Sunday 28th December 2008, day 162. 12° 30’.21 N, 059° 55’.60 W. On passage to Tobago
It is good to be at sea again. We left Barbados with little regret; although a pleasant, safe island, with plenty of palm trees blowing in the constant breeze and gorgeous white sandy beaches, it is quite built up, staggeringly expensive, and seems to be for smarter, richer people than ourselves. Tobago by contrast sounds more like our idea of a tropical island, with jungle, waterfalls, and lots of little bays to anchor in.
The north-easterly trade winds have settled down nicely for this trip of around 120 miles, and are blowing us along at a steady 6.4 knots. The waves are the great Atlantic rollers we had forgotten about in our week in the lee of Barbados: about 10 foot high, with plenty of space between them, they tower over our stern, raise up the side of the boat, twist us, then roar off to starboard in a cloud of foam. The occasional one catches us before the previous one has passed, and then we find ourselves looking out of the portholes into clear blue bubble-flecked water, before Tomia rights herself and surges on.
Tonight is moonless, so we have a chance to look again at the stars, this time with a star chart in hand. Orion falls into place, and, with no light pollution we can make out his sword and bow and arrow. As he marches through the sky, and rises from recumbent to standing, Sirius, his dog, comes into focus, bounding eagerly behind him. To their north, Castor and Pollux, the twins who make up Gemini, hold hands, and then we can make out Perseus wrestling to rescue Andromeda from the rock to which she has been chained, before we get to the Plough, still upside down, still pointing to a pole star which is now below the horizon.
Monday 29th December, day 163. 11° 19’.79 N, 060° 33’.06 W. Pirates’ Bay, Charlotteville, Tobago.
This is more like it! Pirates’ Bay is the right sort of address for a Caribbean island, and Tobago certainly looks more like what we expected. Man of War Bay (of which Pirates’ Bay is an inlet), on the north west corner of the island, is surrounded by steep slopes covered in a dense mat of green vegetation, complete with creepers and brightly coloured flowers. Bananas grow wild – but on slopes so vertiginous we daren’t try and reach them – and steam rises from the darker hill tops where that day’s rain has not yet dried out.
Charlotteville itself is tiny, with perhaps a hundred houses, all simple and mainly wood-built, painted in cheerful pastels. The road along the beach is lined with tiny shops and shacks selling a bit of whatever happens to be available, from pepper sauce through ketchup in plastic bags to cakes of Life Boy (sic) soap. The pace of life has suddenly slowed riiight down. The going exchange rate seems to be that 20 Tobago minutes translate at around a European hour – but hey, who’s counting, when you can wait for the customs officer while watching the chickens peck their way down the ditch, and chat to his wife and children, who have brought him over his lunch. Where’s the rush?
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Atlantic crossing
Hot Bunking across the Atlantic;
or
How to make an interesting story out of 2,022 miles of featureless ocean.
Cast:
The Owl, in charge over all, with particular responsibility for heads and rubbish bins, and stopping the crew doing stupid things to themselves.
The Pussycat, in charge of everything else, and particularly valued for her detailed knowledge of the store cupboards.
Ship’s Artist, to be found at the saloon table at all hours, recording impressions of wind and waves.
Ship’s Siren, named at first for her honking cough and cold, but metamorphosing into a mermaid as the trip and the tan progress.
Gentleman Gin, who gets twitchy at midday and 6 pm, before drinks are served. Doubles as the Cabin Boy, when there’s brass to be polished.
Thursday 4th December
We are off! Re-vittled, re-crewed, revived, watered and slept; Tomia loaded down with spares lugged out by our long-suffering friends; final phone calls made and emails sent, there is nothing more to stop us.
We left Mindelo in a rollicking wind, the Owl steering. We curved around the bottom of the island of Santo Antão, littered with mini volcanoes, as pustulant as a teenager’s chin. At 12.51, we recorded boat speed of 9 knots – flying along. Barbados, here we come!
By mid afternoon, we were in the wind shadow of the island, and the log reports, rather tersely: “Wind all over the place. Engine on.” Over the next four hours, the wind faffed and we fiddled, until we got well clear of Santo Antão, the wind settled down, and we got the main out onto the starboard gybe, where it may remain for several days.
The first twenty four hours of any passage are always rather fractured and awkward. We – and the crew even more – are finding our sea legs, dealing with sea-sickness, remembering how to move and work on a boat that is constantly and unpredictably moving. Anthony and I are briefing the crew, trying to get a balance between giving them all the information they need for their first night at sea, and not overwhelming them with facts – or appearing too downright dictatorial. The crew, however experienced, are getting to grips with a new boat, finding hand-holds, working out how to use the heads without getting catapulted all over the place, understanding the chart plotter and the auto helm and the radar.
Our sleep is uneasy; the boat rolls, the sails frap, Anthony and I sleep with one ear open in case the crew should need help during their watches.
Friday 5th December
Sailing downwind in 10 – 15 knots of wind is exhilarating. Rolling around in 5 knots of wind which is aimlessly wandering about the compass, is quite exceptionally frustrating, especially when the seas are left over from yesterday’s higher winds and are both large and confused. None of us have slept well, and the mood in the cockpit is fragile. We let out the mainsheet, try to pole out the yankee, get the spinnaker out, get the spinnaker down, and in desperation turn on the engine just to give us some steerage and stop the wallowing. We take refuge in our books.
Three hours later, the whole mood has changed; the wind filled in, and settled down from the east. Two bonitos were caught in quick succession – the supper menu is revised in light of the fresh provisions.
We have opened a book on when we are going to arrive in Barbados. The pessimists (Ship’s Artist and the Pussycat) were taking a certain gloomy satisfaction about our slow progress, but now the optimists are feeling smug on the basis of our average 7 knots.
By the afternoon, the crew are really humming. They are all spotting things that need doing, cooking and washing up, keeping the deck log, and, best of all, we are all joining in the debate about how best to sail the boat. This is starting to feel like a team!
The Owl runs the generator, makes lots of water and heats it up and then announces we can all have showers. The crew is delirious with such a surfeit of creature comforts and all scrubbed and clean we enjoy our G&T moment in the cockpit feeling positive about the voyage ahead. A small indicator that we are on a long passage: the fruit bowl has been emptied into the net above the galley, and refilled with a selection of vitamin pills, in case our diet becomes too restrictive.
Simon, the ship’s cat, has been joined by a stuffed tiger, called (inevitably) Richard Parker. Simon maintains his usual imperturbable sleep, while Richard Parker has a look of slightly apprehensive excitement. We will see who ends up eating whom.
Saturday 6th December
We have been taking down the spinnaker at night and using a poled-out yankee. Partly as everyone prefers this slightly less volatile rig at night and partly because raising and lowering the spinnaker gives the crew a late night and early morning workout. This morning’s hoist was smooth and slick and done with great humour. Then we had our first pod of dolphins turning up to put on a display, diving and swirling around the bow.
Now that the crew are settling into the rhythm of the boat, we instigated a ‘happy hour’ and spent it dusting, mopping and generally satisfying our ‘Hyacinth’ side. It is interesting in this stripped down life how one starts to relish having chores to do to break up the time between keeping watch, sailing the boat, making food and sleeping.
Lunch today was a gastronomic feast: a salad of fresh tuna, marinaded in lime, together with the bonito caught yesterday, fried in ginger and garlic flavoured oil, with coriander, freshly squeezed lime juice, and a dash of sesame oil. Followed by chunks of watermelon, straight out of the fridge. Thank you, Siren!
We were just wondering, in a self-congratulatory fashion, whether the food in Barbados would be as good, when we were brought down to earth by the sudden failure of the sparking gadget which lights the gas on the oven and hob. It turns out that this is one spare we don’t carry …
The top drawer in the galley reveals two part-full boxes of matches and one rather tired book from a nightclub, containing a total, after counting twice, of 18 matches, which works out at just over one a day. Mournfully, we contemplate our lockers groaning with a variety of delicious, but potentially forever cold, cans, and wonder if rice and pasta would become edible if soaked for long enough in water that was warmed all day on deck.
At 17.30 ship’s time, we crossed a landmark, 30 degrees west of Greenwich, which means turning the clocks back by an hour. Bad luck for the person on watch, whose watch is extended by an hour – and for the rest of us, who have to wait an extra hour for our G&Ts.
35 minutes later, at 17.05, we achieve 300 miles. Only another 1,723 to go!
17.30. Gentleman Gin asks plaintively if, the clock having gone back, we have to wait a whole more hour until drinks are served.
18.15 On being told about the lighter crisis, the Pussycat, in her quartermaster role, casually opens a drawer with a further seven boxes of matches and three lighters. We are saved.
Sunday 7th December
The spinnaker is up, and the cabin boy is polishing the brass. What a crew! A special cushion is found in the bosun’s locker for kneeling on when polishing brass. What a ship!
Today the Ship’s Artist is on galley duty. Our watch rota is working well. We decided to run 2 hour watches through day and night with the Galley Slave being out of the watch system during the day. We have also instigated a volunteer ‘skivvy’ to assist the chef of the day. It’s a good way of sharing out the fun jobs (oh yes, washing up is FUN here!) and we are also able to knock off and get our heads down, or read our books when not on watch.
As we turned the clock back an hour yesterday, our 24 hour run was read at 1100. 409.8 miles. We can see the quarter of the passage mark ahead of us – sometime tomorrow. We are starting to live completely in the moment, and lose track of time. “What day is it today?” is an increasingly common wonder, as we all try to keep our diaries up to date. Personal space fluctuates in this tiny environment; we are learning to read each others’ body language, and the subtle signs which mean “I am buzzing with interesting thoughts from last night’s watch that I want to share with somebody” or “Go away, I am deep in my book and don’t want to be disturbed.” We can all find our little patch of space, which seems a mile away from the others, whether it’s on the aft deck, or writing at the saloon table.
The Pussycat is loving all these competent cooking crew members. It is the first time since Tomia left her home port that she hasn’t been planning every meal.
Monday 8th December
The Pussycat, asleep in the foreward bunks, is awakened by thundering footsteps above, followed by shouts of “yee hah!” She wonders if a rodeo is taking place, but the wind has come in, the spinnaker is up, and we are doing 10.2 knots surfing down the waves.
Gentleman Gin is on galley duty for the first time, and mighty apprehensive he is too. He has sensibly being laying a stock of goodwill by washing up and making coffees, and now cashes it in all at once, getting advice on every aspect of the forthcoming ordeal.
The last of the fresh fish and meat has been eaten, so it’s cans from now on, unless the fish come and get caught.
Tuesday 9th December
The wind has fallen away, and we are making little progress under engine. The sea becomes progressively calmer, until it is almost smooth, and we can see Tomia’s reflection in the water. We decide to turn off the engine, and go for a swim. Some of us are rather nervous, not of the boat disappearing off, as we check very carefully that there is still one more person on board before jumping in – how stupid one would feel to look round and say “Oh, I thought you were going to stay on board” as she sails off without us! – but of a tentacle reaching up from the deep to caress our ankles.
In the end, we do all go in, in shifts, and the water is both wonderfully warm, and surprisingly silky on the skin. We put the lifebuoy out on a line so we can catch it if the boat drifts quicker than we can swim. The Pussycat swims out to the end of the line, looks at how far away the boat is, and returns at speed.
The wind gradually fills in towards the end of the day, and we get the cruising chute up.
Wednesday 10th December
A hot day. The wind fills slowly, coming aft, and the cruising chute is boomed out onto the main boom, with the jib poled out on the other side. We see a ship! The first in a week. A vast solid lump, like two container ships welded together. It moves steadily southwest across our stern; we speculate that it may be carrying grain from the US to Africa. There is another boat sharing our world; a yacht which we can pick up on the radar, about 6 miles away. We catch occasional glimpses of her sails in daylight, and call her up on the VHF, but there is no reply. “Ships that pass in the night” has an increased resonance for us.
Thursday 11th December
The morning is clouded by two sadnesses: busting the cruising chute when getting it down, and a blockage in the aft heads, which casts a pall over the whole ship. The Owl has been tweaking at it all morning, and has just manfully gone back to the job after half an hour of fresh air in the cockpit – during which the rest of the crew withdrew upwind to give him some space. At least we shall all know how to do colonic irrigation from now on. He and the Gentleman are now making innovative use of a bamboo pole and a drill bit.
The Ship’s Siren is on galley duty, and has put the bread on to rise. The beansprouts are sprouting. We all seem to be thinking about food a great deal.
The unblocking of the aft heads continues all day: the Owl and the Cabin Boy devise ever more interesting appliances as makeshift Dyna-rods. In desperation, The Owl clips two life-lines to himself, and goes down the bathing ladder (Tomia is doing 7 knots by now), clutching the blocked pipe, and the Atlantic Ocean proves highly effective as a pressure washer. We all greet the results with delight, which just goes to show what living on a boat does for your appreciation of the true essentials of civilised life.
For tea, we make an interesting concoction with condensed milk, bread and coconut, baked in the oven. Plaudits all round from the sweet-toothed, comfort-food loving crew. For our evening meal we go to India for a red-lentil curry, via Italy with some parmesan toasted artichoke hearts for starters and finishing off with a watermelon and papaya fruit salad. If we keep raising the food standards like this we’re going to be stretching our culinary imaginations to the limit by the end of the trip.
Friday 12th December
We reached the halfway mark at 0713 today – 1,014 miles at the beginning of the 8th day at sea. Tomia has been romping along at over 6 knots for the last 24 hours, giving a 24 hour mileage of 142.1. A double cause for celebration, and the champagne, stashed in the fridge last night in anticipation of the halfway celebration, was brought out for breakfast. Neptune was paid his due with the first glass being poured over, before we toasted the remainder of the voyage and remembered that halfway is still just halfway and the next celebration will be when we sight land.
The Dyna-rod team’s clothes from yesterday are given a “special” wash, with Dettol taking the place of fabric conditioner.
The Artist takes a delicious, though slightly more ascetic, approach to food, which is probably good for us.
We have a fabulous sunset, maturing to vivid orange and mottled with clouds. The moon is full, and drifts back and forth behind the clouds, almost blanking out the stars entirely when it shines through. The Plough is now quite upside down.
The wind has got up, and we hope it has now settled in for a solid 10 – 20 knots for the rest of the journey. But the waves are causing us problems. These seas are not so much confused as totally bewildered; they come at us from all over the place, and, try as we might to keep her stern to the waves, Tomia is corkscrewing all over the place. None of us sleep well, despite lee cloths and a decent slug of Cointreau in the supper time orange salad.
Saturday 13th December
Well, today was just full of excitements. The biggest was when the impeller of the Duo-Gen, our towed generator, came off, dangling above a 4 kilometre drop. Luckily it was held on by its safety lines, but the Owl is mentally writing a severe note to the manufacturers about building in resistance to the sorts of strains to be expected on an ocean passage.
Then there was a fish, a great big fish on the end of our line. The atmosphere became quite pagan as the winch handle did its work, and everyone crowded round to get their share of blood on their clothes.
Mid morning, we crossed 45°W, which means the clock goes back another hour. Drinks and watches were adjusted accordingly.
On the culinary side, the Siren and the Pussycat have spent a large part of the past forty eight hours whispering sweet nothings to each other, in which the words “last tin of condensed milk”, “ginger nuts”, “banana” and “chocolate chunks” have featured considerably. The result is cooling in the fridge, next to the fish.
