SAILING MAREDA: Winter Cruising

Showing posts with label Winter Cruising. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 November 2018

Thankful for Autumn Cruising

Just in time for thanksgiving, I’m grateful to friends who invited us to spend a few days sailing out to our beautiful islands -

for the friendship and laughter,

for gentle winds, calm seas and autumn sun shining through cool mist,

for the hike along coastal dunes and untouched beaches at sunset,

and the game of petanque and beer at La Trinquette,

for France’s cutest boat dog Nuskha,

and the cheerful salon of the good ship Gudhull with ample room for 7 boisterous sailors wearing multiple layers of clothes and flaming bananas in rhum in perfect security.

For the gentle motion of the boat lulling us to sleep and the soft creaking of wet wood and stretching dock lines, and the moon whose light traces an arc through the cabin that progresses with the night, and the sky full of stars that accompanies a wee-hour pee.

For the fishermen whose engines sputter to life an hour before sunrise and the gulls welcoming the day.

For the smell of strong coffee that hangs in the morning dampness, and for freshly burnt toast.

For our neighbouring boat that shared their catch of squid with us, and the anxiety-filled entertainment offered by the massive conger eels swirling around our feet, snapping up the waste as we cleaned the squid for our dinner.

For a calm anchorage nestled in a rugged coastline that welcomed us for a lunch break and siesta while waiting for the tide to turn.

And most of all, I’m grateful to have found so many kindred spirits who share my never-fading fascination with the sea and boat life. Merci, les amis. Merci.

Cruising 2018 Postponed

How many times have I said that cruising plans are written in the sand at low tide? This winter, we’ve had a larger-than-normal tide that has eroded short-term plans and possibly longer-term ones as well.

Patrick and I have had a series of health problems. Mine are minor-ish: a slightly-pinched disk in the lower back with a touch of arthritis. No more running. No more heavy lifting. Between the arthritis in the hands and now the back, my body has become a living barometer that, once calibrated, may actually be useful at sea.

Winter erosion.

Patrick’s issues are more serious. He has scoliosis, 2 pinched disks, and a very large herniated disk causing “sciatic nerve paralysis.” Strangely, he has no pain in the back, but shooting pain in one leg with loss of reflexes, some nerve damage, and loss of strength. We met with the neurosurgeon yesterday, who wants to avoid operating if possible. The first step is a cortisone injection to see if reducing the swelling may help the herniated disk to back off or even (rare but possible) to slip back into place by itself. If that doesn’t work, he’ll need surgery.

Instead of getting back to the boat on the 6^th of May, it looks like the earliest we’ll be able to leave is late may / early June. If he has to have surgery, it will be at least 6 weeks longer. Since we already have air tickets and an apartment lined up (all non-refundable, optimists that we are...), we may go down on the 6^th anyway to make some headway on the work (cleaning deck and hull, waxing hull, polishing the stainless, etc.) so that when we are ready to go, we’ll just have the bottom paint to slap on.

Washed up.

In any case, we’re going to have to modify our way of doing things on the boat, and possibly our cruising ambitions as well. We don’t want to find ourselves in some idyllic anchorage in the middle of nowhere when his disk decides to slip further and cause a real paralysis and extreme pain. It’s easy to say “take it easy on the boat, reduce sail, don’t misuse your back,” etc., but there are always emergencies on a boat that require your immediate attention and you don’t always have the luxury of being able to rig some gentler way of handling things. My problems weren’t caused by any single catastrophic event, but rather slow constant wear and tear. Sailing 6 months of the year every year for many years takes its toll.

I’m juggling cruising options and it’s still too early to see clearly. We want to avoid being around Corsica from mid-July to mid-August, but I’m a bit leery about hanging out further down on the Sardinian coast with few towns large enough to offer assistance in an emergency. The plan was to continue down to Sicily and winter-over at Marina di Ragusa, but that plan only makes sense if a) Patrick’s back is stable, and b) we plan to continue on to Greece and Turkey the following year. Another option is to start heading back to the French coast to prepare for a passage through the canals the following year, saying goodbye to the Med.

