Bonaire Diving & Panama Waiting

23rd March to 5th April

The island of Bonaire is for divers. There’s not much else except a good relaxed feeling, a few hills in the north and salt works in the south (salt that goes to scatter on the highways of North America, I was told), plus a few easy walks or, if energetic, you can hire a Dutch bicycle and pedal about a bit. But it’s very hot.

For divers there are dozens of wonderful well-managed coral sites (the whole place is a Protected Marine Park), and you can readily go diving straight from shore without the palaver of getting there by boat.

I ‘discovered’ diving with a friendly relaxed Dive Centre that just happened to be opposite my first mooring -close enough to row ashore too. That first memorable and marvellous experience was with Yellow Sub Dive Friends, and Luke, a calm competent Englishman, one of the international dive addicts who seem to teach anywhere on the planet that has a recreational diving job and good diving. (A bit like surfers who have a similar addiction.) Anyway, within two hours of looking at Scuba stuff for the very first time, and after watching a video, we were kitted out and 10 metres down in perfectly clear water and hovering around hundreds of exquisite colourful tropical fish, marvelling at so much variety of coral and fish life – unbelievable!

Then, as Yellow Sub Diving Centre, didn’t immediately have an Open Water course for me, I went elsewhere, to VIP Diving another friendly helpful professional diving outfit where, after some mind-draining homework, Dutchman Ron, tried to teach a Canadian couple and me, how to do it properly. Ron was super friendly and helpful and  pretty patient, but I was spellbound by fishes and not always good at paying attention! It takes a while to learn how to be a fish.

When you see pictures or film of divers, they’re usually either gliding effortlessly and elegantly along, fins idly flipping away as miraculously colourful fishes cruise by, or else they look like cartoon character frogs, looking straight at you, wide-eyed through their masks, blowing bubbles and looking lost, I was often nearer the cartoon frog end of the diving spectrum.

I used to think Scuba diving amounted to a bottle of air on your back and a hosepipe to your mouth. Take a suck of air when you wanted it. But it’s much more elaborate than that. There are lots of pipes, and weights and gadgets and miscellaneous stuff, plus a clever inflatable waistcoat sort of thing, as well as the bottle of air on your back.

Seeing fabulous fish, every shape and size and vivid colour you can imagine, apparently tame, (so accustomed are they to divers), and coral so close and in such abundance is magical. But I think diving isn’t really for me. I seek a simple life, free of the clobber and cluttering confusion of stuff. And, by its very nature (humans not designed to live ‘down there’), there’s too much clobber needed for safe diving. I’ll maybe dive again; but snorkelling is a simpler way of seeing underwater life – albeit not as close or varied as deeper down. (I also should have noticed earlier on that almost all keen divers have good teeth, really shining super white and strong teeth. Maybe I might have guessed it wasn’t really meant for me.)

After all that time underwater it was time to move on from the delights and challenges of Bonaire. (Already I was a few weeks behind the haphazard sort of schedule I follow, well aware that most sailing boats had already reached the Pacific, whilst “Henrietta” had about 750 miles to go just to reach Panama.) So, after a few drinks in the charming little bar “Little Havana” – renowned locally for its music and wide choice of Cuban cigars – we sailed out of Bonaire.

 

 

Six days later, yesterday, I reached Panama – regrettably missing stops in both Colombia and San Blas islands on the way. They’d been part of one of the original so-called ‘outline plans’. (Stuff plans! I’m not running a business school.) Sod’s Law of destination arrivals most often sees me reach new places after dark. Panama was no exception and in the dark and on chartplotter, the next few miles looked so chockablock with ships and buoys and miscellaneous hazardous stuff  that I dared not enter at night and instead lingered sleepless for many hours before entering the vast canal approach zone after dawn, as instructed by the Cristobal Signal Station, following close behind a big red tanker.

The sail had been pleasant enough. Although the reputation of this patch of Western Caribbean at this time of year is for very strong winds, most of the voyage was a rolling run under just the poled-out genoa There was just one day of gale and near gale, when ‘Henrietta’ rolled wildly in turbulent ill-mannered swell with just a scrap of genoa, surfing at up to 10 knots, while I tried to make a pot of tea.

For now I have moored in calm and friendly Shelter Bay marina, the most popular waiting spot for yachts intending to transit the Panama Canal. I’ll tell you more another time. It looks like a long wait here, but meantime  it’s good to have friendly multinational sociable company.

 

Martinique & Bonaire

22nd February to 22nd March

Delayed much longer than planned in Martinique meant I sadly missed revisiting islands further north or south, where I’d planned to meet sailor friends from last year. Nearly three weeks in Martinique; it took that long to get new Hydrovane stuff from England and fit it. Satisfying though to have it working again. Another little bit is still needed to achieve perfection and is being sent to Panama.