Then we did a bit of sail trimming, discovering, a little late, that in these seas, Tomia’s motion is much more comfortable if we do not pole out the jib, but set it on the same side as the main. Quartering seas from port can still heel her over, but her sails won’t allow her to roll back, so she doesn’t set up the corkscrewing motion which has not been lulling us to sleep. To run this rig, we have to set our course slightly south of the straight line to keep the sails full, so we decide to spend the daylight hours going north of our line, and then go south at night. This will add a few miles to our journey, but will be well worth it for a decent night’s sleep all round.
Finally, we found a bit of chafe on the jib sheets where they have been poled out, so got the sail down, cut off the chafe, re-seized the sheet, re-tied it and got the sail back up again.
What with breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea time, drinks and supper… on top of sail trimming and changing, fish-catching and equipment-mending…. you can see that we have very busy days! We just don’t know what happens to the time.
Sunday 14th December
Today started with a bang. The Ship’s Artist was on watch in a flat calm, engine on, tiny bit of mainsail out. Then came a squall – 35 knots of wind and a deluge of rain. The Cabin Boy was woken from his dreams of being a First Class Passenger with a jet of water on his face through the companion way. Hatches were hurriedly closed as the squall passed over leaving in its wake a lumpy sea which threw the boat backwards and forwards making sleep impossible.
The Pussycat, Ship’s Siren and Cabin Boy did their early morning workout with some reefing and unreefing practice, not all intentional. Finally we found a sail combination and course which put Tomia’s stern to the lumpy waves and made coffee time a possibility. The grey early morning cloud cover gave way to brilliant sunshine and opened up the possibility of some scientific suntanning later in the day. The spinnaker was hoisted for the first time in four days – actually it was hoisted twice in quick succession, due to getting the halyard the wrong side of the forestay the first time and not just because the Siren and Cabin Boy needed another workout.
The Pussycat was on galley duty and drafted in the assistance of a superior sous-chef in the form of Ship’s Artist. They secreted themselves in the galley with much whispering and perusing of obscure cookery books. What on earth was cooking today? The waft of baking bread set the nostrils of those in the cockpit a-quiver. Luncheon was served – a beansprout, white cabbage and carrot coleslaw which was devoured hungrily. “Did it really take you four hours to knock that up?” said the Cabin Boy sulkily. But this was Sunday lunch and there were more courses to come. Yesterday’s fish had been finely filleted and slivered to make a glorious ceviche (Mexican dish of fish cooked in lime juice), served with individual bread rolls flavoured with dill. To round off the meal a fruit salad with freshly harvested strawberries grown under glass on the foredeck (we jest of course, but it was a superb melange of tinned fruit tarted up with cardamon and ginger flavoured syrup).
The Owl declared his worry about cooking the next day and announced a back to basics cooking regime. The Cabin Boy volunteered to be Owl’s skivvy so they could lower the tone together. We all agreed that we needed to lower our expectations as the interesting ingredients are rapidly running out!
After lunch the Pussycat and Siren set about working hard on their tans – only a few days to go to fill in the white bits before arrival in Barbados. The run this morning for the last 24 hours was 136.5 miles, a total of 1322.9 since leaving the Cape Verdes. The crew are starting to look forward to arrival, while being acutely aware of how far it is still to go. We sat in the cockpit in the cool of the evening with a canopy of stars above us until the moon rose in the sky obliterating all but the strongest. It feels a million miles away from the UK in December with all its Christmas hype and excess.
Monday 15th. December
Even before the ship was properly awake the cry of “A fish” rang out and the Owl started reeling in what looked like (and was) a whopper. The Cabin Boy wielded the gaff hook, Ship’s Artist and Siren wielded their cameras. The Pussycat took a mouthful of gin. We momentarily wondered whether she was developing an alcohol problem before she squirted it into the fish’s gills. It is supposedly a quick and humane way to despatch the fish, but seemed to require a double dose … or was the Owl feeling in need of an early morning snifter too? The fish was a good 7 or 8 pounds and measured 80cms, we started pondering fishy recipes – this one will do 2 or 3 meals. The back to basics cooking day has been postponed. A beautiful fish he was too, bright yellow tinged with blue, fading quickly as he died.
This morning’s 24 hour run was 125.4 miles. We have less than 600 to go. The Cabin Boy is desperate to keep the boat speed up so he doesn’t have to do another day in the galley.
Tuesday 16th December
It is odd how the knowledge that we are approaching our destination reduces our pleasure in the experience we are having. For the first two thirds or so, we all spent a lot of time in zen-like contemplation of the waves, the sky, the clouds. Now we are counting down the last 500 miles there is at times an impatience to be there, and get the last few days over with. The weather, of course, is deaf to these desires, and serves up not a lot of wind. We flew the spinnaker all day, but only averaged just over 5 knots.
In the morning we found a lump of fishing net had wound itself round the Duo-Gen, seizing the whole thing solid. The letter to the manufacturers now includes a paragraph about providing it with some form of guard rails. The net brought up a colony of finger-nail sized crabs, which were given the choice between flavouring a fish stock or going overboard, and made for the scuppers as one.
The night started off wonderfully full of stars, and we contemplated running the spinnaker through the hours of darkness, until a vivid electric storm a few miles away made us take the more cautious route. Were we the only people in the world to see this display?
Wednesday 17th December
Rain, and no wind. We all loved the experience of sitting out in the rain in our shorts and T shirts, and not minding being wet through. The Siren and the Pussycat, though, are concerned that they are missing out on a tanning day, and will arrive in Barbados with their tummies still white. The clocks go back one last time, and we are now on Barbados time.
We are getting close enough to start fantasising about the joys of land life; fresh pineapple and rum punch are top of the list, followed by dancing on the beach.
Another sign of progress: tonight will be the last time we need to download a seventy-two hour weather forecast!
Soon after the above was written, the wind died away almost completely. We turned on the engine, and motored on into the afternoon. The seas have died right back, and we are surrounded by a grey undulating downland. The moon is about half waned, so still provides a bit of light, but not so much as to drown out the stars – if they weren’t obscured by the cloud.
After talking about it for fourteen days, the guitar is unearthed from the forepeak where it has been keeping the Artist company at night. The Siren plays, accompanied by the Pussycat on the recorder, and the Gentleman on vocals. The result is surprisingly tuneful. Our repertoire is expanded to include “The foggy foggy dew”, at the Gentleman’s request, and then a few carols. We warble cheerfully of halls bedecked with holly, poor men gathering winter fuel, and the frosty wind making moan, while the tropical sun sets behind the clouds.
Thursday 18th December
It’s amazing the difference a day can make. Yesterday was a day of torpor for the crew, with a feeling of wanting to be there and only saved by the early evening carol singing. Not being able to sail drained our energy for other things, and we all read ourselves into a stupor. Today, the sun is shining again. After a night of steady motoring, the total distance to go is less than 250 miles. We know that we will be there sometime on Saturday at the latest. It feels as though we are in control of the ETA at last, despite the lack of wind. Once everyone is awake there is a call for a pre-breakfast swim and the engine is duly stopped, bathing ladder dropped, and the ship’s company dive into the deep blue (not all at once of course, someone is left on board just in case).
We spot a sail on the horizon and the Pussycat calls up the stranger on the VHF. Who would believe it, after 14 days alone on the ocean with just a couple of ships and distant yachts for company, the stranger turns out to be a boat we became friendly with in the Cape Verdes. They left Mindelo a day before we did, and as the boat is 3 foot longer and ten years younger, as well as being built as a racer / cruiser, we feel distinctly smug about it. The whiff of testosterone drifts across the waves. Having motored all night we are enjoying the peacefulness of sailing again and hoist the spinnaker. Not racing, you understand, just making the best of the conditions in a seamanlike fashion.
Friday 19th December
What a way to end! The wind blew, the spinnaker flew, the beansprouts grew, and the fish was blue. Our final fish: a vast wahoo 90 cm long, made the fishing line twang like a tuning guitar as it gobbled its last meal – our lure! We felt a little sorry for it until we saw the array of sharp teeth; it is just as much a predator as we are – as the little fish we found in its stomach demonstrate. We do feel obliged to eat everything we catch, so the Galley slave now has to deal with 12lbs of raw fish in as many appetising ways as she can think of.
The wind was cracking, and the Siren did a great job of tweaking the spinnaker to keep our speed up to the max; her expertise was available for anybody who chose to learn from it. Our final spinnaker drop had the usual share of ropes twisted round the wrong way, but it came down safely, and we romped into Port St Charles, Barbados at up to 8 knots on a three sail reach.
Distance run 2,042 miles, time taken 15 ½ days, winner of the sweepstake on when we would arrive: the Siren.
The lights of the island started to loom ahead; the end of the voyage was in sight. For the Siren, this was just another ocean crossing (her second), for the Artist and the Gentleman it is the start of a holiday in the Caribbean; for the Owl and the Pussycat it means getting to the end of the plans we have made.
Saturday 20th December
This blog has to end somewhere; we leave you in Carlisle Bay. The palm trees are blowing against a blue sky with puffy white clouds; the Artist tells us that the colour of the sea is Cerulean blue; the bars on the beach sell rum punch. And we have just upset the dinghy by misjudging the swell on the beach; our Bajan dollars are pegged out on the rails to dry.
or
How to make an interesting story out of 2,022 miles of featureless ocean.
Cast:
The Owl, in charge over all, with particular responsibility for heads and rubbish bins, and stopping the crew doing stupid things to themselves.
The Pussycat, in charge of everything else, and particularly valued for her detailed knowledge of the store cupboards.
Ship’s Artist, to be found at the saloon table at all hours, recording impressions of wind and waves.
Ship’s Siren, named at first for her honking cough and cold, but metamorphosing into a mermaid as the trip and the tan progress.
Gentleman Gin, who gets twitchy at midday and 6 pm, before drinks are served. Doubles as the Cabin Boy, when there’s brass to be polished.
Thursday 4th December
We are off! Re-vittled, re-crewed, revived, watered and slept; Tomia loaded down with spares lugged out by our long-suffering friends; final phone calls made and emails sent, there is nothing more to stop us.
We left Mindelo in a rollicking wind, the Owl steering. We curved around the bottom of the island of Santo Antão, littered with mini volcanoes, as pustulant as a teenager’s chin. At 12.51, we recorded boat speed of 9 knots – flying along. Barbados, here we come!
By mid afternoon, we were in the wind shadow of the island, and the log reports, rather tersely: “Wind all over the place. Engine on.” Over the next four hours, the wind faffed and we fiddled, until we got well clear of Santo Antão, the wind settled down, and we got the main out onto the starboard gybe, where it may remain for several days.
The first twenty four hours of any passage are always rather fractured and awkward. We – and the crew even more – are finding our sea legs, dealing with sea-sickness, remembering how to move and work on a boat that is constantly and unpredictably moving. Anthony and I are briefing the crew, trying to get a balance between giving them all the information they need for their first night at sea, and not overwhelming them with facts – or appearing too downright dictatorial. The crew, however experienced, are getting to grips with a new boat, finding hand-holds, working out how to use the heads without getting catapulted all over the place, understanding the chart plotter and the auto helm and the radar.
Our sleep is uneasy; the boat rolls, the sails frap, Anthony and I sleep with one ear open in case the crew should need help during their watches.
Friday 5th December
Sailing downwind in 10 – 15 knots of wind is exhilarating. Rolling around in 5 knots of wind which is aimlessly wandering about the compass, is quite exceptionally frustrating, especially when the seas are left over from yesterday’s higher winds and are both large and confused. None of us have slept well, and the mood in the cockpit is fragile. We let out the mainsheet, try to pole out the yankee, get the spinnaker out, get the spinnaker down, and in desperation turn on the engine just to give us some steerage and stop the wallowing. We take refuge in our books.
Three hours later, the whole mood has changed; the wind filled in, and settled down from the east. Two bonitos were caught in quick succession – the supper menu is revised in light of the fresh provisions.
We have opened a book on when we are going to arrive in Barbados. The pessimists (Ship’s Artist and the Pussycat) were taking a certain gloomy satisfaction about our slow progress, but now the optimists are feeling smug on the basis of our average 7 knots.
By the afternoon, the crew are really humming. They are all spotting things that need doing, cooking and washing up, keeping the deck log, and, best of all, we are all joining in the debate about how best to sail the boat. This is starting to feel like a team!
The Owl runs the generator, makes lots of water and heats it up and then announces we can all have showers. The crew is delirious with such a surfeit of creature comforts and all scrubbed and clean we enjoy our G&T moment in the cockpit feeling positive about the voyage ahead. A small indicator that we are on a long passage: the fruit bowl has been emptied into the net above the galley, and refilled with a selection of vitamin pills, in case our diet becomes too restrictive.
Simon, the ship’s cat, has been joined by a stuffed tiger, called (inevitably) Richard Parker. Simon maintains his usual imperturbable sleep, while Richard Parker has a look of slightly apprehensive excitement. We will see who ends up eating whom.
Saturday 6th December
We have been taking down the spinnaker at night and using a poled-out yankee. Partly as everyone prefers this slightly less volatile rig at night and partly because raising and lowering the spinnaker gives the crew a late night and early morning workout. This morning’s hoist was smooth and slick and done with great humour. Then we had our first pod of dolphins turning up to put on a display, diving and swirling around the bow.
Now that the crew are settling into the rhythm of the boat, we instigated a ‘happy hour’ and spent it dusting, mopping and generally satisfying our ‘Hyacinth’ side. It is interesting in this stripped down life how one starts to relish having chores to do to break up the time between keeping watch, sailing the boat, making food and sleeping.
Lunch today was a gastronomic feast: a salad of fresh tuna, marinaded in lime, together with the bonito caught yesterday, fried in ginger and garlic flavoured oil, with coriander, freshly squeezed lime juice, and a dash of sesame oil. Followed by chunks of watermelon, straight out of the fridge. Thank you, Siren!
We were just wondering, in a self-congratulatory fashion, whether the food in Barbados would be as good, when we were brought down to earth by the sudden failure of the sparking gadget which lights the gas on the oven and hob. It turns out that this is one spare we don’t carry …
The top drawer in the galley reveals two part-full boxes of matches and one rather tired book from a nightclub, containing a total, after counting twice, of 18 matches, which works out at just over one a day. Mournfully, we contemplate our lockers groaning with a variety of delicious, but potentially forever cold, cans, and wonder if rice and pasta would become edible if soaked for long enough in water that was warmed all day on deck.
At 17.30 ship’s time, we crossed a landmark, 30 degrees west of Greenwich, which means turning the clocks back by an hour. Bad luck for the person on watch, whose watch is extended by an hour – and for the rest of us, who have to wait an extra hour for our G&Ts.
35 minutes later, at 17.05, we achieve 300 miles. Only another 1,723 to go!
17.30. Gentleman Gin asks plaintively if, the clock having gone back, we have to wait a whole more hour until drinks are served.
18.15 On being told about the lighter crisis, the Pussycat, in her quartermaster role, casually opens a drawer with a further seven boxes of matches and three lighters. We are saved.
Sunday 7th December
The spinnaker is up, and the cabin boy is polishing the brass. What a crew! A special cushion is found in the bosun’s locker for kneeling on when polishing brass. What a ship!
Today the Ship’s Artist is on galley duty. Our watch rota is working well. We decided to run 2 hour watches through day and night with the Galley Slave being out of the watch system during the day. We have also instigated a volunteer ‘skivvy’ to assist the chef of the day. It’s a good way of sharing out the fun jobs (oh yes, washing up is FUN here!) and we are also able to knock off and get our heads down, or read our books when not on watch.
