Andy and Liz on Sally

Hi there in cold and windy Grand Bretagne from cold and windy Bretagne.

2010-05-10T04:54:00.000-07:00

I'm going nuts here trying to will the wind to stop blowing from the north and blow from anywhere else, and not quite so much of it, either. We made fantastic progress from Royan, after the canals. It took a few days to put the boat back together, then we island hopped, Ile de Yeu, Belle Ile and Ile de Groix, where we were moored for 6 days waiting for the winds to abate. When it slacked a bit we managed to get to Loctudy (not far from Quimper). It's quite nice here and has great wifi, so we can keep looking at different weather sites several times a day, but it doesn't look as if we'll be able to leave here until Thurs, to get through the Raz de Sein, then on to Camaret on Fri, maybe. We then have to wait for wind not from north to get us up the Chenal du Four and across the Channel, probably to Dartmouth. From there it's a couple of days to Yarmouth Isle of Wight.

We were confident that we'd get back in time for Andy's niece's wedding in Manc on 22nd May, but not so sure now. Not even sure I'll make it for 4th June to fly to NZ. Actually, if that's the case, I'll get a ferry or plane from here to UK.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

I WANT TO GO HOME!

From sea to shining sea

2010-04-24T10:19:00.000-07:00

From Royan

Well, against all odds, we made it from the Med to the Atlantic. It was a bit of struggle at times. The Canal de la Robine and the Canal du Midi are both just too shallow for a boat of our draught. We thought we drew 1.37 m which would increase to just over 1.4 m in fresh water. (Obviously you float higher in salt water, it’s being more dense.) Well, we must have gone aground about a hundred times. We were towed twice by holiday folk in rented canal boats, once by a car along the towpath!, twice we winched ourselves off with long ropes and the rest of the times we just pushed and shoved with our long bit of wood, which was left over from making the mast supports – and thank goodness it was, as it came in v. useful on a number of occasions. I used it several times as a narrow and wobbly gangplank for getting ashore with ropes, when we went aground just near to the edge, but not near enough to jump ashore. That happened a lot, as you get a build up of mud all along the edge. If we’d stayed in the middle all the time, we’d have done better, but you have to stop sometimes. If for nothing else, there are locks with big gates and they shut at 6pm.

At the big series of 4 locks coming into Castelnaudary the eclusier (lock-keeper) measured our draught with a big stick thing, and it came out at just over 1.6 m. Well the VNF (Voies Navigables de France) say that La Robine is 1.4m and the Midi is 1.5m and the Garonne is 1.6m. Still we managed it in the end. Once we got onto the Canal Lateral de Garonne, after Toulouse, it was better, except we still went aground at the edges quite a few times when we tried to stop.

Also, we had to keep clearing out the engine water intake filter, which got clogged with leaves and stuff all the time, because of the shallow water, and trying to rev ourselves off the mud. If the engine had overheated and blown up, we’d have been completely b***ered.

It was worth it though. It was a lovely experience, apart from the angst of not knowing if we were going to make it and whether we’d have to get craned out and shipped on a lorry. Also, the uphill locks were pretty hard work. I lost pounds in those first few days, running around at locks and hauling on ropes, the water boiling all round the boat, as we tried to protect the mast from getting damaged on the walls of the locks, not to mention other lock users. The peeps who rent the holiday boats get about half an hour’s instruction in how to drive them, if that. Luckily we didn’t see too many. There was a flurry of them around during the Easter week, but after that, we saw very few other boats. The canals were mainly peaceful and very beautiful. Inland France was a joy to behold as the spring unfolded before our eyes, with waterside flowers, trees coming into leaf, and lots of fluffy ducklings, not to mention the herons, flamingos and frogs – (obviously you’re going to get frogs in France!) We didn’t actually see any of them, but we heard them croaking – “Don’t eat us!” they said.

Shortly after Castelnaudary we went over the watershed and started on the downhill bit. The locks going down are much easier and more relaxed. One of the worst things was the plastic and other cack in the water in Toulouse, especially in the locks. We picked up some plastic bags on the propeller and had to stop 2 or 3 times to try and clear it off. Not easy. You have to tie up alongside somewhere and use the boathook blindly through opaque brown water. One time we tried to leave the lock and we had no power, as it turned out our accelerator cable had broken, due to the extra strain of trying to turn heavy duty plastic sheets through the water which get bound tightly round the spinning propeller. The nice eclusier filled the lock again for us and said we could stay there and try and fix it. Andy managed to rig up a system where the cable comes up through a hole in the cockpit floor and you have to pull on it to go faster, and push it back in to go slower. It was a bit in the way and you had to be careful not to tread on it, but it got us this far. Here in Royan, we were to buy a new cable to fit before we put to sea again.

Once we were out of the last lock, we did about 150 km of river, past Bordeaux to Royan. We did it in three days, using three tides. You can’t go against the tide, as the current is violently fast and strong. We tried to go into Pauillac to get the mast put up, but we went aground! So we ate dinner on the mud and waited for the tide to start coming back in and lift us, then we spent the night rolling around on a buoy – (tee hee).

This morning we had the mast put back up by crane and it’s now going to take us a few days to put everything back together. Andy’s busy trying to get the standing rigging (the cables which hold the mast up straight) all at the right tension, then we have to put the boom back on, refit the pole which holds the radar, the pole which holds the wind-generator, and re-fit all the electric and aerial wires, get the VHF radio and the Navtec working again and the GPS. I hope I can remember how to fit the sails back on, and get all the reefing lines in the right order. I’ve been trying to scrub the muck and filth off the boat which we gathered from Mediterranean moorings and the filthy muddy ropes from all the locks. The boat is now permanently stained green from the gazillion leaf-cases which fell off the plane and lime trees lining the canals.

I’d do the canals again, but next time I’d go by bike. There is a fab cycle track all the way along the old towpath, and no worries about trying to keep floating, or doing the locks, and there are some really beautiful Chambres d’Hotes.

Meantime, it’s back to getting the weather forecasts and studying the tides.

Life on the Canal

2010-04-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

We're inland! Weird! Sally's never been above sea level before!

At the mo I'm in McDonald's in Carcassonne - the first bit of internet we've had for several days.

The canals are a bit shallow really. We keep going aground. We've been towed off once and winched ourselves off with ropes once, after I made a heroic leap ashore. We've got our lock technique off to a fine art now. But it's pretty knackering - a lot of rope handling - very very long ropes, too. I think the downhill ones, after Castelnaudary will be easier.

Carcassonne is pretty amazing. We had a look at the medieval fortified Cite today. The little French towns we go through on the canal are quiet, pretty and unspoilt. There are lots of wine chateaux, too. Lovely.

Shame it's been very cold a lot of the time.

Next stop, Toulouse.

Gotta get out of McDonalds.

Busy times in Port-la-Nouvelle

2010-03-31T00:56:00.001-07:00

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.

Some statistics from Dénia, near Valencia.

2010-03-02T10:31:00.000-08:00

We’ve done 2,302 nautical miles in Sally since leaving Poole on 16th June 2008.

In 20 months I’ve slept in 72 different places, which breaks down to 62 different ports and anchorages (some of them we went back to 2 or 3 times) 3 places in Grenada (winter 08/09) and 7 in the UK on various visits.

Since January 16th 2010 we’ve done nearly 700 nautical miles and are now close to Valencia. The Spanish language is different here from Andalucia and Murcia. They spell the words funny! Platja for beach, instead of playa, for instance. I expected it in Galicia, but it came as a surprise to me here.

We have about 350 miles to go until we reach the entrance to the Canal du Midi at Port-la-Nouvelle in the Golfe du Lion. Then it’s about 370 miles of Inland Waterway to Royanne and back on the Biscay coast.
We don’t think we can get up the Rhône against the current in spring as there’s no help from any tide coming from the Med. That would have brought us out near Le Havre.

Target is to get to the canals by the end of March. Out the other end before the end of April, then hope for some decent weather in Biscay for sailing back up the French coast round Brittany and back across the Channel in time to go to Charlotte’s wedding in Manchester in May. If not, I have to be back to fly to NZ for the arrival of my first grandchild.

Since Christmas I have knitted: 3 cardis, 2 hats, 2 pairs of sox and 1 and a half pairs of leggings for my soon-to-be grandson. There’s more in my knitting bag......

Message from Fuengirola

2010-02-08T06:30:00.000-08:00

The next time you hear anyone in Britain moaning about the immigrant population taking over: the Poles, blacks, Asians, whatever, tell them to take a trip to the Costa del Concrete on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. There are more Brits, Germans and Scandinavians here than you can shake a Full English Breakfast at. Everywhere you go it's English Pub this, English Tea-rooms that, Sunday roast, Sausage and mash. Gibraltar was more Spanish than this. Everything's written in English. It's horrifying – like being in a Saga holiday timewarp. I'm beginning to appreciate the other bits of Spain we saw before we got past Gibaltar.

We're just heading eastwards as and when the wind and weather permit towards the south of France. Only another 700 miles to go, then about 850 miles of canals through France, providing we can get the paperwork we need, which involves somehow doing a test to prove we understand all the rules and regs on the Inland Waterways, which we should have done in England. Apart from that, will our engine be able to cope with the constant current coming out of the Rhone, with no tide from the Med to help us up it, against the flow?

We've now come over 2,000 miles from Poole. It's a long way home again.

On D Move

2010-02-01T07:03:00.000-08:00

Friday 29th January

On D Move
That's the name on one of the buses that runs on Carriacou. Aah, I remember last winter, it was sun, sun and more sun.

Still, I can see Africa from here! I'm on the boat and we're sailing from Barbate to Gibraltar. The nice NW wind we were promised hasn't really materialised, but they're still forecasting Force 4 – 5 off Tarifa. I'll believe it when I feel it.

The wind can be fierce in the Straits and it's notorious for the Levanter from the East, blowing opposite to the current which is constant into the Med from the West (due to the evaporation) and can cause horrendous seas. Not today, we hope. Our chart marks about 30 or 40 wrecks along the coast around Gib. I don't want to join them.

It's going to be weird being in a bit of England. We have great hopes for finding Marmite, tomato purée and other delights from home.

We left Ayamonte on 15th January. We managed to break free from the Rio Guadiana, where we'd been since September. It was lumpy as hell getting out of the mouth of the river, but we felt liberated once we'd made it. Two nights in Mazagon, one in Chipiona, then we spent a few days in Rota, which was lovely. A really unspoilt old town with strong Arabic influence, right next to the marina. We took a bus to Jerez and made a visit to the Royal Andalucian School of Equestrian Art to watch the beautiful Spanish horses “dance”. I loved it, although it was a little bit naff. Andy looked a bit bored, even though I kept up a running commentary of the names of the movements they were executing, and my opinion on how well they were doing them! If you've seen what the Lippizaners of the Spanish Riding School of Vienna do, it's much the same. Traditional stuff. All laid on for tourists. Beautiful buildings though.

Apart from the riding school and the many sherry bodegas, most of Jerez is really run down. The bodegas are huge grand estates in the centre of the city where sherry is still made in the traditional way and tourists can do tours and tasting, except if you go in January, when most of them are shut! Sandeman and Tio Pepe were still open, but we didn't have time after the stables as we had to get the bus back to Rota. The bus ride took us through hectares and hectares of vines. Well they have to make the sherry out of something. We looked through the gates of the Domecq bodega and could see hundreds of barrels stacked up and smelling strongly of raisin. I don't like sherry anyway, but I would have liked a tour and a taste.

Since Rota, we anchored overnight in Sancti Petri, then had a cracking sail, bit lumpy for my liking, round Cabo Trafalgar made famous by Lord Nelson. The Spanish navy is still called the Armada. We emailed them to find out if we could sail out of Rota as they keep doing live ammo manoeuvres off Cadiz. There's a huge US Navy base in Rota, too. It was funny waiting for an email from the Spanish Armada!

We managed to get out of there without them getting their revenge for Trafalgar on us, but we kept hearing heavy artillery explosions in the distance.

Still in Ayamonte

2010-01-11T05:22:00.000-08:00

Blog Ayamonte Jan 11th 2010

2010 has gone on much as it started here, with rain, rain and more rain.   We saw the New Year in twice with some friends on their boat called “Status Quo”.   Once for Spain and then again, an hour later, for Portugal.

One of the highlights was Twelfth Night, or three Kings’ Night.   On 5th January there was a cavalcade of carnival floats carrying the three kings round the town, as they threw millions of sweets to the crowds lining the route.    There were several of each of the three kings, dressed in lovely king outfits.   One lot (is it Balthazar?) had their faces blacked up.    Later, they turned up in the main Plaza, as it was getting dark, and stood on especially constructed platforms and threw lots and lots of toys out to the crowds and more sweets.    There were a few scrums as the parents fought for the free stuff.      Then everyone went home for big feasts and more presents. The next day was yet another public holiday.   I don’t know why that hasn’t caught on in UK?    It was fun.

Apart from today and a few other days, it’s been raining pretty non-stop for the last three or four weeks.    The water in the marina is brown from the silt brought down by the rivers.    The wind has been howling, and we even had hailstones yesterday.    It was so windy a couple of nights back that when I got up for a pee, the boat rocked just as I was off balance and I sat very heavily back onto the loo, which snapped!   Andy’s been gluing the porcelain back together again this morning.
We’ve been poring over weather forecasts looking for a couple of days of good settled weather with no rain, not too much wind, and not in the wrong direction.   Not much to ask.   Just so that we can move on.   We need to get to the beginning of the French canals by the end of April at the latest, in order to get the boat back to England in time for me to fly to New Zealand in June.    I’ve bought the ticket, so I’m going anyway, whether the boat’s back or not.    That baby is not allowed to be born without me there!

I’ve been knitting like mad.   The poor little soul is going to have to wear the creations, even though I haven’t knitted for about 25 years.   I must say I’ve been enjoying it, though.    It’s been a sanity-saver, stuck in this tiny space, and makes a change from reading crime thrillers with the odd page missing.    The other boon has been the huge number of films we’ve been able to get either from the internet, or from other sailors who’ve got them form the internet.    Again, quantity has far outstripped quality.

Off to the internet cafe then, to post this.    Things are still not back to normal here after the Christmas fiesta.   We think we were getting our wifi on the boat from the Adult Education College, but it’s been off since Christmas Eve and still it’s not back on.   Get a grip, Spain. It’s the 11th already.

I'm now in the wifi cafe and the news on the TV is all about the snow in Madrid and as far south as Seville! They even showed a picture of snow in Majorca!! Just rain here, though.

Christmas in Ayamonte

2009-12-23T07:17:00.000-08:00

Didn’t actually manage to get any dinner last night, as we had people over for drinkies and nibbles and it went on until after 10. Andy fell asleep in the cabin and I nipped out for some patatas fritas. (That’s chips to you.)
Christmas seems to have started, then.
It’s been some time since I last posted a blog, but that’s because I’ve been busy.
We eventually managed to prise ourselves out of the anchorage up the Rio Guadiana. It’s lovely up there, peaceful as well as sociable amongst the other yachtspeople who go up there to have a look and end up staying there for years, sometimes. Some of them have bought houses in Sanlucar. However, there’s the rest of the world out here. So one day we got up early enough to get the tide downriver and here we are, at the mouth of the river, in the marina at Ayamonte. It’s a good place to be in a yacht for the winter, as it’s very sheltered from weather and currents and there are shops and supermarkets very close to the marina. Ayamonte is a reasonably sized town, with normal life going on, even out of the tourist season, unlike some of the coastal resorts which are ghost towns at this time of year. We do notice, however, a lot of people hanging around all day, as there is little work to be had outside of the summer season. Like many Spanish towns, it has very attractive buildings and plazas. At the moment they are lit up with Christmas lights.
Christmas is celebrated slightly differently here. It seems to focus around family and food, like most of Spanish life. They do give presents, but they’re not as important as in England. They do put up decorations, but not so much as in England. The decorations tend to be mainly nativity crib scenes and lots of 3 kings outfits. You do see Father Christmas, as well, but not so much as in England. They certainly don’t go in for Christmas cards at all, (nor birthday cards.) There does seem to be widespread panic buying in the supermarkets in the last day or two, though, just like in England.
I was getting a bit stressy about the responsibility of the bit of money my Mum left me. I wanted to do something with it, but I didn’t quite know what. I stuck it in the bank and watched it flop on the floor in a useless heap. I’d been trawling the internet looking at property for sale in England and Spain and occasionally reading news headlines to see if the recession was lifting. Being here in the boat meant I was feeling cut off from any possibility of being able to act. So at the beginning of December I flew to Bristol and drove to Cornwall and spent a week (mainly in pouring rain), looking at property for sale in Cornwall. I couldn’t afford to buy anything there that I wanted to own. So I left the holiday apartment I was in (oh, it was so lovely having rooms to walk around in, hot water out of the taps, my own shower and TV) and drove to my old home, the Isle of Wight. I was able to stay with some old friends from Stroud who have moved down there, and again enjoyed a comfy bed, shower, TV and all the home comforts. Anyway, I found what I was looking for, which is a top-floor flat in a lovely Victorian house in a quiet residential road, very close to one beach and quite close to 5 other beaches. It has a view of the Solent from the sitting room window. It has a garden and a garage. It’s also in close walking distance of shops and a pub, which is also, quaintly, the Post Office and tearooms. And it’s mine. Or it will be in a few months, once all the legal stuff has happened.
So the plan at the moment is to set off towards the Med, once the weather looks a bit more like it. Then sail up the coast of Spain and France and head back to UK through the French Canals. I need to be back in the UK by the end of May, as I’m flying to NZ for 6 weeks to get in the way while daughter no. 1 produces my first grandchild. Yay! I’m now knitting a baby cardigan, which is the first thing I’ve knitted in about 25 years (since daughter no. 2 was on the way.) It’s going to be the dead of winter in NZ at that time of year. Terrible planning on Sarah’s part, I feel. Andy will join me in NZ and then we fly back to UK and move into our new flat and see what happens next.
While I was in England, enjoying being in a house, which was lucky as it was absolutely freeeeeeeeeeeezing over there, Andy stayed on the boat and took the toilet pump apart. Euggghhhh! The diaphragm in the pump had split. It would be simple job, if it weren’t in a boat. As it is, it took him days to get it apart, source some replacement bits, find the screws and things he dropped in the bilges, and get it back together again. At least we now have a fully functioning loo. I was so glad he did it while I was away. He kept me updated by email, telling me he was fragranced with eau de toilette!
Since I’ve been back on the boat it’s hardly stopped raining long enough for me to get out and do my Christmas shopping. I’ve done now, though. We have a “tree” which is a bunch of greenery I picked from the gardens round the marina car park. We also have our solar-powered fairy lights strung round the cabin. It does look festive, and, as I said, we had neighbours from a couple of British boats over for drinks last night. I think Andy’s recovered now.
Just left for me to say, merry Christmas to all of you, and I hope you have a marvellous new year.
You’ll be gratified to know that it’s still raining and the forecast is for it to continue for at least the next seven days.........................
It’s not as cold as in England, though.

“Drying out”

2009-11-15T10:32:00.000-08:00

Help! This is really scarey. I'm sitting in the boat which is leaning backwards at an alarming angle and sideways, as well. We're leaning up against a big concrete wall, with the keel resting, now the tide has gone out, on a concrete slipway. We're tied to some stone benches and a couple of willow trees, with a line from the top of the mast to stop us tipping right over.

“Actually,” says Andy, “it looks like there's quite a lot of zinc left on that anode.”

