Pierced and Planted

Friday, July 4, 2008
Quai du Midi
Marans, France

Pierced and Planted

This is a wrap-up (b)log for the summer sailing season. We hope to do some more in September, and I am racing to write this before the experience vanishes away, dream-like in the face of returning to the starting point. Sometimes it’s easy to believe that you never went anywhere, just imagined it all.

Two very real events that I thought you should hear about! We managed to puncture our dinghy in Aix. Oyster shells are the sharpest things in the world (apart from diamonds) and we weren’t quite careful enough landing the dinghy on Aix, where we were on a buoy some way from the shore. It is not always easy to work out where to go with the dinghy - too shallow, or underwater obstructions can cause the shear pin to break. This saves the propeller and shaft from damage but it also means that you have to row or carry out a running repair. The best place is often the ferry quay, but then the ferries appear out of no-where and scare you to bits. Well, we landed on the ferry quay - plenty of water and towed the dinghy around to a second smaller ramp, a little too close to the shell-covered wall. When we came back from our jolly bike trip, the starboard side was distinctly wrinkled. A bad sign! Fortunately we have an ‘unsinkable’ Tinker Tramp with inner tubes so were not too worried. Now repaired and looking good but untested. I learned that the French word for punctured is ‘pierce’ (sorry about the missing accents - should be an acute on the final ‘e’).

We also learned the French for ‘aground’ which is ‘plante’ (see above for accent). Ars-en-Re is practically inland and the channel to the marina is very narrow and shallow. The problem, of course, is that these channels don’t look narrow; they look like they are miles wide. Unfortunately that is an illusion - only the middle bits are deep with less than a metre of water on either side. Our boat draws 1.52m. We made it to within 50m of the marina entrance before I noticed that there was something strange and Al noticed what it was. We were no longer moving! Aaaaargh!! Aground! We were also probably just on the wrong side of high water (meaning it’s getting lower all the time). Al got on the phone to the marina (nobody seems to use VHF anymore) and I wrung out my brain for helpful hints on grounding. The marina said they would send a boat out, Al asked me what happens when the tide goes out, and I remembered what to do. I asked Al to hang out on the shrouds (bits of wire that hold the mast up) on the starboard side while I put full revs on and steered toward the channel. He bounced up and down, I sweated and steered and AHA we were moving. Whew! We passed the marina boat on our way in. He clearly turns out several times a day for this kind of performance - in fact we saw another boat get stuck about half an hour later. It’s the evening sport at Ars-en-Re watching innocents go aground while the locals go ‘heh heh’. We heard that the previous week someone had fallen asleep (tired and emotional?) on his boat at high tide and woke up when it fell over.
Ars-en-Re was worth the effort, though. It gave us access to the West end of the island on bikes. Ars and Les Portes are clearly preserves of the well-off holiday home-owners who live behind the very pretty walls and high gates of the villages - built by the workers in the salt trade. Although I am not a bird freak, there was an amazing bird reserve that we pedalled through just before sunset, when it was thick with avocets, egrets and lots of other more exotic stuff, all calling as they settled down for the night. It was quite magical.
After making it safely out of the Ars channel we had a quiet afternoon followed by a big blow just after the Re bridge - caught with all the main up - on the way back to La Rochelle Minimes, and the final leg back to Marans the following day. (Tides make it impossible to do many of these trips in one day, even though the distances are less than 20 Miles).
After a lull in the Force 6 on Wednesday morning, we made it through the Marans channel without mishap and back into the now crowded canal. Al is back in the UK and I am washing sails and making lists prior to leaving the Snork Maiden to her own devices for a couple of months. She is hoping to get to Spain next year, or at least to see a bit more water under her beautiful keel. We are lucky to have such a brave and pretty boat.