As we turned the clock back an hour yesterday, our 24 hour run was read at 1100. 409.8 miles. We can see the quarter of the passage mark ahead of us – sometime tomorrow. We are starting to live completely in the moment, and lose track of time. “What day is it today?” is an increasingly common wonder, as we all try to keep our diaries up to date. Personal space fluctuates in this tiny environment; we are learning to read each others’ body language, and the subtle signs which mean “I am buzzing with interesting thoughts from last night’s watch that I want to share with somebody” or “Go away, I am deep in my book and don’t want to be disturbed.” We can all find our little patch of space, which seems a mile away from the others, whether it’s on the aft deck, or writing at the saloon table.
The Pussycat is loving all these competent cooking crew members. It is the first time since Tomia left her home port that she hasn’t been planning every meal.
Monday 8th December
The Pussycat, asleep in the foreward bunks, is awakened by thundering footsteps above, followed by shouts of “yee hah!” She wonders if a rodeo is taking place, but the wind has come in, the spinnaker is up, and we are doing 10.2 knots surfing down the waves.
Gentleman Gin is on galley duty for the first time, and mighty apprehensive he is too. He has sensibly being laying a stock of goodwill by washing up and making coffees, and now cashes it in all at once, getting advice on every aspect of the forthcoming ordeal.
The last of the fresh fish and meat has been eaten, so it’s cans from now on, unless the fish come and get caught.
Tuesday 9th December
The wind has fallen away, and we are making little progress under engine. The sea becomes progressively calmer, until it is almost smooth, and we can see Tomia’s reflection in the water. We decide to turn off the engine, and go for a swim. Some of us are rather nervous, not of the boat disappearing off, as we check very carefully that there is still one more person on board before jumping in – how stupid one would feel to look round and say “Oh, I thought you were going to stay on board” as she sails off without us! – but of a tentacle reaching up from the deep to caress our ankles.
In the end, we do all go in, in shifts, and the water is both wonderfully warm, and surprisingly silky on the skin. We put the lifebuoy out on a line so we can catch it if the boat drifts quicker than we can swim. The Pussycat swims out to the end of the line, looks at how far away the boat is, and returns at speed.
The wind gradually fills in towards the end of the day, and we get the cruising chute up.
Wednesday 10th December
A hot day. The wind fills slowly, coming aft, and the cruising chute is boomed out onto the main boom, with the jib poled out on the other side. We see a ship! The first in a week. A vast solid lump, like two container ships welded together. It moves steadily southwest across our stern; we speculate that it may be carrying grain from the US to Africa. There is another boat sharing our world; a yacht which we can pick up on the radar, about 6 miles away. We catch occasional glimpses of her sails in daylight, and call her up on the VHF, but there is no reply. “Ships that pass in the night” has an increased resonance for us.
Thursday 11th December
The morning is clouded by two sadnesses: busting the cruising chute when getting it down, and a blockage in the aft heads, which casts a pall over the whole ship. The Owl has been tweaking at it all morning, and has just manfully gone back to the job after half an hour of fresh air in the cockpit – during which the rest of the crew withdrew upwind to give him some space. At least we shall all know how to do colonic irrigation from now on. He and the Gentleman are now making innovative use of a bamboo pole and a drill bit.
The Ship’s Siren is on galley duty, and has put the bread on to rise. The beansprouts are sprouting. We all seem to be thinking about food a great deal.
The unblocking of the aft heads continues all day: the Owl and the Cabin Boy devise ever more interesting appliances as makeshift Dyna-rods. In desperation, The Owl clips two life-lines to himself, and goes down the bathing ladder (Tomia is doing 7 knots by now), clutching the blocked pipe, and the Atlantic Ocean proves highly effective as a pressure washer. We all greet the results with delight, which just goes to show what living on a boat does for your appreciation of the true essentials of civilised life.
For tea, we make an interesting concoction with condensed milk, bread and coconut, baked in the oven. Plaudits all round from the sweet-toothed, comfort-food loving crew. For our evening meal we go to India for a red-lentil curry, via Italy with some parmesan toasted artichoke hearts for starters and finishing off with a watermelon and papaya fruit salad. If we keep raising the food standards like this we’re going to be stretching our culinary imaginations to the limit by the end of the trip.
Friday 12th December
We reached the halfway mark at 0713 today – 1,014 miles at the beginning of the 8th day at sea. Tomia has been romping along at over 6 knots for the last 24 hours, giving a 24 hour mileage of 142.1. A double cause for celebration, and the champagne, stashed in the fridge last night in anticipation of the halfway celebration, was brought out for breakfast. Neptune was paid his due with the first glass being poured over, before we toasted the remainder of the voyage and remembered that halfway is still just halfway and the next celebration will be when we sight land.
The Dyna-rod team’s clothes from yesterday are given a “special” wash, with Dettol taking the place of fabric conditioner.
The Artist takes a delicious, though slightly more ascetic, approach to food, which is probably good for us.
We have a fabulous sunset, maturing to vivid orange and mottled with clouds. The moon is full, and drifts back and forth behind the clouds, almost blanking out the stars entirely when it shines through. The Plough is now quite upside down.
The wind has got up, and we hope it has now settled in for a solid 10 – 20 knots for the rest of the journey. But the waves are causing us problems. These seas are not so much confused as totally bewildered; they come at us from all over the place, and, try as we might to keep her stern to the waves, Tomia is corkscrewing all over the place. None of us sleep well, despite lee cloths and a decent slug of Cointreau in the supper time orange salad.
Saturday 13th December
Well, today was just full of excitements. The biggest was when the impeller of the Duo-Gen, our towed generator, came off, dangling above a 4 kilometre drop. Luckily it was held on by its safety lines, but the Owl is mentally writing a severe note to the manufacturers about building in resistance to the sorts of strains to be expected on an ocean passage.
Then there was a fish, a great big fish on the end of our line. The atmosphere became quite pagan as the winch handle did its work, and everyone crowded round to get their share of blood on their clothes.
Mid morning, we crossed 45°W, which means the clock goes back another hour. Drinks and watches were adjusted accordingly.
On the culinary side, the Siren and the Pussycat have spent a large part of the past forty eight hours whispering sweet nothings to each other, in which the words “last tin of condensed milk”, “ginger nuts”, “banana” and “chocolate chunks” have featured considerably. The result is cooling in the fridge, next to the fish.
Then we did a bit of sail trimming, discovering, a little late, that in these seas, Tomia’s motion is much more comfortable if we do not pole out the jib, but set it on the same side as the main. Quartering seas from port can still heel her over, but her sails won’t allow her to roll back, so she doesn’t set up the corkscrewing motion which has not been lulling us to sleep. To run this rig, we have to set our course slightly south of the straight line to keep the sails full, so we decide to spend the daylight hours going north of our line, and then go south at night. This will add a few miles to our journey, but will be well worth it for a decent night’s sleep all round.
Finally, we found a bit of chafe on the jib sheets where they have been poled out, so got the sail down, cut off the chafe, re-seized the sheet, re-tied it and got the sail back up again.
What with breakfast, elevenses, lunch, tea time, drinks and supper… on top of sail trimming and changing, fish-catching and equipment-mending…. you can see that we have very busy days! We just don’t know what happens to the time.
Sunday 14th December
Today started with a bang. The Ship’s Artist was on watch in a flat calm, engine on, tiny bit of mainsail out. Then came a squall – 35 knots of wind and a deluge of rain. The Cabin Boy was woken from his dreams of being a First Class Passenger with a jet of water on his face through the companion way. Hatches were hurriedly closed as the squall passed over leaving in its wake a lumpy sea which threw the boat backwards and forwards making sleep impossible.
The Pussycat, Ship’s Siren and Cabin Boy did their early morning workout with some reefing and unreefing practice, not all intentional. Finally we found a sail combination and course which put Tomia’s stern to the lumpy waves and made coffee time a possibility. The grey early morning cloud cover gave way to brilliant sunshine and opened up the possibility of some scientific suntanning later in the day. The spinnaker was hoisted for the first time in four days – actually it was hoisted twice in quick succession, due to getting the halyard the wrong side of the forestay the first time and not just because the Siren and Cabin Boy needed another workout.
The Pussycat was on galley duty and drafted in the assistance of a superior sous-chef in the form of Ship’s Artist. They secreted themselves in the galley with much whispering and perusing of obscure cookery books. What on earth was cooking today? The waft of baking bread set the nostrils of those in the cockpit a-quiver. Luncheon was served – a beansprout, white cabbage and carrot coleslaw which was devoured hungrily. “Did it really take you four hours to knock that up?” said the Cabin Boy sulkily. But this was Sunday lunch and there were more courses to come. Yesterday’s fish had been finely filleted and slivered to make a glorious ceviche (Mexican dish of fish cooked in lime juice), served with individual bread rolls flavoured with dill. To round off the meal a fruit salad with freshly harvested strawberries grown under glass on the foredeck (we jest of course, but it was a superb melange of tinned fruit tarted up with cardamon and ginger flavoured syrup).
The Owl declared his worry about cooking the next day and announced a back to basics cooking regime. The Cabin Boy volunteered to be Owl’s skivvy so they could lower the tone together. We all agreed that we needed to lower our expectations as the interesting ingredients are rapidly running out!
After lunch the Pussycat and Siren set about working hard on their tans – only a few days to go to fill in the white bits before arrival in Barbados. The run this morning for the last 24 hours was 136.5 miles, a total of 1322.9 since leaving the Cape Verdes. The crew are starting to look forward to arrival, while being acutely aware of how far it is still to go. We sat in the cockpit in the cool of the evening with a canopy of stars above us until the moon rose in the sky obliterating all but the strongest. It feels a million miles away from the UK in December with all its Christmas hype and excess.
Monday 15th. December
Even before the ship was properly awake the cry of “A fish” rang out and the Owl started reeling in what looked like (and was) a whopper. The Cabin Boy wielded the gaff hook, Ship’s Artist and Siren wielded their cameras. The Pussycat took a mouthful of gin. We momentarily wondered whether she was developing an alcohol problem before she squirted it into the fish’s gills. It is supposedly a quick and humane way to despatch the fish, but seemed to require a double dose … or was the Owl feeling in need of an early morning snifter too? The fish was a good 7 or 8 pounds and measured 80cms, we started pondering fishy recipes – this one will do 2 or 3 meals. The back to basics cooking day has been postponed. A beautiful fish he was too, bright yellow tinged with blue, fading quickly as he died.
This morning’s 24 hour run was 125.4 miles. We have less than 600 to go. The Cabin Boy is desperate to keep the boat speed up so he doesn’t have to do another day in the galley.
Tuesday 16th December
It is odd how the knowledge that we are approaching our destination reduces our pleasure in the experience we are having. For the first two thirds or so, we all spent a lot of time in zen-like contemplation of the waves, the sky, the clouds. Now we are counting down the last 500 miles there is at times an impatience to be there, and get the last few days over with. The weather, of course, is deaf to these desires, and serves up not a lot of wind. We flew the spinnaker all day, but only averaged just over 5 knots.
In the morning we found a lump of fishing net had wound itself round the Duo-Gen, seizing the whole thing solid. The letter to the manufacturers now includes a paragraph about providing it with some form of guard rails. The net brought up a colony of finger-nail sized crabs, which were given the choice between flavouring a fish stock or going overboard, and made for the scuppers as one.
The night started off wonderfully full of stars, and we contemplated running the spinnaker through the hours of darkness, until a vivid electric storm a few miles away made us take the more cautious route. Were we the only people in the world to see this display?
Wednesday 17th December
Rain, and no wind. We all loved the experience of sitting out in the rain in our shorts and T shirts, and not minding being wet through. The Siren and the Pussycat, though, are concerned that they are missing out on a tanning day, and will arrive in Barbados with their tummies still white. The clocks go back one last time, and we are now on Barbados time.
We are getting close enough to start fantasising about the joys of land life; fresh pineapple and rum punch are top of the list, followed by dancing on the beach.
Another sign of progress: tonight will be the last time we need to download a seventy-two hour weather forecast!
Soon after the above was written, the wind died away almost completely. We turned on the engine, and motored on into the afternoon. The seas have died right back, and we are surrounded by a grey undulating downland. The moon is about half waned, so still provides a bit of light, but not so much as to drown out the stars – if they weren’t obscured by the cloud.
After talking about it for fourteen days, the guitar is unearthed from the forepeak where it has been keeping the Artist company at night. The Siren plays, accompanied by the Pussycat on the recorder, and the Gentleman on vocals. The result is surprisingly tuneful. Our repertoire is expanded to include “The foggy foggy dew”, at the Gentleman’s request, and then a few carols. We warble cheerfully of halls bedecked with holly, poor men gathering winter fuel, and the frosty wind making moan, while the tropical sun sets behind the clouds.
Thursday 18th December
It’s amazing the difference a day can make. Yesterday was a day of torpor for the crew, with a feeling of wanting to be there and only saved by the early evening carol singing. Not being able to sail drained our energy for other things, and we all read ourselves into a stupor. Today, the sun is shining again. After a night of steady motoring, the total distance to go is less than 250 miles. We know that we will be there sometime on Saturday at the latest. It feels as though we are in control of the ETA at last, despite the lack of wind. Once everyone is awake there is a call for a pre-breakfast swim and the engine is duly stopped, bathing ladder dropped, and the ship’s company dive into the deep blue (not all at once of course, someone is left on board just in case).
We spot a sail on the horizon and the Pussycat calls up the stranger on the VHF. Who would believe it, after 14 days alone on the ocean with just a couple of ships and distant yachts for company, the stranger turns out to be a boat we became friendly with in the Cape Verdes. They left Mindelo a day before we did, and as the boat is 3 foot longer and ten years younger, as well as being built as a racer / cruiser, we feel distinctly smug about it. The whiff of testosterone drifts across the waves. Having motored all night we are enjoying the peacefulness of sailing again and hoist the spinnaker. Not racing, you understand, just making the best of the conditions in a seamanlike fashion.
Friday 19th December
What a way to end! The wind blew, the spinnaker flew, the beansprouts grew, and the fish was blue. Our final fish: a vast wahoo 90 cm long, made the fishing line twang like a tuning guitar as it gobbled its last meal – our lure! We felt a little sorry for it until we saw the array of sharp teeth; it is just as much a predator as we are – as the little fish we found in its stomach demonstrate. We do feel obliged to eat everything we catch, so the Galley slave now has to deal with 12lbs of raw fish in as many appetising ways as she can think of.
The wind was cracking, and the Siren did a great job of tweaking the spinnaker to keep our speed up to the max; her expertise was available for anybody who chose to learn from it. Our final spinnaker drop had the usual share of ropes twisted round the wrong way, but it came down safely, and we romped into Port St Charles, Barbados at up to 8 knots on a three sail reach.
Distance run 2,042 miles, time taken 15 ½ days, winner of the sweepstake on when we would arrive: the Siren.
The lights of the island started to loom ahead; the end of the voyage was in sight. For the Siren, this was just another ocean crossing (her second), for the Artist and the Gentleman it is the start of a holiday in the Caribbean; for the Owl and the Pussycat it means getting to the end of the plans we have made.
Saturday 20th December
This blog has to end somewhere; we leave you in Carlisle Bay. The palm trees are blowing against a blue sky with puffy white clouds; the Artist tells us that the colour of the sea is Cerulean blue; the bars on the beach sell rum punch. And we have just upset the dinghy by misjudging the swell on the beach; our Bajan dollars are pegged out on the rails to dry.