We’re both taking all of this with a big dose of philosophy. There’s no debate - health comes first. We’ve had a wonderful 10 years of sailing and maybe it’s time to reign in our ambitions by limiting ourselves to sailing locally around France, or chucking it all and moving on to some new life project. We live with an uneasy oil-and-water mixture of disappointment and excitement at the moment. The world is big and there’s so much to do and see…

Washed out.

Countdown to Cruising 2017 Begins

With only 6 weeks to go before we head off for 6 months, we’ve been keeping very busy with cruise preparations. What, you ask, is there to do when your boat is far away in Gibraltar? Here’s a sampling of what off-season sailors do:

(…and the photo theme, in keeping with the “what off-season sailors do” theme is A Day at the Beach in the Breton Winter. Click on photos for larger versions).

Battle with phone company won by Patrick; 55 Euros per month for telephone service and 30-GB internet that can be used in the 6 months on the boat outside of France. No more lost days running around to Portuguese/Spanish/Italian phone operators trying to understand how their pre-paid cards work.

2^nd credit card ordered for our main bank account. If we lose one or it is stolen, we just cancel that one and continue with the 2^nd one … no waiting around for a new card to be mailed.

Small repairs on Mareda approved by Jeanneau guarantee and appointments made with shipyards in Spain to do the work.

House-sitting arranged. We’ll have friends and family staying in our house this year, and have made a “how to” document to describe how to turn on / off the water and electricity.

Patrick and friend cart sailing, Presqu'il de Quiberon

Nav planning progressing. General strategy set, every cala and port in the Balearics and northern Sardinia investigated, dozens of emails sent to marinas for availability and price quotes for wintering options.

Tourism planning begun. Yes, yes, tourism. It’s not all about the boat. Very excited about Sardinia!

Transportation logistics finalized for the trip down. Plane tickets bought, hotels reserved, bus schedules studied.

Haul-out, hull wash, and relaunch scheduled in La Linea. We’ll have 3.5 days to scrape and repaint the hull, change the sail-drive oil, and replace the zincs while the boat is out of the water.

Patrick zips along while I try photographic panning for the first time.

Anti-fouling paint ordered and sent to Accastillage Diffusion in La Linea.

Search for paper charts initiated. Yes local sailing friends, I’ll be calling YOU to see if you can loan me your paper charts! I know I don’t really need them with 3 independent systems of electronic charts (MaxSea, OpenCPN, Navionics), but I like having at least a large-scale route map with me.

Computer preparation underway. Update computers with latest versions of grib viewer; update OpenCPN with Pierre’s brilliant Google Earthand Navionics maps embedded; backups-a-go-go; bought new battery for Sony Vaio.

Spare solar panel charge regulator bought. We had one of these go bad before. It’s easy to fix but would be long and costly to have delivered to the islands.

Planning for friends and family to join us underway. Juggling schedules and potential port stops is always a challenge.

To do list / To buy list in progress. Items include a Parahoule System, new Breton and Spanish flags, Italian flag, 2 additional 10-liter jerrycans for fresh water, trip line for the anchor, no-suds salt-water bath gel and shampoo, and maybe an additional mosquito net.

Entertainment Gathering. E-books, movies, and music being researched and loaded.

The clock is ticking !!

The day after Storm Zeus on the Wild Coast, Quiberon.

Sea foam piled up like snow and flying through the air.

Foam beach.

Season Kick-off 2017

The temperatures hover around freezing, a thin layer of ice fringes the port, and our thoughts turn south towards sun and warmth as we begin planning our 2017 sailing season. (And having just gorged our way through the holidays, the photo theme is “the things we ate” from our 2016 cruise.)

They try to tell you that these are very light...

Our current tasks:

1. Buying / borrowing the necessary nautical guides and charts. I’ve begun our route planning and have been scouring others’ blogs for tips on anchorages and ports (mostly about ports to avoid…). We will probably spend the month of May along the Spanish coast between Gibraltar and Alicante, then June-August in the Balearic Islands, moving on in September and October to our wintering ground. I’ll plan two options: an ambitious one that will take us to Sardinia for the winter, or a more tranquil cruise towards the Spanish / French border. No, we aren’t making much “east” in our Med cruise, but we’re taking time to enjoy the trip. We won’t be coming back a second time later in life.