“Aaagh!” I say. “Is that so?” We've got to sleep at this angle tonight, except that at about maybe 2 o'clock in the morning the back part of the boat will start floating again. By 4 o'clock, we'll be properly afloat again, until early morning, when we'll start bumping on the ground again and lying at an alarming angle. The scariest part is walking from the front of the boat to the back and feeling it seesaw and boink on the ground. I'm going to try and cook a meal, now, but I think the potatoes will all slide to one side of the oven. The other thing is, we won't be able to pump out the toilet. It's going to have to be a bucket!

For the uninitiated, all boats with metal in the water have to have sacrificial anodes made of zinc attached to their bottoms. Thus, the zinc, being lower down the electro-chemical series, dissolves in preference to your boat. It's to do with having different metals in salt water, which actually form a kind of battery. If you want a proper explanation, look on the interweb. Don't ask me. I asked Andy, but I'm not sure he really knows.

Changing the subject, to try and keep my mind off the fact that I'm sliding off the end of the bunk here, we went almond-bashing last Friday. There were about 8 of us who went upriver in our dinghies to a finca owned by an English guy. His almonds haven't been picked for about 10 years, he said. In order to get a better crop, they need to be picked. There's not much of a market for them, apparently, as it's cheaper to make almond essence out of chemicals. Since these chemicals are thought to give you cancer, though, he thinks the market may be coming back. I think he hopes to get organic status and flog them at inflated prices in London.

So, we dragged great big nets and spread them under the trees, then hit the trees with long bamboo poles. Some of the almonds fell into the nets. It was jolly hard work, when you're used to lying around reading detective novels for most of the day, but it was good fun to get out and do some purposeful activity. We all came back with big bags of nuts, which Andy has been setting about with mole-grips while I eat what he's cracked.

We were less than impressed with the French-Canadian guy who turned up with his three kids and stood around talking to the owners Italian wife while we all sweated and beat at the trees, dragging nets-ful back to tip into the trailer. He then upped and left with a bucketful of ready cracked ones! I think he needs to be told the story about the Little Red Hen. Just because he sails his boat and doesn't use an engine, and always rows ashore because he doesn't have an outboard, and they all play sea shanties on the squeezebox and pipes. Pah! At least us dysfunctional ones who brought our kids up on TV all mucked in as a team and had a jolly good time.

Up the river again.

2009-10-31T07:47:00.001-07:00

Oh it's mighty good to be back on the water again! It was very good to see my daughters in England and to play with our granddaughter, but...

I found England too busy with too many cars, too many people, in too much of a hurry, too much gloom and doom coming out of the TV and the radio, and too much background music and noise. It also rained too much. Apart from that, it was OK.

We were met off the plane in Faro, and I kept wondering where all the people and cars had got to. Marvellous. After a peaceful night on the river, we came back upstream to Alcoutim/Sanlúcar to wait for the easterly winds to change into something more favourable so that we can explore further eastwards along the Spanish coast. Meantime we are doing lots of jobs on the boat using all the stuff we brought back with us.

Olives Update

2009-09-29T06:48:00.001-07:00

I looked it up. You have to soak them in salt water for six months, then transfer them to a mix of vinegar and salt water which can be flavoured with herbs, garlic, etc, etc.

Rio Guadiana

2009-09-29T06:08:00.000-07:00

We’ve not been socialising much for the last few days, which is a relief for my liver, although after a week or two of being joined at the hip to Andy with no-one else to play with, I start to rebel against the shackledom. This morning I insisted on dinghying ashore on my own and doing the shopping while Andy mended the starter switch on the Yanmar.
I rowed to Spain, as the bread is better from that side. The Portuguese bread up here is construction quality. However, the beer is cheaper at the bars on the Portugal side. It’s jolly handy being able to go either side of the Rio, depending on what you want and what time it is. We’re anchored about 20 miles up the Rio Guadiana, which is part of the boundary between the aforementioned countries.
It’s very peaceful and simple and just lovely up here. The sides of the river are overhung with bamboo, pomegranate trees and weeping willows and beyond the banks the hills roll away for miles and miles on each side. There is very little traffic noise; just the gentle clanging of the bells on the sheep and cattle which graze on the banks, except close to the hour when the church bells in Sanlucár (Spain) start to chime, say, ten o’clock, then the ones in Alcoutim (Portugal) start to chime nine, then the other church on the Spanish side starts up, then the other one in Portugal... At 5.15pm today, Andy said, “I’ve only just had a cup of tea and I was thinking of having a beer. Silly me, it’s only just gone 5.” He has his watch set to Portuguese time. “But in Spain in quarter past six!” I said. So we had some olives and a glass of Vino Tinto. There are olive trees all over the place here, just laden with the little green darlings. I’d like to find out what you have to do to them to be able to eat them, though. They are very bitter and utterly unpalatable if you try one straight from the tree. (Note to self, Google it next time we’re on the wifi in the Biblioteca.) We have been eating delicious sweet figs straight from the trees and lots of almonds picked up from the ground beneath the trees. Nearly all the pomegranates, though, have split open and are dry and sour as there’s been no rain here since May.
We’ve been exploring on foot and by bike along the side of the river and over the hills. You wouldn’t believe what a time warp it is once you get away from the coastal towns. It really hasn’t changed very much in centuries, except that most of the little fincas are empty and derelict. The landscape is the same and the same people are sitting around the village bars. There are donkeys hobbled which are still used for transport and ploughing and beautiful horses, ridden in ancient looking saddles with leather stirrups. I’m trying to find someone who’ll let me ride their horse, as there don’t seem to be any riding schools round here.
Anchoring in the river is a bit of a hit and miss affair, as the currents run very strongly at the height of the ebb and flow of the tide, and sometimes the wind gets up. Boats regularly shift, sometimes quite alarmingly. A couple of hours after we anchored the first time we suddenly found ourselves shooting backwards downstream at a terrific rate and managed to get the engine going just before we crashed into another anchored yacht. We’ve had to move twice, but now seem to be well stuck into a nice patch of mud. We also only swim off the boat at slack tide for fear of being swept away! The water is not at all cold, although it is a bit muddy. We’ve become more brazen about swimming in the nude, as otherwise your cossie gets too dirty! It doesn’t matter about us, as we’re brown anyway! We can also have a hot shower from our solar bag afterwards. It’s still very hot in the day here, but cooler at night now that the sun is setting earlier.
There are people living in boats here who came for a couple of days to have a look and have stayed for years. Some have moved ashore. Many of the usual single blokes in their boats. There are a few English families living in the old fincas, without electricity, using a boat to get to the shops. Not that there are many shops. There are two food shops each side and a couple of bars. There is one ironmongery sort of a shop on the Portuguese side. There’s a fish van that calls, a bread van and a butcher’s van. I saw someone selling clothes from a van today.
In a couple of days we shall motor back down to the mouth of the river and put into the marina at Vila Real de Santo Antonio as we’re flying to UK for a visit. I’m not looking forward to being back in the town. After Culatra we had a few days in Ayamonte and were both in culture shock with the traffic and noise and just the amount of stuff there is in even the small towns that we can manage to live quite happily without. Up here in the hills, sometimes all you can hear is the sound of the insects happily buzzing about their business, and at night, to the accompaniment of the cicadas, the view of the stars is just astonishing without the light-pollution. We can see the Milky Way quite clearly. Still, it has to be done. I miss my girls and little Esmé is growing up. We also have a long list of stuff we need for the boat which we can’t get here.
We shall explore further along this coast, the Costa de Luz, when we return for our first winter aboard.

Culatra - little Carriacou in Europe!

2009-09-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

I’m glad I came now. This place is wonderful. The sea, although not as warm as that in the Caribbean, is at least not cold. We’ve been swimming every day off an almost empty beach. Miles of sand, clear clean water, and it doesn’t freeze your whatsits off. But first I have to tell you about all the stuff we’ve done before we got here.
Sines (pronounced Sinch) was a lovely little town on Portugal’s west coast. We liked it there, but the sea wasn’t warm enough for us and it suffered from the Atlantic fog. We also didn’t get much sleep because of the bands playing nearly all night, very very loud, because, guess what? They were having a fiesta. This time it was Our Lady of Somewhere, or the Virgin of somesuch.
Shalini, Heymede and Fair Joanda, three British boats with whom we had socialised on and off since the Rias, turned up and we drank several jugs of sangria – a dangerous and seductive drink. It tastes benign, but this just leads one on to buy another jugfull. Oh dear.
We planned to leave early one morning to make the long trip round Cabo São Vicente (the Land’s End of the Iberian Peninsula) only to be beset by the FOG. We waited for another couple of days, which was good, as we got to see the rescue services and harbour officials showing off what they could do. They created an “oil” slick of popcorn, then put booms in place and a big scoopy thing on the front of a boat and “hovered” it up – well, most of it, anyway. Then we went ashore and followed the procession as they brought a statue of the Virgin out of the church and carried it on high, in a solemn procession, with the Priest and marching bands and a choir, and Uncle Tom Cobbley, through the streets (for quite some way) stopping to pray from time to time, then they loaded her onto a stinky fishing boat, all decorated (as were most of the fishing boats) with flags and palm leaves and flowers, and everyone piled onto boats (carrying coolboxes full of beer!) and paraded her around the harbour. There was much jollity and drinking and hooting of horns.
We eventually set off and managed to round “the cape”. It did remind us of our first long voyage in Sally when we brought her from Holyhead to Poole. After 50 odd hours at sea (the last 12 of which had been horrendous), we rounded Longships Light at Land’s End at dawn and got into Newlyn, the little fishing harbour, where I was never so glad before or since to tie up and have a cup of tea. It wasn’t so bad rounding S. Vicente – we were in teeshirts and shorts all day, but Baleeira did remind us of Newlyn. Just a little fishing harbour, nothing to encourage the yachtsmen at all, least of all the price of beer in the local bars - €2.50 for a 33cl bottle of Sagres! Also we were unable to find a supply of fresh water. Talk about the hunter/gatherers – we spend most of our life looking for available taps, fresh veg, bread, and from time to time, Camping Gaz bottles. The Pilot Book says that you can get water from the place where they sell diesel to the fishing boats. Well, you can’t. I asked the dive shop, who had a hose running out all over the floor and they said no. I accidentally wandered into the Doca da Peixa (literally fish dock, I think, but it’s where the fish are sold on the quay) and, using international sign language, ascertained from a minion that I could fill up my container from the tap marked Agua Potavel. When I came back with my other containers, I was met by the man in the blue official shirt with Doca da Peixa embroidered on his heart, and was told in no uncertain stream of Portuguese invective that I couldn’t have water and what did I think I was doing wandering in there in the first place, damn cheek. I couldn’t understand a word of what he said, but he made himself pretty clear, all the same. I smiled and got on my bike.
Portimão, east of Lagos, in the heart of the Algarve tourist development, must have been a stunning place once upon a time, and would be again if you could get rid of the tourists and the accompanying annoyances, like ribs towing squealing teenagers on bananas and the dreaded jetskitoes. Whoever invented those, eh? Still, we had a pleasant stay, and the violent wash from the speeding fishing boats, all wanting to be the first ones in with their catch to get the best prices, was much more annoying than the tourists. I was actually thrown off my seat onto the floor of the cockpit one day when the combined wash from a fishing boat and the “pirate” ship that takes trippers out to see the caves hit Sally at anchor. It was also an hour in the dinghy up the river to the nearest Pingo Doce (a really good Portuguese supermarket) and back, still having to ride the wash from the fishing boats, ribs, pirate ships, ferries, navy ships, etc. We never got back dry. It was an art keeping the bread dry.
There was a really nice bar on the beach, though, on the Ferragudo side, which is less developed, with lots of sofas and floor cushions. Very relaxing. I tried the Cataplana, which is a very nice kind of fish stew. We had some good walks along the cliffs and looked into the caves. That coast line has a most interesting geology. Quite majestic. While we were in Portimão we were accompanied by a fleet of huge international racing yachts from all over the world competing in the Audi Med Cup. Wow. They made us look puny. It did mean that there was very loud music every night, as the crews all had to party, party, party. We’re used to it now.
But here we’ve found a haven. It’s like a Caribbean island. We’re anchored off Culatra, which is a small island (really a big pile of sand) in the lagoon where the rivers from Faro and Olhão meet. There are no cliffs here, it is sand dunes. It is part of a designated Nature Reserve and seems to be immune to those that build tourist developments. The beaches are used, but you only have to walk little way to get a large stretch to yourself and many people seem to enjoy swimming and sunbathing as nature intended. It’s a lovely freedom to be able to swim naked. Oh, and the best thing is, it’s cheap. The beer in the bars here is only 80 cents! We’re hanging around here for a while before we move on to explore the Rio Guadiana, the boundary, then we’ll be back in Spain.

Catch up from Portugal

2009-08-13T09:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I thought it was about time I wrote something in case you think we’ve drowned. We haven’t. We’re fine. We’re now in Sines, which is south of Lisbon, in Portugal. It’s hot and sunny, but the sea is still rather bracing. I managed once round the boat and back on board for a solarbag shower yesterday. Andy didn’t go in as he was put off by my screams.
Too much has happened for me to tell you everything here. You’ll just have to wait for the book to come out.
A very brief resumé, then:
At Portosin we failed to hire a car (no es posible) to see ElCurro and La Rapa das Bestas (where the wild horsemen of the Spanish mountains grapple wild horses to the gound, cut off their manes and brand them with a hot iron to show they’ve “tamed” them.)
Hung around in the next Ria (Ria de Arosa) waiting for another Curro up the mountain, which we went to but it was rained off.
I wanted to go home as I was sick of living on a boat with only Andy to talk to, so we headed north back to Muros.
I changed my mind when we met other English people to talk to and went to the all night dancing of the Fiesta (the Virgin of Carmen, patron saint of fishermen, this time) and we headed south again.
Andy nearly had a nervous breakdown.
Saw lots of interesting stuff in between.
Have a scan down the photos for some of it.
Catch you l8r.

Yay!

2009-06-21T03:09:00.000-07:00

Good news! Colin and Tui arrived in the Azores on Friday night. Phew! We don't have to call out the Coastguard Helicopters.

Santiago de Compostela.

2009-06-20T10:35:00.000-07:00

I went to Santiago De Compostela, Liz didn’t; she was struck down by Migraines, and an over exposure to my company. I went alone, braving the bus system and everything and got there all by myself. See if you can spot the difference between my mangled use of the enlish languaguge and Liz’s more polished prose.
I’m sure you’ve all heard of this place, I hadn’t until I visited Northern Spain for the first time, but then, as I am constantly reminded, I am a bit of a cultural barbarian, favouring The Honda Outboard Motor Maintenance Manual to the works of Jean Paul Sartre. The more attentive reader may remember the Blog covering our visit to Luarca where I took a passable snap of the scallop shell symbol that marks the pilgrim’s route through Spain and France to this, if I can mix my religious persuasions, Mecca.
Our main reference work on board to Spain, the Lonely Planet, babbles on about Santiago ( Saint James to you and I) and a stone boat that carried his remains for reasons that seemed a Good Idea At The Time from the Holy Land to the Atlantic Spain. When docked , they carried St James’s body inland some 17km inland before burying him. They then decided not to mark the grave or anything and return in their stone boat. Some time later a hermit suddenly thought that the grave of Saint James might be somewhere near, and using a handy Guiding Star found exactly the right place. The second part of the name of the place – Compostela - comes from this star-following malarkey.
The excellent Wikipedea give a slightly less unbelievable explanation as to how the place got there, but one way or another there it is. Arrive and you can see there has been an overly keen interest in building religious structures, churches, cathedrals, and shrines for quite some time. More than you can shake a stick at.
For the non RC visitor the cathedrals etc look absolutely fine from the outside, but enter in and they seem very alien indeed. Gold leaf, or probably just golden paint, and statues of the Virgin Mary, and others that I’m sure weren’t mentioned at my Methodist Sunday School: Saint Salome? Perhaps I just wasn’t paying attention at the time, but I’m pretty sure there are far more luminaries in the RC version than the one I was pointed at.
There are loads of people here, coachloads of them, and we are all armed with the same map. This means that if your peaceful appreciation of the Cathedral’s impressive interior is spoilt by, say 40 Germans piling into what was a quiet corner, then the same thing will happen at the Church of Saint Sebastian ( A nice example of the extended cast version of Christianity, have you heard of him?). That said I really enjoyed my wander about. I found museums, art galleries, exhibitions as well as the religious buildings I expected. Obviously I didn’t actually go into any of the secular ones, as I Would Not Have Understood.
Crowded, but not excessively so, I took three and half hours to do the recommended 3 hour route.
The map also gives a , and here I quote, “ A tour around the parks and gardens bordering the old town, with views of the monumental quarter, convents, monuments and singular contemporary architectures” Not put off in the slightest by that last bit I set out.
Where did everybody go? Suddenly the Pilkington’s Detective Agency, in the guise of the 40 Germans, had been given the slip, and I was on my own Paseoing like a professional. This was much better, in the parks and staring at big views, I felt like I should be there, rather than an imposter in the churches. The only problem was, if I took a wrong turn, that the Pilkington’s Detective Agency weren’t around to set me back on the trail, pardner. Ok I knew I was lost and had a map, so if I grunted at a local and pointed at the map, then they would know, by a process akin to osmosis, that I just needed to be pointed in the right direction. Let me tell you doubting Thomas’s ( I’ve heard of him) that this actually works, with me answering the unintelligible response to my grunts with a cunning mixture of Spanish-for-beginners, and for reasons even I can’t fathom, French and English, I managed to keep on the path. Then I hit on a more successful plan, this is hard to explain, but surprisingly easy to implement: you simply ask people who can speak English for directions, and suddenly there is no language barrier at all.
My wander around was a joy, marred only by some of the “singular contemporary architectures”. I just don’t get this building inside out, covered in rust, or just looking like it might be OK when finished stuff, but then I found something I liked, The Remodelling of Aveinida Xoan XXIII, and there’s a picture of the thing too. The glass roof offered a sense of space that nearly made paseoing seem like a sensible way to pass an hour or two. My visit was nearly at an end, I turned a corner and entered the intriguing Pracina de Penas, and there my eyes took in a sight I didn’t think possible. Was it a mirage or some kind of holy intervention? The place is famous for it after all. Glimmering in a halo of pure light I beheld a sign, and I finally realised why people tramp over the Picos de Europas to get here. Could it be true – “O Triangulo Das Verduras – Restaurante Vexetariano” a veggy restaurant! The first one in over a thousand nautical miles.