Monday, 22 December 2008
Caribbean for Christmas
We've arrived! After a 15 1/2 day crossing, we made it into Port St Charles, Barbados at 1 in the morning of Friday 19th December. A good crossing, winds not too strong, but plenty of variety. This is just to let you know we've arrived ... more to follow, but first we've got to find a launderette!
Thursday, 4 December 2008
Wildlife - and temporary farewell
Sunday 30th November 2008, day 134. 16° 45’.16 N, 022° 58’.77 W. Palmeira, Sal, Cape Verde
Describing the Cape Verdes would take a book! We have been to five islands in the group: São Vicente, Santo Antão, the westernmost, then going east, to the uninhabited Santa Luzia, São Nicolau, and now we are on Sal, the most north easterly, waiting for our new crew to arrive and the previous one to depart. I must try to pull all the impressions of the islands together to make something coherent; at the minute it is just a jumble of the harsh country, hard-working people, bright sunlight, and jolting on cobbled roads up and down mountain ridges in shared minibus taxis, through scant fields of maize, taciturn goats, and great webs of spiders strung between the telegraph poles.
Something easier to describe is the wildlife we’ve seen since leaving the Canaries – because there hasn’t been a lot of it. What there has been, though, has more than made up for the scarcity.
To start with – a turtle, all by himself, quietly plodding his way across our wake, when we were half way between the Canaries and Cape Verdes. He was the only one we’ve seen, so it is hard – though foolish – not to imagine him being the sole representative of his species in these waters.
Then, two days out from the Canaries, we were startled by a loud bang in the middle of the night. It was a flying fish, hurling himself from a predator’s jaws straight onto our spray-hood. He was stunned, but we chucked him back in, and hope he escaped. From then on, we have been “catching” a couple every night, usually a few inches long, but we hope to get a decent sized one soon, so we can report on the texture and flavour. They are quite amazing to watch during the day. I had assumed that their flight was just really a long leap out of the water, but no. They fly low over the waves, like a silver skimmed stone, and can easily cover 100 yards, not just flying in a straight line, but banking and curving to choose the safest spot to land. If they time it right they will just catch a wave with their tail, and give a quick flick, to get a boost of speed and a few more yards of flight. On deck, they are about 6 inches long, and mackerel shaped, silver, with blackish fins / wings and tail.
We think of them flying to escape larger fish, but another predator is a local type of gannet, which has perfected the art of flying alongside boats to pick up any flying fish put up by them. The fish leaves the water, the gannet soars after it, matching the fish turn for turn, until the fish re-enters the water, when the gannet will dive. We assume the fish slows on re-entry, which gives the bird a chance to catch it.
I met more wildlife in a clothes shop in Mindelo; I picked out a rather jazzy pair of navy and white striped trousers, and was just admiring the opulent three-dimensional embroidery of a black and gold striped spider covering the back pocket when – it moved. My first thought was to hand the trousers to the owner of the shop – it was, after all, her spider – but she seemed oddly reluctant to take them. We froze briefly, me holding the hanger by my fingertips, at full arm’s length, until she decided it gave a bad impression to customers if she appeared frightened of her stock, and took it gingerly, whereupon the spider leapt to the ground, we all shrieked, and it whizzed into the nearest dark corner, beside what had been a rather tempting pair of red patent shoes. She offered to take any garment we were interested in from the rack herself, and shake it before handing it to us, but somehow the glamour had gone out of the shopping expedition.
These islands seem to be a good environment for spiders; up in the hills, one sees giant webs strung between the telegraph poles, inhabited by up to a hundred of them, all at least an inch across the body. The effect is quite eerie. This may explain the slightly neurotic behaviour of the local flies. We speculated briefly that a spider web like that could be an excellent, eco-friendly alternative to a mosquito net, but on second thoughts decided not.
Now, in Palmeira, a fish eagle is hovering over the boat, and has just emerged from a dive with a decent-sized fish clutched in its talons.
And finally, with roll of drums and a fanfare of trumpets, there are … the fish that we’ve caught ourselves! So far, we’ve had three, one almost certainly a bonito, the other two less easy to identify, but all good eating, the bonito sweet and tender. It turns out, for us novices, that catching the fish is just the first part of the problem. We gaff them fairly easily, then put on gardening gloves against the spines, hold them down on a beech-wood block, and Anthony administers the winch handle. Sometimes the fish have co-operated. Anthony is dead chuffed that his brand new shorts have spatters of fish blood on them; it makes him feel like a primæval hero.
Thursday 4th December
We are now back in Mindelo, have reprovisioned, taken on water, got the next week's weather forecast, all had a good night's sleep, and are about to head west for 2,100 miles. Will be back in touch on the other side.
Just in case we don't get there in time, Happy Christmas!
Describing the Cape Verdes would take a book! We have been to five islands in the group: São Vicente, Santo Antão, the westernmost, then going east, to the uninhabited Santa Luzia, São Nicolau, and now we are on Sal, the most north easterly, waiting for our new crew to arrive and the previous one to depart. I must try to pull all the impressions of the islands together to make something coherent; at the minute it is just a jumble of the harsh country, hard-working people, bright sunlight, and jolting on cobbled roads up and down mountain ridges in shared minibus taxis, through scant fields of maize, taciturn goats, and great webs of spiders strung between the telegraph poles.
Something easier to describe is the wildlife we’ve seen since leaving the Canaries – because there hasn’t been a lot of it. What there has been, though, has more than made up for the scarcity.
To start with – a turtle, all by himself, quietly plodding his way across our wake, when we were half way between the Canaries and Cape Verdes. He was the only one we’ve seen, so it is hard – though foolish – not to imagine him being the sole representative of his species in these waters.
Then, two days out from the Canaries, we were startled by a loud bang in the middle of the night. It was a flying fish, hurling himself from a predator’s jaws straight onto our spray-hood. He was stunned, but we chucked him back in, and hope he escaped. From then on, we have been “catching” a couple every night, usually a few inches long, but we hope to get a decent sized one soon, so we can report on the texture and flavour. They are quite amazing to watch during the day. I had assumed that their flight was just really a long leap out of the water, but no. They fly low over the waves, like a silver skimmed stone, and can easily cover 100 yards, not just flying in a straight line, but banking and curving to choose the safest spot to land. If they time it right they will just catch a wave with their tail, and give a quick flick, to get a boost of speed and a few more yards of flight. On deck, they are about 6 inches long, and mackerel shaped, silver, with blackish fins / wings and tail.
We think of them flying to escape larger fish, but another predator is a local type of gannet, which has perfected the art of flying alongside boats to pick up any flying fish put up by them. The fish leaves the water, the gannet soars after it, matching the fish turn for turn, until the fish re-enters the water, when the gannet will dive. We assume the fish slows on re-entry, which gives the bird a chance to catch it.
I met more wildlife in a clothes shop in Mindelo; I picked out a rather jazzy pair of navy and white striped trousers, and was just admiring the opulent three-dimensional embroidery of a black and gold striped spider covering the back pocket when – it moved. My first thought was to hand the trousers to the owner of the shop – it was, after all, her spider – but she seemed oddly reluctant to take them. We froze briefly, me holding the hanger by my fingertips, at full arm’s length, until she decided it gave a bad impression to customers if she appeared frightened of her stock, and took it gingerly, whereupon the spider leapt to the ground, we all shrieked, and it whizzed into the nearest dark corner, beside what had been a rather tempting pair of red patent shoes. She offered to take any garment we were interested in from the rack herself, and shake it before handing it to us, but somehow the glamour had gone out of the shopping expedition.
These islands seem to be a good environment for spiders; up in the hills, one sees giant webs strung between the telegraph poles, inhabited by up to a hundred of them, all at least an inch across the body. The effect is quite eerie. This may explain the slightly neurotic behaviour of the local flies. We speculated briefly that a spider web like that could be an excellent, eco-friendly alternative to a mosquito net, but on second thoughts decided not.
Now, in Palmeira, a fish eagle is hovering over the boat, and has just emerged from a dive with a decent-sized fish clutched in its talons.
And finally, with roll of drums and a fanfare of trumpets, there are … the fish that we’ve caught ourselves! So far, we’ve had three, one almost certainly a bonito, the other two less easy to identify, but all good eating, the bonito sweet and tender. It turns out, for us novices, that catching the fish is just the first part of the problem. We gaff them fairly easily, then put on gardening gloves against the spines, hold them down on a beech-wood block, and Anthony administers the winch handle. Sometimes the fish have co-operated. Anthony is dead chuffed that his brand new shorts have spatters of fish blood on them; it makes him feel like a primæval hero.
Thursday 4th December
We are now back in Mindelo, have reprovisioned, taken on water, got the next week's weather forecast, all had a good night's sleep, and are about to head west for 2,100 miles. Will be back in touch on the other side.
Just in case we don't get there in time, Happy Christmas!
Monday, 1 December 2008
Creature comforts
Palmeira, Sal, Cape Verdes, Monday 1st December.
I would like you now to stop what you are doing, and go and have a long chat with your washing machine. Make it a cup of Calgon, sit down, and tell it how much you appreciate the way it washes the heavy duvet covers and towels and pillow cases, and hundreds upon hundreds of smaller things, and rinses them and then rinses them again, and then spins them for you until they are almost dry, all without any fuss. Make it feel loved. Because, believe me, you don´t appreciate it nearly as much as you ought!
I would like you now to stop what you are doing, and go and have a long chat with your washing machine. Make it a cup of Calgon, sit down, and tell it how much you appreciate the way it washes the heavy duvet covers and towels and pillow cases, and hundreds upon hundreds of smaller things, and rinses them and then rinses them again, and then spins them for you until they are almost dry, all without any fuss. Make it feel loved. Because, believe me, you don´t appreciate it nearly as much as you ought!
Saturday, 22 November 2008
On passage to Cape Verde
Monday 17th November 2008, day 121. 22° 18’.56 N, 020° 16’.74 W. On passage from La Gomera to Saõ Vicente, Cape Verde Islands, a journey of around 800 miles.
We are three days out from La Gomera, waiting for the half-way point of the passage to come up, in about 15 miles. Yesterday we passed the southern border of Morocco, making the vast sandy hills of Mauritania our landfall to the east. This morning we crossed the tropic of Cancer at 23° N, but the weather today has been almost cool, with a grey haze masking the sun.
Tomia is rollicking along downwind, thoroughly enjoying herself at 7 knots, without disturbing two crew who are taking their afternoon nap, and the skipper reading his John le Carré and just twitching the fishing line every now and then. He is also of course making sure the spinnaker is properly set, and keeping a sharp lookout for passing shipping; from my vantage point at the chart table, I would say John le Carré is winning.
By the third day, the strangeness of going about our normal tasks, while bobbing about on a little piece of glass fibre in the middle of the ocean, is wearing off. It seems quite natural thing to lie, half awake, in one’s berth, listening to the water rushing by, just three quarters of an inch away. Or to sit at the computer at the chart table, blinded occasionally by a glimpse of sun when the spinnaker falls inwards for a second. Or to shower in lovely hot water, with one’s soapy back braced against the rolling of the boat, and the shower gel placed carefully where it can’t fall. We are all bending and swaying with the movement of the boat, unconsciously reaching for handholds, remembering to open cupboard doors with caution, putting things down where they won’t roll, or leap off tables. Everything is a little bit odd; everything is surprisingly normal.
And meanwhile Tomia carries us along, free and willing and exuberant.
For me, the first day or so of a passage is so overwhelming in its alien-ness from normal life, and the sensations and challenges of life afloat are so strong, that only the simplest of thoughts manages to make its way to the surface. Not falling over, staring down sea-sickness, remembering radio schedules, getting food out of the fridge, adjusting sleep patterns to the requirements of watch-keeping, cooking, navigating and just plain sailing the boat are all-consuming. Gradually, though, they become part of the background, and the brain re-emerges, to read and to imagine, to think of friends at home; to practise the guitar, and to try to shoe-horn a few more words of Portuguese in before arriving at the Cape Verdes.
And to write up the blog. Some of you have asked how we manage to use the computer at sea, without it sliding around all over the place. Those who know me well have wondered how I allow a prized possession like my laptop to come to sea at all. In fact, the computer is a key part of Tomia’s kit, acting as photo-storage, CD player, diary, log and maintenance scheduler, as well as being our main source of weather information.
On ocean passages, there are three main sources of weather forecasts: weather faxes, weather broadcasters, and the ubiquitous Web, whose filaments now seem to cover the entire world’s surface. Navtex has a range of about 200 miles, so peters out after the first day or so, and the soothing tones of the Radio 4 shipping forecast have been nothing but a fond memory since we rounded Punta Nariga in Galicia.
The internet is the source of wind forecasts known as grib files, which predict the wind up to seven days out, in an easy to read animation. With a fast enough connection, the internet can be the source of just about any other information one wants, but that’s the problem: how to get an internet connection at sea? SSB radios can work with something called a Pactor modem, which gives connection of a speed, quality and stability that rewards only the calmest and most phlegmatic of operators. They also cost £1,500.
A satellite phone provides quick and reliable connection, but costs £1 a minute on top of the £1,300 initial outlay. They can be used to quickly squirt a grib file into the onboard computer, and upload a day’s position onto a blog. They are effective, but the purchase cost deterred us. Finally, the sickeningly rich can be recognised in marinas by the fat white dome on their boat’s superstructure (as opposed to the fat white belly on their own), which houses an Inmarsat satellite receiver, providing broadband-type connectivity. We could have bought one, but would have had to sell the boat to pay for it, which seems a little counter-productive.
We have chosen to get our weather from a mixture of weather faxes, and weather broadcasters. The faxes are an amazing piece of technology: they come to us in the form of chirrups and burbles from the SSB radio, which a piece of software on the computer downloads and translates into synoptic charts. Pause and reread that, and marvel.
Weather stations all round the world, from Iqualuit to Tashkent, broadcast these charts, together with predictions of wave heights, hurricanes, and iceberg movement at pre-scheduled times; for this passage we are getting the current situation sent out by New Orleans, and forecasts for 48 hours away, from Boston.
I still find it utterly fascinating to turn on the radio, hear the pattern of warbling that indicates the start of a new file, and watch it emerge inch by inch on the computer screen. Still more amazing in a way is that this relatively old technology, now thoroughly overtaken for commercial shipping by satellite communications, is still reliably produced, for free, by so many state-funded weather stations. Long may it continue.
Our final weather resource is the few dedicated individuals who do their own forecasting, for the benefit of any yacht that wants them. The two best known are Herb, up in Canada, and Trudi, in the Caribbean. They both run their own ham radio transmitters. We will sign in with one or both of them, tell them our planned passage, and then call in on the SSB at a pre-arranged time every night, to be told what is coming our way, and to get advice on the best course to steer to take advantage of what is likely to be affecting us.
We are three days out from La Gomera, waiting for the half-way point of the passage to come up, in about 15 miles. Yesterday we passed the southern border of Morocco, making the vast sandy hills of Mauritania our landfall to the east. This morning we crossed the tropic of Cancer at 23° N, but the weather today has been almost cool, with a grey haze masking the sun.
Tomia is rollicking along downwind, thoroughly enjoying herself at 7 knots, without disturbing two crew who are taking their afternoon nap, and the skipper reading his John le Carré and just twitching the fishing line every now and then. He is also of course making sure the spinnaker is properly set, and keeping a sharp lookout for passing shipping; from my vantage point at the chart table, I would say John le Carré is winning.
