion, though, has the most horrendous wind I’ve ever encountered. We’d heard about it. We’d read about it. It’s all true. In the first part of the Med we had the terrible Levanter and the Poniente to deal with. Winds from the East or the West which blow strong enough to make the hardiest sailor quail. We experienced the way the wind can change direction and speed at a moment’s notice. We were nervous about coming here because of the famous Tramontane which blows from the north down between the Pyrenees and the Massif Central. It comes out of nowhere, with a blue sky, and blows for days at a time. We’ve had it gusting up to Force 9 and 10, but luckily, we research all the weather forecasts we can, and if in doubt, don’t go out. The other one is the Marin, which blows from the south and is just as bad.
Our approach to St Cyprien is something I’ll never forget. We set off from Roses in Spain prepared to stop at any of 3 or 4 ports straddling the border at the Pyrenees, depending on the wind and wave conditions and what speed we could make. We had a lovely day’s sailing in the sunshine and were doing so well, we kept going on until we rounded Cap Béar heading for St Cyprien. Then an onshore wind got up, out of nowhere. It’s a shallow sandy coast away from the mountains with marinas built out with walls. We had to get into a really narrow gap between big concrete walls, made narrower by silting in the entrance. As we approached I could see the waves crashing into the harbour wall and spray blowing over the top. We were chucked around all over the place as we got our scrap of sail down and motored in. It got down to about 0.5 m under the keel, with wind, spray and waves breaking round us. We spent two days pinned by the wind to the fuel quay, as it was too windy to move to a proper mooring.
Back in France and I’m getting my languages well mixed up. The food is much better but more expensive than Spain.
We had a day in Agde, where we went by train, to collect our International Certificates of Competence which we had updated by the RYA to include the Inland Waterways. We had them sent to Colin’s sailing friend, John, who lives there. It took a lot of organisation to arrange to get to where we could collect them. Unfortunately, we never did get to meet John and Theo before they went off on their skiing hol. We missed the train because no-one told us that the clocks changed on Sunday! Theo left them with her friend in Agde. So it was from a friend of a friend of a friend. We also bought our Vignette (licence) from the VNF to allow us to travel on the canals for the month of April. We did have some entertainment watching two French guys manoeuvring a 42’ yacht through the famous round lock in Agde. It took them about 25 goes, going backwards and forwards, they bent the pulpit and may have damaged the mast and furler, which sticks out in front when laid along the length of the boat, you see. The crewman very very nearly fell in, but managed to climb back up the side of the boat where he was hanging on the rail. We eventually pulled them through with a rope from the bank. So that’s the sort of thing we’re going to have to do. It has to be better than the Tramontane.
We decided to go and sound the depth of the start of the canal as the websites and hearsay are telling us it’s only 1.2 or 1.3m, where it’s supposed to be 1.5m The homme in the VNF office tells us it’s 1.4m. The femme in the boatyard with crane tells us it’s 1.35 – 1.4m. Our draught is, we think, 1.37m. We can’t go and try in Sally without first taking down the mast, as the canal starts the other side of a bridge. Yesterday Andy blew up the dinghy, but it got too windy to go and test it with our homemade depth stick. When Andy deflated the dinghy again to save it from blowing away, one of the valves fell in and disappeared! We now have no dinghy to use. We may not be able to get ashore in some parts of the canals. He’s not in my good books.
At the moment it’s too windy for us to get the sails off and prepare the boat for de-masting. Andy has purchased a different size valve for another dinghy and is trying to adapt it. I’m going off to buy something nice for lunch, before I take everything out of all the lockers and try to re-arrange it so we’ll have somewhere to put the sails while we’re on the canals, if we ever get on them.
Ah, the good life! I remember it, when it was simple, and all I had to do was get up and go to work.
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