(Photos: installing new Hydrovane rudder shaft)

 

(The travels of bits of Hydrovane as recorded by Fedex tracking make an exciting sort of itinerary. The little bit went Nottingham, GB – Leicester GB – Stansted GB – Memphis TS – Bogota CO – Panama City PA …now delayed (they’ll want more money!) Little wonder the bit itself cost £15 but the shipping £44 – so far. Anyhow, Hydrovane have been very efficient and helpful throughout.)

While on the subject of help and efficiency, I thank all the fellow sailors who helped me and Henrietta in and out of the boatyard maintenance pontoon at Le Marin. If you have tried reversing a hefferlump yacht stern to a pontoon, picking up two buoys for bow on the way in, plus getting two lines ashore for the stern, in strong gusting crosswinds, without sinking neighbouring boats etc, you’ll know it’s not a single-handed job! In the event I think about seven folk helped me in, and two helped me out including kind amateur tugmen in their inflatable tenders. No wonder I prefer anchoring.

The maintenance pontoon in Le Marin has perhaps a dozen boats at any one time. It’s one of the busiest sweatiest place I’ve ever been. From dawn to after dusk: welding sparks fly, angle grinders whine, sanding, banging, grunting, multilingual cursing; and smells of glues, resins and paints. It was  a relief to leave, though I’d appreciated the company and easy access to chandleries and shops, and I had to be very close to pontoon to replace vane rudder shaft.

To finish off on a review of work done in Martinique, Marco (a delightful unflappable and gymnastic electrician ex-Parisian  liveaboard …” came here many years ago, work enough for money for sailing…”) helped me remove solar panels, solder bits..now all fixed…Tilikum (Victron agent) and Frederic, another French exile c. 25 years since sailing here, brilliant in replacing regulator….Jacques, yet another liveaboard Frenchman now heading back to Greece and with more links to LA than France, kind and knowledgeable for Hydrovane assistance….Unnamed (but with infuriating French charm) electronics outfit, hopeless with fixing SSB radio (indeed, much worse than useless as it now does not transmit at all!….I give a heartfelt weary Gallic shrug and mutter a rude French word. I’ll go without SSB transmit capability. But I successfully fixed most of the items on my ‘to do’ list.

Through Ocean Cruising Club (OCC) – as much a social club as a sailing one in the Caribbean – I was happy to meet new and old faces. (Strictly speaking we’re all old rather than new, but you know what I mean). And I found some of the Six Nations Rugby was on telly.

A day sail then 30 miles up the coast of Martinique to old capital, St Pierre – obliterated by volcanic eruption (which I told you about when there last year. See last year’s post if you want). It’s one of my favourite little Caribbean towns; pretty, unhurried, hospitable and altogether charming.

Photos in St Pierre, Martinique

 

Then, desperately needing the stimulus and challenge of somewhere new, I sailed the 450 miles over to Bonaire.

Arrived three and a half days later in darkness and, after exasperatingly long time found a vacant mooring buoy (to help preserve the coral, no anchoring is allowed), drank a tin of beer and went to bed. (It is not easy to find a little mooring buoy in the dark, let alone tie up to it – on your own!) Next morning I find glorious crystal clear water all around, swim with pretty tropical fishes and check the mooring.

If you haven’t heard of Bonaire, then until a year ago, I hadn’t either. Bonaire is the ‘B’ of the ABC islands, Dutch Antilles, off the coast of Venezuela. (The A is Aruba, the C is Curacaou).

(Images from Bonaire. The pretty yacht is “Little Coconut” last seen in Madeira!)

Bonaire has about 16,000 people, nearly half are Dutch. (cf. The two cruise ships here yesterday and the two today have over 11,000 passengers between them, and they’re each over four times higher than the highest building on the island! There’s only just room to squeaze them in and pilots are superhumanly skillful at parking!)  

It’s flat here – like most of Holland, I suppose. People come here to dive, and if you’re a diving buff, I gather it’s in the top ten of the world’s best spots. “Many more dive shops than bakeries” I was told, and it’s true. Languages give a clue to Bonaire’s history. Officially they are Papiamento (itself a blend of every language you’ve ever heard), plus Dutch, English and Spanish. Residents seem to slip effortlessly from one language to any other in a trice, and always make an Englishman feel especially humble and hopeless. I should add that the music is more engaging than I came across in Eastern Caribbean (where, apart from a rare good steel band, it’s mainly poppy sloppy pap), and the place is very very relaxed. As a Dutch Territory, it’s clean and tidy, people polite, direct and moderately efficient.

So anyway, now I’m here, I’m going to learn to dive. This will mean a stay of another week. I really don’t know what to do next. I want to see Colombia and San Blas islands. But Panama is still nearly 800 miles away and I’m late for the Pacific, both late in the season, and late in life. And I ache and feel mighty tired as well! Plus I recognise we can never see all the wonders of our amazing planet, so maybe north to Jamaica and Cuba is a better bet.