By the third day, the strangeness of going about our normal tasks, while bobbing about on a little piece of glass fibre in the middle of the ocean, is wearing off. It seems quite natural thing to lie, half awake, in one’s berth, listening to the water rushing by, just three quarters of an inch away. Or to sit at the computer at the chart table, blinded occasionally by a glimpse of sun when the spinnaker falls inwards for a second. Or to shower in lovely hot water, with one’s soapy back braced against the rolling of the boat, and the shower gel placed carefully where it can’t fall. We are all bending and swaying with the movement of the boat, unconsciously reaching for handholds, remembering to open cupboard doors with caution, putting things down where they won’t roll, or leap off tables. Everything is a little bit odd; everything is surprisingly normal.
And meanwhile Tomia carries us along, free and willing and exuberant.
For me, the first day or so of a passage is so overwhelming in its alien-ness from normal life, and the sensations and challenges of life afloat are so strong, that only the simplest of thoughts manages to make its way to the surface. Not falling over, staring down sea-sickness, remembering radio schedules, getting food out of the fridge, adjusting sleep patterns to the requirements of watch-keeping, cooking, navigating and just plain sailing the boat are all-consuming. Gradually, though, they become part of the background, and the brain re-emerges, to read and to imagine, to think of friends at home; to practise the guitar, and to try to shoe-horn a few more words of Portuguese in before arriving at the Cape Verdes.
And to write up the blog. Some of you have asked how we manage to use the computer at sea, without it sliding around all over the place. Those who know me well have wondered how I allow a prized possession like my laptop to come to sea at all. In fact, the computer is a key part of Tomia’s kit, acting as photo-storage, CD player, diary, log and maintenance scheduler, as well as being our main source of weather information.
On ocean passages, there are three main sources of weather forecasts: weather faxes, weather broadcasters, and the ubiquitous Web, whose filaments now seem to cover the entire world’s surface. Navtex has a range of about 200 miles, so peters out after the first day or so, and the soothing tones of the Radio 4 shipping forecast have been nothing but a fond memory since we rounded Punta Nariga in Galicia.
The internet is the source of wind forecasts known as grib files, which predict the wind up to seven days out, in an easy to read animation. With a fast enough connection, the internet can be the source of just about any other information one wants, but that’s the problem: how to get an internet connection at sea? SSB radios can work with something called a Pactor modem, which gives connection of a speed, quality and stability that rewards only the calmest and most phlegmatic of operators. They also cost £1,500.
A satellite phone provides quick and reliable connection, but costs £1 a minute on top of the £1,300 initial outlay. They can be used to quickly squirt a grib file into the onboard computer, and upload a day’s position onto a blog. They are effective, but the purchase cost deterred us. Finally, the sickeningly rich can be recognised in marinas by the fat white dome on their boat’s superstructure (as opposed to the fat white belly on their own), which houses an Inmarsat satellite receiver, providing broadband-type connectivity. We could have bought one, but would have had to sell the boat to pay for it, which seems a little counter-productive.
We have chosen to get our weather from a mixture of weather faxes, and weather broadcasters. The faxes are an amazing piece of technology: they come to us in the form of chirrups and burbles from the SSB radio, which a piece of software on the computer downloads and translates into synoptic charts. Pause and reread that, and marvel.
Weather stations all round the world, from Iqualuit to Tashkent, broadcast these charts, together with predictions of wave heights, hurricanes, and iceberg movement at pre-scheduled times; for this passage we are getting the current situation sent out by New Orleans, and forecasts for 48 hours away, from Boston.
I still find it utterly fascinating to turn on the radio, hear the pattern of warbling that indicates the start of a new file, and watch it emerge inch by inch on the computer screen. Still more amazing in a way is that this relatively old technology, now thoroughly overtaken for commercial shipping by satellite communications, is still reliably produced, for free, by so many state-funded weather stations. Long may it continue.
Our final weather resource is the few dedicated individuals who do their own forecasting, for the benefit of any yacht that wants them. The two best known are Herb, up in Canada, and Trudi, in the Caribbean. They both run their own ham radio transmitters. We will sign in with one or both of them, tell them our planned passage, and then call in on the SSB at a pre-arranged time every night, to be told what is coming our way, and to get advice on the best course to steer to take advantage of what is likely to be affecting us.
Friday, 14 November 2008
Off to Cape Verde
13th November - we are just about to set off for the Cape Verdes, so don´t expect any updates for at least a week!
hugs to all
hugs to all
Tuesday, 11 November 2008
La Palma to La Gomera
Sunday 9th November 2008, day 113. 28° 18’.1 N, 017° 21’.4 W. On passage to San Sebastian de La Gomera.
Canarian Food The good: rabbit in mojo, tasty little slices across the rabbit’s spine, with the skin making a slightly chewy, bacony contrast, and tiny kidneys attached every now and then, casseroled in pimento and olive oil, with almonds added for a treat.
The bad: bienmesabe (literally “tastes good to me”) a wonderfully unhealthy and unfinishably delicious pudding. Imagine melted turkish delight, add some golden syrup, and then mix in chopped nuts. Eat very slowly, ideally chilled, while watching old black and white films.
The ugly: pulpo alla Canaria. I love octopus, but prefer it chopped up into manageable slices and, frankly, with the suckers decently disguised. The Canarian octopus tastes just as good as its Gallician cousin, but is served with no false modesty; just a purple, eight-legged dollop, complete with eyes and beak.
We left La Palma at 5 in the morning, in order to arrive at our destination in daylight. The sky was clear, the first time in a while, and we could see the Plough – which has moved! It’s rotated 90° anti-clockwise, to stand like a question mark in the sky. The two stars that indicate the Pole Star are now pointing downwards, to a point hidden behind the island.
Canarian Food The good: rabbit in mojo, tasty little slices across the rabbit’s spine, with the skin making a slightly chewy, bacony contrast, and tiny kidneys attached every now and then, casseroled in pimento and olive oil, with almonds added for a treat.
The bad: bienmesabe (literally “tastes good to me”) a wonderfully unhealthy and unfinishably delicious pudding. Imagine melted turkish delight, add some golden syrup, and then mix in chopped nuts. Eat very slowly, ideally chilled, while watching old black and white films.
The ugly: pulpo alla Canaria. I love octopus, but prefer it chopped up into manageable slices and, frankly, with the suckers decently disguised. The Canarian octopus tastes just as good as its Gallician cousin, but is served with no false modesty; just a purple, eight-legged dollop, complete with eyes and beak.
We left La Palma at 5 in the morning, in order to arrive at our destination in daylight. The sky was clear, the first time in a while, and we could see the Plough – which has moved! It’s rotated 90° anti-clockwise, to stand like a question mark in the sky. The two stars that indicate the Pole Star are now pointing downwards, to a point hidden behind the island.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
6th November
Thursday 6th November 2008, day 108. 28° 40’.4 N, 017° 46’.0 W. Santa Cruz de La Palma.
Ooh! Aah! Ow! We went for a wonderful (oof!) 18k walk up the central volcano yesterday and (aah!) today can barely move. My volcano climbing muscles (that’s the fat ones at the top of my legs) are not used to this sort of thing, no more are the volcano climbing down muscles in my knees, and together they are doing a good job of suggesting that a day writing emails and gently ambling round shops is just what’s needed. Except that, having sat down to do a bit of writing, I can’t get up from the chair!
Anthony, of course, being so young and fit and agile, finds all this creaking and groaning highly amusing – but even he is moving a bit gingerly, when he thinks I’m not looking.
The volcano in question is Taburiente, whose pinnacle collapsed aeons ago, leaving a massive crater 8km wide, and surrounded by sharp-edged peaks and ravines, worn down by thousands of years of erosion. Its slopes are covered in Canary pines, with almost nothing else growing at the very top apart from a wiry, slightly aromatic relation of the sage plant.
The road up has been blasted through volcanic rock; here it is a dark brown, and has the lumpy texture of soft friable earth, but is hard like iron, and as coarse as steel wool. As you climb, the plant-life gets less and less varied until the pines and sage take over entirely. The Canary pine is made for this sort of harshness, with the ability to force its roots down into lava as solid as steel, and to withstand forest fires. Judging by the growth of the unmarked trees, the last fire had passed through about fifteen years ago, leaving the trees with their bark charred and blistered into thick, many-layered, scales.
The path climbed steadily for three hours, giving spectacular views down to the plain below, while we breathed in the scents of warmth and damp and green living things. The sense of smell gets atrophied on a boat for lack of variety, so we revel in the scent of forests and flowers whenever we come across them.
The top of Pico Bejenado, at 1,854m, looks north across the cauldron to the peaks on the other side. When we arrived, they were just visible above the cloud filling the bowl, and then, in the space of time it took to turn round, almost all the cloud vanished, allowing us to look down to the bottom of the giant ravined, pine-filled hollow. By the time we started to come down, the cloud level had dropped again, giving us a cool soft light for the descent back down – and, amazingly, we timed it so that we arrived five minutes before the hourly bus left – worth yomping that final mile.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
Crackling sounds
Well, according to several fellow sailors, the sound that might have been the boat falling apart is just fish and, believe it or not, sea urchins. Something to do with the excellent sound conducting properties of water - and their noisy table habits! Thank you all for your replies.
5th November
Tuesday 4th November 2008, day 108. 28° 40’.4 N, 017° 46’.0 W. Santa Cruz de La Palma.
Santa Cruz, which we have just walked round quickly, seems to be a really pretty little town. Masses of lovely shops … a pasteleria selling doughnuts rellado con chocolate … bars, palm trees, pretty squares, interesting “Canarian” architecture – a really nice place to end up. So often we choose our next stop because it is sheltered from the wind, or because of the chandlery or the boatyard – or simply because it has a launderette! But here we seem to have come to a destination which is worth visiting in its own right.
La Palma is the north-westernmost island of the Canaries, and not to be confused at all with Las Palmas, the touristy town on Gran Canaria. Its volcanoes are still quite active; the last eruption was in 1971. There is a self-contained maturity to the town, which is chic without being flashy, and seems to cater to the local population rather than visiting tourists.
In the end we stayed two weeks in Tenerife, having a really good go at all the maintenance jobs which have been building up – as well as those which didn’t get done before we left. I think we have finally got the upper hand on the LIST, which up till now has been growing as fast – or sometimes faster – as we can cross things off it.
We also did our victualling for the Atlantic crossing – quite a major logistical exercise to sort out food for five people for three weeks, in a fairly limited amount of storage space. First of all there was the estimating of just how many teaspoonfuls of coffee or bowlfuls of cereal the average crew member would get through happily in a day, then the Spreadsheet, which multiplies all that up, and allows for contingencies (or extra hard-working and hungry crew members) and adds just a leetle bit of extra chocolate for emergencies …, then the village fête game of guessing just how many teaspoonfuls of coffee there are in the average jar, then checking what we have already to produce the final list of requirements. Right at the end, as a reward for all that hard work, we get to spend 2 hours trudging, utterly lost, round a supermarket the size of Woodbridge, and then get it all home, filling the boot and the back seat of the taxi. Then the fun starts! Anthony gets rather miserable, as he is convinced it won’t all fit; I am stimulated by the challenge. (Which is a bit sad, but there you go.) So we pull everything out of every locker, and empty all the carrier bags, and pile it all up on the saloon table, and take a photo. Then sort it out, and Anthony starts packing it away – and he carries on packing and I carry on sorting and we only lose our temper with each other once – and miraculously, it all disappears into the lockers! But we don’t dare open them, in case the whole lot comes thundering out again.
Anthony had a birthday during all this, which we celebrated, along with our 100th day of the voyage, with a supper party with a lovely boatful of New Zealanders, and all the presents I have been collecting for him from various visitors since we left. Thank you, everybody, for getting the cards and presents to him!
We took a day off, as part of the festivities, and hired a car with the intention of going up El Teide, Tenerife’s volcano. This was what turned out to be the start of almost a week of bad weather. We drove up from the still-warm, if drizzly coast, into a bank of cloud, filling all the gaps between the tall straight eucalyptuses, with just the faintest glimmers of light shining through the trees. Then we came out of the forest into a storm of horizontal sleet, which gave way to horizontal freezing rain (like sleet, but wetter). We stopped at a café which served hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, by the side of a roaring log fire. Down at sea level, we had put what seemed like a lot of warm clothing in our rucksacks: a sweater, an extra shirt, gloves, hat, scarf and waterproof jacket. Totally inadequate in the bitter cold – full-on skiing kit would have been a good start!
Then on and up, until at around 2,200m we came out of the cloud into bright cold sunlight, and a vast barren plain around the volcano itself. The colour scheme here is shades of brown, purplish grey, ochre and dull mustard, with occasional apparent bursts of colour coming from a dried-up clump of grasses, or an array of greenish granite chips giving the impression of life. Due to the cold (-4° at the top) the cable car up the volcano wasn’t running, but we had a long walk all around the base of the mountain, and through a park of twisted lava pinnacles left behind by erosion of the softer rock around them.
Downwards, past the site of the most recent eruption, in 1798, which still looks as bare, raw and scarred as if it had happened only days ago. Right at the edge of the lava flow, where it thins out, the indomitable Canary Pines are just starting to establish a toe-hold, and their dropped pine-needles will, imperceptibly slowly, start to decompose and provide the basis for other forms of life.
We had planned to leave Tenerife a day or so after this trip, but ended up staying put for a further three days, to let some thoroughly nasty wind, rain and waves blow themselves out. So we got down to some jobs that were so dull they’d sort of got ignored in our first burst of energy … and Anthony’s resistance was so worn down that I was allowed to go shopping in the chandler’s for spares that we don’t even need yet!
Sunday, 26 October 2008
23rd October
Thursday 23rd October 2008, day 96. 28° 28’.0 N, 016° 14’.6 W. Marina Atlantico, Santa Cruz de Tenerife.
This comes to you from the marina’s launderette, where two loads of our dirty washing are churning away. The launderette is new and clean, the machines work, and the instructions leave no scope for error. For everyone reading this at home, with the washing machine a commonplace that is only noticed when it breaks down, that may seem a pretty mundane way of starting a blog. For us, it gives an unusual feeling of domesticity!
We are now in Tenerife, in the capital, Santa Cruz, on the north east side of the island. We shall stay here a couple of days, visit El Teide, and also stock up on cans and dry goods and bottles for our Atlantic trip. Anthony and I have both owned up to little bits of unused storage that we had been keeping quiet about – so now they can be used for beer …
Tomia has just come out of the water for a scrub and a fresh coat of anti-foul in a little fishing marina just north of Santa Cruz. She wasn’t too dirty, but it was the last opportunity this side of the Atlantic, and it won’t be until January that we have another chance, with a bit of luck.
Having flicked a dollop of Nitromors onto the chart table during the fit-out, where it lay unseen for three days, I had been excused all duties involving paint brushes. This exemption doesn’t seem to apply to anti-fouling. Oh well.
In fact, the anti-fouling was judged so adequate that I have now been promoted to assistant varnisher (horizontal surfaces only). There is now a fine dribble of varnish on the companionway, and a small smudge on the handle of the kettle. I honestly have no idea how they got there. Poor Anthony, being married to such a klutz.
A funny noise has been disturbing us, and if any sailors reading this have an explanation, please tell us. It’s a crackling sound, a bit like velcro being separated, or the snap, crackle and pop from a bowl of cereal. We were convinced it was fish nibbling at the weed on Tomia’s hull, but the noise continues despite the scrub-down. The hull was in perfect condition when we hauled her out, so it’s nothing dire (at 3 in the morning, the imagination turns to the sound of thousands of tiny bursting bubbles of gel coat). Any thoughts?
