Oh no!

Help! I have been struck down with a disobedient back. No obvious cause apart from the usual suspect - stress. But why? And why now? So today is the 11th and I am not sure whether or not to take the ferry tonight. Yesterday evening I thought I was practically OK, then this morning couldn't hardly get out of bed without crying.

"Will all drivers rejoin their vehicles on the car-deck..." I will have to be carried down there... Checking out Brittany ferries to see whether I can get a cabin tomorrow night - website says not. Maybe on compassionate grounds, har har...

Back to re-rigging my travel arrangements.

Virtual massages accepted!

Oh no!

Help! I have been struck down with a disobedient back. No obvious cause apart from the usual suspect - stress. But why? And why now? So today is the 11th and I am not sure whether or not to take the ferry tonight. Yesterday evening I thought I was practically OK, then this morning couldn't hardly get out of bed without crying.

"Will all drivers rejoin their vehicles on the car-deck..." I will have to be carried down there... Checking out Brittany ferries to see whether I can get a cabin tomorrow night - website says not. Maybe on compassionate grounds, har har...

Back to re-rigging my travel arrangements.

Virtual massages accepted!

Smell the Sea

The sailing season is coming… Snork Maiden smells the sea! Current plan is that I go over to La Rochelle (Marans) with the car, tins of antifouling, engine spares, ship’s stores (weeveley biscuits and salt pork, or maybe quinoa & tins of tomatoes) and anything else that seems useful. I will cross via the Plymouth-Roscoff ferry - have yet to settle on a date, but somewhere between 5 and 9th May. If I have a willing crew, I’ll try to leave sooner rather than later, to make sure we get some sailing time (weather permitting).
Travelling on the night ferry, I usually arrive at Marans mid-afternoon or so (picnic on the way).
It should take about a week to get the boat ready to go into the water - depends on how hard I work, and how many problems come up! (An how many scurvy dogs are helping me!) As you all know by now, nothing to do with the sea and ships is at all predictable
So once in the water, will go for a little test cruise, depending on the weather. Could go round to La Rochelle, Ile de Re, usual suspects, then back into Marans. Or if it’s just me and the auto-pilot, I could nip down to the lock and back!
I need to get back to London by night of May 23rd. If there were 2 or 3 of us, car & ferry might be economic. Otherwise trains look good.
Then Al & I will head back down on June 2 via EasyJet from Bristol to La R, and cruise until approximately the end of June, when we head back to Bristol. Snork Maiden will (hopefully) wait patiently in the water at Marans until we return in September to do a bit more sailing and then lift her for the winter.
As some of you might know, the major plan for next year is to take 6 months and go down to Greece, but this will depend on things looking good economically (har har) around the end of January. I’ll keep y’all posted. If we decide to go, we will be looking for some nice people to rent / take care of our house.
So, all you adventurers, sharpen your cutlasses and swash your buckles.

Smell the Sea

The sailing season is coming… Snork Maiden smells the sea! Current plan is that I go over to La Rochelle (Marans) with the car, tins of antifouling, engine spares, ship’s stores (weeveley biscuits and salt pork, or maybe quinoa & tins of tomatoes) and anything else that seems useful. I will cross via the Plymouth-Roscoff ferry - have yet to settle on a date, but somewhere between 5 and 9th May. If I have a willing crew, I’ll try to leave sooner rather than later, to make sure we get some sailing time (weather permitting).
Travelling on the night ferry, I usually arrive at Marans mid-afternoon or so (picnic on the way).
It should take about a week to get the boat ready to go into the water - depends on how hard I work, and how many problems come up! (An how many scurvy dogs are helping me!) As you all know by now, nothing to do with the sea and ships is at all predictable
So once in the water, will go for a little test cruise, depending on the weather. Could go round to La Rochelle, Ile de Re, usual suspects, then back into Marans. Or if it’s just me and the auto-pilot, I could nip down to the lock and back!
I need to get back to London by night of May 23rd. If there were 2 or 3 of us, car & ferry might be economic. Otherwise trains look good.
Then Al & I will head back down on June 2 via EasyJet from Bristol to La R, and cruise until approximately the end of June, when we head back to Bristol. Snork Maiden will (hopefully) wait patiently in the water at Marans until we return in September to do a bit more sailing and then lift her for the winter.
As some of you might know, the major plan for next year is to take 6 months and go down to Greece, but this will depend on things looking good economically (har har) around the end of January. I’ll keep y’all posted. If we decide to go, we will be looking for some nice people to rent / take care of our house.
So, all you adventurers, sharpen your cutlasses and swash your buckles.

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.

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.

Fort Boyard, Sea, Sticks and Rags

Thursday, June 26, 2008
Snork Maiden
Boyardville, Ile d’Oleron

Fort Boyard, Sea, Sticks and Rags

The weather has turned into summer. We wake up to sunshine and blue skies, and the evenings are long and clear. Sometimes cloud in the middle of the day, but that’s good since the sun is mid-summer strong. There are good beaches on Oleron, but it tends to be windy - that’s how come La Rochelle is such a good sailing place.

We arrived in Boyardville a couple of days ago. Bodyarville is a small holiday village on an old canal leading into the marshy are of the island. It would have started life as an island but now its big attraction is the beach, the small marina with restaurants clustered around it - and Fort Boyard. It was a perfect sailing day when we arrived so we sailed a circuit of the fort. We were approached by a 3rd assistant director in a RIB (rigid inflatable boat with a large outboard engine). He asked us very politely to sail away out of shot, and sure enough, we could see a camera on a crane on top of the fort. (for those of you who don’t know, Ft B is the location for a TV game show - maybe one of you would like to add a comment, ‘cos I haven’t seen it either! Ella Dovey??). Anyway, I am sure that they like to maintain the fiction that it’s in the sea miles from anywhere and not a bus ride from La Rochelle. There is a local industry in boats taking tourists out there to sail around the exclusion zone and ogle. It was nice to do that on our own boat and save the 35€ each. We spent the rest of the day tied to a buoy (corps mort) and snoozing whilst waiting for the tidal gate to open and let us into the harbour. The channel into Boyardville is very necky - Sally will probably remember how it looked at low tide - like a little groove in the sand! Anyway - another soft landing for Snork Maiden.

This end of the island also has a small forest of mixed trees - mainly pines and there’s a shady bike ride parallel to the beaches that has the smell of the Mediterranean. Yesterday evening we cycled down the digue just after sunset and the sea colours and surface were just indescribable. Lawrence called the Med a ‘wine-dark sea’ and that almost does it because the sea manages to be blue and red at the same time. I tried to photograph it, but its not possible to reproduce the appearance, let alone the feeling. In Rochefort we went to the maritime museum and there was an exhibition of paintings by an artist called LAPIQUE. He was fascinated by boats and the sea and really caught some of that in a completely unexpected way. Google him and take a look! Some of the Brittany artists also have a take on that. There are good collections at Pont Aven and Quimper.
People with power boats call yachts ‘boats with sticks and rags’. We call their boats ‘stink pots’. Fortunately, there are very few of those here, just honest day fishing boats. I did the washing yesterday and hung it all over the boat as usual. Most of our clothes look like they are ready to be engine rags!
Saturday 28th June
Back in La Rochelle after a good day’s sailing - 6.4 Knots in a F5 with a reef in the main and working jib. Light airs forecast for tomorrow. We will make for Ars-en-Re, at the N end of the Ile de Re. Access is via a narrow channel through mud and rock. We have to catch it at high water to be safe, so will put the light Genoa sail on and shake out the reef as we go out tomorrow, in other words, give it all we’ve got to get there by 1300. 6am start and midnight now so going to bed.