Food Glorious Food

March 2017

 

Waiting for spare parts there have been few excitements in recent boat life. Boaty chores, cleaning/tidying/fixing, doing odds and ends, some social life and sorting photos. And then, this morning it occurred to me, I thought you should know more about food – and tell you that a vegetarian eats very well on ocean crossings. Furthermore, it saves a pig and also reduces risk of food poisoning that goes with eating long-stored dead animal flesh!

Essentially my seafaring diet is always vegetable with something. Something such as lentil, bean, nuts, egg or cheese. Doesn’t sound exciting? Read on!

Market veg is usually better than supermarket veg. It lasts better if it’s not been chilled (which most supermarket veg is). Staples are the usual: rice, pasta, potato et al. And I have a pressure cooker for the pulses and beans, and after soaking, it’s only five to ten minutes under pressure. (Lucky the pressure cooker was rescued before it went to a local museum). Herbs and spices are colourful, varied and wonderful, and readily available almost everywhere.

Gas is always at a premium so cooking has to be done on hob. No oven or grill except for holiday or birthday treats, or with special visitors.

Finally, and most important, give all dishes a French title. (Or Italian if you must)  Any meal is effortlessly transformed and elevated with exotic French words. The French realised a long time ago that food could only be eaten if it had a French name (pizza being  an exception). That’s also why Michelin is the bee’s knees; and Tripadvisor so unreliable. For example, if my meal is with lentils or beans, it’s quelque chose ‘au vent’. Without the lentils or beans, it’s the same thing but ‘sans vent’. You may guess why. Culinary disasters like burnt bread can be transformed as ‘pain de la nuit’. (The wonders of French ‘O’ level a long time ago!). (Incidentally, lawyers use Latin for much the same reason as cooks use French: it adds exclusivity! It might impress some of us too.)

In a nutshell then; herbs, spices and French title, and you may consider you live like royalty!
Here are some more pictures of a few of this year’s Atlantic meals.

 

Atlantic

La Gomera to Martinique

31st January to 21st February

It’s a long way across the Atlantic and a lot happens. If you want the full version – the complete works – then skip this bit. But if a summary is enough then here’s a brief version.

Very much a tale of two halves: first part, about 1,500 miles, had good wind, confusing swell and heartening progress of around 140-150 miles a day. Second part was slow slow slow, not nearly enough wind (Henrietta is a bit of a lump and, running, likes over 15 knots to keep her sails billowing with any sort of vigour), so, for the last 1,200 miles, at times we crept along at under 3 knots (that’s an average sort of walking speed…just imagine walking across the Atlantic!). Damage? First part saw broken Hydrovane rudder shaft (which is serious trouble) and half solar panels fail (which is moderate trouble), and cauliflower going rotten (which is smelly trouble) and skipper mildly injured and on painkillers, so by the time we were half way I was super tired and starting to plan life as an OAP in rural Devon, thinking of warm log fires, a country walk, a glass of red wine and maybe a pair of slippers.

The longer version?…..

Crossing this ocean east to west from Cape Verde islands about this time last year, in January 2016, I couldn’t think where the time had gone. The 15 days it took just seemed to whizz past and afterwards, if people asked “What did you do?”, I couldn’t really answer, except saying I’d been pretty busy. I was busy too but, if you’re single-handed, of course you don’t have anyone to back up and verify your tales of industrious bizzyness, and also you aren’t spending lots of time discussing things, great and small, or agreeing what to do or when to eat, or all those other things that couples or groups of friends may do. The solo sailor just stews such matters around in his or her head, does more daydreaming and fantasising, and then does it.

Anyway, this time I kept a more complete diary to note what happens – at least until I got too tired to be bothered. This is perhaps more for my interest than yours; I don’t like to have too many chunks of life just disappearing without explanation. It suggests idleness and goes against what we’re taught and have wired into us with all that Calvinist/Protestant stuff. And, because my own personal wiring makes me naturally lazy, I’ve been prone to too much guilt and so nowadays try to reduce the time spent just blatantly doing totally absolutely nothing. It’s wearisome – but that’s another story.

Before leaving La Gomera and facing a few weeks of no shops, no alcohol, no people and no serious puffing exercise, I almost overdosed on all of them. Apart from the shops bit, I knew I’d miss the others, especially the people. So on my last Gomera mountain walk I picked up some fellow walkers, first three Swedish ladies, then a Dutch couple, and added to a Scottish couple from neighbouring yacht, enjoyed an afternoon and evening of chat and drink. I think it’s nice for non-sailors to see the inside of a sailing boat, and Dutch and Swedish walkers seemed intrigued that any normal person would want to live in a little boat. Also, as a result of the Brexit business, (sorry to bring it up again!), I’ve been trying to inform every EU person I meet that I was out of line with my voting countrymen, and in fact I have only a few friends who were mistaken in wanting to exit. Britain, I arrogantly suggest, made a barmy decision based on the half-truths, self-interests, inflated egos and distorted press coverage of a nation trying to find a scapegoat (in this case ‘Brussels’) for the fact that it felt it was going down the plughole. (In truth, we were nowhere near a plughole – though may now be spiralling slowly towards one). There is a fairly popular European view, if not the informed political one, that Britain has always been a pain in the arse of the EU, and we may as well go our own way and behave like a self-centred brat if we want. Good riddance some of our European neighbours say! It’s too depressing for words.