Another Blog from Portosín

2009-06-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

Andy’s gone off to Santiago de Compostela on his own on the bus today. I’m staying here feeling weedy with a slight stomach upset and a migraine. I’ve managed to get some washing done and got the shade tent up over the boat, which helps enormously. It is very hot here.
You can see from the pix that Muros was a charming little town with winding lanes, stone steps and fresh water springs. It was like being at home in Chalford, only warmer, by the sea, and everyone speaking Galician Spanish. We were charmed and amazed by the trouble that the locals went to decorate the streets with colourful patterns for the Festival of Corpus. They started on Friday with cutting up box-loads of flowers and fennel and other leaves. On Saturday there were still lots of people doing the cutting up, while others were beginning to mark the road with chalk using a cardboard template. Saturday evening they were making the lovely patterns with coloured crystals. There was an elaborate picture of two swans and a moon at one end of the trail. On Sunday morning they were hard at it making patterns from the petals and leaves and setting up altar tables with astonishingly white cloths, edged in local lace, candles, and floral displays with lilies. Some people were hanging banners of the Spanish flag on their balconies. The bells were calling the people to church several times that day. We walked the length of the decorations from the swans to the church, which must have been over a mile, through the charming lanes, being very careful not to tread on any of the displays. The fragrance was intoxicating. In the evening we waited outside the church, with the band and other spectators until the people started to come out. They eventually set off in procession with some altar boys in front carrying candles and crosses on tall poles, then came several men carrying banners on tall poles. There was a bunch of boys and girls, walking in pairs, all dressed up in white dresses and sailor suits. The girls were carrying baskets of flowers. Then came the priest in his ornate robes with six men all carrying a pole to hold the red and gold canopy over his head. After him there was a band playing a mournful and solemn march tempo. They didn’t follow the trail, but walked down to the main road which goes along the harbour side. We nipped down for a cold one at a bar and waited for them to come past. They walked the length of the main road then up to where the swans were, but kept stopping all the way. Once there the priest had a swig of the wine and some bread and there was a choir of men and women all dressed up in penguin suits (men) and matching blouses (women) and some ceremony (which we missed but wouldn’t have known what they were doing anyway.) Then, they carried on marching slowly, but this time they followed the trail of flowers back to the church. They tramped all over it all, stopping for more ceremony and swigs of wine at various “altars” along the route. On Monday morning, when I went ashore to buy bread, it was all gone, swept away.
That was when I got swamped by the waves getting out of the dinghy and had to go the supermarket absolutely dripping. We’d been awake most of the night because of the strong winds and we must have got up at least 6 or 7 times to check that the anchor was holding, which it was. On the way back in the dinghy the transom fell in half and poor old Hondy fell right in. Luckily we had her tied to a bit of rope and Andy got her back on board, but then I had to row about half a mile against a very strong wind, with a bag of shopping between my knees, trying to keep the bread dry, while Andy nursed Hondy on his lap.
We motored off across the Riá a few miles to Portosín in search of shelter and a good night’s sleep.

Portosín is not very charming at all and the marina is very expensive. We’re paying just over €20 a night here. It was only €9 in Camariñas. Okay, the showers are bigger here and there is wifi. There’s also a washing machine and driers, but you have to pay for them, anyway. It’s a bigger marina and not so friendly. We’re only staying here because it’s the nearest place to get the bus to Santiago de Compostela. However, I’m not well, so we’re a bit stuck. That’s why I’ve sent Andy off on his own today. I want to leave here. We may go back to Muros, where we anchored for free. It’s not good if the wind’s strong from the north and east, though. Still, it’s time we moved on. There are more Rías to see.
Oh. The effort. It’s too hot. I want to go home. I don’t have a home. I don’t think the nomadic life suits me at all. It’s nearly all finding a supermarket then finding what you want in it. We have to shop little and often as otherwise the stuff goes off. I’m thinking of writing a book called “Round Spain Without a Fridge”. Andy loves not going to work and messing about with engines and stuff. He spent yesterday taking Hondy apart and putting her back together. She runs now. Hurray! Before he did it, though, he had to mend the dinghy transom. He went to the hardware store for nuts and bolts and came back saying they didn’t have any. The woman offered him hinges. I went back with him and showed her a bolt and nut and washer. We got some. They’re not stainless, but they’ll work for while until we can get stainless, or they’ll just rust in place until they fail again. The ancient dinghy, Achilles, needs a repair, as the ring that holds the rope round the edge by which we lift it, pulled out. We did try gluing it, but it failed again. When Andy was trying to test out the Honda he first had to mend the transom and fit it to the already broken dinghy, which he tried to blow up, but the pump broke. So he then had to mend the pump. At the end he had a sense of achievement of getting broken things to work again. I’d been out and bought tomatoes. Aaaaagh. It’s driving me nuts.
As my friend, Helen, said, real nomads take their families and lives with them, not just their Andys. It was more fun when I had a life outside of the boat and Andy. It’s not a nomad’s life, but a life of being on holiday all the time. It’s not as good as you’d think. Imagine eating only chocolate. You’d be craving mashed potatoes, even the peeling of them first.
I think it’s time for my siesta. It’s getting very very hot. I expect Andy will be back with lots of photos for me to post on the blog.
Hasta luego.

Muros and Portosin.

2009-06-16T12:39:00.000-07:00

I've put on a load of pix and will write some more when I get around to it. I'm suffering a bit from getting too hot today. I went for a swim, but it was freezing! We hope to get the bus to Santiago de Compostela tomorrow.

We had huge fun and games the other day in Muros when the dinghy broke and the outboard fell in. Later,on our way to Portosin to get out of the wind, we lost our deck brush overboard. Despite our rigorous training our B.O.B recovery took about 25 attempts. I'm glad it wasn't me in that cold water waiting to be hauled out. The brush doesn't seem to have suffered at all and it was gratifying to find it floats. Not sure about poor old Hondy yet. (That's the name Andy calls the outboard motor.)

We're in desperate need of some stainless steel nuts and bolts (pernos y tuercas)to fix the transom on Achilles. (That's the name of our aged blow-up dinghy.)

Camariñas

2009-06-10T08:12:00.000-07:00

The windows are steamed up. There are wet jackets, trousers, shoes, socks, hats, and more draped all around the boat. There’s a bucket of wet clothes, washed and rinsed and waiting to be hung out to dry. The floor is damp. My shoes are damp. My trousers are damp. The wind has been shrieking round the mast for the past 3 days: the rain hammering against the coach roof. The wind generator is whizzing round fit to bust – it’s a wonder the boat doesn’t take off, but it’s well tied to the pontoon, with extra ropes. It’s June and we’re in Spain!
Last night Andy, Colin and I climbed into our foul-weather gear, boots ‘n’ all, and intrepidly made our way up the pontoon and beat our way through the extreme weather to a restaurante, where we had a very nice meal of fresh caught fish – the fishing boats still go out, even though most of us yachtsmen are hiding in the marina. There are even some yachts (large ones, I might add) that still keep coming and going – gawd knows why – why would anyone choose to go out in weather like this? There were warnings of Force 10 storms on the Spanish Meteo this morning. By the way, Andy didn’t eat the fish, but amazingly, after asking around at several establishments, we found one that was willing to cook something for a “vegetariano”. The woman had even heard of the word and didn’t look at Andy as if she couldn’t understand how he was still standing upright when he obviously had no pulse. We also sampled the local speciality: Pimientos de Padrón, which are little green peppers fried whole in very hot olive oil then sprinkled with coarse salt while still sizzling. They are very good.
So, I’m down to one novel left to read. After that, it’s “Heavy Weather Sailing” or “Storm Tactics”, both enough to put the fear of god into anyone even contemplating going near a boat. I’m going to have to brave the outdoors and ask on all the British boats here if they’ve got any books to swap. They must have. What else are they doing holed up in their cabins? Apart from looking at weather forecasts on the internet, of course. It is supposed to be improving tomorrow and going to be nice for quite a few days after that. Colin is planning to leave tomorrow for Muros (probably motor-sailing with little wind and in the wrong direction) then set out for The Azores on Saturday. We’ll probably leave it till Friday to go to the Ría de Muros, as we think we’ll get more help from the wind then. It’s supposed to get a lot easier once we’re round Finisterre, with warm balmy weather, a south-going current, and the northerly Portugese trade wind. It can’t be any worse than this. Then it’s steadily southwards, we hope.
Camariñas isn’t a bad place to be stuck in bad weather. The supermarcados are near the marina, there is fuel to be had at the quay and the showers are hot. Hidden away in a maze of cobbled lanes is the best bread bakery I’ve ever been to. (That’s saying something as my father was a Master Baker and Confectioner and I grew up with the run of two bakehouses and three shops.) The O Forno Novo (Galician for the New Oven) is a small bakehouse where trays of hand-crafted loaves are heaved into and out of the ovens and when you’ve chosen your warm loaf, the lady in the corner weighs it to sell it by the kilo. If you want a smaller loaf, they’ll cut it in half for you. It’s delicious.
We’ve also managed to get out for some walks, sometimes it even stopped raining for some of the time. We, with Colin, went for a long tramp out to the lighthouse on Cabo Villano. It took us a couple of hours along a coast path, past tiny fields of potatoes, sweet corn and cabbages, past a tiny chapel of the Virgin of the Mount. As we climbed up the hill to the base of the lighthouse we could see the rain coming in over the sea. The wind was strong enough to lean on, as it whipped up spume from the waves smashing onto the rocks beneath us. They call this bit O Costa da Morte. You can translate that Galician for yourselves. Amazingly there was a museum about the history of the lighthouse out there. I think we were the only visitors that day, or maybe that week. The receptionist there must have been even lonelier than the old lighthouse keepers were in the days before automation. We walked back through the wind farm. The whole of the coast we have seen from Gijón onwards, through Asturias and Galicia, is all wind turbines and forestry. It’s very green. That’ll be the rain in Spain.

Floating again!

2009-05-30T09:55:00.001-07:00

Well on Tuesday the sun came out and the anti-fouling arrived. After one day it was on the bottom of our boat. Thursday evening we were launched back into the water. It was quite scary being on the boat as it was rolling backwards down the concrete slip, held only by a fork lift truck with a ripped tyre. We had to guess what all the men were saying, and communicated, as usual, by a mixture of Spanish and sign-language. Anyway,we got the boat afloat, turned it round, and off we went on our first voyage for 7 months. It was all of 500 metres to the pontoon!

We're still here. Our plans to leave were held up by Andy spending a day taking the outboard motor for the dinghy to bits. There were lumps of rust in the carburettor. Then our friend, Colin, turned up after a horrendous crossing of Biscay, during which he weathered two storms and an engine failure as he tried to come into Cedeira in the pitch dark in a gale. I'm so glad it wasn't me. He's here recovered now and it's great to hang out with him for a bit until he sets off for the Azores.

We hope to go out into the Ria tomorrow for a shake-down, before leaving on Monday, maybe. As ever, it depends on the weather/swell forecast. Yesterday was blistering heat, as we scrubbed and hosed down the boat in our swimming costumes. Today there's a thick fog in the Ria and a cold wind.

We've also bought a gismo for the computer which will give us mobile phone access to internet for when we need weather forecasts in places without wifi. Hopefully this will save us some marina charges.

Andy's out buying cerveza. We're eating dinner on Colin's boat, Tui, this evening. He dined on Sally last night.

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the Ria de Ares.

2009-05-25T09:52:00.001-07:00

It's been pouring all night and all day and it's cold and the paint still hasn't arrived. even if it does, it's too wet to use it. Andy's taking the boat apart inside trying to source and stop the water which is coming in and soaking everything in the nav table. It's not that much fun. The Concello internet still isn't working, so I put on my foul weather gear and took myself to the Biblioteca and the free wifi.

Time to go back for a glass of wine now. At least that's cheap here.

Here we are again....... Back in Ares

2009-05-22T07:58:00.000-07:00

Prepare yourselves to catch up.
Andy and I are recovering from our heart attacks at the price of “pintura de anti-incrustante” (antifouling paint) in Spain. It’s expensive in England, anyway. We usually pay about £60 or so for 5 ltrs every year, but were left open-mouthed when we bought some from the boatyard here and it was a stonking €180 for 2.5 ltrs! Luckily it turned out that we’d bought the wrong stuff and were able to return it for a refund. We’ve ordered some from the same guy in England where we’ve always bought it and it’s £100 for 5 ltrs, delivered to Spain in a van. Trouble is we now have to wait for it to arrive. They said it should come today. As our friend, Colin, said, why don’t we cover the boat in gold leaf? It would be cheaper and the barnacles won’t stick to it. Colin is on his way single-handed to the Azores, mad fool. We’re hoping to meet up with him somewhere here in north-west Spain in the next week or two. At the moment, we’re not going anywhere, as we’re still on the yard in Ares. At least the sun is shining. For the first week we were here it was cold and raining and I was missing the turquoise blue of the Caribbean sea. All that swimming has faded into a distant memory now.
We did enjoy a couple of weeks in England staying in a delightful holiday cottage in our village. I can recommend Christine Felce’s Didi http://www.cotswoldaccommodation.co.uk/ for self-catering or B&B if any of you or your friends fancy a holiday in Chalford. We were very busy, shopping and shopping for clothes and things for the boat and seeing people and dandling young Esmé (who is now 1 yr old and gorgeous.) We hadn’t bought any clothes for about 2 years and most of what we had been wearing in the Caribbean all winter had worn out, what with the sweat, the sea and the sun damage. I think the same has happened to my skin. We also had dentist’s appointments and eye tests.
As I said, our time in the Caribbean seems long ago. It was interesting and relaxing and a lot of the time I was bored. However, that was one of the things I wanted to find out. I now know that I don’t want to live there. There isn’t enough for me to do. It is also too hot to want to do anything. It was getting very very hot during March and April as the sun came directly overhead and I was glad to be leaving. I was also looking forward to going back to Europe, where there is some kind of civilisation: the streets are cleaned, there’s architecture, art and music and people wear underwear. I know there’s music in the Caribbean, lots of it, but, well, it isn’t exactly Mozart. It’s just loud.
We made some good friends out there, though. We had a little party at the pizzeria on our last night. I’ll put some pix on here when I can get some decent internet access. We usually do have a very good free wifi signal from the Concello, but it’s not been working for a day or two. I went there today, but it was shut for the festival of Santa Rita who is the patron saint of civil servants, can you believe? This meant that the Biblioteca, the other place where we can get free wifi, is also shut for the day.
Meantime we’re waiting for Pedro to come and fix a little bit of damage to the floor of our heads (boat toilet, to you landlubbers). During the winter they had some fierce weather here and Paco and his men had put some extra props under our boat. One of the wedges they’d driven in had bent the hull slightly, which had pushed the floor up inside and cracked it. Paco is used to more modern boats which have thinner hulls and can flex more. We don’t think there’s any damage to the hull, and they are going to fix it for us. Mind you, Pedro has said he was coming every day for the last 3 days, and we’re still waiting. It reminds me of the Caribbean all over again. However, we can see him working on other boats. It’s not that “a man needs to rest”. They are very busy because at this time of year everyone wants their boat fixed up and got ready to go back on the water for the summer. They work funny hours here, though. Start at 10am and go on until 2pm. They start again at 4.30pm and work until 8pm. We eat our meals at English times, and are quite out of kilter with the locals. We go to bed when it’s still light and they’re just having their dinner.
After seeing a lot of friends and family in England, I felt quite lonely when we first got here. We had made a lot of friends in Tyrrel Bay, Carriacou. It was easy. They spoke English , were into boats, and had lots of time to hang out. Here they speak Spanish. Actually, they speak Gallegan, which I can’t understand at all. They can understand me when I’ve worked out what I need to say in my best Spanish, but when they answer I just stand there looking stupid. I’ve had a lot of practice at that. Also, we’re going to be moving on, as soon as we can. Maybe this is why I feel the need to write my blog again. An outlet for my need to chat.
I’m used to living on the boat on the yard now. I think I’m getting thinner, as I’m up and down a ladder about 50 times a day. I haul containers of water up. I haul the night-time bucket down. I ride my bike to the toilet many times a day. I also use it to go the shops. Even though this is a very friendly little place where people are helpful and polite, we carefully lock our bikes up every night. We haven’t forgotten the inconvenience and frustration caused when they were nicked in France. Still, it will be very nice to be floating again. I just hope that the anti-incrustante arrives soon.

Life Goes On

2009-02-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

As it says, life goes on here. I haven't felt inclined to write much lately. It began to feel like a restriction to have to remember everything and everybody to write about. Then it began to feel like I was obliged to do stuff I could write about. So, we're carrying on sailing, swimming, walking about and meeting people and making friends and eating and drinking.

I will write again, when I feel like it, but I will still be putting pix on, so keep tuning in to look at those.

Getting used to it.

2009-01-24T10:12:00.001-08:00

I'm getting used to it here.

More sailing

2009-01-12T13:48:00.000-08:00

Well it's been a ripping couple of days. Andy and I took Cocoa, the little boat belonging to Hutch, into the mangroves with a bottle of fizzy white and some left overs for lunch. (Rice with a mess of sweet potato, plantain, beans, pumpkin, onion, garlic, chillies, peppers, aubergine, callaloo, ginger, nutmeg and hot pepper sauce in coconut milk. We sailed across the bay into the mangroves and dumped our sail on the beach. We then rowed into the mangroves and let the wind take us all the way down to the end, about a mile, or so. We drifted while we drank Buck's fizz and ate our lunch and fended off trees when we bashed into them. There were a lot of brown jelly fish in there and oysters growing on the tunks of the mangrove trees. These trees put down long shoots downwards into the water, where they grow roots. The best bit was siting comfortably in the stern while making Andy row me all the way back out of the mangrove. My goal is for him to develop a six pack like Beckham's. Haven't made much headway in that direction so far. More of a barrel than a six pack.

Anyway, after we sailed back, finished the wine and had a swim we went to the pizzeria, where we managed to firm up on an invitation for a sail with Frank Pearce on Tradition. She is an old Carriacou workboat which he has restored and this was her inaugural shake down sail. It wasn't long, but it was really fun. There were about 8 of us crew all hauling and heaving on the ropes. This is a wooden gaff rigged boat, not a winch or an electric button in sight. It was most interesting. Once we were back on her mooring and sucking up beers and a wicked rum punch brought along by Andy Smelt who runs a sail loft here, we saw Nutmeg sail into the bay. We had met Ollie and Sarah and their two little girls on Nutmeg in France and Spain last summer. They crossed on the ARC (Atlantic Rally Crossing) in November/December. We shall be meeting up with them again soon for drinks and to point them at the sights.

I'm going to start cooking now as Ted is coming for dinner before he disappears to England for 6 weeks. He seems to think we've volunteered to take care of the sailing club while he's away. HEEEELP! At least I'll be able to put Acting Commodore, Yacht Club, Caribbean, on my CV!

Getting some sailing in

2009-01-09T09:52:00.000-08:00

Well I suppose I’d better drag myself onto the keyboard to tell you what we’ve been up to. Oh, it’s such an effort. I feel myself being sucked deeper and deeper into the space-time continuum that masquerades as normal life here. We always used to call this place “the land where no one gives a flying fuck.” I have not changed my opinion. Do you know that song that goes: “I’m busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do. I’m busy going nowhere, isn’t it such a crime? I’d like to beeeeeeeee unhappy, but I really don’t have the time.”? That’s my life. I love it.

We have done stuff, though. We went sailing on New Year’s Day with Chris Morejohn in Hogfish Maximus, which he designed and built himself. It was really a most interesting boat and he was a most interesting man. He’s done so much stuff, building boats, houses, painting, making sculptures. He’s just finished building himself a house in the Bahamas. His boat, a 34ft sailing yacht, has a flat bottom and a big centre board which is winched into position, giving a draft of about 7ft. It sailed brilliantly, which is just as well, as he doesn’t have an engine in it, so he had us tacking through the anchorage and between the islands and reefs. It points well to windward and is a good stiff sailing boat. It has lots more room inside than a conventional boat of that length has, and he can pull up the board and beach it!

One afternoon, I took out Hutch’s little Mosquito, called Cocoa, with the distinctive red, gold and green sail, while Andy sailed one of the Optis. We just tooled around the anchorage, looking at the boats, and trying not to hit them. The owners don’t like that. I find these little dinghies really uncomfortable to sail in and I was glad to put the thing back on the beach and go for a swim.