In the Canaries, we are firmly back in Spain, just as in Madeira we were in Portugal. This means, hurray!, we are once more in the country of pimientos de padron, which stopped dead at the border between Spain and Portugal, five weeks ago. On the downside, that means we are back in the country of UHT milk – and also in the country of free plastic bags. In Portugal, the bags are as on-message as Peter Mandelson’s spin doctor, sporting the logo “Even on foot, a plastic bag uses petrol”, and cost 5 centimes each. In Spain, the checkout girls take a dim view of your spurning their brightly branded ones for a tatty Tesco bag left over from a previous life.
We had heard bad things about Tenerife being built up, but this north east corner is lovely. Very dry and dramatic scenery; the marina is surrounded by viciously spiked hills, a harsh purplish grey, dotted with green tussocks of some sort of succulent. Santa Cruz is a lovely old town, with lots of art deco buildings, very few tourists, and the general air of being a nice place to live, without being too bothered about adapting their ways to foreigners.
We hired a car while waiting for Tomia to be lifted out, and drove up into the Anaga mountains, stopping at a roadside caff for a delicious lunch of rabbit in piquant sauce. Then an exhilarating walk along the mountain ridge (flattened now by centuries of footsteps, mule and human, to about 6 foot wide) to a tiny village called Taborno. A sign led us up to “Café Hilario” – the smallest, coolest café ever. Hilario has added a fridge and a counter to his 40 sq ft sitting room, ran out of room, and installed the sink on the terrace outside, then whitewashed the walls to give space for his guests to write messages in felt tip pen. The sun shines, the bougainvillea tumbles over the trellis, the view stretches down to the sea, and five tiny kittens stagger in the shade of the banana tree. A great spot.
We scrambled back up the 700 ft to the place where we had lunch – any chance of an ice cream? Incredulous laughter. This is October! It’s the autumn!
Friday, 24 October 2008
19th Oct
Sunday 19th October 2008, day 92. 28° 31’.98 N, 016° 07’.95 W.
Tenerife, Ensenada de Zapata.
It is raining. So we are sitting below, and, just as if we were on our mooring in the Deben, Anthony is reading Yachting Monthly, Mike Pert is lapping up Nigel Calder’s tome on boat electrics and I am catching up with the blog, before having supper, followed by a game of scrabble. Just like being at home. Even down to the marmalade bread and butter pudding in the oven.
Except that tomorrow morning we will all get into the sea before breakfast, and swim to a deserted black sand beach, with volcanic cliffs striated above us, and agaves and prickly pears on the hillsides. Oh, we are so lucky!
Tenerife, Ensenada de Zapata.
It is raining. So we are sitting below, and, just as if we were on our mooring in the Deben, Anthony is reading Yachting Monthly, Mike Pert is lapping up Nigel Calder’s tome on boat electrics and I am catching up with the blog, before having supper, followed by a game of scrabble. Just like being at home. Even down to the marmalade bread and butter pudding in the oven.
Except that tomorrow morning we will all get into the sea before breakfast, and swim to a deserted black sand beach, with volcanic cliffs striated above us, and agaves and prickly pears on the hillsides. Oh, we are so lucky!
Monday, 6 October 2008
4th October
Saturday 4th October 2008, day 77.
Porto Santo is a tiny, bare, volcanic island, about 40 miles NE of Madeira. It has one harbour, with about 20 visiting yachts at any time, all of them en route to the Canaries, and mostly on to the Caribbean, though a couple are heading for the Guyanas, and one for the Panama Canal, and then on to the Galapagos and the Marquesas. Nationalities: Dutch, Norwegian, French, Swedish, Danish, Irish, Belgian, one American, one Canadian. Many of them have been living aboard their boats and sailing the world for years; we feel very new and inexperienced alongside them. At the same time, being part of this cruising community makes our plans seem quite feasible.
The first inhabitants brought rabbits with them for food, which did their usual trick: escaped, bred, and ate every green thing in sight. Reforestation efforts are in place, but as the island gets little rain – for some reason, it is all saved for Madeira - it is an uphill struggle.
Today’s linguistic curiosity: what is a frigideira? Deduct one point everybody (and that includes the spell-checker) who said a fridge or freezer. It’s a frying pan. The recipe does make a bit more sense now!
Porto Santo is a tiny, bare, volcanic island, about 40 miles NE of Madeira. It has one harbour, with about 20 visiting yachts at any time, all of them en route to the Canaries, and mostly on to the Caribbean, though a couple are heading for the Guyanas, and one for the Panama Canal, and then on to the Galapagos and the Marquesas. Nationalities: Dutch, Norwegian, French, Swedish, Danish, Irish, Belgian, one American, one Canadian. Many of them have been living aboard their boats and sailing the world for years; we feel very new and inexperienced alongside them. At the same time, being part of this cruising community makes our plans seem quite feasible.
The first inhabitants brought rabbits with them for food, which did their usual trick: escaped, bred, and ate every green thing in sight. Reforestation efforts are in place, but as the island gets little rain – for some reason, it is all saved for Madeira - it is an uphill struggle.
Today’s linguistic curiosity: what is a frigideira? Deduct one point everybody (and that includes the spell-checker) who said a fridge or freezer. It’s a frying pan. The recipe does make a bit more sense now!
2nd October
Thursday 2nd October 2008, day 75. 33° 03’.7 N, 016° 18’.8 W. Porto Santo.
We have arrived! A great sail, with the wind in the right direction (ENE), and the right speed (16 – 26 knots) for a whole three and a half days. We had the spinnaker up twice, and most of the rest of the time sailed on the main and the boomed-out jib. Tomia behaved beautifully, and although she couldn’t help rolling and veering when caught by quartering seas, she has never felt other than totally solid and in her right environment.
We passed due west of Gibraltar early on Wednesday morning, quickly followed by Tangier. Rabat was next, on Thursday morning, then Casablanca, and if we went straight east to Africa now, we would arrive somewhere near Cap Beddouza. Suddenly, having been ambling along the coast of Portugal and Spain, safely staying in Europe, we are travelling properly. As long as we were on the Portuguese coast, we could always have decided that ocean crossing wasn’t for us, and that we would turn left and go into the Med. From here, though, it is probably easier to go on, south and west, to the Caribbean, with the trade winds behind us, than to turn back and beat our way 500 miles against the prevailing winds to mainland Europe. So we really are off!
We are also exhilarated and amazed (still) to find that it was possible to take our lives by the scruff of the neck and do what we wanted to do with them.
Life on passage worked pretty well for us. We kept four four-hour watches from eight in the evening, giving us each two decent slugs of sleep. We slept in the little lower bunk just forward of the saloon, well wedged in with the lee-cloth against the boat’s rolling. At change-over, one put the kettle on, roused the other, did a quick handover about the wind, the waves, forecasts, distance made, any potential dangers from other shipping, and then tucked themselves into the berth while the sheets were still warm from the previous body. Then from midday we would both be up, sharing the experience and doing various tasks about the boat before it was time to start getting going on supper.
Preparing food at sea is a whole art-form in itself, with the boat continually in motion, and any locker ready to violently eject its entire contents if opened at the wrong point of a roll. The sea-cook needs at least five hands: one to open a locker, two to hold the contents in place, another to find the required ingredient, and of course, one to hold on tight to stop themselves being thrown across the boat. Being 60% down on this complement creates constant problems!
To get ingredients out of the fridge, the procedure is this: take the two cushions off the berth above it, balance them on the next door cushions. Take up the plywood berth support, and balance it against the table, without scratching the cabin floor. Bend sideways around the table to lift up the lid of the fridge, and look around, as always, for somewhere stable to put it. Decide, as always, that for the few seconds it will take to find the broccoli, the lid will be just fine, balanced on the edge of the fridge. Choose a calm moment, let go of the lid with one hand, and dive into the fridge. The boat lurches, as always, and between stopping the plywood from banging against the table support and the cushions from going flying, let go of the lid entirely. Take fingers out of the way smartly as the lid shoots towards you. Vow, as always, that the next time you will find a proper place to put the fridge lid.
Repeat.
Having got the broccoli out, replace the lid and the plywood (again without scratching the cabin floor), retrieve the cushions from the other side of the cabin and put them back too. Retrieve the broccoli from wherever it has rolled to (round vegetables on a boat are a bad idea. Give me a nice flat broad bean, it stays put).
Finally, and this is the key bit, remember that you also needed to get out the potatoes.
Repeat.
Despite all this we have eaten well: chicken curry (followed by curried chicken soup for lunch), seafood risotto (followed by seafood soup for lunch, you begin to see the pattern?), then pork chops with apricots and garlic, new potatoes and broccoli, and finally tonight something quite like kofte, made with something Portuguese that was quite like cracked wheat.
We have arrived! A great sail, with the wind in the right direction (ENE), and the right speed (16 – 26 knots) for a whole three and a half days. We had the spinnaker up twice, and most of the rest of the time sailed on the main and the boomed-out jib. Tomia behaved beautifully, and although she couldn’t help rolling and veering when caught by quartering seas, she has never felt other than totally solid and in her right environment.
We passed due west of Gibraltar early on Wednesday morning, quickly followed by Tangier. Rabat was next, on Thursday morning, then Casablanca, and if we went straight east to Africa now, we would arrive somewhere near Cap Beddouza. Suddenly, having been ambling along the coast of Portugal and Spain, safely staying in Europe, we are travelling properly. As long as we were on the Portuguese coast, we could always have decided that ocean crossing wasn’t for us, and that we would turn left and go into the Med. From here, though, it is probably easier to go on, south and west, to the Caribbean, with the trade winds behind us, than to turn back and beat our way 500 miles against the prevailing winds to mainland Europe. So we really are off!
We are also exhilarated and amazed (still) to find that it was possible to take our lives by the scruff of the neck and do what we wanted to do with them.
Life on passage worked pretty well for us. We kept four four-hour watches from eight in the evening, giving us each two decent slugs of sleep. We slept in the little lower bunk just forward of the saloon, well wedged in with the lee-cloth against the boat’s rolling. At change-over, one put the kettle on, roused the other, did a quick handover about the wind, the waves, forecasts, distance made, any potential dangers from other shipping, and then tucked themselves into the berth while the sheets were still warm from the previous body. Then from midday we would both be up, sharing the experience and doing various tasks about the boat before it was time to start getting going on supper.
Preparing food at sea is a whole art-form in itself, with the boat continually in motion, and any locker ready to violently eject its entire contents if opened at the wrong point of a roll. The sea-cook needs at least five hands: one to open a locker, two to hold the contents in place, another to find the required ingredient, and of course, one to hold on tight to stop themselves being thrown across the boat. Being 60% down on this complement creates constant problems!
To get ingredients out of the fridge, the procedure is this: take the two cushions off the berth above it, balance them on the next door cushions. Take up the plywood berth support, and balance it against the table, without scratching the cabin floor. Bend sideways around the table to lift up the lid of the fridge, and look around, as always, for somewhere stable to put it. Decide, as always, that for the few seconds it will take to find the broccoli, the lid will be just fine, balanced on the edge of the fridge. Choose a calm moment, let go of the lid with one hand, and dive into the fridge. The boat lurches, as always, and between stopping the plywood from banging against the table support and the cushions from going flying, let go of the lid entirely. Take fingers out of the way smartly as the lid shoots towards you. Vow, as always, that the next time you will find a proper place to put the fridge lid.
Repeat.
Having got the broccoli out, replace the lid and the plywood (again without scratching the cabin floor), retrieve the cushions from the other side of the cabin and put them back too. Retrieve the broccoli from wherever it has rolled to (round vegetables on a boat are a bad idea. Give me a nice flat broad bean, it stays put).
Finally, and this is the key bit, remember that you also needed to get out the potatoes.
Repeat.
Despite all this we have eaten well: chicken curry (followed by curried chicken soup for lunch), seafood risotto (followed by seafood soup for lunch, you begin to see the pattern?), then pork chops with apricots and garlic, new potatoes and broccoli, and finally tonight something quite like kofte, made with something Portuguese that was quite like cracked wheat.
30th September
Tuesday 30th September 2008, day 73, 23.11 pm. 36° 12’.7 N, 012° 45’.2 W. On passage to Madeira
There is phosphorescence in the sea tonight. I have had several attempts at finding a good way of describing the magic of it, but this is what it is like: it is like sailing, in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, when the sea is black and the moonless sky is star-spangled grey, and you are the only person awake for as far as the radar can see, and as the boat rushes through a wave, the foam is thrown up white and shot right through with tiny globes of light, over and over again, and all you can see is the rushing waves and the glittering sea. That’s what phosphorescence is like.
The boat’s loos work on sea water, so in these conditions, it’s as if we’re flushing the loo with starlight. I just hope the plankton feel as poetic about it.
At night I am struck, more than ever, by the bravery of the explorers who set out across the oceans armed with little more than optimism and faith – and the hope of wealth and glory. On a moonless, cloudy night, there is almost no light at all, and you cannot even see the waves until their crests break. We have GPS and charts, so, apart from a log or a container, we know that there’s nothing for us to run into. We surge on into the darkness, confident that we know exactly where the next piece of land is.
Not only did the early explorers not know if the lands they were looking for existed, they didn’t know what other land or rocks might appear in their way, on which they could suddenly be wrecked. When they found land, would it appear over the horizon during the day, so they could reconnoitre and choose the safest-looking bay to land in? Or would the first they knew of it be the sound of waves breaking on the rocks ahead, still invisible in the darkness? We only know the names of the successful explorers, those who found land safely and returned. The names of those who were wrecked earlier on the same islands have vanished for ever.
We have seen two birds so far, a pair of juvenile gulls. They came in to land a few feet away from us, red legs extended as they slowed their glide, just hanging there until a wave came up to meet their feet, then they stalled and subsided gracefully and sat there bobbing up and down, just in case we threw some rubbish over the side.
There is phosphorescence in the sea tonight. I have had several attempts at finding a good way of describing the magic of it, but this is what it is like: it is like sailing, in the middle of the ocean, in the middle of the night, when the sea is black and the moonless sky is star-spangled grey, and you are the only person awake for as far as the radar can see, and as the boat rushes through a wave, the foam is thrown up white and shot right through with tiny globes of light, over and over again, and all you can see is the rushing waves and the glittering sea. That’s what phosphorescence is like.
The boat’s loos work on sea water, so in these conditions, it’s as if we’re flushing the loo with starlight. I just hope the plankton feel as poetic about it.
At night I am struck, more than ever, by the bravery of the explorers who set out across the oceans armed with little more than optimism and faith – and the hope of wealth and glory. On a moonless, cloudy night, there is almost no light at all, and you cannot even see the waves until their crests break. We have GPS and charts, so, apart from a log or a container, we know that there’s nothing for us to run into. We surge on into the darkness, confident that we know exactly where the next piece of land is.
Not only did the early explorers not know if the lands they were looking for existed, they didn’t know what other land or rocks might appear in their way, on which they could suddenly be wrecked. When they found land, would it appear over the horizon during the day, so they could reconnoitre and choose the safest-looking bay to land in? Or would the first they knew of it be the sound of waves breaking on the rocks ahead, still invisible in the darkness? We only know the names of the successful explorers, those who found land safely and returned. The names of those who were wrecked earlier on the same islands have vanished for ever.