Oh dear, here we go…drifting off the sailing stuff again…

 

In fact, the more time I spent in La Gomera, one of the last civilised outposts of probably the most civilised continent on earth, the less inclined I felt to leave. Don’t ask me why I did. I don’t really know.

 

But, I did. Weighed down and lockers bursting with masses of fresh fruit and veg, and freshwater tanks filled, and with wind forecast ok, I left…..

Then, 21 days (and nights) and some 2,700 nautical miles later, I sailed into Martinique, which is a French outpost territory in the Eastern Caribbean. (I’m still clinging to Europe you see!)

 

What did I do while Henrietta worked mightily carrying me across? Well, you may not believe me, but it is quite hard work. If you haven’t sailed an ocean, you first have to imagine the constant rolling motion of a boat running before the wind in an irregular two to five metre swell, wind for the first half seldom less than F.5/6. “Rolling” implies some sort of soothing rocking movement, but it’s not like that; it’s unpredictable, sometimes wild and lurching, sometimes beguilingly steady for a few seconds. If not sitting down you have to hold on almost all the time with at least one hand. Just as you think a pattern of regular rolls is happening, and you’re about to do a two-handed task, like chopping vegetables say or joining two bits of wire, a violent roll comes along, and you’re back to one hand. So, everything is done slowly and can take ages, particularly everyday chores like cooking and sail changing and repair work. And at night, sleep is disturbed of course. But never mind, we think we do it because we want to; and it is, I assure you, a lovely way to see a huge inky blue ocean and trade wind skies and magical dark starlit nights. Though as time goes by, I fondly imagine the sheer delight of a stable bed, an armchair in front of a good film, a warm shower and eating off  a china plate instead of a plastic bowl. But know that’s ‘grass is greener’ thinking. In another time,in a place not far from here, we might after all have been shackled slaves suffering unimaginable horrors in the bowels of a trading vessel.

So what happens? Here’s a typical day taken from my diary (abridged): “dawn getting later, but still on UT [GMT] so having tea in the dark at 8am, just under 2,000 miles to go, into tropics now but not very warm, no flying fish yet. Last night, joy: while below, heard squeaks, found I was racing along with pod of playful dolphins, sang and called to them, which I think they like, they stayed half an hour (will never tire of the happy feelings that come with meeting sealife. Two days earlier a huge whale, at least 20 metres, surfaced with that loud base grunting blast as it spouted nearby – just how you’d imagine an ogre would grunt/puff if it surfaced after swimming ten lengths of the swimming pool underwater.) First long-tailed tropic bird appeared later and fluttered around for an hour before flapping away to the south (they look too fragile for mid-ocean life). Started new book, (Kate Atkinson’s “A God in Ruins”); on to lesson 5 of Spanish course (albeit a bit late now I’ve left Spanish territory) but fell asleep mid-lesson, thorough all-over wash (cleanliness next to Godliness and all that), oh no! Main solar panels failed again, spend over three hours with multimeter and screwdrivers trying to fix, without success but bruised arms, hurt back and cut hand, genoa reefed/unreefed repeatedly, cook (chilli con carne, without the carne), clean, wash-up, tidy up…now it’s dark already, brush teeth, wash face, fret about solar panels and very rolly so hopeless sleep, and read Kate Atkinson instead, eat codeine pills (and write this)….”.

That’s it. A more-or-less typical day.

 

A day later, the rudder shaft of Hydrovane snapped. It didn’t hit anything but I guess endless stresses led to fatigue. (For non-boaty people, Hydrovane is the wind-powered self-steering device that keeps me on course). I’d sensed its slow responsiveness, went to stern to investigate (very very rolly seas) and was horrified to see the rudder shaft bent. It’s a 30mm heavyweight stainless steel rod. While considering options, it – this super-strong s/s shaft – snapped and rudder broke away, dragged along like a demented great fish on its tether. Luckily I retrieved the rudder, did lots of other boaty things, and had a cup of tea. …and….for the next 1,400 miles the autohelm (electric self-steering system) just about managed. But, as it has an old-age knack of periodically stopping, there were few periods of rest.

 

Between tending to steering, adjusting sails, cooking, washing, cleaning, miscellaneous chores and other discernible spells of activity, there’s an awful lot of thinking and day-dreaming and half-hearted planning. It’s all a lot like life on land for dirt-dwellers really. It’s just that there are no people here, just a wonderful overarching sky and endless empty mighty deep-blue ocean. Oh! And there’s no telly, no phone, no shops, no human, no news and no internet. (And these last must fill a big chunk of most modern people’s lives.)