We did enjoy, however, going for a sail with Ted and his son, Josh, in the Yngling which belongs to Jeff, who owns the boatyard. He has a lot of boats. Collects ‘em. I think people sometimes take boats to the boatyard and forget to collect them again. He also gets hurricane damaged boats and fixes them up. He has a motor yacht which he rescued from the bottom of the bay after the last hurricane. The Yngling is quite a big dinghy, which is sailed by women in the Olympics. She was the best sail I’ve ever had – slips though the water like nobody’s business. We were hoping to get a team together with Ted and sail it in the regatta coming up in a week or two, but Ted’s just told us he’s going to England for 6 weeks to try and sort out an education for his children. Thoughtless bugger. I don’t think Andy and I are up to racing on our own. We could learn a lot from Ted and were hoping he’d give us a lesson in deployment of the spinnaker, although we’re not sure if “Little Bloody Mary”, the Yngling, has one.

We also had a fun day out this week in Lady M, which is a 57ft ketch built in a traditional style, except that she’s 33 tons of ferro-concrete. We sailed up to Union Island with Captain Bananas, had lunch off Frigate Island, and sailed back. Captain Bananas is an American with, shall we say, a chequered past. There seem to be quite a few blokes like that around these parts.
As far as the house goes, Joy has now brought us another curtain. We’re still waiting for the last one. He’s not keen on getting us another bed, so we’re going to have to borrow one if we get any guests.

Do you like the pic of the little post office? It’s a bit of a hot walk up there to collect any post. I went up there on the morning of Friday 2nd Jan and a guy hanging around the rum shop next door told me she was supposed to open at 10 am, but that she’d probably be there at about 10.30. I went for a walk and hung around under a tree for a while, but she never turned up at all. It was the Friday between New Year’s Day and a Saturday, so she evidently thought it wasn’t worth her while to open at all.

Andy is still fibre-glassing away on the GP 14, in between mending the Optis. It’s all one step forward and one back, though. He only does a couple of hours a day on them. As he says, a man needs to rest!

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T14:36:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year to all my readers. Hope your Christmasses were good. Ours was. I got a mug and Andy got a CD. We're going to the Lambi Queen tonight for New Year's Eve. The steel band will be playing. Aaaaaaaaagh! There's only so much Island In The Sun a person can take. However, it is near, it is loud and there isn't anything else.

We've been invited out for a sail tomorrow with an American guy called Chris. He's going to take us to a little island where we can go snorkelling while he collects shells. Sounds nice.

Yesterday we had fun watching a couple of guys who were supposed to be building, but they were climbing a tree trying to shake out an iguana. The iguana dropped out and ran across the road, where the guy who was supposed to catch it squealed like a girly and ran away. Tee hee. They said I should try it. They said it tastes better than chicken. But I like to watch the iguana swaying in the tree top and eating the flowers.

Must go. Going to have pizza tonight before we go out to celebrate.

Christmas preparations

2008-12-22T07:52:00.000-08:00

We went to Hillsborough on the bus. Andy went one way and I went the other and we met again twenty minutes later with all our Christmas presents bought. I can't tell you what I got Andy until after I've given it to him. I can tell you, though, that I only went to one shop and picked at random. If there were a bookshop on the Island, I might have gone there, but there isn't one. We pick up used books which yachtsmen leave at the yacht club and at the launderette. We also use the library, of course.

Later I'm going into Hillsborough again to see what treats we can find to eat. I did see some rather expensive gherkins in one of the supermarkets. We have been invited up to Ted's house for Christmas day, with his three children, Tina and her two kids, and Hutch, who is still hobbling on crutches due to his infected foot. I've found out that Ted is coooking turkey and sprouts and wants me to make mince pies! I thought I'd got away from all that. We may make and take some veggie option made of breadfruit, plantain and beans, flavoured with onion, garlic, chilli, nutmeg and ginger. (This, as ever, all depends on what is available at the vegetable stalls.) We can always put hot West Indian sauce on the turkey and dip the mince pies in rum.

Happy Christmas to all my readers, if there still are any.

Harvey Vale Government School Christmas Party

2008-12-18T08:04:00.000-08:00

"I want a fish skin, a Christmas fish skin." "No. It's fish kit," says Andy into my ear, "I want a fish kit." I'm singing along to the Parang song which is blasting out of the black speaker boxes, the size of a small house. The baseline is pinning me against the perimeter fence and palpating my sternum, forcing my heart to beat in rhythm with the tune. We hang around watching people arrive, drink a beer - yes, beer for sale at the junior school Christmas party. I don't think they bother about licences and that sort of thing. Suddenly the big tamarind tree lights up, with no ceremony or announcement. It looks wonderful. It is strung about with what looks like a hundred fifty different strands of fairy lights, most of which light up. After a lot more milling around and people buying barbecued chicken, the entertainment begins. Each class puts on a show, a song, a dance or a poem. They appear in random order and not as written on the programme. Then some adult women sing some Christmas carols. We can only hear the woman in the middle who is standing in front of the microphone. I think hers may not have been the best voice of the choir. A local man wearing a lampshade on his head and carrying a tall stick proceed with a display of yogic bendiness. He blows a conch then stomps barefoot on broken glass, before rolling his naked torso across the glass. After demonstrating his ability to walk with his legs bent over his shoulders, head between his feet, he exits before anyone has a chance to applaud. The teacher making the announcements does warn the children not to try these things at home. Later, much later, a Parang band comes on and plays some guitars and maracas and sings made up songs about the local people. These may have been hilarious to those who had a clue what they were on about.

Parang is an annual music competition in which songs are performed which take the mick out of local people and events. It will be happening in Hillsborough this weekend. As we wouldn’t have any idea of what they were singing about, even if we could understand the words the performers are singing, and as all the tunes sound exactly the same, in a calypso style with more rhythm, we probably won’t go.

Off to Hillsborough on the bus later to do our Christmas shopping. That’s if we can get any money from the ATM, as it wasn’t working yesterday.

Rescue Boat Rescue

2008-12-17T08:52:00.000-08:00

Well, we had a bit of excitement at the weekend. Kevin, a young sailing coach, came up from Grenada to give extra teaching to the kids in the Tyrrel Bay Junior Sailing Club (all donations desperately needed and gratefully received). Hutch, an American who lives on a boat in the bay, had said he’d organise a motor boat to use for the weekend. As Hutch has an infected foot and has been on crutches for 6 weeks, he got permission for Andy to drive the “Rescue Boat”, thus leaving Ted to supervise on the beach. The boat we borrowed belongs to Dan, an American who also lives on a boat in the bay. He gave Andy careful instructions about how to start the motor and not revving it too much. On the Sunday I decided I’d go out with Andy and Kevin on the boat, as you get a good view of the yachts at anchor from out there. Everything was going wonderfully. There was a nice breeze and the kids were doing well, until the engine mounting bracket broke off and Andy found himself hanging onto a heavy outboard motor by the twist grip. As it tried to fall to the bottom of the sea, the grip twisted in Andy’s hand and revved even more. He was desperately hanging onto it while trying to reach the stop button with his left hand, as the motor jumped around in the water. Luckily, and through sheer tenacity, he managed to get the thing turned off and lifted it into the boat. The Optimists sailed away and we were left drifting. It wasn’t that bad, we had oars. Hutch had accompanied the Optimists in his little sailing dinghy, which he uses as a tender to his yacht, so he sailed up to us, dropped his mast and assessed the situation. He had a cellphone (that’s American for mobile) so started phoning people he knew with boats who could come and get us back to the shore. He managed to raise Tim, an English guy who lives on a boat in the bay, who manages the boatyard. That’s Tim towing us in in his rib. Dan, the owner of the boat, had also been accompanying the young sailors in his little sailing dinghy, which he uses as a tender to his yacht. He sailed onto the beach and Andy had to tell him he’d broken his engine. It turned out (to Andy’s relief) that it had already been broken by getting jammed under the dock at Bequia . He’d had it temporarily fixed. It’s very difficult to weld cast aluminium, he admitted. I suggested he bought a new bracket for the thing. I also suggested that he needed a little piece of rope to tie the engine onto the boat. We always tie our outboard onto our inflatable, just in case of mishap. It’s not always possible to retrieve things once they’re on the bottom of the sea.

This little event is very typical of the sort of thing that goes on here every day. Things work sporadically, if at all. Things get half fixed up, then left to fall apart again. Everything takes much longer than you can possibly imagine to get done, then it only gets done in a half-arsed way. We kind of like it, though.

We were pleased to see that after Kevin had gone back to Grenada, some of the kids spent the rest of the daylight on Sunday out in the Optimists practising what they’d been taught. We later learned that they had been going round to the yachts asking for food!

And, yes, there do seem to be a lot of single blokes living on boats here.

This morning Andy has gone down to the bay to continue working on the GP14s. He’s having some small success getting the resin and fibreglass matting to stick. I’m left here to battle with the ants. I made another batch of lemonade yesterday and must have got the outside of the bag of sugar sticky, because when I looked in the cupboard later there was an army of ants marching through and swarming inside the bag of sugar. They had actually eaten through the plastic bag to get in there. I threw that lot out, then found they’d eaten into a bag of flour. A blast of Baygon put paid to that offensive. We’re now keeping everything in the fridge, even the rice. I don’t think even they can eat their way through metal.

This evening we’re going up to the junior school (Harvey Vale Government School) to see the Christmas lights switched on. I think they will have decorated the huge tree which grows in their yard. They children have also been practising songs and dances for the occasion. It’s supposed to start at 6.30, which means that people will start turning up at about 8, Caribbean time.

Oh yes, and the electrician eventually made it to fix our shower, only two weeks after he’d said he’d come, and several phone calls from our landlord telling us he was on his way. He explained to me why he’d taken so long, but I couldn’t understand much of what he said, except for his last sentence which was, “A man needs to rest.”

Tropical Torpor

2008-12-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

I’m finding it increasingly difficult to sit down and write. It’s not because I have nothing to say, but because I can’t be arsed. That’s what the Caribbean does to you. We spend hours sitting on the balcony either reading or just staring. I just spent about half an hour watching a little lizard stalking its prey. I understand the expression “leaping lizards” now, because they do little leaps from the floor to the wall, say. They catch flies so quickly that you can’t see how they’ve done it. One moment they’re staring intently, keeping low and moving in ultra slo-mo, then there they are munching away on a big juicy fly. It takes quite a bit of chewing and manoeuvring around the mouth until they can be swallowed. Fascinating.

So we read, stare at the horizon, “Look, there’s a big catamaran coming in.” “Oh yes. Looks like British/French/Dutch/Canadian (delete which inapplicable) ensign.” “Is that Selassie going out?” Selassie is the name of the boat of a local fisherman. I think it’s also his name. “See that blue boat over there?” “Where?” “Next to the entrance to the mangroves.” “Yes.” “That’s the one that takes charters to the Antarctic.” “Why would anyone want to go down there?” “Don’t know.” “Oh, it’s lunch time.” “Jolly good.” Etc.

We have managed to get our library cards filled out, with the names of two references. We got Ted and the girl in Alexis Supermarket. We took them into the library in Hillsborough yesterday and handed them to the librarian. She told us to go and take out a book. We spent quite a long time trying to find something that we wanted to read. I was looking for something on the flora and fauna of the West Indies. The non-fiction section has about 9 feet of books in random order. There were quite a few very old ‘O’ level chemistry texts and some children’s books. I did find quite a good work on the trees and plants of the West Indies, but it was in the reference section. This section was also in random order. The adult fiction was largely in alphabetical order of author and eventually we managed to find a couple of novels to take away. There was no computerised system, or even Brown’s pockets. The librarian wrote down on a sheet of paper the name of the book next to our names. We’re allowed two books for two weeks. I don’t know what the fines are. After I’d gone a little way up the road, I turned and went back in. “Excuse me”, I said, “do you need anyone to help out in the library? I used to work in one. I noticed there are a lot of books waiting to be shelved.” (There were almost as many books on the reshelving shelves as on the proper shelves – random order, adult and junior mixed, fiction and non-fiction mixed.) She told me that she does have an assistant, but she was on vacation. She gave me a phone no. to ring though, to volunteer myself. I’ve decided not to, though. Can’t be arsed. I could go in and sort that place out in two half days, but I think I’ll leave it as it is.

As far as our house goes, we now have three curtains up and some holes drilled in the walls of the other bedroom, ready for the wires and curtains, should they appear. We also have a (small) mirror over the bathroom sink. A few days ago we came home to find a table had arrived unannounced. We are still waiting for the electrician to turn up with a new element for our shower heater. Whenever we see Joy, we tell him, he makes a phone call and says the electrician is coming today. He doesn’t. Haven’t seen much of Joy lately. He’s moved his sheep and goats out of our garden now.

We sowed some seeds a week ago, and they are mainly now bursting out of their little pots. We bought some packets of seed with us: tomatoes, courgettes, cucumber, aubergines, peppers, lettuce, basil, parsley and coriander. With the exception of the parsley, they all germinated really quickly. The courgettes have now got their proper leaves on and are about 4” tall. We also sowed some seeds we saved from stuff we’d eaten: melon, papaya, avocado, passion fruit and orange. Only the melon have germinated, so far. The avocado stones we put in, because when we took them out of the fruits, they already had roots growing. The avocado here are big and round – not pear-shaped at all. They have a yellower flesh and are more flavourful than the ones we buy in England, being soft and creamy and almost sweet. We keep saying, we must think about where we are going to plant these things. I’m now saying we have to move beyond the thinking and prepare some soil. It’s too hot now. Maybe tomorrow.

Being a veggie here is just as difficult as it is in France or Spain – so we don’t eat out. There is actually an excellent pizzeria just down our hill and we have eaten there. We do have to watch the budget, though, and food is more expensive here than in Europe. You can buy a pineapple for less in Waitrose, than you can here. The beer, however, is cheaper and the rum is much much cheaper. We just buy whatever vegetables we come across and try different ways of cooking them. Not that different, actually, as we only have two gas rings, a big saucepan, and little one and a frying pan. We can always get onions, garlic and potatoes and dried goods, like rice, lentils, kidney beans. When available in the local shops or from Dennise’s stall, we buy plantain, yam, dasheen, breadfruit, sweet potato, callaloo, christophene, funny long, thin green beans, peppers, very hot scotch bonnet peppers and succulent fresh ginger. Fresh tomatoes are expensive and the tinned ones are about £1.50 a can! We also sometimes get avocados, ridge cucumbers and lettuce. Pigeon peas are a staple here, but seem not to be in season at the mo. They grow on little trees which smell fragrant on the breeze. They are sold fresh in pods or dried in bags.

As far as supermarkets go, forget everything you know about shops in Europe. The one we use mostly in Tyrrel Bay is a sort of dark shed with rickety shelves. There are often big gaps on the shelves, or a lot of one thing arranged in more than one place. Most dry goods are still bought in bulk here and weighed up into plastic bags. There is nothing to tell you what’s in the bag, or how much it weighs. Just a price written on in felt-tip pen. Certainly there is no list of ingredients, recommended daily dose or warnings about nut allergies.

We did, actually eat out last night, though. It was a spur of the moment thing. We’d been for our swim. We extended the length of that again. I’m finding it easier and easier as my muscles remember what to do and I tend to get ahead of Andy. So I’ve been giving him the benefit of my professional swimming teacher’s knowledge and giving him pointers to improve his breast-stroke. (No smutty jokes, please.) This has had the effect of slowing him down quite a lot and, instead of waiting for him to catch up, I just carry on to see how far ahead of him I can finish. He regained his manly dignity though, by beating me afterwards when we took two of the Optimists for a spin round the Bay. After that I smelled the barbecue chicken going on in the Old Rum Shop, and I decided it was time I had a meaty treat. It was delicious. It had some sticky kind of sauce stuck to it by the time it came to me on a plate, with rice and vegetables and coleslaw. Andy said that’ll be the creole sauce. He had just the rice and veg, along with two eighths of Jack Iron rum and two bottles of coke to dilute it. (It’s 90% alcohol.) I had to lead him home after that. He seems fine this morning.

I’ll save the story of how I stole a bath mat and got caught for another time........

18 days now.

2008-12-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

I can't believe it's a week since I last blogged. I haven't got time now: got to go and meet Andy for a swim. He's been doing a fibre glass repair on one of the Optimists. Something or other breaks every Saturday. I've been making my nth batch of lemonade and trying to speak to daughter no. 3 over a very wobbly internet connection. We have extended the length of our swim a couple of times and I think we may make it a little bit longer again today. I'll write and tell you more later on. The sea is calling.

Day 11.

2008-12-03T16:41:00.000-08:00

We’re beginning to settle into our new house. We gave Joy, our landlord, a list of all the things the house needed for us to be able to stay here. He is slowly providing them and, in desperation, we have provided a few for ourselves – a saucepan, a sieve and some glasses. When he says he’s coming to do something we wait and he doesn’t show up, so we go out and when we return we find something left for us. The first time it was a curtain. Two days later he came and put up some of that stretchy curtain wire and put up the curtain. Several days later, two more curtains appeared. He still hasn’t put them up, although he said he’d come today. When we were out buying veg from the lady who has a stall in Tyrrel Bay, he came and left us a mirror. Up to now Andy has been guessing to shave and I think it’s just as well that I can’t see my hair, as it’s growing apace and is often thick with salt and sweat. Nice! I’m going to have to get Andy to cut it – gulp! – or maybe I’ll just let it grow long again.

Joy also told us that the electrician was coming today because the hot water for the shower has stopped working. The other taps are only cold anyway. We can just as easily shower in cold water because, once the top of your head has gone a bit numb, it isn’t very cold. Also, when the electric heater for the shower was working, it didn’t actually get very hot. When I was in there the other day it suddenly smelled of burning plastic and stopped working. It’s nothing to be alarmed about, as everything here works sporadically, if at all. We have had a couple of power cuts since we’ve been here. The whole of Tyrrel Bay was out last night, but had come on again by the time I’d found the candle and matches. One advantage is that you can see the fireflies in the trees below our balcony better when the lights are off. We also see humming birds down there. They are tiny and black and hover in a most delightful way. The other day there was a big bright green iguana down in the garden with our landlord’s sheep. We also see frigate birds soaring over the bay and pelicans diving for fish.

When we’re not looking at wildlife, we’re looking at yachts, fishing boats and freight-carriers coming in and out of the bay. Although we’ve been swimming every day, we haven’t been for a snorkel as yet. When we’ve come here for two weeks' holiday, we have to go all out to make the most of our time here. Because we’re here for five months, we’re taking it a little more easily. At least now we are. At first we had to push ourselves a little in order to find a house to rent, then move our stuff in. We’ve also had to trawl through Hillsborough for saucepans and other useful items. It’s incredibly hard to get hold of stuff here. There just isn’t very much to be had, even if you had a bottomless purse. We managed to find one small saucepan which, by European standards you’d think very cheap and nasty. It wasn’t particularly cheap, but it is shoddy, like most things here.

So we’re beginning to slow ourselves down to Caribbean time and wait patiently for things to happen. Maybe we’ll get our curtains up this week.