Octopus, beaten soft and sauteed in olive oil, salt, and mild red pepper.

2. Making visiting cards. This is something we always thought was a little silly until we ended up scribbling our names and contact information on scraps of paper all summer while others passed out fancy cards. We’ve met so many great cruisers out there and enjoy staying in touch as we cruise along the same waters.

Spain has the biggest and best razor clams on the Atlantic seaboard; sauteed in a little butter, garlic, salt, and parsley.

3. Buying a laser rangefinder. At first, I was against this, seeing it as a potential source of conflict. Patrick: “The rangefinder says we’re 30 meters from the nearest rock. We can anchor here with NO PROBLEM!” Me: “And does your magic rangefinder tell you if there are rocks UNDER the water next to that jagged coastline? Huh?! We’re moving!” Then a friend told us how useful rangefinders are for those famous “Med Moorings” where you need to start dropping your anchor 3 boat-lengths away from the dock as you back into a spot. So far in my planning, most of the med-style moorings in ports have lazylines or buoys so we won’t need to use our own anchor, but I’ve now decided that a rangefinder is a nice gadget to have on board.

An electric wok cuts cooking gas use by half or more !

4. Thinking about flopper stoppers. We plan to do a lot of anchoring this year and fully expect that many of the anchorages will be rolly and lumpy because of swell. I have my trusty riding sail, but that’s only useful when there’s wind. There are lots of swell stoppers on the market and many people simply use a sort of large weighted bucket poled out perpendicularly on the spinnaker pole or boom. I suspect we’ll try this homemade system first before investing in a more costly one. As they say, “one experiment is worth a thousand expert opinions.”

When you order a glass of wine in Spain, you often get some sort of tapas served with it, like this potato and cheese omelette. Who needs to eat lunch after this?

5. Learning Spanish. This is an ongoing battle; essential but not very effective since it requires discipline to sit down and do the work. We use a combination of on-line video tutorials, tv news in Spanish, and exercise books, but we’re having a motivation meltdown as we begin 2017. I have an additional barrier in that Patrick already speaks much better Spanish than I do, so I tend to place this in the “Patrick will manage this” category. Mas facil !

Ham, cheese, empanadas, olives, excellent wines.... heaven !

Photo Friday: Full Moon Fever

This week's super moon brought super tides, ideal for clam digging. In principle. After scratching around in the mud for 30 minutes only to come up with 9 clams, I took out my camera and started hunting other prey. (Sorry if this post takes time to load...I forgot to compress the size for the web and ran out of time.. er, um, well, was lazy...).

Super moon with telephone wire. (pitfalls of suburban nature photography)

The Brent Geese are on their post-nuptial migration and have settled into Brittany this month in one deafening, hungry mass. This collective honeymoon trip begins in the arctic and Siberia, advances to Denmark and Germany in September, then moves on to Brittany and finally to the Arcachon Basin near Bordeaux as their final wintering spot.

My 10-year old version of Photoshop finally died and I'm now playing with GIMP. Couldn't resist infra-rouge geese.

A couple of swans were trying to hold their own in the mass of geese, while the local gulls clearly decided to vacate the area until the tourist riff-raff set off again for warmer climes. The winds for the next week will be blustery and from the south, so the geese will likely hang around for awhile longer until the wind turns favorable for a tailwind ride down the coast, just like retired sailors waiting for a weather window.

With Patrick's persistence, "we" managed to get enough clams for a meal. (To be fair, I only ate my 9 clams...).

Quiberon's Wild Coast, Unchained

The first big storm of winter hit southern Brittany today with recorded gusts of 146 km / hr (91 mph, 79 knots!). Patrick and I ventured out to the Wild Coast (Cote Sauvage) near our home to watch the spectacle. We waited till the wind was a more manageable 75 km / hr (40 knots), but taking photos was still difficult - impossible to steady the camera and sea foam blowing everywhere. We're very happy Mareda is safely tucked away on her cradle (facing the wind !).