We have seen two birds so far, a pair of juvenile gulls. They came in to land a few feet away from us, red legs extended as they slowed their glide, just hanging there until a wave came up to meet their feet, then they stalled and subsided gracefully and sat there bobbing up and down, just in case we threw some rubbish over the side.
Sunday, 28 September 2008
28th September
Sunday 28th September 2008, day 71. 38° 41’.66 N, 009° 12’.23 W. Lisbon.
We have been far too busy sight-seeing in Lisbon to write up the blog. We are ashamed of ourselves.
After 10 days of eating and relaxing, life gets back to "normal" tomorrow when we set off for Madeira. This will be our longest passage so far, around 480 nautical miles. For the first time, our port of refuge if we find ourselves obliged to head for land will be in Africa, not Europe. Tomia is fully "vittled", the water tanks are being filled as I type, and the weather forecast is benign. What more can we ask for?
We have been far too busy sight-seeing in Lisbon to write up the blog. We are ashamed of ourselves.
After 10 days of eating and relaxing, life gets back to "normal" tomorrow when we set off for Madeira. This will be our longest passage so far, around 480 nautical miles. For the first time, our port of refuge if we find ourselves obliged to head for land will be in Africa, not Europe. Tomia is fully "vittled", the water tanks are being filled as I type, and the weather forecast is benign. What more can we ask for?
Sunday, 21 September 2008
12th September
Friday 12th September 2008, day 55. 40° 08’.84 N, 008° 51’.59 W. Figueira da Foz.
After fog and wind, today’s challenge is waves. The only thing between us and Newfoundland right now is sea, so whatever weather is going on over there (currently the remains of Hurricane Gustav) ends up with us sooner or later, in the form of swell. We seem to have left behind the short chop of Biscay and the Channel, so the waves, however high, come in at well-spaced intervals. Tomia rides them unconcerned, rising and falling as they pass under her, as buoyant as a plastic duck. But they cause us to roll and pitch, which in turn makes sailing awkward. The wind angle changes as the sea comes in from the starboard quarter, we lift up and heel to port, then the wave passes underneath us, we roll back to starboard, the wind disappearing as we go down into the trough of the sea, the sail collapses, before filling again with a crack as the next wave comes through. All rather tiring, and music to a sail-maker’s ears, so we end up turning on the engine to give us some progress through the sea. If there was any decent wind, this would be different, but there’s not really enough to get us going.
We did manage to sail with the engine off for the last hour approaching the landfall, and then had the harbour entrance to contend with. Waves that are benign out at sea, however high, are a different matter approaching land. They have nowhere to go, and, like any other thing which is trapped with limited options, become frustrated, noisy and destructive. All that energy, which has rolled unhindered over the ocean for thousands of miles, is suddenly corralled by the harbour entrance and the rapidly rising sea bed, creating a rush of water to catch the entering boat and race her forward, just as if we were on a surf board.
After fog and wind, today’s challenge is waves. The only thing between us and Newfoundland right now is sea, so whatever weather is going on over there (currently the remains of Hurricane Gustav) ends up with us sooner or later, in the form of swell. We seem to have left behind the short chop of Biscay and the Channel, so the waves, however high, come in at well-spaced intervals. Tomia rides them unconcerned, rising and falling as they pass under her, as buoyant as a plastic duck. But they cause us to roll and pitch, which in turn makes sailing awkward. The wind angle changes as the sea comes in from the starboard quarter, we lift up and heel to port, then the wave passes underneath us, we roll back to starboard, the wind disappearing as we go down into the trough of the sea, the sail collapses, before filling again with a crack as the next wave comes through. All rather tiring, and music to a sail-maker’s ears, so we end up turning on the engine to give us some progress through the sea. If there was any decent wind, this would be different, but there’s not really enough to get us going.
We did manage to sail with the engine off for the last hour approaching the landfall, and then had the harbour entrance to contend with. Waves that are benign out at sea, however high, are a different matter approaching land. They have nowhere to go, and, like any other thing which is trapped with limited options, become frustrated, noisy and destructive. All that energy, which has rolled unhindered over the ocean for thousands of miles, is suddenly corralled by the harbour entrance and the rapidly rising sea bed, creating a rush of water to catch the entering boat and race her forward, just as if we were on a surf board.
Friday, 12 September 2008
11th September
Thursday 11th September 2008, day 54. 40° 39’.55 N, 008° 43’.81 W. Saõ Jacinte
Yesterday was windless and foggy, with the forecast showing more of the same, so it was a disagreeable surprise to be woken by wind gusting through the rigging, and rain pelting down. We were both lying half-awake, when suddenly we heard frantic cries from another boat close by. We shot out of our berth: someone was dragging their anchor. A quick look through the saloon windows – it was us, and we were bearing down on the boat behind, too quickly for comfort.
In that situation there is a quick balance to be struck between putting on a few clothes – and even more importantly, shoes - and averting disaster. If necessary, we would have dealt with her stark naked, but there was just enough time to throw on the minimum before shooting out of the companionway into the pouring rain. The engine started first time (whatever other troubles it’s given us, its starting has always been impeccable) and from then on things came back under control. It was a nasty shock, though, and when we came below with the anchor well dug in again, it wasn’t just being soaked through and cold that was making me shiver.
Saõ Jacinte is not much of a place. Its main attraction was that it broke our voyage to Figueira da Foz into two day-sails, and also that there is a pleasant town (Aveiro) further up the river, together with some bird-rich wetlands. But with the wind gusting strongly and the holding suspect, we didn’t want to leave Tomia for long enough to explore, so remained beneath the loom of the gas holding tanks, sunning ourselves a little in the lee of the cockpit cover.
The local shop sold chorizo, flip flops and fishing rods, so we chose the first of those for our supper, casseroled with a tin of tomatoes and some odd white beans (tremoço) that had been for sale next door to the olives, but tasted more like under-cooked lentils. Pudding was better, though, thanks to the pasteleria next door, which provided a palmier topped with an orange, almond-tasting jam, and a little custard tart for Anthony.
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
10th September
Wednesday 10th September, day 53. 40° 53’.01 N, 008° 46’.73 W. On passage to Aveiro.
This morning we woke early to the mournful bleat of foghorns. Visibility in the harbour was down to a few hundred yards, almost blotting out the Christmas tree-like lights of the motor boat anchored next to us. We decided to wait a few hours, and then take a look outside the breakwater to see if the fog lifted a bit out from land.
Now Tomia is slouching, heavy shouldered, through an undulating featureless sea, bounded by a circle of fog 4 miles across. There is virtually no wind, so we are plodding on under engine.
The past four days have been spent in Leixões, the only place for a yacht to stay close to Porto. The marina has nothing to recommend it apart from as a base to explore the city (and the charming, doe-eyed Portuguese harbour master …) The loo block is smelly, and the door to the single ladies’ loo cannot be shut. Perhaps because of this, it is sadly obvious that some of the marina inhabitants decide not to bother with going ashore, but flush straight into the marina. You don’t want to know. One boat on our pontoon appears to have been abandoned; she has been here so long that clusters of mussels are growing off her hull and mooring ropes. Another abandoned boat is slowly rusting through her paintwork. Although we loved Porto, we are not sorry to leave and head off down the coast.
Porto itself more than makes up for the grubbiness of the marina. Built on the steep, rocky banks of the Douro, its narrow shaded cobbled streets, lined with laundry-strewn balconies, give on to white squares decorated with statues of victorious generals and navigator princes, and breath-taking azulejo-decorated churches.
Beneath the immediately impressive beauty there is a strong flavour of decay: in the steep twisting side streets, only a few yards from the triumphal centre or the cathedral-fortress on its hill-top, the tiles have cracked off the facades, the ironwork is rusting, and stone-work crumbling.
A flavour of lands further south is creeping in, among the smart air-conditioned shopping centres.
The central mercado do Bolhão looks as if it has been transplanted from Dakar. The centre of one city block is occupied by a shanty-town of stalls on two levels, within a crumbling concrete and wrought-iron enclosure. Far more fruit and vegetables seem to be piled up on the 30 or so stalls around the upper level, than would be bought in a week. Down below are the flower sellers, the fish-mongers, and the little butchers where you can buy every part (and I mean every part) of a pig, apart, possibly, from the oink.
On the way to the mercado, the route from the city hall takes us through an almost medieval concentration of iron-mongers. Eight or nine of them are cheek-by-jowl at the intersection of two streets. One specialises in cutting keys, two in door handles and padlocks (rows of drawers 8ft high stretch back into the darkness, each with an example of its contents stuck on the front) , while an outlying specialist carries hundreds of reels of different sized string and rope, jumbo packs of loo paper, and devotional candles. Thirty yards further on, we are back in the 20th century, with brightly-lit clothes and interior design shops.
By the way, on the subject of shoes and shopping, I would like to record that Anthony has bought three pairs of shoes so far on this trip. No comment, just a simple fact.
No visit to Porto would be complete without a trip to a port house, so we walked over the bottom layer of Gustav Eiffel’s double-decker bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia, on the south bank of the Douro, where all the port lodges are. Out of the 20 or so lodges that have tours, we chose Graham’s, for associations with a friend who sadly hasn’t been able to join us on board. The vast halls of barrels were full of a smell of something sweet and musty, perhaps wild mushrooms and walnuts, with a layer of redcurrant jelly on top? Some of the vats had little damp patches in the dirt beneath them, but despite running a hopeful finger around the bottom of a few of them, there was nothing dripping just then …
Two hours later: the fog has gone, the sun is shining, but there is still no wind, so we are still plugging on with the motor. I hate motoring: in my view it transforms sailing into nothing better than damp caravanning. But right now, the absence of sails means that, with a couple of cushions, the foredeck is transformed into the best armchair in the world.
This morning we woke early to the mournful bleat of foghorns. Visibility in the harbour was down to a few hundred yards, almost blotting out the Christmas tree-like lights of the motor boat anchored next to us. We decided to wait a few hours, and then take a look outside the breakwater to see if the fog lifted a bit out from land.
Now Tomia is slouching, heavy shouldered, through an undulating featureless sea, bounded by a circle of fog 4 miles across. There is virtually no wind, so we are plodding on under engine.
The past four days have been spent in Leixões, the only place for a yacht to stay close to Porto. The marina has nothing to recommend it apart from as a base to explore the city (and the charming, doe-eyed Portuguese harbour master …) The loo block is smelly, and the door to the single ladies’ loo cannot be shut. Perhaps because of this, it is sadly obvious that some of the marina inhabitants decide not to bother with going ashore, but flush straight into the marina. You don’t want to know. One boat on our pontoon appears to have been abandoned; she has been here so long that clusters of mussels are growing off her hull and mooring ropes. Another abandoned boat is slowly rusting through her paintwork. Although we loved Porto, we are not sorry to leave and head off down the coast.
Porto itself more than makes up for the grubbiness of the marina. Built on the steep, rocky banks of the Douro, its narrow shaded cobbled streets, lined with laundry-strewn balconies, give on to white squares decorated with statues of victorious generals and navigator princes, and breath-taking azulejo-decorated churches.
Beneath the immediately impressive beauty there is a strong flavour of decay: in the steep twisting side streets, only a few yards from the triumphal centre or the cathedral-fortress on its hill-top, the tiles have cracked off the facades, the ironwork is rusting, and stone-work crumbling.
A flavour of lands further south is creeping in, among the smart air-conditioned shopping centres.
The central mercado do Bolhão looks as if it has been transplanted from Dakar. The centre of one city block is occupied by a shanty-town of stalls on two levels, within a crumbling concrete and wrought-iron enclosure. Far more fruit and vegetables seem to be piled up on the 30 or so stalls around the upper level, than would be bought in a week. Down below are the flower sellers, the fish-mongers, and the little butchers where you can buy every part (and I mean every part) of a pig, apart, possibly, from the oink.
On the way to the mercado, the route from the city hall takes us through an almost medieval concentration of iron-mongers. Eight or nine of them are cheek-by-jowl at the intersection of two streets. One specialises in cutting keys, two in door handles and padlocks (rows of drawers 8ft high stretch back into the darkness, each with an example of its contents stuck on the front) , while an outlying specialist carries hundreds of reels of different sized string and rope, jumbo packs of loo paper, and devotional candles. Thirty yards further on, we are back in the 20th century, with brightly-lit clothes and interior design shops.
By the way, on the subject of shoes and shopping, I would like to record that Anthony has bought three pairs of shoes so far on this trip. No comment, just a simple fact.
No visit to Porto would be complete without a trip to a port house, so we walked over the bottom layer of Gustav Eiffel’s double-decker bridge to Vila Nova de Gaia, on the south bank of the Douro, where all the port lodges are. Out of the 20 or so lodges that have tours, we chose Graham’s, for associations with a friend who sadly hasn’t been able to join us on board. The vast halls of barrels were full of a smell of something sweet and musty, perhaps wild mushrooms and walnuts, with a layer of redcurrant jelly on top? Some of the vats had little damp patches in the dirt beneath them, but despite running a hopeful finger around the bottom of a few of them, there was nothing dripping just then …
Two hours later: the fog has gone, the sun is shining, but there is still no wind, so we are still plugging on with the motor. I hate motoring: in my view it transforms sailing into nothing better than damp caravanning. But right now, the absence of sails means that, with a couple of cushions, the foredeck is transformed into the best armchair in the world.
4th September
Thursday 4th September 2008, day 47. 42° 07’.12 N, 008° 50’.45 W. Baiona
We are sitting at anchor in Baiona, waiting, apprehensively, for a gale to come through. The gale warning came out last night, and was confirmed and strengthened this afternoon. The marina staff are out tying up their flags and taking down the banners that welcome visiting yachtsmen, to prevent them being torn down by the upcoming wind. Great dark clouds are massing to the west, above the town. We and a couple of other yachts have moved our position as far as we can towards the shore, to gain as much shelter as possible from the surrounding hills; we have put out extra anchor chain, got the dinghy up on deck and lashed it down, checked there’s nothing that could flog loose – and are about to sit down to medallions of pork in a vermouth and crème fraîche sauce; keeping up our standards, even if the weather can’t keep its side of the bargain.
The last entry came from Combarro. From there, replete with sardines and bougainvillea, we went to Vigo for a couple of days, where, thank heavens, we found engineers who had the ability – and the availability – to give our raw water pump a good looking over, diagnose what had (probably) been the problem, and give us a reasonable degree of comfort that the underlying issue had been solved.
[Technical digression for anybody who’s interested: when the exhaust first stopped putting out water, Anthony did some initial diagnostics, and, having checked that the water wasn’t blocked getting into the boat, and wasn’t going anywhere it shouldn’t after leaving the engine, and wasn’t running out of a crack in the engine block (praise the lord), took the raw water pump off.
We found then that the slot on the back end of the pump drive shaft had had a semi circle gouged out on both faces. And the cam shaft adaptor, which had started life as a ridge approx ¾” long, was now a (beautifully turned!) ¼” circle. This was made of 316 marine grade stainless steel, so there had been some fairly massive forces at work, given that the piece had been replaced during the winter servicing only 200 hours previously.
The engineers in Muros were able to obtain for us a new drive shaft adaptor, and a new shaft in the pump. Anthony put the whole lot back together again, and everything appeared to work well, but our concern was what the underlying problem was, because that amount of damage in so little running time presumably indicated something more fundamental.
The engineers in Vigo disassembled the pump again, and checked bearings, greasing, gaskets and tolerances, and have given us a clean bill of health.]