As far as getting involved with local life, though, we went along and helped Ted with the Tyrrel Bay Junior Yacht Club. [There is a short film of this in action on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ekf3T-hde8Y ] Ted has about six or seven Optimist dinghies in varying states of repair, in which he teaches local kids to sail. It meant, with Andy and I on the beach supervising the slightly bigger ones in a race round various boats at anchor, Ted was able to take out a couple of the little ones. Our main aim, at the moment, is to get the two GP14s, which Ted acquired, repaired and seaworthy, for two reasons: 1) So we get the use of one of them when we want – hopefully we might even learn to sail properly ourselves. 2) So Ted can use a bigger dinghy to teach the little ones in. We can also become more useful in teaching once we’ve got more of the hang of these dinghies. It’s very different from sailing a 30’ cruiser.

You wouldn’t believe how difficult it is just to get anything of this kind done. For a start we have no tools or anything much with us. We’ve spent about five days now just looking at stuff lying around at the roadsides because we need something to prop the boat up so that we can work on it. Nothing of any use gets thrown away here. We can’t even find a beer crate – they are all in use for propping up fishing boats on the beach. We think we may have located some lengths of wood that I’m trying to convince Andy don’t belong to anyone. We may have to ‘borrow’ them under cover of darkness. However, we don’t want to get Ted accused of stealing someone’s bits of wood. He has enough on his plate with his wife living with another man.....

....Don’t get me started on the scandal and gossip we’ve started to collect......think of any small village in England (particularly one on a small island*), then multiply it by ten. Maybe the climate has something to do with it.

*[My Isle of Wight friends know what I mean.]

Day 3. It ain’t half hot.

2008-11-26T15:06:00.000-08:00

Tuesday 25th November 08

We arrived in Carriacou on Saturday and checked into Scraper’s. He has a restaurant, bar and shop and 4 self contained units just across the road from the beach at Tyrrel Bay. I don’t know why he’s called Scraper. We’ve noticed that many of the locals have names that we assume were not the handles endowed on them at birth by the doting parents, but maybe acquired at school and stuck into adulthood and beyond. There’s Bubbles, who drives a taxi and rents out a house, Nark, Slinger the guitarist, Baba and many more. We’ve been coming across these people in the course of our enquiries, as our mission at the moment is to find somewhere cheap to rent for the next five months, so we’ve been asking everyone. David Augustine, who runs the Laqua Supermarket, the Twilight Bar and rents a house or two, showed us a little wooden place very close to the beach at the quiet end of Tyrrel Bay, but it is very small. Pokey would be the most accurate description. We saw a very dark apartment which was right on Paradise Beach (50 points in its favour) but the landlady lives upstairs and has about five dogs and a couple of cats (100 points against). The gloom and the resident cockroach also didn’t make us leap at it. Joseph at the Hardwood Snacket surprised us by showing us two lovely apartments with a fantastic view over to Union Island, but they were slightly more expensive and a little out of the way. We don’t want to be too isolated as we want to get to know people and get involved with local life. We’ve seen a nice little house just up the road from the beach at Tyrrel Bay which has been fixed up since the last hurricane (Ivan in 2004) and we’re waiting to hear what the rent is for that. Also, the guy next door who looks after the place for the landlady who is in England, was unable to unlock the door! We should find out this evening, so have decided not to make any more enquiries today, but have awarded ourselves a day off.

There has been a lot of rain here during November and we have been woken in the night a few times by some giant emptying a humungous bucket of water over the roof for about ten minutes. The result is a far greater humidity than anything we’ve experienced here before. So we’ve been sweating profusely and not actually cooling down. It was a little debilitating to start with, but I think I’m beginning to acclimatise. It should get drier from now on, anyway. The cloud formations have been dramatic – towering, boiling cumulus.

I wish I could put the sounds and smells of this place into the blog to share it with you. As I sit in my kitchen writing this I can hear a woman singing at the top of her voice somewhere down the road....I’ve just stepped out for a looksee and it’s Scraper’s wife sweeping the path singing what sounds like a traditional African song. She sounds happy in her work.

It wasn’t just the rain keeping us awake last night, as next door at Tanty Liz’s were having a big funeral party. When we arrived on Saturday they were chopping up meat on a table outside with big machetes. We saw them making preparations all weekend as more and more people arrived to stay. The preparations stepped up on Monday morning then they all disappeared to the church dressed in sombre finery. I say sombre because they were mainly in black and white, but still the ladies wore fancy hats and all the gold jewellery they could muster. By early evening they were all back next door, spilling out across the road, with plates of food and drinks, and we could hear the conversation getting louder and louder. Then the drumming started. I don’t know how many guys were on the big hand drums, but the rhythms were complicated and loud. If it had been any other kind of party I would have gone out for a gawp, but in respect for the dead person, we kept out of the way. So I don’t know if people were dancing or not. It went on until nearly midnight, though. It made my Mum’s funeral seem rather restrained in comparison. I do know that she would have risen up and given me what for if we’d had African drumming at her send off.

Andy already has project to start. He is going to be working with Ted (English guy) to get a GP14 (sailing dinghy) seaworthy. Ted has some Optimists (little dinghies) as well and teaches the local kids sailing on Saturday mornings. I’m hoping to get involved with helping to teach them to swim, too. Once Andy and Ted have done some fibreglass repair work and got the boat rigged, we will have the use of it, which should be fun.

As the day is getting warmer, I’m going to put away this steaming laptop and go for my daily long, lazy swim in the bay.

Wednesday 26th November 08

We moved into a lovely house with a stunning view over the bay (photos to follow). We think we will enjoy it more once the electricity and water start working! We waited in all afternoon for Grenlec to come and sort it. Looks like there was a small fire in the thing outside the house where the wires join. We have tank full of water but it comes into the house via an electric pump. We have some candles and a bucket of water at the ready and have come out for a pizza.

We also have two lovely kids to dote on living under the house.

Yes, real kids. Their mother is a goat.

Winter in England.

2008-11-09T08:24:00.000-08:00

Hope you like the new look blog. I think it’s easier to read.

Isn’t the weather s*it? Best to get out of here asap. Funnily enough, we have got our tickets now. We’ll be flying out to the sun on 21^st November, after Cherry’s graduation ceremony.

We have new tenant moving into this house just after we leave.

Nothing much else to tell you at the mo, but I will be resuming my regular blog jottings from a secret location in the Caribbean. Hope you will join me. I’ll try to bring some sunshine into the drabness of winter.

On Dry Land

2008-10-19T05:03:00.000-07:00

It's so boring living in a house! It keeps still, for one thing, and it's so quiet at night, with no water lapping and fishing boats going out at 5am. Can't wait to get back to it. First I have to put up with 5 months in the sun - that's if we can find flights we can afford now that XL have gone bust.

Well, we’ve been pretty busy since the funeral. The tenants left Andy’s house looking superficially ok, but we keep finding more stuff to clear up, clean, paint or get rid of. It’s quite satisfying, though, to get the house as nice as we can for the new tenants. We hope someone is going to take it at the end of November, but it’s not certain yet. So if any of you know anyone who wants a really nice Cotswold cottage with plenty of room for cat-swinging, a lovely conservatory with a view across the valley, super nice kitchen and bathroom, attractive inglenook fireplace fitted with an efficient wood-burner, and private garden, let us know.

Backtracking a bit, I left Andy in Spain all on his own for ten days, during which time he gave himself a crash course in Spanish, using the Michelle Thomas CD Rom set, and, with the heavy aid of a dictionary, managed to communicate with locals enough to buy a valve attachment for the bicycle pump, a new container of Camping Gas, and to get the boat safely hauled out of the water and parked on the land. He assures me he has done everything he had to do to put the boat safely to bed for the winter, all tucked up and everything. I withhold judgement until such time as I have returned to Ares and surveyed the scene.

Meantime, with visits planned to family in Kent, friends in Cornwall, more windows to clean on Andy’s house, more garden to hack back and burn, friends to see and annoy when we tell them how nice it is not going to work, long-lost daughter form NZ to hang out with, little granddaughter to visit until she howls, then leave her with distraught Mum, we’re finding we’ve got plenty to occupy us until Cherry’s Graduation ceremony, after which we intend to leave the country as fast as we can to get away from the failing banks, crashing property markets and businesses going bust.

Hasta luego.

Blogification - 26th September 08

2008-10-19T04:43:00.000-07:00

I wrote this episode just before I had to fly back to England, so it never got posted on the blog. You can read it now.

26^th September 08

I’m getting bored now. I divide my time up between reading, doing crosswords and swatting flies. That’s when I’m not going shopping, cycling or going to the Biblioteca to use the wifi and the Skype phone. So far we’ve managed to find British yachtspersons with whom to swap the books we’ve read. It means we get a mixed lot of books to read – Andy’s now reading one by Lyn Andrews, described on the cover as Catherine Cookson of the north. But some of them have been very good.

We have tended to bump into the same people again along this Spanish coast. Yesterday we had drinks aboard a British boat with some people from the New Forest. They told us they’d sold three boats and bought two in the last few weeks! Their “proper” boat was in Lymington. The one we went on here was just their “knockabout”. It was twice the size of ours, with three bedrooms and two toilets. Still, we didn’t mind slumming it for a bit, just to be sociable. Then we had the cockney couple from the cat on our boat for drinks last night, but they’ve now gone south. It’s been really really windy since we’ve been here, and even if we’d been trying to go somewhere else, we wouldn’t have wanted to.

We’re now keen to find Paco to talk to. He’s the guy who’s going to haul the boat out for us, and we want to make sure he’s going to do it before we leave for England in ten days’ time. We fear he may want to leave it in until we’ve gone, then haul it out without us looking. We want to see it come out, be securely settled on land, and inspect her bottom, the prop, the seacocks, the rudder and the keel. We’re going to see if we can find him this evening and pin him down to a date. We may need to find Marco to act as translator. The problem is finding people at work. It’s no good going now because they’ll all be at “lunch” which last from about 1.30 to about 5.30. That’s the best time, we find, to go out and do anything, like cycling or going to the supermercado, because there’s no-one around and it’s quiet. The morning’s no good for us because we get up too late. The early evening to late evening is when the shops open again and everybody crawls outside dressed in their best clothes and goes for a walk. There is a kind of unspoken rule about the etiquette of the “paseo”. It’s a kind of power game as to who gives way to whom on the pavement. The smarter your clothes and the more bling you wear, the less likely you are to get out of the way of other strollers. We are always pitifully underdressed in shorts and tee-shirts and find elderly ladies in high heels with matching bags and sculpted hair walk straight at us knowing that we will step aside.

We’ve just realised it’s Friday, which means the boatyard guys seem to have knocked off early. That’s means we’ll have to try and catch him on Monday, now.

I like and admire the “mañana” mentality – until, that is, I want to get something done.

Sad News

2008-10-06T10:27:00.000-07:00

Hi readers, I haven't been on here for a while because I've been coping with some personal sadness. I had to fly back to England last Sunday (28th September) because my mother was ill in hospital. Sadly, she died. It had been expected for a number of years and she was very frail and ill. I am glad that now she has been freed from her worn out body and all the cares and anxieties, depression and pain. She is now with Dad again after a ten year separation. This is the eulogy I have written to speak at her funeral this week.

PHYLLIS 1925 - 2008

83 years ago my Mum, with her twin sister, Betty, was born prematurely, weighing just 2lbs … a bag of sugar . The doctor told our Grandma to put the little mites in a drawer and not to get too attached as they wouldn’t last the night. Well they did last the night. Mum, in fact, lasted 30,267 days and nights. She was FULL of life. She was a tall, strong woman with a powerful character. She was vivacious and passionate and could be quite frightening at times. I can remember her flying down the kitchen with a hair brush in her hand ready to give us our due when we’d done something to make her cross. But she was a bit rubbish at aiming and I could usually dodge out of the way, and as quickly as it had arisen, her anger would abate and she’d give up and be sorry.
But she laughed more often than she was cross. She had a huge sense of fun and playfulness. She liked being a bit naughty. When we were little and still living in St Albans there was a local Bobby who used to call in for cups of tea, homemade cake, a chat and a laugh. He’d come in the front door, take his helmet off and put it by the phone, leaving his cape on the back of his bike which was propped up outside. Mum, in her daftness, thought it would be a great joke to steal something from a policeman, so she nipped out the backdoor, took his cape, and hid it, expecting him to go out and say “’Ullo, ‘ullo, ‘ullo, what’s been goin’ on ‘ere then?” Well, he drank his tea and off he went ……. After a few days Mum didn’t know what to do. She was really embarrassed and in the end she had to go to the police station and own up and give back the cape. Dad would have teased her mercilessly. I grew up thinking “Daft old woman” was a term of endearment …. which it was.
Mum ran the shop in Freshwater for 10 years and was really popular in the village because she was so cheery, laughing and joking with the customers. What people didn’t realise was that she would come in exhausted at the end of the day, take out her plate with the two false teeth on it and leave it somewhere around the house, then collapse in front of the TV with her feet in a bowl of Radox. If anyone knocked the door she’d get up, look round frantically, saying, “Where’s my tooth?” Once I put it in a mug of water in the deep freeze overnight. When she tried to pick it out of the mug on the windowsill in the morning it was in a solid block of ice. She wasn’t cross that time …. she laughed.
People were drawn to her generous nature. When I came back to live in Freshwater when Sarah was little she was ALWAYS, every day, entertaining friends at the big pine table in the kitchen with coffee, home baking, a chat and a laugh.
What were the best things she gave me?
There was so much fun, warmth and the freedom to go off and do things - riding bikes, horses, climbing the cliffs.
But there are three things I’ll mention in particular - all of which I’ve passed on to my own three daughters:
She took me to libraries from an early age and engendered a love of books and reading.
She took me swimming from an early age - although she didn’t share Dad’s love of boats and sailing, cos it made her seasick, but she loved being in the water and was a strong swimmer.
Thirdly, she took us to the Clark’s shop to get our feet measured and made us wear comfortable shoes.
Thank you, Mum, for everything.

Ría de Ares

2008-09-21T08:15:00.000-07:00

21^st September 08

Well, I see I haven’t written a blog for about 11 days. So here goes.....

We were getting quite settled in Viveiro and making friends with other Brits on boats and with the port staff. One of them looked like Peter Sellers and had a similar enjoyment of a joke. He was particularly animated the day after the boss guy came in with his arm in a sling. Apparently he’d had a tankful the night before and crashed his car on his way home. I asked in Spanish if his arm was broken. I was told no, just cut and stitched. When I asked if his car was broken, Peter Sellers cracked up completely, while trying to hide his amusement from his boss.

We had more or less decided to pull the boat out there for the winter and spend three weeks having a holiday. There was a handy boat-hoist; the supermercados were close; there was a nice beach nearby; the showers, though basic, had plenty of hot water. We booked our flights home from La Coruña. The journey to the airport was going to be slightly cumbersome, however we discovered that the journey back from the airport to Viveiro would have been impossible without staying a night in a hotel, so we decided to carry on and get a bit closer to La Coruña. Also, with one of the hoist drivers having put off his operation to cure tunnel vision in order to cover for the one with his arm in a sling, we thought Sally might prefer to be lifted out elsewhere.

We left Viveiro in what we expected to be an Easterly force 4 to 5, but turned out not be much wind at all, so we ended up motor-sailing to the next Ría, which is Cedeira. That was such a lovely place to anchor overnight and it was free. It is a completely sheltered bit of water surrounded by wooded hills, rugged cliffs and golden beaches. We both think it was the nicest place we’ve been to on this trip. We had a brief foray ashore, before going to have drinks on a Cockney couple’s catamaran (nice bit of alliteration). The little town on the river was absolutely charming, with the main square having a lovely beach at one end. We would like to have stayed there for a few more days and explored, but heavy weather was forecast for the Friday. We needed to check out whether Ares would do for over-wintering the boat, because if not, we would have to find somewhere else; so we set off next morning round the north-west corner of Spain.

Again, there was less wind than forecast and again we motor-sailed. The coast-line here is rugged and beautiful. Unfortunately it is mostly shrouded in a hazy mist. We were visited by a pod of dolphins again, which played and raced around the boat for about 20 minutes. I sat on the foredeck and watched them while my Magnum photographer took pictures of the water where the dolphins had just been. It was a nice way of marking what may well be our last sail of the year.

We’ve done 906 miles since leaving Poole in June and about 3,000 miles altogether in Sally since we bought this boat 3 ½ years ago. Now we are going to leave Sally here in the Ría de Ares which is the next one along from El Ferrol and opposite to La Coruña. It is quite a small town (only one supermercado) and a bit of a backwater. The marina has been enlarged in recent years and has plenty of room. One advantage is that the guy who works in the office was brought up in London, speaks perfect English and is a willing translator when it comes to negotiating with the boatyard guy. He is also a very useful source of local information and says he can book us taxis and so on. I am managing to make myself understood in Spanish, but the locals all speak Gallegan (Galician Spanish which is a bit a mixture of Catalan and Portugese), so I’m finding it very difficult to understand them.

So far it has been quite warm here. In fact, yesterday was so hot we had to put up the sunshade over the cockpit. We also cycled round to one of the beaches for a refreshing swim. Although a bit cloudy today, it is still warm. I hear that the weather has improved in England, but I’m still not really looking forward to it. Here in September, it is like a hot June day in England, if any of you can remember what that feels like. I am, however, looking forward to catching up with my family and friends, then hopefully we will be heading off for more sun and adventures in Grenada, if we can find an affordable flight, seeing as XL have just ceased trading.

Now where did I stow my fleece?

I shall carry on blogging, though, so don't go away......

Viveiro 10.09.08

2008-09-11T07:26:00.000-07:00

Well it feels like I haven’t written on the blog for quite some time. We left Ribadeo on Monday and found, as soon as we left the Ría, that there was very little wind and we motored to Viveiro.

The last week in Ribadeo had been their fiesta time. We walked up the hill to see a band one night with a couple off a boat from Scotland. They’re spending 3 years going round the world in a 44ft yacht, which makes ours look very small. They had two toilets! as well as everything else you could possibly imagine in the electronic gadgetry department and every other department. They didn’t like the band though, as they were expecting something more traditional and Spanish, not the long-haired hippies who looked straight out of the early 70’s with their version of Cream’s Strange Brew. So we went back to their boat to try all the different aged Scottish malt whiskies they’d brought along with them – at least Andy did; I stuck to the vino tinto out of the litre carton at 0.59€. Andy keeps telling me how much money we’re saving by being here. I’m a bit more concerned for our livers.

Other features of the fiesta were more bands of the traditional rock and roll style, fairground rides for children, lots of stalls, mainly manned by South Americans, selling all sorts of stuff no-one needs, and huge figures and people with oversize cartoon heads, dancing around to the music of bagpipes. Also, for the two nights of the weekend, when it was the fiesta of Santa Maria de Campo, I could hear Roman Catholic Church organ music, singing and chanting during the early hours of the morning wafting down from the Plaza Major. It’s no wonder they have to shut everything down for 3 or 4 hours in the middle of the day and take a siesta.

While there, we did a long cycle ride, taking in part of the pilgrimage route which joins the Camino de Santiago de Compostela. This is a tourist route goes from the Pyrenees all the way across northern Spain, to Santiago de Compostela, near La Coruña. It was good to cycle on tarmac lanes with no cars, up through the forests of eucalyptus (an import which seems to have taken over much of the hillside forestry of northern Spain), giving us marvellous views of the Ría.

