SAILING MAREDA

Thursday, 29 October 2015

Homeward Bound 2015

Sailing from Oleron was like being the ball in a pinball machine as the winds turned every day to a different cardinal point. Our options were to zigzag with the prevailing winds or wait stubbornly until a steady wind from a good direction blew our way. As the season draws to a close and we have to start paying attention to the calendar, we decided to make a series of small hops from Oleron to Bourgenay and then almost due west to Yeu island flying the gennaker.

A sunset sail to Bourgenay, arriving 1 hour after dark. The deck lights work well !

The spinnaker halyard got away from us leaving Oleron. The only thing we could do was turn around in the water a few times to get it to wrap itself around the backstay. It held up under 2 meter swells and 20 knot winds.

Yeu island is one of our favourite spots on the French Atlantic coast and we had it entirely to ourselves… not a single other visiting yacht in port the day we arrived ! We rented bikes and enjoyed stretching our legs along the south coast and the old chateau.

A favorite picnic spot on the south coast of Yeu.

The chateau from the sunny side.

After two days on the island the winds and tides made it possible for us to make a 43 mile trek to Piriac, the last port in the Quiberon bay before heading into the Vilaine river and our home port of Arzal.

Heading to Arzal in the cold rain. Time to call it quits.

Morning raindrops in our cabin. Really time to call it quits...

Over the last few weeks, the cooler weather has led to condensation in the mornings and a feeling that all our clothes and bedsheets are wet. We have 2 heating systems (one hot / dry air fan and one oil-bath radiator) and they keep things cozy, but they’re just no good at drying out clothes folded and closed up in cabinets or closets. On our last morning in Piriac, we were woken up by cold drops of condensation raining down on us, convincing us that it was really time to call it quits for the year and head home.

Mareda is tied up on an offshore floating dock in the Vilaine river, waiting for the sails, dodger and bimini to be removed before really snuggling down for the winter. We’ll pull her out of the water from mid-January to mid-April. I guess the good news is that I’m too exhausted to be sad after the last 2 days of moving. The house is littered with bags and boxes of damp clothes and equipment needing to be washed, dried, and stored, so we’ll stay busy for quite awhile. And tomorrow we head out to our local boat show to see if we can buy even more boat stuff at good prices, so we don’t feel too land-bound just yet.

Low Tide and High Winds

We're hanging out on Oleron Island, waiting for some stiff winds to blow past before making our next hop up the coast towards home. The port of St. Denis is a great place to wait: super fast internet, great showers, a daily open-air food market, small grocery store, nice restaurants, and the port loans bikes to visiting sailors. As an added bonus, we connected with a friend from our UNESCO days who has retired to the island. Thanks for a great evening, Christian and Marie-Claude !

Here are some photos from yesterday's bike trek around the Chassiron lighthouse. The last time we were here, we climbed to the top of the lighthouse and sampled some local grapes, but this year we're too late in the season. The grapes are gone and the winds were too high to make climbing to the top of the lighthouse appealing.

Antioche tower at low tide in high winds.

Chassiron Lighthouse

Hmmm...which way do the winds blow ?

Wine past its prime.

Mareda on the visitor's pontoon, St Denis.

Beach cabins closed up for the season.

Sailing Bordeaux

Just one word for you: DON’T.

You could wait until 2020 when the port of Bordeaux is scheduled be renovated and enlarged to receive visiting yachts. But even in 2020, there’s nothing they can do about the fact that you have to navigate 50 miles of river to get there, and I’ve come to accept that rivers like this one are not meant for sailboats: 4 to 5 knot currents, water so thick with mud that the depth sounder lapses into a coma and flat-lines as soon as you leave port, tree branches and trunks that threaten to bash into your hull / keel / rudder at high speeds, and cargo and passenger barge traffic vying for space in relatively narrow channels. I saw a weather forecast yesterday that warned of 2 meter “seas” in the river. I laughed. I no longer laugh. Even a moderate wind (12 knots) against a stiff current (4 knots) can whip up mountainous mud slushies. And to add insult to injury, the scenery around the river is just not that pretty.

Selfie in the muddy Garonne River.

Watching for branches.