And I can confirm, as I did last year, that the Atlantic Ocean is not a pond; and it’s really ever so silly to say ‘pond’. How would a hippopotamus feel if you called it a water vole – just think?

And another question I’ve been asked by fellow European sailor (and I’d like an answer to this one): Why is so much in Britain referred to as ‘Royal’? Not just the Royal Family (they’re almost univerally applauded), but yacht clubs, agricultural shows, chinaware, even a few towns, a Cruising Club, an Automobile Club and all sorts of other things. Plenty of other countries have monarchs but they don’t get carried away with the Royal stuff like Britain does. Is it just because we’re so obsessively stuck in the 19th century or snobbish, and consider a Royal pre-fix adds cache – a nation, not of shopkeepers but old-fashioned status-seeking snobs? …Answers please?

So that’s it. I have no idea what comes next. In theory, there’s the Pacific, Europe, East Coast USA, or staying here in the Caribbean to choose from. While weary, aching and awaiting spare parts to fix Henrietta, I dream about that log fire in rural Devon. (Haven’t had any slippers since school days  and know I don’t really want any now!).I suspect my stamina has ebbed to a new low and wonder if it may recover. Oh! But I’m enjoying lots of swimming, and French Caribbean bread and wine from Bordeaux, and other people’s company.

La Palma and La Gomera

17th to 26th January

My favourite Canary Islands.

 

These are small islands. It would be a shame to overwhelm them with visitors, so I am quick to point out that they probably wouldn’t suit you! There are no golden beaches, nightlife is subdued – perhaps I’d call it ‘refined’ – and souvenir shops and Michelin restaurants are in short supply. But  there are lots of bananas and, for a quiet old Englishman (late middle-age anyway), these islands have enough to keep me perfectly content for many many months.

 

 

After Stephanie left, I stayed a while longer on La Palma, happily sandwiched between my three delightful and beautiful Dutch neighbours (hopeless with names I recall them as bracelet, brains and heartache, and trust they’re not offended). Never very keen on sitting about, I swam and walked more cliff and mountain paths and tried not to drink too much.

 

Next, unplanned and spur-of-the-moment my sister, Margie, arranged a short visit. So I sailed back to La Gomera, ferried across to Tenerife, bought a new iphone and returned with said sister. (These things are not linked: my phone was broken).
Margie has today returned to Somerset. It was a treat to see her. And now it’s hard to tear myself away from La Gomera. There is not much wind in the air anyway. So I’ll stay. One day soon -maybe – I’ll roll up my sleeves, buy some onions, summon more energy, and head across the Atlantic.

 

 

Good breeze approaching San Sebastian (I was passing…)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Gomera, Tenerife, La Palma

24th December to 16th January 2017

For the past three weeks I’ve had company on board; first, son George, then friend, Stephanie. Since my favourite humans are my children and nice women, this has been a bit of a treat – even if Stephanie, for all her many virtues, is not a liberal vegetarian. (Stephanie won’t, I hope, mind me saying this!) For the next few weeks, if not months and years, I shall be single-handed, so it has seemed important to enjoy the company of others – stickily despondent as my current mood may be.

Of course, as a single-handed sailor – or even not as a single-handed sailor – you do meet many other lovely folk. For,  most waterborne people agree, one of the greater delights of sailing – or travelling in general – is meeting, talking, and exchanging ideas, opinions, experiences and knowledge with others. But these encounters will always be fleeting compared with the hourly and daily contact of familiar others. Never mind… all travel is enriched with understanding (or trying to understand) fellow beings. The world seems such an overcrowded bundle of multiple confusion and fascination.

….The above stuff is not really what this blog set out to cover. But, if you read this, you might find it rather tedious to have a repetitive diet of ‘where I go and what I do and who I meet and what I eat’ – hence: the odd rambly thought.

To cover briefly the where/what/who stuff….George and I enjoyed some typically inspiring walks on the island of La Gomera. With so many varied routes, you may spend many months here and rarely cover the same ground twice, and of course it was doubly delightful to share outings with my youngest son.

 

 

With George leaving me for the brighter lights of London for New Year, Stephanie and I, plus sailor-neighbours from Hampshire, Norway and Holland, enjoyed local New Year celebrations in San Sebastian de la Gomera (friendly and welcoming with magnificent fireworks and shared champagne). San Sebastian is perhaps my favourite little town on my favourite little island in all the Canary Islands – at least, while aboard a boat.

 

Thence, Stephanie and I sailed gently up the eastern side of Tenerife, via nights and launderette of Las Galletas, to the Tenerife capital, Santa Cruz. Whilst there in early January, we coincided with the ‘Procession of the Three Kings and Epiphany’. Apparently, children hereabouts don’t get their presents until the said holy kings have visited, some twelve days after Christmas itself. But we didn’t see these three latter-day gentlemen arrive after dark by helicopter in the football stadium and from there set forth through the city’s beautifully-lit streets, on camels; streets thronged with amiable local people though.