So we arrived safely in Viveiro, which is quite a way up this Ría and very sheltered from the Atlantic swell. There is an interesting historic old walled town here, completely hidden behind the miles of new apartment blocks. It has old stone gateways and narrow lanes, opening out into the Plazas. We came across an almost exact replica of Lourdes by one of the many old churches. People who wish some ailment or problem to be cured, buy a small plastic limb, or head, or cow, depending on their affliction, and hang it on the wall beneath the effigy of the Virgin Mary. You can also light a votive candle by putting a coin in a slot, and a pretend candle lights up with an electric flickering bulb. It was an insight into the Catholic faith which will stay with me.

I am still adjusting to this life. It sounds from this Blog as if all is sweetness and light, however there is a dark side. I’ve been quite depressed at times from being a perpetual tourist. We’re just passing through and nobody knows us, and we know nobody. I grew up in a holiday place and know what we locals thought about what we called grockles or rubber-necks. We occasionally make contact with other people on boats, then we part and never see them again. Quite often I’m very pleased not to meet them again, as many seasoned yachties seem to be tradition-bound, closed-minded, pedantic bigots, who are only too willing to put us right and tell us how everything they know and do is right and how crap everything else is. Those are just the nice ones! No. I am exaggerating there. We’ve met some very nice people too, but, as I say, they sail onto the next place. The other thing I’m finding difficult is not having enough to do. Well, we always have stuff to do, but it’s the sort of stuff you do on holiday. Everywhere we go we do the same stuff. Find the supermarkets, get a map from the Tourist Information or from the Oficina de Puerto, and explore. We hardly even scratch the surface, though, and we never understand why what’s going on is going on, if you know what I mean. Anyway, I shall wait and see how my attitude changes as we go along. Perhaps I’m expecting too much. I realise that the world has changed. There’s no such thing as a traveller any more, only tourists. Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep positive for Andy’s sake. I suspect it’s me that’s driving him to drink.

We’re now seeking out in earnest somewhere to keep the boat for the winter. We’ve booked flights home from La Coruña now. Viveiro is a possibility, but the journey to the airport is a bit of a faff, so we’re planning to go round the corner into the Ría de Ares to see what that’s like.

The good news is that we went for a swim at the beach yesterday, and the water, although not warm, didn’t actually take your breath away and leave us shivering. It wasn’t bad at all.

Ribadeo

2008-09-03T09:38:00.000-07:00

It’s raining. It’s been raining all day and the forecast is for rain tonight, rain tomorrow, rain the next day, and the day after that. So it’s true that the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain – if the plain is the strip of land between the coast and the mountains where shines a vibrant green, on the days that it isn’t overcast in mist and cloud, that is.

Ribadeo is quite a nice town. A bit bigger than Stroud, maybe, and quite run down around the edges. We noticed in Luarca and here that there are a lot of properties for sale and to rent and shops with closing down sales. The credit crunch seems to be biting here as well as in France and Old Blighty. Most of the building work and growth here is the municipal stuff, funded by EU money: new roads, council buildings, marinas, etc. There are quite a few new marinas along this coast line, but very few yachts to fill them. We like the emptiness of the seas and the laid back feel of the marinas. The few British yachts we meet are long distance - either on their way to the Caribbean or on their way back from Turkey. It’s so very different from the French marinas, where boats were coming in and out every day and the staff packed them in like sardines.

This marina is the most restless place we’ve stayed. There are strange currents flowing down the Ria which stir the boats about on their pontoons. One of our mooring lines frayed right through on our first night. We’ve had to keep tightening the ropes, protecting them with plastic tubing and adding more. We also get the sound of fenders squeaking against the sides all night, which doesn’t aid restful sleep. When we get a favourable wind, we’ll be off to Viviero. At the moment it’s all westerly and wet.

We’re now looking along this coast for somewhere to lay-up the boat for the winter so we can return to UK for a visit, before, hopefully, flying off somewhere hot for the winter. We’ve just heard that Andy’s tenants are moving out at the end of September, so if any of you know of someone looking for a beautiful house to rent, let us know. Also, it may mean we can camp out there on our return. If any of you happen to have a spare car, we’d like to borrow it for November, please.

Thunderbolt and lightning, very very frightening...

2008-09-01T02:48:00.000-07:00

“Isn’t it lovely sailing in shorts and teeshirts!” I said to Andy, as we surged along the coast with an easterly wind on our quarter, bathed in sunshine. We left Gijón to enjoy its Fiesta de Sidra* without us, and headed for Luarca, about 40 miles away.
*(Festival of getting completely rat-arsed on local cider, which is poured from a great height into the glass, preferably without looking, in order to make it “fizzy”.)
Two hours later: I watched as spectacular forks of lightning struck where I thought the mountains were, because they had disappeared into mist, and counted the seconds as I listened for the thunder. I began to apply the water- and wind-proof sailing gear. Andy put on his hoody. “That’s not going to do you much good in an aguacero tormentoso,” I said. “What?” he said. “A heavy downpour with thunder. I can see it raining over there.” The forecast had mentioned a possibility of the thundery downpours, but we had been enjoying such lovely settled weather, that we didn’t really take much notice.
We carried on watching the lightning and listening to the rolling thunder as it got nearer. There was just our little boat with its great big tall metal stick surrounded by not very tall sea, with lightning all around us. The skies opened and the rain drops were so big and so numerous that they flattened the waves. We took shelter huddled under the spray-hood.
Andy: “I wonder what you’re supposed to do if your boat gets struck by lightning?”
Liz: “I don’t know. No-one said anything about it on any of the courses we’ve done.”
Andy: “If we survived it, we could just put our fingers in our ears and go la, la, la.”
Liz: “I think we could just panic.”
Andy: “I don’t think that would be very helpful.”
Liz: “Oh, unlike your suggestion, then.”
We thought it prudent to make frequent fixes of position on the chart, in case our instruments got affected. We have known our depth gauge to go haywire under electric storm conditions. But with the coast line we were approaching only a couple of miles away, and us still unable to see it, we thought we might be a bit stuffed if the GPS failed at that point.
As we approached the harbour, the details became more visible through the gloom and, needless to say, we got safely into Luarca. We’re beginning to see why this coastline is so verdant, as we’ve been kept awake by more thunderstorms, but they paled into insignificance in comparison to the heavy metal festival which was playing on the quay last night, including bands like, “Legacy of Brutality” and “Negra Sombra”. We actually did manage to sleep through a lot of it, helped by the fact that the stage was facing away from our boat and about 250yards away.
Luarca is a quaint and unspoiled little town with a thriving fishing harbour. It is built on the sides of a steep gorge with a river running through it. It’s like Chalford by the sea, with derelict little stone cottages with stone tiled roofs with bushes growing out of them and lots of steep steps. There is provision for a few yachts to moor (for free!) but we’ve only seen two others and been on our own here most of the time. It’s so different from the overcrowded marinas we’ve left behind in France. It seems quite old-fashioned here and they don’t seem to have heard of wifi. There is, however, one internet café which we’re going to try this evening and see if we can post this blog and, more importantly, get some weather forecast, otherwise we’re stuck here forever and ever. We don’t seem to be receiving anything on the Navtec or on the VHF here. There is an Oficina de Puerto, but so far the door has always been locked and there is no forecast pinned up. I don’t know how the fishermen manage. The lady in the Tourismo told us that the Cruz Rojo de la Mer (the Red Cross who seem to run the lifeboats) get a weather forecast, but when we asked them yesterday, they only had one for the day before.
We plan to go on to Ribadeo next.

Las Bicicletas nuevas

2008-08-27T09:26:00.000-07:00

Yay! Check out the shiny red bikes.

Viva España!

2008-08-24T09:40:00.000-07:00

We made it! 58 hours across Biscay, living on dry bread, plain boiled potatoes and sips of water. Only the first 48 were the worst, where I spent most of the time lying down with my eyes shut pretending I was somewhere else, devising adverts for the sale of the b*****d boat, while my stomach turned itself inside out. I did have to make myself take some watches, because I knew if Andy didn’t get some rest, things could all go horribly wrong. As it was, we picked up a huge bit of fishing net on our propeller as we were motoring into the south-westerly which was supposed to be a nice westerly. Luckily it was daylight and not too rough and that Andy had just come up from a rest (I’d just been sick over the side) and he stopped the engine very quickly when he heard it go clunk. We drifted 150 miles from the nearest land with about 3 miles to the bottom underneath us and Andy inflated the dinghy to inspect the damage. He squeezed into the wetsuit and snorkelling gear and had to dive under the boat with a sharp knife and cut us free. After about an hour and a half we were ready to continue. That was on the second day. The wind veered and increased. We stuck the sails out and were doing about 7 knots. The third day, I rose again. The sun shone. Less than 99 miles to go. About 30 miles from the Gijon we saw a whale about two boat lengths away from us, blowing. I think they feed along the edge of the continental shelf. Shortly after that we were able to make out land and the Picos de Europas mountains loomed out of cloud. We sailed into Gijon about 6pm in the sunshine. The coast is green with cliffs and river inlets interspersed with sandy beaches. We were in Spain. I never want to do that again – well next time, I’m going to take the Stugeron before I start, and keep taking it all the way.
Gijon
The largest city in Asturias. I don’t like cities. But Gijon is different. It’s spacious, clean, quiet and happy. It has two beautiful beaches. Some beautiful old buildings still remain, although it was mainly destroyed during the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and has been rebuilt as a modern and very attractive city. It has trees, parks, sculptures, bike hire stands, where you put a card in a slot and ride off. The marina is very big and, compared to France, practically empty. It costs about two thirds of the French prices, as does the food.
As we got further south in France the British yachts became fewer, and what there were, were mainly retired people having a few weeks cruising in boats that were kept permanently moored in France. Here, the few British boats there are tend to be those of people with a larger agenda. There are a couple with two little girls (aged 2 and 4) heading for the Caribbean; a couple on their way back from the Azores and Back race who got stuck in Coruña and were trying to get back to England – they’ve just decided they like Gijon so much they’re going to leave the boat here and fly back; and a Dutch couple with two children who are also off to the Caribbean. They are proper boats, solid with long keels, fit for the oceans. Those modern fast, wide boats, fitted with televisions don’t cross Biscay. We’re with the big boys now.
Tomorrow we’re going to try the hire bikes in search of new folders, before make plans to set off westwards along this fascinating coastline.
PS The Spanish language I’ve been waiting to practice is all coming out in French now. C’est la vie! See what I mean!

Off to Spain

2008-08-19T04:00:00.000-07:00

Looks like we have our window for Biscay. I can't find any more excuses not to go, so it looks like we'll be leaving tomorrow morning - Wed - should arrive Gijon on Friday.

Watch this space.....

Sorry

2008-08-19T03:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry, folks, for the last two rants. Please don't stop reading. I like to know there's someone there that I can talk to.

Things were getting just too much for a while, but I'm getting over it and getting things back into proportion. I think I'm getting over mourning for my bike, too.

I can't promise no more rants, though, as there are so many things that happen in this crazy world which deserve to be ranted at. Not that it does any good.

We are still stuck in France, but it looks like there'll be a weather window this week (Wed - Fri) for us to get across Biscay to Gijon.

We had become resigned to not going there at all, and taking the canals, but that was proving problematic. We have to take a test and get a certificate which we should have done in England, except that we weren't panning on going that way. Also, there are other regulations which we're not sure if we comply to. If we can't cross Biscay and can't get through the canals, then we'll most likely have to turn round and bring the boat back to England.

We've worked out that we've spent, so far, about twice what we were expecting. This is mainly becuse we've been in France for twice as long as we were expecting and been forced to stay in expensive marinas in order to get internet access and long-range weather forecasts. The other reason is that the exchange rate is very unfavourable.

If we can get to northern Spain, our expenses will be much lower.

So, it's either Spain by the weekend, a month getting through the canals and then finding ourselves in the Med, or back home.

I'll let you know.

It's a Dog's Life - Another Rant

2008-08-16T03:42:00.000-07:00

Well that was exciting – just had a visit from three young men in uniform with Douane written on their chests. They just wanted to know where we'd come from, where we were going, had we anything to declare and to check our ships papers and passports. They've gone away now. I thought they were going to take the boat apart searching for drugs or illegal immigrants or whatever else they may have been looking for – potatoes or salt, I expect. I managed to get into the conversation about our bikes being nicked, mainly so that I could paint us as the innocent victims.

Well, we're still here, in L'Herbaudière. Yes. A week here now and still no weather window for Spain. After three days of howling winds and rain, pinning us onto the pontoon, squashed by the boat rafted up to us, squeaking fenders all night, it is now hot and sunny. We thought we were going to go yesterday or today, but there is more shit coming at us from across the Atlantic, expected tomorrow and Monday. We're hoping a window might open up next week, if the high pressure out there decides to sit on the Azores and push the lows up over England. Meantime we wait and see. Tomorrow we shall take the free bus, yet again, - the lady driver is quite friendly to us now, even though we haven't got a clue what she's chatting about. We just smile back – to walk to the SuperU where we can get the Wifi for €3 per hour. It's so noisy in there that it's impossible to use the Skype phone. The Port said it would have Wifi on 15^th August – yes, that's today, but when I asked yesterday they said it was coming at the end of August now.

It's pretty annoying being here with no bikes, though. We've walked all the walks. We're thinking of trying a swim this afternoon, when the tide's come up a bit and hopefully warmed up the water on the beach. At low tide there are miles and miles of wet sand (and seaweed) which is utilised by land-yachts. We've been trying to get new bikes, but it's very difficult to speak in French on a phone, because they gabble back and don't understand that I don't understand, if you understand what I mean. The bike shop in Noirmoutier did have a go at ordering some for us but told us it was impossible. So we continue to wait, bikeless.

I'm keen to get to Spain. I've been revising from my Spanish language text books. I've just started reading Love in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to get in the mood. And maybe we'll be able to buy bikes in Spain. I also hope that they don't have as many dogs in Spain as they do in France. What is it with the French and their dogs? I thought Britain was supposed to be the land where we treat our pets better than our children. Here nearly everyone has at least one dog. They take them in shops, restaurants and bars; they carry them in bags, give them rides in bicycle baskets, and even have special bicycle trailers for the dog to sit it! I've never seen so many dogs being dragged, against their will, onto boats. Huge men with shaved heads and tattoos have little lap dogs on leads. It's impossible to walk along the pavement without getting tangled in one of those stupid leads that extend and allow beloved pooch to get in front of legs, bikes and (hopefully) cars. The amount of merde on the pavements also reflects the French love of their favourite pets.

If we haven't found a weather window in the next week or two, we're going to have to take the canals. That's not as easy as it sounds. We'd have to get the mast taken down, and the boom, even our radar and wind turbine are too high, we think, for some of the bridges. We'd have to find a way of taking the exam so that we can get our international certificate of competence for the inland waterways. There are 120 locks between Bordeaux and the Med. At least we wouldn't have to worry about the weather, though.

So we wait.

Grand Theft Vélo - L'Herbaudiere 12th Aug 08

2008-08-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

....and it was all going so well....

There's a lot to tell you, so I'll start with the good stuff. Saturday we got our bikes out and had a good old explore of this very interesting island. It is joined to what we would call the mainland, but the French call the continent by (a) a bridge and (b) a causeway which is a road for cars only at low tide. They sell a funny postcard in the tourist shops showing a car under water as the tide has come in. Not so funny to us in England who remember the flooding last summer. Anyway, the main economic activities here (apart from tourism) are growing potatoes – famous Ile de Noirmoutier pommes de terres which are sold in little fancy packages to tourists, mussels, oysters and salt. There are vast areas of salt pans on the marshes and people gather salt, as the water evaporates in the sun, and sell it, you've guessed it, wrapped in fancy packages to tourists. It is a completely flat island made of sand and the main mode of transport (apart from the constant jams of tourists in cars) is tourists on bikes. There are about three million bikes (I counted) on this island and a marvellous grid of cycle tracks and roads to get around on, away from the cars.

So why did you pick on our bikes to nick, you bastard, whoever you are out there, I hope your thieving fingers rot, painfully and slowly.

That was Sunday morning, as Andy set off to buy pains au chocolats for our breakfast, then came back to tell me our bikes had been stolen from where they were locked to the bike rack at the end of the pontoon. That was when our world fell apart. With no transport, we couldn't get to the town of Noirmoutier, which is where we have to go to get internet access and weather forecasts, so that we can get out of this place.

We went to the Bureau du Port and told them and got them to phone the police for us. At this point, there was a screaming of sirens, flashing of blue lights, the exits to the Island were sealed, scene of crime officers descended with finger-printing kit, nets, guns and prison wagons. No, there wasn't. We were told to go to Noirmoutier to report it to the Gendarmerie, but not to go until the afternoon, as they were busy. But how do we get there? There is a free bus. Wow. Yes, in July and August there is a free bus about 5 times a day to and from Noirmoutier.

The bus dropped us near the centre of the town and we had to walk about a mile to find where the bold Gendarmes hide behind a big barred fence and locked gates. There seemed to be no way in, until I walked past the sign saying no entry apart from military personnel, through the car park and up the steps. A very suspicious officer opened the door to us babbling about how we were meant to use the phone outside to get in. Je ne comprends pas in an English accent soon shut him up. He let us in and we managed to explain about our bikes. He got us a form to fill in and gave us a case no. so we can claim on the insurance. Oh, by the way, you'd better go to the Municipal Police to see if they've found your bikes. While we were there a couple were admitted, after waiting at the gate a long time, with bleeding hands, ranting on about something and being hit on the head, and the bold gendarmes, with true sang froid, told them to go away. How I wish I could understand this stupid language.

The Municipal Police Station was completely hidden behind the Mairie, down an alleyway, round the corner, with a sign about three inches across announcing we'd finally found the right place, after searching for half an hour, then asking at the Tourist Info office, and a woman officer took down details of the bikes on a post-it, which she'd probably binned before we were back out of the alley. Anyway, there seemed little danger of any of them actually solving any crime, but at least they were safe.

Now don't even get me started on the Restaurant....

Oh, all right then.... we'd gone up there on Saturday evening lured by the promise of the vegetarian set meal for €20. Madame told us the restaurant was full but would we like to make a reservation for the next day, Sunday? Yes, we would.

Sunday, we walked, bikeless, to the restaurant and were shown to our table. It was all rather bizarre. There was a huge stuffed caterpillar against the wall, which may have been art. Not sure. The waitress had very little English and spoke so quietly that we couldn't hear her, anyway. She brought a huge menu, the size of a photo-album, made of that lumpy home-made paper you get in gift shops. As I flicked through (and she only gave one to me, not to Andy, whom she never addressed at all) could see all sorts of stuff in French, but nothing about what food or drink they had on offer. She turned it to the wine page and said something about it starts here. I looked at the wines (Andy normally chooses the second cheapest) and then handed it to him to choose. We chose a rosé. She went off, with the menu.