There are two very good ports at the mouth of the river, Royan or Medoc. Beyond this, you have Pauillac (25 miles) and Bordeaux (another 25 miles) for sailboats larger than 10 meters (and preferably with a lifting keel for both). Pauillac is limited in depth and has a very narrow s-shaped entrance with strong currents, and Bordeaux is limited by a series of locks, all requiring good planning and time management. Arrive too early in Pauillac and you get bashed around by 3 knot currents inside the narrow port while you’re trying to manoeuvre; arrive too late and you get stuck in the mud. Bordeaux has a very nice waiting pontoon, but it’s on the edge of the river and exposed to all those tree trunks coming and going at 4 to 5 knots. Fun, eh? Whatever your typical cruising speed is, increase it by at least 40% because of the current. At one point, we were so far ahead of schedule, we doused the sails and then cut the motor off completely and still made 5 knots.

Pauillac entrance - welcome to wine country.

Pauillac waterfront at low tide.

The port in Bordeaux is old, industrial, butt ugly, has filthy water and is not meant for visiting yachts. We called ahead a week before and were told there would be no problem for our visit and that we could stay for a week at no charge. After this initial contact, we could never reach anyone by phone again.

Waiting dock for Bordeaux Locks in front of the beautiful Chaban-Delmas bridge.

The lock entrance to Bordeaux port.

Inside the lock with tramway in background.

The lock operators were very helpful and opened the 2 turning bridges and 1 lifting bridge for us, but they told us we were on our own to find a place in the port. There were only a few slips free, and all were stern-to-dock moorings with buoys for the bow line. Great practice for the Mediterranean, we thought ! After a rather successful tie-up, we were greeted by our neighbours, a small community living aboard vessels that were way past their sailing prime. While they were kind enough, they aggressively told us we were not to try to use the water or the electricity since they had to pay for those services and we were likely to overload their circuits. They also told us we had taken the spot of one of their comrades who would likely be back with the next lock opening (every 2 days). A sign on the port office door read “Closed.” The immediate surroundings were grim and far away from the city center. We quickly informed the lock operators we intended to leave with the next lock opening.

Our first stern-to-dock mooring.

Port of Bordeaux basin number 2.

We did bravely venture out (despite one guide book that suggested it was dangerous to leave your boat unattended) and found that we were only a 15 minute walk to the tramway that took us straight into the heart of Bordeaux. Bordeaux is like a small Paris with a better climate and we love it. For a brief moment over a glass of wine we decided that the port wasn’t so bad after all, but once we made our way back to the port and the wine wore off, we realized it was truly nasty and we couldn’t stay.

Bordeaux waterfront.

Bordeaux waterfront with fall colors beginning to show.

Leaving Bordeaux, however, was almost as difficult as getting there. As we were making our get-away, the lock opened and a big green net dropped down, blocking the exit. After waiting, perplexed, as long as I could stand it, I climbed off the boat and went to the lock operator’s shed to see what the problem was. “We don’t know what that net is or who put it there. You’ll have to motor up to it and cut it with a knife.” When he saw my jaw drop and the blood drain from my face, he said “Um…I can go with you if you’d like.”

Net strung across the lock barring the exit. Tramway blocked. Mareda blocked !

Tied up to the bridge while the lock operator tries to cut the net.

We tied up to the bridge and he went off to try to cut the net, surrounded by a growing crowd of on-lookers, blocked in their commute by the open bridge. The city tramway was blocked for the 45 minutes it took us to get the net cut. While he was working, he received a phone call explaining the situation. Apparently the net belonged to the organizers of an adventure race to be held the next day, where participants were meant to swim through the port basins (eeuuuwww!) and climb up the net. They informed the city official in charge of such things, who completely failed to inform the port authorities. I hope someone informed the race organizers that their net was cut…

Our back-up option for a port in the area was the Halte Nautique de Lormont, just 2 miles down the river and underneath the Aquitaine bridge. This was an idyllic spot located right next to the boat taxi service that takes you into Bordeaux in under 15 minutes. The problem is that it is also located right on the edge of the river and leaves you exposed to getting bonked by those ever-present tree trunks. Patrick cleverly parallel-parked us between two boats thinking that they would break most of the wood for us during both incoming and outgoing tides. It was a good idea and probably spared us about 80% of the wood hurled our way, but we still heard many bumps in the night. We were very glad to pull away and head back down the river to Pauillac, Medoc and the open sea.