From Tenerife, the wind forecast looked just-about-ok for the 120-mile trip round the top of Tenerife and then round the bottom of another island, La Palma, to the welcoming port of Tazacorte. In the event, conditions were not really ok and temperamental winds blew from any of the compass’s 360 degrees with anything between five and nearly 50 knots – so, it was a sleepless 24 hours.

On arrival we were not allowed into a berth (manoeuvres considered too risky) and, with strong south winds, spent the first night lurching, creaking and wallowing at a reception pontoon. Next day, wind eased and we shifted to a berth. And now, a week later, as I write this, I feel pretty much at home. I’ve enjoyed several new walks on La Palma. Henrietta is comfortably sandwiched between two Dutch yachts, between them sporting three charming and disarmingly attractive girls from Holland.

Here are some images from La Palma….

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Despite such delights, it’s been a time of half-hearted decision-making – i.e.not quite ‘-making’. I’ll head back to La Gomera in a day or two, or three. Then, try to work out if I really want to leave the beauty, the diversity, the security, the cultures and the delights of Europe (especially warm friendly Canary Islands) for the world’s less-privileged continents.

Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, La Gomera

5th to 22nd December

Henrietta can write this bit of blog. I’m tired.

H: The trouble with Michael is that he’s just a human being, just a plonker human bean. Not homo sapiens, more like homo plonkus. He has all these feelings and thoughts and human stuff. He gets moods of despondency and melancholic glumness. And when we sailed one of our demanding nights the other night, fickle wind and lumpy bumpy seas, and there was a lot of reefing and unreefing, and altering course and other boats on the sea that he had to watch, and then his chickpea and veg and saucepan jumped out of the gimballed stove making a very dreadful mess, he got a bit frazzled and I heard him groaning and grunting a lot, and saying things, and his muscles ached. (And personally, I think he sometimes thinks he’s getting a bit old).

Anyhow, I can see the advantages of being a sailing boat: – none of this emotional stuff or feeling sad or gloomy or cold or tired. Humans: homo sapiens, a miracle of creation. Nonsense! That’s me – pure beautiful functional plastic sailing boat: boatus miraculus.

Luckily, most sailors are optimistic. They’re pretty stubborn and often silly too. Otherwise they would have given up sailing ages ago. They need to be optimistic and a bit stubborn/determined. They’re always believing that tomorrow will be better – not just better breeze and sea and sunshine either; they also believe that tomorrow, nothing on the boat will break or wear out, and it wil be better with other experiences – experience of interest or happiness or music or exotic food or wondrous scenery or marvellous sea-life or amazing other people.

M has a severe case of sailor optimism. He’s a romantic optimist. That’s the worst sort. Us boats, we know life doesn’t always work out. We’re pure fatalists and know we’re just here to suffer most of the time. Groan!

You may not want to read all this stuff…so. Where have we been and what has happened?

After Anna left Madeira, we had a gentle enough sail down to Lanzarote. Rude people used to call this island Landzagrotty. But we liked it. Arrecife, the capital, has a big, shiny, newish marina with lots of polished stainless steel, big glass-fronted fashion shops and restaurants. Best of all for me (though I don’t think M liked it so much) was piped music coming from speakers all over the marina frontage playing soppy Christmas music – not proper carols like you used to sing in church or school concerts, but slow modern drippy carols, often sung by girls or children who’d eaten too much honey. And at night there was very loud party beat disco sort of music, and I think a bit of karaoke. (Again I quite like it, but M feels quite ill when he hears karaoke – possibly the most abhorrent Japanese import of all time, he says.)

We missed the little island of Graciosa this time, for reasons too long to explain. It’s the small empty island north of Lanzarote (lovely we’re told), and we’ll have to go back another time.

Here are pictures of Canary coastal sailing……

After Arrecife, we had some rolly-polly nights anchoring on the coasts of Lanzarote and Fuerteventura; then on to Gran Tarajal, at the south of Fuerteventura, and another marina. It has extremely cheap mooring and the town is a low key tourist spot, with a nice beach and Spar supermarket but little discernible night-life. I think M’s highlight there was meeting the amazing Anglo-Australian couple, Chris and Elayne, who built a car (yes, a car…not a boat) and drove it all over the world. Furthermore, Chris is one of the world’s most wonderful story-tellers and one-man entertainers who will enthrall anyone for hours with his tales of adventure. Just have a look at his blogsite http://www.ouradventurebug.com. He and Elayne are now trying sailing. They bought one of those aluminium French boats in Marseille a year ago. “Sell it when we get to Australia and recoup our costs”, Chris says. And we berthed alongside a friendly talkative English couple who had spent years and years and years on their boat in the Canaries, so they were super-knowledgable.