She brought the wine. We drank some. She then brought a plate with some little melon balls and a little pot of mushed up beetroot to dip them in with a cocktail stick. Okay, we did that. When she came to serve the people at the next table, I said I would like to read the menu. We'd not ordered any food yet, and were hungry. She said something I couldn't hear and the man on the next table said he'd explain. Apparently, on Sunday evenings there's a set menu for €22 when the chef uses up all his left overs in the fridge so you don't know what you're going to get. Oh, we said. That explained some of it. “Nous sommes végétariens”. She went away. We waited for some time. The other tables got brought an entrée in a glass with some salad and a bread roll. Eventually the chef came in with two plates which he proudly set in front of us. There were two very small pieces of fish arranged on some haricots verts with spring onion tops. Andy said, “Je suis végétarien.” No problem, said the chef in his little hippy African-type hat, and took his plate away. I ate mine. It didn't take long. Then the chef brought Andy a plate of fried potatoes on some green vegetables. Then the waitress brought us both a small bread roll. I'd already finished my fish, so ate the bread while Andy ate his, what we thought was an entrée. Then we waited a long time. The other tables had plates of hot stuff brought to them and they ate up. Then the waitress brought us a spoon and fork, and we wondered what kind of main dish it was going to be. You never know with this nouvelle cuisine lark. After a while the waitress brought us a desert. I was gobsmacked. Partly because I didn't want one. I wanted my dinner. Partly because it had a cooked banana lurking in one corner (which looked to me like merde de chien) and something in a little tiny glass. A half a strawberry in another corner and a tiny drizzle of what looked like kiwi juice. Oh, and the mint leaf, of course. I ate half of the stuff in the glass, but the spoon was too big to get the rest out. I knew Andy would be embarrassed if I stuck my finger in, like I would at home, so I didn't. Then we waited some more. We were hoping for some cheese, or a coffee, perhaps. Nothing happened. I tried and tried in vain to catch the eye of the waitress or the proprietress. People were leaving, all happy and smiling and fed. In the end we went. The bill was €70. I was fuming all the way back to the boat, where I filled up with bread and cheese. Today, I spent two hours with my dictionary penning a letter to the restaurant proprietors about how I felt disappointed, angry, robbed and hungry. Why didn't the stupid woman tell us what happened on Sundays when she took our booking? We would have booked for another night where we could choose the vegetarian option for less money.

That's done it for us, now. We're never eating out again. We had a veggie pizza on Belle Isle where we'd both woken up parched in the middle of the night because of the amount of salt that must have been in it. In Britain there is a huge variety of foods you can eat out: Indian, Chinese, Thai, Italian, French, English, African, McDonalds, fish and chips. In France every restaurant has the same food, every crèperie has the same menu, every brasserie, bistro, whatever, has the same menu. The only thing they ever have which isn't fish or meat is a warm goat's cheese salad as an entrée. The French pride themselves on their food. Well, there are more tastes in heaven and earth, M'sieur, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. You try and find lime pickle or cumin seed in a French supermarket. They don't have it. And another thing, while I'm on a rant, why don't they sell choppped tinned tomatoes. Plenty of tinned tomatoes, not chopped. You have to chop them in the tin, the juice runs down the side and makes a mess. Don't they know we've had them chopped for the last 20 years or so.

Sorry about this, but having our bikes stolen has certainly coloured our vision, to say the least.

My life now consists of getting the bus to town, trying to claim the insurance for our bikes, trying to source new bikes, which is proving impossible and waiting for this infernal wind to die down. Today we rescued a traditional wooden boat in the marina which had broken free of its moorings and was blowing towards us, menacingly. When the guy who works in the marina came to help, he didn't tie the motor launch up properly and it drifted away. Perhaps there's a future permanent career for him in the police force.

Blog - Saturday 9th August – L’Herbaudière, L’Ile de Noirmoutier.

2008-08-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

Well, we’re still in France! We thought we were going to Spain on Wednesday, although it was looking like Thursday was going to be a bit blowy, but on Wednesday morning the forecast was worse (Force 7, gusting to 8), so instead we had a change of plan. We thought we’d keep going a bit further south so that we only had to find a two-day weather window to cross to northern Spain, instead of a three-day one. We said goodbye to Port-Louis and sailed to Belle Ile, which is aptly named. It was lovely. We saw some dolphins on the way but they didn’t hang around. Thursday was indeed very blowy and we were getting the full benefit of the Atlantic swell at our anchor, so we moved into the harbour on Thursday night, which meant waking up the boat next door very early on Friday morning and doing complicated things with ropes, in order to get out and put in a full day’s sailing, as the next port was about 45 miles away.

We had a cracking sail all the way to Noirmoutier in less than 9 hours which was marked by a pod of dolphins swimming along with us, under the boat, in front of it, leaping out beside us, for about twenty minutes. A marvellous and heart-warming sight and such an honour. It was a bit rolly with a following wind and the swell from behind. With our old-fashioned long keel, we were able to keep our course while surfing down the waves. We saw other boats wallowing quite a bit more than we were in the swell, particularly when we got closer to Noirmoutier, where the sea is shallower and the swell was breaking.

So it all went swimmingly until we got into the harbour and the girl in the Service du Port boat gabbled something at me in French which I didn’t understand at all. She then indicated for us to follow her, so we did, right down the harbour, which was absolutely packed with boats rafted up along the hammerheads at the ends of the pontoons. She was pointing and Andy, scrabbling around with ropes, was saying, There, next to the motorboat. Well, there were about two hundred motorboats to choose from and I had no idea where I was meant to be stopping the boat. It became apparent when I saw the harbour wall in front of me and the depth gauge started flashing frantic signals at me, that I was supposed to have stopped at the motor boat which I had just passed. Now, as I said, it was packed in there. There was no room to turn our boat round, so I was forced to try reverse. Now, if any of you have ever tried to reverse in a long-keeled boat, you will know the problem I had. If you haven’t, then take it from me, it’s impossible. As the water you are pushing away doesn’t flow over the rudder, you have no way of steering. The boat goes backwards, but in whatever direction it chooses. It decided to turn itself round to port on this occasion and was stopped when we crunched into a little motorboat rafted up on the opposite hammerhead. Oh, dear. People came out of their cabins to help, smirk, or just protect their own boats. My first thought was, Oh my god, it’s going to be nightmare of paperwork sorting out the insurance. By this time, we had managed to get ropes over to the motorboat on the other side and we were able to park, facing the other way. (At least we’re now facing the right way to get out of here!)

I sat down shakily with a beer, once we were firmly attached to the pontoon, and tried not to look at the blue paint on the motorboat the other side of the fairway. When the harbour girl came back, I called her over and managed, in French, to admit, Nous avons frappé cette bateau, while pointing at the incriminating Sally-coloured paint on the other boat. She went over and washed off the blue smear and gabbled something else at me. It seemed that she thought there was no damage, even though I’d heard a horrible crunch as our inch-thick GRP with teak rail had dented in their ¼ inch-thick shiny white plastic. We even went to the Capitainerie du Port and told them what we’d done. He said there was no damage. So, it looks like we got away with that one.

The pilot book said this place was an unspoilt, old-fashioned mix of yachts and fishing boats. Maybe the authors were here some time ago, but now it is a big marina and the quay is wall-to-wall tourists’ shops, cafés and bars. Not really our kind of place. To cap it all, they have no internet access. Their Wifi is coming on 15th August! Fat lot of good to us. We’re going to have to pedal off to Noirmoutier sur L’Ile in order to find some kind of interweb so that we can continue to pore over weather forecasts in the hope of getting across Biscay. If we don’t manage it in the next week or two, we’re going to have to go the Plan C and take the canals.

The good news is we found a restaurant here which has a vegetarian set meal for €20. As it is the only place in the whole of France (as far as we know) that caters for Veggies, or even admits that they exist, we're going to have to go and try it.

It's also very hot here. I'm suffering a little from an excess of sun yesterday, so I'm going to break out the sunhat.

Bad Hair Day in Port-Louis

2008-08-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

We’re still here in Port-Louis, but I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to write, as I’m trying to get over a very bad haircut. We didn’t do “At the hairdressers” for my French O Level, which was 40 years ago, and the coiffeuse had less English than my French. It was so bad that I went back two days later and asked her to try again. She gave it another going over, but it was too late then. She’d already cut some bits too short. I think it may be terminal, or at least several months in recuperation. Hopefully it will get so hot that I have to wear my sunhat.

We received the charts we were waiting for, and some spokes arrived, but they were the wrong ones. However, we managed, using the French integrated public transport system, where you buy a ticket for €1.25 and it lasts an hour on any buses, including the water buses (or Batobus – get it?), to get to Lorient and a big bike shop which had the correct size spokes. Andy has now replaced 4 broken ones on my back wheel (I’m not really that heavy) and we are fully mobile again. We had actually been getting around to the supermarché, etc, using the bikes provided free by the Bureau du Port. I don’t know if any other marinas offer this service, but this is the only place we’ve ever come across it. I must emphasise how impressed we were, though, with the cheapness and effectiveness of the bus system. Lorient had a noticeable lack of traffic congestion, and a lot of people using the buses.

The seaward approach to Lorient is dominated by the massive concrete submarine pens built by the Germans under Admiral Dönitz during WWII to house their UBoots. The Americans tried to destroy the pens, but didn’t make much impression on them, so they bombed the city almost out of existence in order to cut off the supply lines for fuel, food, water and power in order to stop the Germans deploying their UBoots. Lorient was rebuilt as a pleasant modern city with wide boulevards and squares. The concrete pens are now mainly used for a variety of other purposes, including housing the lifeboats, but they are a chilling reminder of what an unhappy time that was for the French. Next to them is the biggest marina I have ever seen full of the largest, fastest sailing vessels know to man. It makes Cowes look like small fry. There were several of those enormous trimarans like the one Ellen McArthur used to knock around in. You know when a boat goes fast, because it has lots of big corporate logos emblazoned all over it.

We are now waiting for a big enough weather window to get across Biscay and to northern Spain. We need a good three days and three nights of not too much wind, not too little and not in the wrong direction. Not asking much? At the moment there are a series of low pressure systems crossing the Atlantic, into Biscay and hitting the French coast just about where our boat is moored. These are bringing strong winds, rain and the wind is mainly from the South West, which is where we want to go. We don’t fancy three days and three nights of wind on the nose and bashing into waves, which stop the boat, causing the wind to spill from the sails, not to mention the pouring rain and being up to 200 miles from the nearest lifeboat.

So we wait. It’s a nice enough place to be. We haven’t even done the museums yet. We’ve been entertained by a film show one night, where films about the tradition of boat-building and fishing in Brittany were projected onto the sails of an old wooden fishing boat, accompanied by musicians playing Breton bagpipes and another ancient wind instrument, like the thing they blow into on the bag pipe, but without the bag. There is a terrific street market on Tuesday nights until very late, which everyone seems to attend and there is music played outside the bars and lots of stalls selling stuff we don’t want. Yesterday we saw a whole band of bagpipers, pipers, drummers, brass section and their dogs ‘n’ all, practising while marching round the local sports ground. We still think there IS only one tune, repeated as necessary.

Meantime the search for a restaurant which has one vegetarian main course on the menu continues in vain. I had the boat stocked up with sailing snacks ready for the epic voyage, but Andy keeps eating them. Grrrr!

Blog from Port Louis - Sunday 27th July 2008

2008-07-27T07:33:00.000-07:00

In Concarneau it got hot. We had a swim. It was cold. There’s no Gulf Stream here.

We were also very busy trying to organise a few things. Up till Concarneau we’d been happily bumbling along from port to port enjoying not going to work, buying French food, just doing what we do when we’re on holiday, only this time we don’t have to go back home again. We got here and began to realise that we have to make plans to set off across Biscay at some point. We had bought charts for the French coast, but hadn’t seen any available in the chandlers for the north and west coasts of Spain. We assumed we’d be able to buy them in France. We find, after a lot of hot walking, that we can’t. A couple of hours Googling in the café Les Moutons , with free WiFi, but not free bière, some reading up in our Pilot Books and the Nautical Almanac, and we have eventually ordered some Admiralty charts from England to be sent to us. We had to choose a place to get them sent to, knowing they’d take about a week to arrive. We chose Port-Louis, just across the estuary from Lorient.

We were also doing interweb research to locate spokes for my bike. The shop we bought them from in Malmesbury said they’d send us some.

Concarneau is the biggest town we’ve been in since leaving Poole. It has an interesting “Ville Close”, which is a medieval fortified town on an island in the middle of the harbour, accessed by drawbridge. We had a wander round but found the number of tourists’ shops underwhelming. How many striped shirts did those ancient Breton fishermen need? Didn’t they realise that, after all those crèpes, moule frites, kouign amann and American-sized glacés, they really could never get away with horizontal stripes? Why would they want to have their photograph taken with a Johnny Depp look-alike pirate? Was he a Breton?

We were stopped in our tracks by the homme entertaining the crowd with his performing chickens. I say “performing”, if that’s what you call it when you tie a rooster to a small bicycle and push it along a mini high-wire. I couldn’t help wondering if they wouldn’t prefer being force-fed in an overcrowded battery? At least they are blessed with a quicker release when Bernard Matthews turns them into nuggets.

Wednesday night in Concarneau is a big market and we went ashore to listen to the blues duo playing outside Les Moutons. We played “name that tune” again and wandered off to look at the market. We saw our first (and probably last) traditional Breton dancing. It’s a cross between line-dancing and circle-dancing, with less aplomb, done to the plaintive strain of the Breton bagpipe. We didn’t join in. We went back to the blues duo and demonstrated to the natives how to shake a leg with our dazzling display of jiving on the pavement. (Particularly difficult to spin in all-terrain sandals.) Another British couple from the marina joined in. That showed them.

Next day we left Concarneau for Les Iles de Glénan. Only a three hour sail in the sun, but a world away. They are a nature reserve and mainly used for teaching kids to sail. The Pilot Book says they are “as close to the Caribbean as you can get in S Brittany”. Well, Mike and Gill Barron, you have evidently never been there. Although on a sunny day the shoal waters over the white sand are clear and turquoise, there the resemblance ends. There was a decided lack of tepid sea to swim in, palm trees for shade, rum reggae and mangoes. However, we didn’t expect any of that. We anchored there for a night and dinghyed ashore. It was lovely after the bustle of Concarneau to get away from it all, relax and gather our wits. No tarmac, no shops. Lots of birds and rabbits. Concarneau had been frazzling, not just the heat and bustle, traffic and shops, trying to sort out what, where and when we were going to go in Spain, finding we couldn’t get the charts we wanted, not having my bike meant that everything took ages to sort out: I found I was having a crisis of confidence. What are we doing? Why? Let’s go through the canals and forget Biscay and the inhospitable north Spanish coast. I don’t want to go all the way round Spain and Portugal. It’s too far, too expensive. We don’t know what we’re doing.

The Iles de Glénan put it all back into perspective. We stick to the original plan. We’ve got charts on their way. It’ll be fine. We weren’t even put off by waking up on Friday morning to see a yacht resting at an ungainly angle on the rocks about 500m away with the Lifeboat anchored nearby. We drank coffee and watched as the lifeboat men in a rib attached a rope to the yacht and waited for the tide to lift it enough for the big lifeboat to tow it off. After a bit of messing around with ropes and presumably checking that there were no big holes in the hull, they towed it back to the mainland. As other anchored yachtsmen around us woke up, they never knew what a near disaster they hadn’t witnessed.

We set sail for Port-Louis, which contains 5 marinas and the city of Lorient. We had a good sail for most of the way, with the wind on our beam. It died off for a bit, then got up again later as we sailed towards the Ile de Groix and a big bank of rain. The vis dropped as we got into the area where the big ships come in and out of Lorient and we had trouble spotting the navigational buoys. I was glad to drop the mainsail which had been shedding sheets of rainwater into the cockpit for the last hour or two, and we got safely into the harbour, wet through. It was much smaller than we’d thought and the most ramshackle place we’ve seen this side of the Atlantic. We peeled off wet oilies and put up the “tent” over the cockpit. Once the rain had eased off in the evening we went ashore to the Capitainerie to explain that we are awaiting some packages from England to arrive at their office. The Bureau du Port is a semi-derelict shed. The toilets and showers unspeakably old-fashioned (and smelly). We are surrounded by working fishing boats. I was trying to fill in the details of our boat on the form in the office but was too distracted by the some music. My entrails were stirred and my soul thrilled to a blues guitar solo which was streaming out of Youtube courtesy of the Bureau du Port’s internet connection. The charming young man behind the counter told me it was Paul Personne, the best blues guitarist ever. I can recommend it. We knew we were in the right place to spend a few days and await our post from Blighty. A quick explore of this little town confirmed it. It’s on a peninsula which is fortified all round with ramparts, built to defend Lorient from the British and Spanish invaders. There are occasional reinforced oaken doors through the fortifications and you find yourself on a lovely beach. The town is completely unspoiled and has narrow cobbled streets. To top it all, the Port has 4 vélos which they lend out for free, and the showers, grotty as they are, have as much hot water as you want without having to buy a jeton. (The big expensive marinas often charge 2€ just for a 5 minute shower.)

The sun is shining and we’re happy. I’m not going to think about Biscay. I’m putting my fingers in my ears and going la la la.

Up the River Odet.Sunday 20th July.

2008-07-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

From Camaret to Audierne we had the best sail we’d had for ages, through the notorious Raz de Sein. We had a crucial tidal gate to meet to get through the Raz (pronounced Raah), and as the boat was going along better than expected, we were trying to slow down so as not to meet with what can be terrifying eddies (or Grundies, as we call them). However, the sea was calm, (mer belle, as the French meteo calls it) and we had the wind on our beam, and it presented no problems. In fact, it was lovely. We were able to eat lunch and have cups of tea without spilling them, while watching the coast slip past. We didn’t go right into Audierne, but hung off a buoy in the bay of St Evette, which was short bike ride to Audierne. The French supermarchés, just like the ones in England, are now out of town to suit the motorcar user. Now we no longer use the motorcar, we find they don’t suit us at all. We had to walk a very long way up a very steep hill, which was a busy and boring road, to find the soulless buildings on trading estates, surrounded by large carparks.
However, we had a good explore by bike. You don’t have to go far inland to find unspoilt Breton villages and hamlets, each with their very old, very pretty church in the centre. Most of them have ancient communal washing places, like a stone paddling pool built to collect water from the stream, where the women of the village would once have gathered to do the weekly wash. This must have been a very sociable activity, with the children playing together as the women chatted and scrubbed. I don’t recall ever having seen these in England. Must be because of the climate, I guess.
We had a rather boring motor-sail from Audierne to Bénodet. The wind only got up for a good reacha few miles before we entered the mouth of the River Odet. This river is navigable up as far as Quimper at high tide, but not by boats with masts or deep keels. We can, however get a few miles up. We stayed a night at Bénodet on a buoy next to some very smelly fishing boats. It’s a small and very friendly port on the West bank, opposite the main town, but it is a holiday resort. We didn’t mind the church bell telling us the time every hour, but in combination with the Vedettes (pleasure boats which do tourist trips up and down the river), the many other yachts, ribs, motor launches and the ferry going back and forth and the night club which entertained us with dance beat music into the early hours of Saturday morning, we decided to go up river in search of tranquillity. (Especially as we could find no internet access in the town.)
The River is very beautiful once we got away from the marinas and under the big road bridge. We got a couple of miles upriver and anchored for a leisurely lunch. After that, we bravely set off even further up river where it narrows through a tree-lined rock walls. We saw egrets and other fishing birds, a couple of chateaux slid past, and we hung off a buoy next to an ancient stone quay with some ruins of old buildings. The sun came out and we ate fresh artichoke, dripping with butter, as a starter for our evening meal, accompanied by the usual vin rouge. Lovely. After getting into my bunk and reading a few pages of Madame Bovary I was drifting off to the sounds of the river washing past, when it started: the insistent beat of very loud dance, trance, garage or whatever they call it. I don’t know if I’d call it music, in the total absence of any melody, just the electronically produced thumping beat. As I got about two minutes sleep in the whole night, I had a long time to think about the difference between “factory” produced beat noise, and the discourse and communication which happens when musicians play instruments and the listeners respond by dancing or just foot-tapping. It was still going on at 9am this morning when we gave up and had breakfast, now accompanied by heavy metal, which then changed to punk rock, all very loud. We could see lads in hoodies standing around on the quay with beer bottles in hand. It eventually stopped. When I dinghyed my bike ashore to go for an explore, one of the walking wounded trying to engage me in conversation about bikes and fishing. Even with my limited French, I could tell he was talking bollox. When I got back from my cycle ride (with bread, vin de table and tarte aux pommes) they were lying around on the grass, unconscious. We thought it would be a good time to go and start singing popular folk songs, loudly, nearby. We didn’t have to, though, because enough Sunday afternoon locals turned up in cars, launching boats, canoes, dogs and even a pony into the river to disturb them. I just hope they’ve taken their generator home as we’re intending to sleep here again tonight.
Off to Concarneau tomorrow in search of internet, water, water filter (as ours is broken) and charts for northern Spain.