Halte Nautique of Lormont. Much prettier if not safer.

Lormont dock underneath the Aquitaine bridge.

We now have 15 days to make it back to our home port of Arzal. We can make it in 5 hops without any night sails but that leaves little time for any tourism. The weather has turned capricious, too, so we will certainly have a few port days as we wait for things to blow over. Still, we’re thrilled to be hitting the open sea again after a week in the river, even if it means heading home and ending our sailing season.

Sailing Life: An Alien Culture

“There are 3 types of men: the living, the dead, and those who go to sea.”

I was reminded of this saying by Somerset Maugham (I think...) after reading a post on the Women Who Sail forum about how curious is it that even after having completed some nautical feat like sailing your boat half-way around the world, non-sailing friends will rarely ask anything about it. It’s as if you simply disappeared for some time, then re-appeared, with nothing significant happening in between, or at least nothing worth talking about.

Shell art at the Sables d'Olonne.

Not to over-intellectualize the situation, we can all agree that there a few activities more boring than hearing about other people’s vacations. It’s no different when the perceived holiday is a semi-permanent lifestyle (which, it must be emphasized, is only occasionally punctuated by holiday-like activities…) I’ve been in the middle of describing some fantastic sailing adventure to a friend when suddenly she’ll cut me short to tell me about something cute her cat did the other day. Is it because she really isn’t interested or is it just that the lifestyle is so foreign that she doesn’t even know where to begin asking questions? Is it jealousy? Does she think we’re insane and that she shouldn’t encourage us?

Way back in graduate school (oh, let’s see now… 25 years ago? Yikes !), the shoe was on the other foot. I met a woman who had sailed with her husband from California to China in the 1980s. Sailing to China is quite a feat even today, but in the 1980s? Nixon’s visit to China was only in 1972 ! And they made this voyage well before the era of GPS, satellite phones, or wide-spread internet. For their adventure, they were made fellows of the Explorer’s Club. WOW !!

But did I ask a single question about their trip? I think I said something along the lines of “wow,” but I can’t be sure. I remember just drawing a blank and feeling a little bit embarrassed, like when the teacher calls on you and you’ve been daydreaming. Even as an oceanographer, I had no idea what sailing a small boat across the Pacific meant, or what sailing to a country with no foreign policy or facilities for dealing with visiting sail boats might entail. Truth be told, I probably also had some sarcastic thoughts banging around in my head like, “surely there are cheaper, faster, more comfortable ways to get to China…”.

How I would love to speak to that woman now ! I’d ask what kind of boat they had and how it was equipped, what navigational instruments they had (just paper charts, a compass and a sextant ?!) what route they took, how they prepared and provisioned, how long it took, what adventures they had along the way, what the weather and sea conditions were, how and where they entered the country, and then ask all the same questions about the return trip, and on and on and on…

Looking back on it, these are questions that only another sailor can ask. Unless you have some idea of what a long sailing voyage is like, you can’t imagine what’s involved. Because we are so saturated by this lifestyle and are surrounded by other sailors who speak the same language, it’s sometimes difficult to remember that not everyone shares our passion or has even a basic understanding of what live-aboard cruising is like.

I’m making a list of questions I get asked by non-sailing friends when they come to visit us on Mareda and will make a “cruising 101” post out of them. Some of the questions make me laugh, some frustrate me, and others point out just how strange our little world must seem.

As for us, we’re currently hanging out in the Sables d’Olonnes, the starting and ending point for the Vendee Globe solo around-the-world race. (I wrote a post about Les Sables the last time we were here with lots of photos of local shell art). We’re in the period of the highest tidal coefficients of the year, which creates strong currents and makes an entry into the Gironde river to Bordeaux inadvisable. We’ll head down to Oleron island tomorrow and wait the currents to weaken before heading down to Medoc at the entrance to the river. After the weekend, we’ll begin a 50 mile trek down the river to the center of Bordeaux…just in time for the Foire aux Vins ! (Wine Fair !).