Next after Fuerteventura, we sailed overnight to Gran Canaria’s capital, Las Palmas. It was soon after dawn when we confidently pootled into the giant marina, fenders out and mooring lines ready, only to be told to go away. (And we had radioed ahead but had no reply) It’s the marina from which the ARC fleet of yachts departed a few weeks ago, and M was told there’s always space once they’ve gone. Trouble is that mooring there is so absurdly cheap that boats stay for months, leaving little chance for newcomers. We were told to anchor outside with the 20 other yachts all waiting for a berth in the port. M is short of patience when tired and, rather than hang around for days waiting to berth, we sailed on south to a marina in the south of Gran Canaria – Pasito Blanco.

One day out from the cocoon of the Pasito Blanco marina complex, I know Michael walked along the seashore under the crumbly cliffs, over rocks and boulders, and past enclaves of well-oiled pink people sunning their not-so-private parts, to a nearby holiday resort; a mega-mega-holiday resort with more tourists than you’d think could sensibly be flown in to one island. Sailors tend to avoid these mega resorts. They’re better suited to people who need football on telly, a casino or two, golden beaches, a ‘good time’ and Irish Pubs. And though, the square miles of hotels, conference centres, flesh pots and shopping malls that make up the Maspalomas metropolis are smarter and more upmarket than the equivalent Los Cristianos on Tenerife, the coffee and cakes are still twice the going rate (and pizza cheap as chips), and you come across.endless almost identical restaurants and the supermarkets always have the Sun and Daily Mail. And M gets depressed and is reminded, if he had ever forgotten, that he understands so little of how most of his countrymen, and other north Europeans, live and think and feel.

 

We left and sailed, overnight again, to La Gomera. It was a bit trying.

 

This has been a dreadfully long blog. Bye-bye for now and Happy Christmas from Henrietta.

 

M: Henrietta wrote that after we arrived in La Gomera a day or two ago. It was a low spot. It’s best that Henrietta writes when I am out of sorts. And I am happy now. This place is a spirit-lifter. It’s a smaller Canary Island, quite near Tenerife.

I’ve been for a couple of leg-stretching walks, and some swims (and had a horrifically drastic haircut – the outcome of my pathetic Spanish and a suspected sadist hairdresser). More next time…..I’ll stay in La Gomera a while. Apart from the hairdresser, I like it here, and my youngest son, George, joins me on Boxing Day.

Here are pictures from La Gomera….

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Happy Christmas everyone!

Madeira

23rd Nov to 4th Dec

Our spell on Madeira is nearly over. I’ll head southeast to the Canaries soon and Anna went to England yesterday.

It’s been a mainly happy stay on this magical island with ever-friendly and helpful Portuguese/Madeiran people, varied lush mountainous scenery, good wine – and lots and lots of tunnels.

I’d heard of Madeira wine, but never the tunnels. The faster roads seem to spend half their time underground with successive long sections of fine sinuous subterranean tubes; and the “levada” walks include dozens of narrow dark low wet tunnels,between a dozen metres and a kilometre long. Enough about tunnels; the island is thoroughly well burrowed.

“Levadas”, the small irrigation channels that meander along precipitous mountainsides, are a well-known feature of Madeira. (If you’ve been here you know that already) With a career spent briefly in the world of irrigation, I can only marvel at the scale and ingenuity of the Madeira irrigation schemes: built mainly from the 16th century on, the “levadas” run for nearly 2,000km, countless men died in their construction which often involved lowering workers down mountainsides in wicker baskets to blast a route through the rock and, as mentioned, include dozens of long mountain tunnels. Nowadays, many of the canals are well maintained and run alongside near-level contour paths used by the numerous walkers who tramp back and forth through the mountain flora – always dripping wet for our stay on the island. (Madeira’s walkers are, it seems, predominantly fit  lean amiable and focussed Germans.) Some walking photos below….

So, we walked lots of “levada” routes and, on the only day when clouds lifted from the top peaks, we joined a throng of fellow walkers to clamber to the highest point – and on a bit, where the throng thinned out, and we ate our sandwiches in mountain peace.

It so happened that Christmas lights were switched on on 1st December. And we ambled through the streets of Funchal savouring the gentle warmth and good-natured hospitality of residents, feeling as content as happy children. Giant Father Christmas and pretty elves do that.

More Christmas lights pictures:

Yesterday, Anna and I bade farewell with heartache and went our separate ways.

Porto Santo

2nd to 19th November

From Cascais, near Lisbon, to Porto Santo is nearly 500 miles. After my first premature departure (when I’d left but turned back a few hours later in face of not-quite-forecast headwinds and seas), Henrietta and I finally rolled across this patch of ocean, under just the poled-out genoa, in less than four days, anchoring in the dark off a beach with thundering surf. Next fine morning the ferry from Madeira passed by and I upped anchor and followed it into port.