Anyway, apart from engineers, Vigo provided us with yet another wonderful pasteleria, a splendid fish market, our first opportunity to anchor stern to … and the presence of our friend Richard who had flown out to join us, and all his presents: two sorts of chocolate, spares for the boat, a replacement chart plotter*; all good stuff, but also letters from home, four different newspapers, colour supplements, Time magazine, the Economist, three sailing magazines, three light novels, a book on sea birds and another on identifying cetaceans, and Alan Clarke’s 500 page history of the German campaign in Russia in WWII. We are awash in the magic of little black symbols on white paper, and only our great affection for Richard (and gratitude for the effort in lugging all that stuff) stops us from diving head-first into his bounty for the next twenty four hours.
*[another digression for sailing friends: we’ve had faultless after-sales service from Raymarine and Seamark Nunn: when the chart-plotter started going walkabout in Biscay, they offered immediately to send out a replacement, no questions asked. This has been a great weight off our mind.]
We woke the next morning and found the view had changed: subtly, it was hard to put our finger on it, but surely the buildings hadn’t so completely surrounded the harbour when we came in? Had that block of flats been there? No, the whole clicked into focus, it was a vast cruise ship, which had crept in silently while we slept. That explains the alley of expensive fish restaurants in an otherwise rather tatty dockside area, a few hundred yards from the liners’ quay.
A whiz around the town in the morning victualled the ship for the next couple of days, including more different things to try from the pasteleria and some great red langoustine-type creatures from the fish market. We then went off to the Islas Cies, just in the mouth of Vigo’s ria, where we anchored, and …
… spent the afternoon on a white sandy beach in the sun. Mmmm. The trees leaning gently towards the surf were pines, not palms, but apart from that we could have been on a Pacific atoll.
The first time in two months! Up till now, we’ve sometimes had the beach, and occasionally had the sun, and sometimes had the time – now they’ve all come together. Bliss. We had our first attempt at getting an inflatable dinghy off the shore into oncoming breakers, and got back home a little wetter than we’d left!
The following day we went on to Baiona, which has a pretty old town centre, once again well preserved, but surrounded by modern buildings stretching in every direction. We’ve seen this in almost all the towns from Coruña southwards; the old town is very clearly demarcated, presumably protected by planning rules. I imagine the relative inaccessibility of this area has meant that no one much has wanted to develop it till now, though building is now going on apace, and we have seen several hillsides cleared for enclaves of flats and villas.
Richard proved his sterling worth as a crew member by getting out the Brasso and tackling our brightwork; his standards are rather higher than ours, we are ashamed to say. He also cooked the supper which is going to sustain us through the stormy night ahead.
6th September
Saturday 6th September 2008, day 49. 41° 19’.90 N, 008° 49’.72 W. On passage to Leixões.
The storm came through, all right, but apart from ripping the end off our Spanish courtesy flag, did no damage, though we all three were up several times, woken by a change in the note of the wind, or the grating sound as Tomia was swept to the end of her anchor scope, before bouncing back into the teeth of another gust. Today the storm is tearing up the English Channel, causing floods and rain storms. So to anybody in England who thinks we’ve escaped the terrible summer – we’ve had it just like you, just a couple of days earlier.
Richard has asked that I stop singing his praises as chief tidier, washer-up and polisher, as he is modest, self-effacing sort of a chap. Here is a criticism to balance things out – he has read this blog thoroughly, and as a result, we cannot tell him about our adventures, because he knows everything already!
During the course of yesterday we passed from Spanish to Portuguese waters. In Viana do Castelo, last night’s stop, we found we had become more Spanish than we realised over the past month; setting out for supper at 10.30, a time that would find restaurants a scant 20 miles to the north in full swing, we found ourselves the last guests, with waiters sweeping up around us as we ate pudding. Now I have to shake all the Spanish vocabulary out, and start replacing it agora mesmo with Portuguese.
The storm came through, all right, but apart from ripping the end off our Spanish courtesy flag, did no damage, though we all three were up several times, woken by a change in the note of the wind, or the grating sound as Tomia was swept to the end of her anchor scope, before bouncing back into the teeth of another gust. Today the storm is tearing up the English Channel, causing floods and rain storms. So to anybody in England who thinks we’ve escaped the terrible summer – we’ve had it just like you, just a couple of days earlier.
Richard has asked that I stop singing his praises as chief tidier, washer-up and polisher, as he is modest, self-effacing sort of a chap. Here is a criticism to balance things out – he has read this blog thoroughly, and as a result, we cannot tell him about our adventures, because he knows everything already!
During the course of yesterday we passed from Spanish to Portuguese waters. In Viana do Castelo, last night’s stop, we found we had become more Spanish than we realised over the past month; setting out for supper at 10.30, a time that would find restaurants a scant 20 miles to the north in full swing, we found ourselves the last guests, with waiters sweeping up around us as we ate pudding. Now I have to shake all the Spanish vocabulary out, and start replacing it agora mesmo with Portuguese.
Monday, 1 September 2008
Friday 29th August, 42° 25’.69 N, 008° 41’.98 W Combarro
Last time I wrote enthusiastically about the joys of staying put in Finisterre. Be careful what you wish for, as it may come true … We stayed put a whole week at our next stop, Muros, and although it was a pretty enough place, our inactivity wasn’t through choice. As we sailed into the bay, after a great sail down from Finisterre, we realised that there was no water coming out of the engine exhaust, which means no cooling water going round the engine: in short, bad news.
The next week could be read as a long saga of frustration: trips to the mechanics, promises that the pump would be looked at tomorrow, tomorrow never coming, finally a great deal of expense and a temporary solution which got us on the move again, but with no resolution of the underlying problem.
Better to treat it, and remember it, as an enforced “holiday”, where we sat in bars and restaurants and cafés to watch the world go by, ate vast quantities of seafood, got the blog up and running, went to Santiago de Compostela. In the end found we barely had enough time for everything we’d meant to do.
The map from the tourist office showed a “lavadoiros” and as some washing had built up to we set out to investigate. A public washing place, yes, but with forty or so stone basins fed by a spring, led along a concrete irrigation channel! It was still very much in use, judging by the lines of clothes around the perimeter. Being over-civilized souls, and believing in the merits of hot water for washing, we set off instead in the rib to the village of Portosin, across the ria, balancing on three bin-liners full of sweaty clothes and bedding.
We are eating so well! Quantities of fruit – how nice to be in a country where almost all the fruit is grown locally. The nearest we have come to a ready meal is a pot of fruit-flavoured yoghourt. Our favourite restaurant in Muros described itself as a Pulperia – an octopussery? Pulpo alla Gallego are pounded to make them tender, simmered and served in red wine, with olive oil and paprika. Delicious! Then there are the deep-fried squid with their crispy purple-red tentacles, the plates of sardines (of a size which means that no tin could take them), the mejillones (mussels), the almejas (clams), and always the possibility of a little tarta de queso (cheesecake) for postres. For elevenses and breakfast, the pastelerias provide sweet pastries, including old-fashioned cream puffs that explode with crumbs of flaky pastry and spurts of cream at the first bite. The fishing catch is sold in an impromptu market every afternoon. On our last evening in Muros we took back a bag of langoustines, simmered them quickly, then fried them in a little garlic butter to crisp them up.
We are muscling up a bit with all the hauling on ropes – in my case just getting rid of the worst of the desk-bound flabbiness, but Anthony is becoming quite rrrrippling with muscle. He has celebrated this by getting out a T shirt he must have bought in the 70s, cream with thin navy blue horizontal stripes, and navy blue buttons on the shoulder seam. With his tan – he is now so black it just looks as if he’s forgotten to wash – he looks like a thorough-going native of Marseilles.
One day we took a bus to Santiago de Compostela. By the roadside there were many little stone buildings, standing on saddle stones, about 12’ by 3’, with ventilated walls, and a small spire, and often a cross, at both ends. There were no obvious ladders or steps leading up to the small doors in the side. We puzzled what they might be. They had the immediate air of being family mausoleums, but almost every house seemed to have one, often right outside the back door, and there was washing hanging under several of them … hen houses? Places for the jamón to dry in safety? Stores for winter clothes? Privies?
Our destination, Santiago, is the city where the apostle St James is supposed to be buried and is a place of pilgrimage for thousands of people by foot, on horseback and bicycle every year. The front of the cathedral has a Gothic face and the high altar is covered in gold coloured carvings and is extremely ornate – rather over-elaborate for our taste and not quite in keeping with the very simple life that Jesus and his apostles lived.
Santiago has a lovely collection of squares with fountains - one with a bust of an etiolated 16th century face, pointed beard and ruff. To English eyes, especially those which have recently been in Plymouth, the obvious description was Frances Drake - most unlikely though on this bit of the Spanish coast. It was Cervantes.
We had a wonderful lotus eating time in Muros, and really slowed down to the local pace of life. It reminds me of the following story - with apologies to anybody who´s heard it before, and to my former colleagues
The management consultant and the fisherman
Not so long ago, a management consultant took a holiday in a small Spanish fishing village.
In between fielding messages of great importance on his blackberry, and working up a couple of business plans for developing the village with a marina and high-end leisure complex, he practised his Spanish on Pedro, a local fisherman. Pedro took his fishing boat out in the morning, and busied himself around the bay, checking his pots for lobsters, trawling his nets for cod and hake, and visiting his vivero to haul up ropes of mussels. He returned around midday to sell his catch, then took what was left home to his family. At around 5 in the evening he would saunter back into the plaza, and pass the rest of the day chatting with passing friends, over a beer if he was in funds, or just sitting by the fountain if the fish had been scarce.
The management consultant found Pedro’s lifestyle deeply disturbing, and he worried for the future of this amiable man, who, although well into his 40s, appeared to have no capital, no savings, nothing to protect him against the vagaries of the world. As the week went on, he abandoned his musings on how to make money out of the village, and devoted his energies to planning a better future for Pedro. He made several phone calls to colleagues, researched EU and regional grants, and sat in the plaza working diligently on his laptop.
The day he was due to return in body to the job which he had barely left in spirit, he went to see Pedro, and gave him the fruits of his efforts.
“My friend” he began. “I would like to make you a free gift. It really upsets me to see you sub-optimising your wealth accretion opportunities in such a way. Although I normally charge my time at €500 an hour, I would like to make you a present of some of my valuable consulting experience, gained with some of the largest corporations on this earth. I believe you and your family deserve a better life, and I wish to be the person who facilitates the ascension of your family through the socio-economic grades.
Pedro listened politely.
“I started with a piece of diagnostic work. I think we can agree that the career you have chosen for yourself can be described, using the EU standard descriptors, as “fishing and ancillary trades”. Pedro nodded. “I have reviewed your pattern of activity, and have noted that you spend on average 3.25 hours every day at your chosen work. Research at our head office in Santa Clara has devised a matrix of basic minima for non-work items, which should ensure the continuing maximisation of productivity. I have applied these to you career, age and personal fitness levels (which are, by the way, quite superior), and the model gives you 6 hours a day for sleep, 0.5 hours for self-maintenance (including meals) and 1.5 hours for personal interactions (which may also include meals). This means that there are a further 12.75 hours during which you can work, every single day!” He clearly regarded this as a conclusion that would delight Pedro.
“So, you are asking yourself, what should you do with this extra time, that, balancing risk with likely outcome, and while preserving the unique aspects of your chosen career, will maximise the life-time earnings potential, and enable the construction of a solidly-backed wealth portfolio to transmit in a tax-efficient fashion along an inter-generational path?” Pedro nodded, thoughtfully. The question, certainly, was not one he had posed himself before that day.
“This is the strategy I have devised for you!” He started to pull print-outs from the folder under his arm, and lay them down on the stone bench on which Pedro was sitting. Flow charts followed, time-lines, balance sheets, colourful presentations embellished with pictures of sacks of gold and stick men dancing with joy. It took him several minutes to explain the full plan: the additional fleet of Panamanian-registered fishing boats, the tuna canning factory financed by the regional government, the refrigerated lorries, the hitherto unexploited market niches and marketing angles. A few of the pages threatened to blow away, and he anchored them with pebbles from the beach as he orchestrated their story, conjuring, conducting, weaving his vision of the vast and profitable commercial empire.
“And now”, he said, “we get to the best bit!” He held up a piece of paper with just one number on it, in a large, golden font. “2033!” “This is the point at which we realise the wealth you have created over the previous twenty five years. We will by that time have several options, but if my predictions for the mid-century evolution of the fast-to-consumer high value-add fish-product market are correct, we should be looking at …” he plunged into a jumble of financial details, and further spreadsheets flew out of his folder for Pedro’s inspection.
The consultant paused. “So, my friend, you will be rich! You will be the richest man, not just in this village, but in the province. Imagine that!” He moved to the killer arguments. “What would you do then? Imagine the sort of life you could lead! Once you’d got the buy-out in the bag you could slow down at work, find someone to take over the running of the business for you, delegate some routine stuff. You could have a little time for yourself, take up a hobby, perhaps go fishing a bit, spend some quality time with your family - why you’d only need to work a few hours every d …” He tailed off, and stood silent.
The sun sparkled on the harbour. A few waves lapped on the slipway. A gull squawked overhead, and the little breeze picked up several of the spreadsheets and scattered them over the gorse bushes around the harbour. Pedro smiled.
Anybody who wants to reply with La Fontaine’s fable of the ant and the grasshopper is most welcome!
When we finally left Muros, we headed into Sanxenxo, a town in the Ria de Pontevedra, whose proximity to the motorway network has built it up into a flourishing holiday resort. The engineers there were most friendly and interested in our problem – in the end, we had father, son and cousin all sitting down looking at the worn out pieces – but without the resources to help us. They did, however, recommend another marina in Vigo, in the next ria. Sanxenxo also provided copious hot showers … Tomia has got a shower, but we always have to be careful with the water, and a shower is a quick burst of water, soaping, and another quick burst to rinse. It is bliss, just every couple of weeks, to stand under a shower that is blasting out water as hot as you want, for as long as you want. The third star in Sanxenxo’s crown is an heladeria selling grapefruit-and-rose flavoured sorbet!
From Sanxenxo we came to Combarro, towards the head of the ria. A ridiculously charming village, whose old part has been fully restored without losing its character. At the minute it is poised safely on this side of the line between quaint and cute, but a new marina is just being built (the diesel pumps are still in their bubble wrap!) so perhaps the souvenir shops are not far behind. A sequence of little stone-built fish restaurants and taperia line the harbour. Great walls of purple bougainvillea cascade down, and there were several trees whose names I don’t know, with foot-long yellow trumpets hanging down, smelling heavily and sweetly in the evening air.
On Friday we took the rib right up the ria, beyond where yachts can navigate, to the provincial capital of Pontevedra. The red port-hand marks on the stone piers that mark the channel appear to be made of terracotta piping – a very practical idea. As usual, every navigational mark has been colonised by gulls and cormorants, who find them an excellent vantage point for spotting fish or drying out wings. The old centre of the town, like Combarro’s, has been preserved intact, with modern buildings in a ring all round, but almost none in the centre itself.
The main product of the town seems to be bars and cafés; at least one in every one of the many pleasant squares. 3€ gets us a beer, a cup of coffee, a large bowl of nuts, access to several papers, and the opportunity to sit for as long as we want admiring the view. The protestant work ethic is bound to kick in again before too long, but I’m enjoying being without it, just for a while.
I am looking forward to the approaching end of August, which means all the sales will stop. I have never seen so many windows full of enticing shoes – and have no excuse to buy a single frivolous pair.
love to all
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