Another spoke has broken on my bike, making it unusable now, really.

Audierne, Near Quimper

2008-07-17T02:09:00.001-07:00

Andy has started talking to the outboard motor!

Camaret, 14th July, after the storming of the Bastille.

2008-07-14T06:50:00.000-07:00

I’m not sure whether Bretons in funny outfits playing bagpipes had much to do with the storming of the Bastille in Paris 1789, but they symbolically processed along the quay last night followed by children carrying paper lanterns. We followed for a bit, but couldn’t decide whether they were playing the same tune over and over again, or that it just sounded like that to our unaccustomed ears, so we went and listened to the band playing in the car park instead, where we were able to play “name that tune” and even had a little dance, but then had to stop to watch the feu d’artifice.

Well, the locals certainly made a night of it. We stayed up until after midnight! Unheard of for us. But we could hear the youth being rowdy long after we went to bed.

A few days ago, an English chap from one of the yachts had caught our eye, as he was wearing sparkling white trousers, navy sweater with a fancy yacht club logo, and a captain’s hat with gold stuff on the peak. As he passed our boat on the pontoon he asked if we had suffered any sadness in our family, as our ensign was flying at half mast. We explained that that was just the way it had been when we bought the boat from the last chap. We’ve never bothered to fly our ensign before, but we have been since we crossed the Channel, simply so that Johnny Frenchman doesn’t babble away at us in his mother tongue, leaving us nonplussed. However, after a long and informative lecture from “The Commodore”, as we privately named him, we decided we had better get some string up to our cross trees and fly the courtesy flag of the country we are in. Apparently it means we are asking protection from that country, under the Geneva Convention, and are not invading. We thought it best to make that clear, on entering a foreign country, despite the obvious lack of canons or other weaponry on our little boat. Now, Andy has asked me not to mention the amount of equipment and effort it takes to get a man of his age up, but nevertheless, we managed it. I’m hoping to attach a photo of Andy after I’d winched him up the mast – well, what did you think I was talking about? We now have the French flag flying from our starboard cross-trees and have also bought a Spanish one ready for the next country. We are a little concerned about the Basques, but have decided we probably just won’t go there. As to the raising and lowering of the flags at sunrise and sunset, they can stuff that. I bet you didn’t know that we are supposed to lower the ensign if we see a naval vessel from any country and wait for them to lower and raise their ensign, at which point we can then raise ours again. Yeah, right.

By the way, I forgot to mention, after a cycle ride of about 8 miles to Crozon the other day, we were unable to get spokes to fit our small wheels. We are going to have to try internet and posting to somewhere where we expect to be. The internet is very patchy here, which is why I haven’t managed to get any pix on the old Fred Blog lately.

Kouign Amann from Camaret = a stonking 9 out of 10. I know I said I wasn’t going to eat any more, but it looked so good. But it wasn’t even a bike ride away – just a short walk. What the hell – it’s a holiday today here in France.

Saturday 12th July – Life is a Camaret!

2008-07-13T03:36:00.000-07:00

Here we are. The sun is shining. We’ve turned the corner and are out of the Channel. We’ve left the forbidding granite behind. The landscape is softer.
We had a good sail here yesterday – 8 ½ hours door-to-door – and the wind abated, as did the waves, as the day went on. We hardly even got rained on. The Chanel du Four wasn’t nearly as bad as we’d expected, with the tide zipping us through. We were accompanied by several interesting old wooden boats, gaff-sailed and square riggers, which were belatedly making their way to Brest for the huge international festival of traditional boats which is being held there this weekend.
Camaret is touristy, but charming. There’s a holiday feel around as Monday is a holiday for the French, who like to celebrate the storming of the Bastille with fireworks and alcohol. We just watched a boat arrive from Brest with 8 blokes on it who took three attempts to come alongside the pontoon and tie up. They didn’t want to be separated from their vin rouge and cigarettes just to moor the boat safely. One of them was playing a trumpet just now.
We’re now having to cycle to Crozon to find a bike shop, as I’ve broken a spoke (un rayon de roue) and the shops will be shut on Sunday and Monday. It’s all go.

Friday 11th July – Escape from l’Aber Wrac’h

2008-07-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

We’re preparing to leave this morning. The wind is slightly less horrific than it’s been for the last eleven days. Eleven days we’ve been here. Once we’d found our way around we went into a time slip. We must have stepped through a portal in the fabric of the universe when we stepped ashore. Thenceforward, we observed the normal world as through a veil. We have at last, finished the blind for the forehatch after four weeks of conceptualising, fashioning, manufacturing and fitting. The reason we needed it was that we were waking up too early in the mid-year sun. Once in France, that automatically became one hour later. Once we were in the parallel universe, it no longer occurred. We sleep for 12 hours and manage to maintain a kind of wakefulness for the other 12 hours. The blind does help, though, at the other end of the night, as it is still light when we yawn our way into the fo’c’sle.
So, the preparations are done: we’ve removed the sail cover, attached the main halyard, winched up the genoa halyard, put in the speedo, the waypoints are in the GPS and marked on the charts. We’ve stowed everything that can move and got our foul-weather gear out of the locker. We’ve checked and double checked and triple checked the weather forecast. High water at Brest is 1205 and we plan to leave at 1100. Andy’s making me a cup of tea.
So it’s goodbye to the Monument of Desolation, where we had cycled to the western tip of the peninsula and stopped to look at the War Memorial. I stood on the low granite surround to peer at the weathered lettering, when I was assaulted by a gnarl-faced Breton man in furious French. I think he thought I was disrespecting the war heroes: the liberators and the Resistance. I tried to explain in my ‘O’ level French. “Je suis desolée. Je lis les mots seulement.” But he wouldn’t listen and carried on shouting and waving his arms. Later I put it down to his lunchtime anis having worn off and it was not yet time for his evening ones. Or maybe he had missed his game of boules because of the rain.
And it’s farewell to the Roundabout of Despair, where I collapsed on the grass verge to eat an apricot pastry and rest my wearied feet. It was our first day in L’Aber Wrac’h and we’d walked about 5 or 6 km to Lanilis for supplies in the hot sun – it was the last we’d seen for almost two weeks. We asked at the Bureau du Tourisme for directions back to the marina, away from the main road, parce qu’il y a plus de voitures. It was too embarrassing to go back to the lady in the office and ask again. We owed it to all future British tourists not to seem too stupid to follow directions (given in English) and find our way back. Anyway, it worked. After the pastry we used the Force and the position of the sun and the lie of the land and got back to our boat. A harbour is always downhill, wherever you start from.
We’ve got a bit bored with being in one place, even though we didn’t actually manage to squeeze a visit to the Museum of Seaweed into our packed schedule. We’ve seen enough. It’s onwards, into the wind and rain to see what delights Camaret-sur-Mer has to offer.
Kouign Aman á la Lanilis = 8 but I’ve decided not to try any more. They contain more calories than the cycle ride to fetch them uses.

Trapped by the weather and the biggest cycle race in the world.

2008-07-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

It looks like we're going to be in L'Aber Wrac'h for a few more days. Don't fancy Beaufort Force 8 and what they call High Seas!

However, here in the Cafe du Port, Andy is glued to the big plasma screen with the first day of the Tour de France in full pedal. He has a biere in his hand. Andy heaven! The Tour set off from Brest this morning on the first day of the gruelling 3 week ordeal. We decided not to take the bus down to Brest to watch it, as it would have been very crowded. Here we get marvellous arial tv shots of the Breton countryside. It doesn't seem to matter to Andy that the commentary is in fast French that neither of us can make head or tail of.

One morning this week I had a bit of a scare when I turned on my phone to find a message from my daughter, Cherry. I could hardly understand what she was saying because of the emotional flood of tears and sobs which met my ear. Oh no, I thought, something really terrible has happened. It turned out she’d got her final Uni results and had been awarded a B Sc with first class honours! She was actually rather pleased.

Score for Kouign Amman from the patisserie in Landeda, just up the hill from L’Aber Wrac’h = 8. Firmer texture with a subtle layer of apple. Nice chewy edge.

American Independence Day.

2008-07-04T03:28:00.000-07:00

Il pleut, ici.

We left Primel last Monday and motor-sailed through a slack wind to L’Aber Wrac’h, which is on the sticky out bit of France: their equivalent of Land’s End. It was a bit of a culture shock coming back into a marina after the quiet and independence of hanging on a buoy in Primel. We were finding it difficult to get up-to-date weather forecasts there, though, as the print-out on the notice board outside the Bureau du Port was changed about once every 5 days! Going on the forecast we got from cycling to the town and using the internet in the Tourist Info on Saturday (last blog day) we decided it was safe to leave when we did. We had got a bit fed up with the constant rolling motion from the Atlantic swell. It would get worse at higher states of the tide and we had to cling onto our bunks at night. Keeping food on the table was also a challenge.

There was a melee of boats coming into the marina, no signs telling us where the “Visiteurs” could moor, and no Capitaine du Port in sight. We managed to find a place to tie up then set off to get the code no. for the Sanitaires and the WiFi. This marina is newly built and the buildings on the quay are still under construction. There is the occasional construction vehicle to negotiate, a lot of loose gravel which gets in your sandals, the ubiquitous merde de chien, and the facilities, we discovered, smelt less than sanitaire. The hommes and femmes are in together and the jeton (token) for the shower is 2€. We have been informed that the douche lasts about 2 and a half minutes. We’ve been using our solar shower bag in the boat, instead. You get used to it. Luke warm is better than cold.

However, due to the weather conditions which have been not enough wind and now far too much wind, but always in the wrong direction, we are still here and the place is growing on us. Our next trip has to take us west then round the corner then south through the notorious Chanel du Four. As we’ve not done it before and as we are neither brave nor rash, we prefer to wait for better conditions. Ideally a north-east wind, but that’s not likely to happen.

It’s funny how you can arrive in some places and not be impressed at all, but after a while the charms become more apparent. Some of the places where I feel the deepest connection have been like that to start with. I wasn’t bowled over by Andy when I first met him, either!

We’ve discovered the Cafe du Port which is a very laid back place where you can drink beer or coffee and use free wifi while listening to interesting jazz and blues. The proprietor also sells fresh bread, which saves quite a long trip to the nearest town. Although, we discovered yesterday on our bikes, that there is a small town with a little supermarche and a boulangerie only a couple of kilometres away up a steep hill (nothing to us Chalfordites.) We had walked about 5 kilometres in hot sun to get emergency supplies of beer and cake on our first day here!

There are cheaper moorings to be had up the river in Port du Paluden, which we went and had a look at, by bike, as usual. (They are brilliant, those folding bikes.) It is a lovely peaceful spot and very well sheltered. However, we do have this need to get internet access for contact with friends and family, as well as weather forecasts. We tried out the Relais du Pont there for lunch, though. It had been closed down, according Tom Cunliffe in the Channel Pilot Book, but had just reopened two days before under new management. We don’t eat out very often because with Andy being a veggie, it’s not always that rewarding in France! However he had a very good mushroom omelette which had all kinds of fungus in it. I had what may have been a galette (like a crepe but different) with fruits de mer. We don’t get the French thing about pancakes. We eat them once a year with lemon and sugar, and yet about two out of three eating places here is a creperie. I’ve been told by Joan (our new marina friends, retired teachers from Coventry) that the French will go in and have a crepe, then have another one with a different filling, then maybe another, to make up a meal. The French, though, certainly don’t get vegetarianism. The only other choice for us to eat out here is a pizza. Might try that another day. Mostly, though, we’re happy to find lovely vegetables, artichokes, haricots verts, tomatoes that smell of tomato, lettuce with real dirt on it, and eat on board.

As it’s still raining, I could carry on waffling for hours, but I won’t. I’m going to carry on making a blind for the fore-hatch out of an old spray-dodger, and maybe a bit more of Martin Chuzzlewit. I’m about two-thirds of the way through the 880 pages now. Well, there was no point bringing detective novels, I’d have been through them all by now.

Captain’s Blog - Stardate: Samedi, le 28eme Juin. Port de Primel, Bretagne.

2008-06-28T07:31:00.000-07:00

We like it here. It’s free! We had three nights in the marina at Trebeurden, which was great. We could walk ashore to hot showers, toilets, shops and had wifi internet without even leaving the bateau. However, the trouble with marinas is that you always get some twonker parked near you who keeps running their generator in order to power their fridge, DVD player and plasma screen. Chacun a son gout, as they say over here, but that doesn’t stop me having my own opinion. You get new neighbours frequently, with whom you have pretty much the same conversation. "Where have you come from?" "Where are you going?" "How long are you away for?" When we tell them that we’ve left work, sold the cars, rented out the house and are away indefinitely, they ask, "When are going back?" "We don’t know," we answer. When they leave, they say, "Enjoy the rest of your holiday." Well, der.
The bikes came into their own at Trebeurden. We went on cultural tours of the area looking at ancient megaliths and "Allees couverts", wine drinking and cake eating. The local specialite, kouign amann, which is a bit like a lardy cake, but made with butter, is divine. We gave the one from Trebeurden, with apple in it, 7.5 out of 10. It was very good, but we have to keep some points in reserve.
The wind was in the west and we wanted to go west. The forecast said it would be in the west for the next 5 days or so, so we decided, as there was quite a lot of wind, but not overmuch, that we would go to Primel which was only about ten miles further west. We reefed down the main and had to tack to beat the wind. Some boats, sleeker than ours, will sail at about 45° to the wind, but Sally is only willing to go at about 60°. It’s to do with the shape of the hull and the sail plan. The advantage of Sally is that we can stand up in the cabin, stow two folding bikes, sleep in a double bed with almost enough room to stretch out our legs, and the added advantage of having a toilet about two feet from where our pillows go! To have all that in a sleek, fast boat, we’d either have to sleep curled round the anchor chain, or have to buy one much bigger and costing about ten times as much. I digress. We had a good sail here, tacking between the rocks close to the shore, and the rocks further out. We managed to entertain a sailing school boat full of adolescents by oversteering on one of our tacks and heading straight towards them. Luckily our French is not good enough to interpret the chorus of shouts which emanated from said teenagers. However, I managed to execute the next tack to perfection just after they had overtaken us.
We managed the very narrow and rocky entrance to this fishing port and moored on a buoy, which is costing us nothing. We’ve only seen the harbour master once. His office is closed every time we’ve tried it. The weather forecast on the notice board is 4 days out of date. It’s a wet dinghy ride ashore and an 8 kilometre bicycle ride to the nearest shops. That’s also where we can get internet access for 50 centimes per 20 minutes, in the Tourist Info. We rock and roll all night from the swell, but it is tres tranquille. Kouign Amann a la Pousgenu = 8.5 out of 10.
Plan is to go on to Brignogan and then L’Aber Wrac’h Monday and Tuesday when the wind is supposed to be from the south.

The Longest Day

2008-06-23T04:44:00.001-07:00

Well Guernsey seems ages ago now. We had 4 days there during which we explored on our folding bikes. The trouble with Guernsey, like the rest of the world, is that there are too many cars. There's no excuse there, though, as you can never be more than about 4 miles from St Peter Port! However, the TouristInfo supplied us with a map of the Rouettes Tranquille which give priority to horses, pedestrians and cycles and we found them to be eponimously tranquille. We also found several cottages selling excess garden produce very cheaply and availed ourselves of peppers, aubergine, green beans and the most sweet and flavoursome strawberries, which we ate sun-warmed straight from the punnet, while we watched kite surfers at Vazon Bay.

On Midsummers Day we set off for the Brittany coast, having carefully planned our passage to take about 13 hours and get us into the marina at Trebeurden by about 9.30 pm, well before the sill would close for the low tide at midnight. However......this is sailing, where nothing ever goes according to plan. With the wind on the nose for most of the way, and no help at all from the tide, by 8pm ish we were quickly revising our passage plan. As it got dark we decided not to take the shorter route inside La Crapaud (aptly named for yachtsmen who don't take kindly to huge lumps of granite directly in their path) and thus ended up coming into a strange harbour in pitch dark, knowing from the chart that there were treacherous lumps of not very bouncy granite all around. We couldn't see them, but knew they were there. We had to find the sector light which would guide us up the safe channel, amongst the multitude of street lights, navigational lights and buoys. By taking bearings and counting the number of flashes per minute we got the right one. By the time we reached the harbour, it was after midnight and the sill was closed. There was also a lot of dried out ground where the sea had been and, of course, the rocky islands. We were unable to see the buoys which were meant to be available for boats waiitng for the marina sill to open so ended up dropping our anchor in the fairway and while Andy drank coffee and sat in the cockpit to make sure we didn't bounce off any of the said granite, I had a lie down below, listening to the grinding of the anchor chain as the boat bobbed and jerked in the wind.

At daylight and with the new tide, we got safely into the marina, where we celebrated with scrambled eggs on toast followed by a sleep. Ah, the life at sea!

So we've got the French dictionaries out and have stocked up with vin rouge. Had drinks aboard a big new yacht with a couple from Bournemouth that we'd met in Guernsey. Their galley was about as big as the kitchen I've left behind in my cottage! Off to explore on our bicyclettes now.

Between a rock and a hard place

2008-06-18T03:18:00.000-07:00

That was our first passage through the Swinge channel north-west of Alderney. Rocks to the right of us, rocks to the left of us. Scarey. Still we managed to get to Guernsey after a cracking sail, and with the weather falling apart a bit now, we thought we'd stay here for a few days and relax. We are managing to relax now, after the emotional and physical wrench of leaving home. I have to admit there were a few tears on leaving my little house. I'm still worrying about the lawn growing and no tenants in there until 1st July.

Anyway, I'm having trouble writing this because we're having a conversation with another couple from a boat and it turns out she is from the Isle of Wight and went to the same grammar school as me.

Off the the Patisserie Victor Hugo now for the best cakes I've ever had.

The last few days

2008-06-10T03:34:00.000-07:00

The last 6 weeks has been a mix of hard work and mild partying, fueled by the fact that we have a lot of friends to leave behind and a lot of dusty bottles in the cupboard which have to be emptied, as storage space on board is minimal.

It's been pretty stressy at times and emotional, putting my life away in labelled boxes and stacking it in the shed. Saying goodbye to my children. Becoming Grandparents. The worst has been spending hours on the phone pressing buttons and listening to music trying to get stuff organised. We have shunted out an enormous amount of stuff to charity shops, freecycle, the tip, even sold some, but it's the decisions about what to keep, where to keep it and how to dispose of the rest that have been more exhausting than the redecorating, digging out footings for the shed and heaving furniture.

This is the last push of our six year campaign to let out our house and go and live on the sea.

I keep telling myself that it will all be worth it once we've gone.