Reflecting aimlessly on the sail over, it occurred to me again that open ocean sailing sometimes seems to induce a sense of overwhelming insignificance and listless melancholia, especially, I find, when feeling slightly queasy. It’s a kind of hollow alternative reality – and may of course just be simple incipient madness. Most of us at sea are all too well aware of our fragility on a little boat in a vast empty mighty ocean, but sometimes you look up skywards on a black moonless night and recognise that all humanity on planet earth is pretty insignificant too. Our tiny planet seems so fragile, wobbling round our fairly average star, the sun, in that endless dark ocean of stars. Even the so-called supermoon did nothing but magnify the sense of us being a mere speck of humankind on a tiny planet in a mere speck of a solar system. But we can’t grapple with infinity right now. Plus you may have mounting excitement at the prospect of Christmas. I don’t want to spoil it. But if we could organise such a thing, I’d send Messrs Trump, Farage and acolytes on a little sailing boat for a few days ego-deflation in the Atlantic. A prerequisite to high political office.

What of Porto Santo? In case you didn’t know, it’s a little island near Madeira. I’ve malingered here for nearly two weeks now. It’s one of those small, peaceful, friendly, low-key places that suit me. Pop. about 5,000, with some prominent mini-mountains, retired volcanoes, (1,000 to 1,500ft), and a perfect golden sandy beach about four miles long. One small town, scattered homesteads, a few rural bars and some local touristy settlements – mostly deserted now the summer is over. Here are some random pictures…..

I’ve trekked up almost every mini-mountain, walked or cycled nearly every road or dusty track, plus swum/bodysurfed a few times.  I should be quite fit. But I’m also pretty lazy and I drink too much, so I’m not.

The marina (one and a half pontoons with wobbly little fingers) is laid-back, multi-lingual and sociable. A few boats come and go each day: passage-making sailing boats and some amateurish local fishermen.

Passage-makers come from most corners of Europe, dominated by the ever-adventurous French. They include some of the smaller scruffier boats and prettiest women of our continent. Indeed, I’d say Porto Santo marina has probably the prettiest boat sailors I’ve ever seen anywhere: not just French (we expect them to be pretty) but English, German, Czech, Estonian, Dutch et al. A charming and exquisite assortment of European delight. The sort of thing that makes hopeless wrinkly old men sigh wistfully and daydream pathetically. But where else can I socialise with fascinating talented thoughtful worldwise young, and not-so-young, travellers? Incidentally, the sailing community is well-balanced and sane (and very pretty) compared with some of the handful of non-Portuguese visitors, I’ve encountered. Exhibit A: a middle-aged but retired Bulgarian chef, adamant the world economic system is on the verge of complete collapse (you first heard it here; it’ll happen before Christmas according to his unquestionably correct thinking – derived from long hours gazing at a candle); and Exhibit B, a serious lanky ‘night-shift taxi driver’ from Kiel who’s come here to exercise his muskles…and more. He seems to know too much about NATO strategy. Not many dull moments!

All in all, you’ll see why I’ve stayed so long. Though, the fact that marina fees encourage longer stays and that I’m not due to meet Anna in Madeira till next week, have given added reasons to stay on.

Muros (Spain) to Lisbon

12th to 31st October

It’s been a busy couple of weeks: sail down coast of Iberian peninsular from top of Spain to Lisbon with a few brief stops; leave Henrietta in a Lisbon marina; fly to England for a few days; come back with Anna; touristy whizz round Lisbon……

To add a bit of colour and some photos, it has been wonderful – mostly. Sailing the 250-odd miles down the coast in a bit of a hurry (as I had air tickets booked) meant some overnight sailing and short stops and not nearly enough time to explore, but you can’t have everything. I did spend a night anchored off Isla Ons (“beach is favoured by nudists” – but chilly so not a soul in sight). Then, a night at sea, one in Fig. de Foz and another brief halt alongside a wet wobbly seagull-pooped pontoon in Nazaire.

And I got to Lisbon with a day to spare and Easyjetted off to Bristol and Devon. Wonderful to see George (son no.3), find legs ok for a brisk walk with friends in Dartmoor, paint brushes ok for a couple of days’ house decorating, wallet ok for shopping for new underwear and Marmite (subsequently confiscated by airport security)…and other stuff.

Anna and I then flew back to Lisbon to rejoin Henrietta and indulge in some high intensity Lisbon sightseeing and move to Cascais, a well-heeled and established tourist hot-spot on the coast nearby. Here are some photos of Cascais….

Lisbon is a truly fabulous and fascinating city with civilised, courteous, friendly population; countless exquisite streets, heavenly coffee and fine functional public transport. And, even if we seemed to be almost the only tourists not indulging in obsessive selfie pics, I think it’s a thoroughly attractive and all-round gorgeous place – even better photographed without us in the foreground. Personally and for what it’s worth, my ratings would give Lisbon an 8 out of 10 (cf. Paris and Venice 9/10, Amsterdam 8,  Prague 7, Barcelona 6, Madrid and Berlin 5, Sydney -3, Los Angeles -2,000). If you have nothing to watch on telly, discuss with your spouse or someone, how you’d rate the places you’ve visited. Here are some touristy photos of Lisbon…