The Morbihan Gulf

We're pinned down at Yeu Island with screeching winds and big seas, but we have good internet for once. Here are some photos from the Morbihan Gulf to go with the post "Continuing Education", where I realized we have few photos of our home waters. This is only a small selection of the beautiful scenes in the gulf. I hope we can explore a bit more in late fall / early winter before the season is over.

Conleau. This is a 10 minute bike ride from home

Sinagots, traditional sailing vessels of the gulf, anchored off Port Anna.

The Maison Rose, or pink house. This is marked on nautical charts as "pink house" and the owners are obligated to keep it pink.

Chapel at Boedic Island.

Arradon. When the evening news runs a story on Wealth Tax, this is the scene they show...

More modest neighbors.

Arradon point.

St Joseph chapel.

Port Blanc, across from Ile aux Moines.

Gregan cardinal buoy and The Pyramid navigational aid at the mouth of the gulf.

Navalo point. When we see this scene from offshore, we know we're home.

A Year of Reading the Med

I don’t know many live-aboard sailors who are not avid readers. There is a lot of down-time in the sailing life, from days pinned down by bad weather to simply looking for some meaningful way to spend the hours between dinner and bedtime. (Or, as many of our early-rising crew members have found, the hours between the time THEY wake up and the time WE wake up, somewhere around the crack of 9 if we have our way...)

From our friends over at The Cynical Sailor and His Salty Sidekick, we were recently introduced to the “Around the World in 80 Books” challenge. The idea is to read 80 books from different countries, from A to Z. This all started with UK writer Ann Morgan and her “A Year of Reading the World” project. As I am already a fan of armchair travelling, I love the idea and have accepted the challenge (with important modifications).

I first tallied up my country list based on things I’ve already read. This exercise pointed out some interesting facts and conundrums for me. While I’ve covered 29 countries (and every letter except O, Q, W, Y, and Z… there is no X country), I realized that I am woefully ignorant of Spanish and South American literature (excluding Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Paulo Coelho, whom I assume everyone has read anyway, right?). I also prefer historical fiction that gives a strong sense of place and time, but many of these books are written by outsiders; for example, an English author who writes about Malta, rather than reading something written by a Maltese author. And then there are the books written by an author from a particular country that have nothing at all to do with the country itself. Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery isn’t about Italy (the author’s origin) and Prague only plays a minor role in the story. It’s a fabulous book, but hard to classify in the framework of this game.

Once you start scratching the surface of this challenge and imposing some guidelines on yourself to follow the spirit of the exercise, the task becomes quite daunting. One of the official guidelines is that you must finish a book you start. I’m throwing this one straight into the trash heap. Life’s too short and there are too many great things to read to adhere to this rule. And besides, it would be too bad to feel like you’ve dismissed the literary merit of a whole country because you didn’t like one book.

But I’m imposing some other rules, lest you think I’m taking the easy road. If I read a book about a country written by an outsider, I will also try to read a book written by a native of the country (bravely keeping in mind the aforementioned safety valve of chucking it in the bin if I don’t like it). While the books don’t have to be historical fiction, it should evoke the place and lifestyle that influence the story. I’m also not wedded to fiction as there are some fantastic travelogues out there. Where possible (which is to say, where interesting to me) I will try to read “modern classics” or something on someone’s list of “things you should read if you think you’re well-read”.

And lastly, because the world is a big place, I am starting my assault on the Mediterranean countries. We’ll be sailing down to the Med next year and will spend the next 3? 4? 5? years there. What better way to inform, plan, dream ?

Depending on who’s doing the counting, there are 23 countries and/or autonomous provinces in the Med (proceeding clockwise): Gibraltar, Spain, France, Monaco, Italy, Malta, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania, Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco. I’m also including a general Med category to include the classic “The Middle Sea” by John Julius Norwich and “The Pillars of Hercules” by Paul Theroux. Here is my DRAFT list of possible reads, with a CRY FOR SUGGESTIONS from you, dear readers.

Gibraltar A Vision of Battlements – Anthony Burgess

Spain 2666 – Roberto Bolano; The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon; A Heart So White or The Infatuations – Javier Marias; HELP !! Missing Mediterranean setting / ocean theme. Balearic islands?

France Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan ; Granite Island: A Portrait of Corsica – Dorothy Carrington ; Patrick Modiano (Prix Nobel 2014) – Rue des boutiques obscures (set in Rome) … good excuse to read the latest Nobel winner from my adopted home country…

Monaco Loser takes all – Graham Greene

Italy Ocean Sea - Alessandro Baricco; If on a winter’s night a traveller… - Italo Calvino

Malta Ironfire – David Ball HELP ! Need Maltese Writer or Travelogue !

Slovenia Cette nuit je l’ai vu - Drago Jancar (Prix Medici)

Croatia The Ministry of Pain - Dubravka Ugresic; Our man in Iraq – Robert Perisic

Bosnia Herzegovina The Lazarus Project – Aleksandar Hemon

Montenegro The Coming – Andrej Nikolaidis

Albania Chronicle in Stone or Broken April – Ismail Kadare

Greece Birds without Wings and Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres (Covers Greece and Turkey); Zorba the Greek – Nikos Kazantzakis (set in Greece and Crete); Eleni – Nicolas Gage

Turkey The Time Regulation Institute – Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar; Istanbul - Orhan Pamuk

Cyprus Gregory and other award-winning stories – Panos Ioannides

Syria Damascus Nights – Rafik Schami

Lebanon An Unnecessary Woman – Rabih Alameddine

Israel From Beirut to Jerusalem – Thomas Friedman; A Pigeon and a Boy – Meir Shalev

Palestine Mornings in Jenin – Susan Abulhawa; I Shall Not Hate – Izzeldin Abuelaish

Egypt The Map of Love – Ahdaf Soueif (Booker Prize Finalist); Cairo Trilogy – Naguib Mahfouz (Nobel Prize); Beer in the Snooker Club – Waguih Ghali

Libya In the Country of Men – Hisham Matar

Tunisia L’Immoraliste – Andre Gide; Return to Dar Al-Basha – Nasr; Les Trois Graces – Attia

Algeria Ce que le jour doit a la nuit – Khadra ; The Rabbi’s Cat – Sfar (GREAT movie !)

Morocco Au Pays – Tahar Ben Jalloun ; The Spider’s House and The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles; La Nuit Sacrée / L’enfant de sable - Tahar Ben Jalloun

Mediterranean The Middle Sea – John Julius Norwich; The Pillars of Hercules – Paul Theroux

Happy reading, and send in those suggestions !

Update 1 here.

Continuing Education

Every day of sailing is the same: learn, learn, learn. We thought we knew our home waters of the Morbihan Gulf well, but this week, we’ve learned quite a few lessons about the gulf, about Mareda, and about ourselves. Some of those lessons have been painful.

We took advantage of blustery weather and impending repairs in Vannes to spend some time getting reacquainted with the gulf. The gulf is listed as one of the 50 most beautiful bays in the world and is said to have a different island for every day of the year. (I believe the official total, however, is around 80.) A lifting keel opens up numerous possibilities in the gulf and we set out to explore areas we haven’t visited in over 10 years. We hid behind Irus Island for a night when the winds were blowing strongly from the south and took a lovely day sail around Arz Island with a stop at Ilur island, which everyone says is a paradise and which we found to be only so-so.

Our recent escapades in the gulf. Red marks from left going clockwise are Ile aux Moines, Ile Irus, Les Logodens, and Ile Ilur.

And then we did what we’ve already done numerous times: stopped for the night along the floating docks at Ile aux Moines. But this time, we pulled in during mid-tide when currents are at their strongest. To get to the docks, you first have to weave your way through a maze of a mooring buoy field, where the currents push you sideways as if you were on a conveyor belt running perpendicular to where your nose is pointed. This conveyor belt also runs at strange angles to the docks.

Promotional photo of Ile aux Moines, where you can see the mooring field and 2 small floating docks and the bottom left of the field.

With 20 knots of wind blowing, we lined up to the dock head-to the wind and current…or so we thought. As soon as Patrick reduced the throttle, the current took hold of us and slammed us into the corner of the dock. Clearly, this is something that happens regularly, since the wood protecting the corners of the dock have been splintered to bits, exposing a sharp metal corner. Once so engaged, it’s almost impossible to pull away from the dock. Neighboring boaters nervously popped out of their boats to see what was happening and rushed over to help us with our lines. We slid and scraped our way alongside the dock and tied up as quickly as we could, thanking our new neighbors for the help and trying to downplay our embarrassment. One old sailor tried to ease the tension and told us, “You know, a successful docking manoeuvre is a tragedy for the spectators !”

Once everyone had gone back to their boats, we took a deep breath and stepped off the boat to survey the damage: one big deep wound in the gel coat exposing the fiberglass, a long shallow scrape running about 60 centimeters, and 2 very bruised egos. Say what you will, it’s much more embarrassing to screw up in a flashy new boat than with a modest-looking old one.

Two days later, with the winds still howling, we decided to leave the dock to get closer to Vannes for an early morning arrival. We thought we could find a free mooring buoy behind the Logoden islands that would be reasonably sheltered. Leaving the Ile aux Moines docks, we had strong currents pinning us to the dock again. We tried our best to get the nose to pivot away from the dock by putting the motor in reverse and pulling against the stern spring line, but that was only marginally successful. Patrick had to gun the throttle as quickly as possible once the nose was away from the dock, but we still had a hard time turning away. The owner of the big fancy motor yacht in front of us turned pale as we brushed past his boat at 3 knots with only about 50 centimeters to spare. Our bruised egos take another sharp punch.

When we arrived at the mooring buoy behind the Logoden islands, we turned into the wind (18 knots) and current (2.5 knots), motored up to the buoy and successfully passed our line through the metal ring on top of the buoy after 2 attempts. But as we cut the throttle and pulled the line through the hook and back onto the deck, the current and wind pushed us back rapidly. With all of Patrick’s force and a ½ turn already around the cleat, he was straining to try to keep it from being ripped out of his hands. I ran forward to help him, got my hand on the lines and pulled as well.

Mistake ! I SHOULD HAVE put the motor in gear and advanced towards the buoy to take the strain off.

Four hands grabbed onto the small length of line that remained. When our grunting and cursing drowned out the sound of the howling wind, I told Patrick to just let it go… it was useless.

I dashed back to the helm, but not fast enough. The currents had turned us sideways and I was close to broad-siding another boat. My reaction (again, not the right one) was to kick the fenders overboard to protect the hull. Patrick (correctly) took the helm and pushed the motor into high gear (I hate doing that) to get us out of the buoy field, with only centimeters to spare. We quickly agreed that we weren’t going to try to pick up the buoy again, since the currents and wind were clearly too stiff for us to spend anything resembling a calm night there anyway.

As the adrenaline died down and we headed towards Vannes, we both noticed we had pain around our wrists. I had a bloody gash and swelling on mine where my hand was caught between the line and the navigational light on the balcony. Thankfully I was wearing sail gloves or it would have been worse. Patrick had a few mysterious red friction burns around his wrist…and NO WATCH. Apparently it got snagged in the line and went overboard in the struggle.

We motored on to the waiting dock for the port of Vannes and tied up, defeated. The waiting dock is a great option for early entry to the port (which is barred by a bridge with only a few openings per day around high tide). But it’s also not free for a night stay, which just added salt to our wounds.

And now, we’re settled into Vannes for the next few days waiting for the steering wheel pinion system to be replaced (and to carry out a rapid gel coat repair…) The part ordered by the shipyard wasn’t the correct one, and so we are staying in port courtesy of Jeanneau, with the promise that the correct part will arrive in 2 days. This suits us just fine as it is still blowing a gale out there and we would have been faced with at least 2 more days of trying to hide behind various islands, coping with strong winds and currents everywhere we turn. The lessons learned were good ones, but I’m in no hurry to try to prove to myself that we won’t make the same mistakes again.

I've also learned another thing about the gulf in writing this blog post: despite having sailed here for more than 10 years and lived here for 6, I have very few photos of the gulf ! Must remedy that...

No Place Like Home Waters

I’ve said it before, but it deserves repeating: destiny is a fickle thing. The shipyard had to order a part for our steering system, and rather than wait to fix it in November after we come back from the southern leg of our cruise, we decided to sail around our local waters until it arrived. During this last week of sailing, we have finally found the beautiful islands and nice weather we’ve been looking for all summer, right in our own backyard.

Here is our last week in pictures, from Houat Island and Belle Isle in the Quiberon Bay, Southern Brittany.