The Great Atlantic Crossing

30 December 2002

We started off with one bit of really bad luck. On the 31st of December, our second day into the journey, George the autopilot died. Mike spent hours working on it, cleaning and oiling the bits, but to no real avail. It would work for a minute or two and then stick. Effectively, we had to steer every minute of every day for the rest of the trip. Our new batteries were a disappointment and never seemed to hold a charge. The solar panels could not provide enough power to feed the autopilot as well as the GPS, VHF and lights. Mike didn’t like to run his engine, but even when he did, no juice seemed to go into the batteries (we discovered later that the alternator wasn’t working properly). Eventually, we had to sail without lights at night, which scared me witless initially until I got used to it. Our rationale was that, in theory, the only other vessels that might travel without lights would be sailing yachts and in those strong trade winds they would have to be going in the same direction as us. As there was always one of us on watch we would spot any other craft long before they got anywhere near us and then we’d put our lights on.

Personally, I hated the whole thing. Someone had told me, I don’t remember who, that the waves in the Atlantic were long and smooth, not short and choppy like the Med. The Med, they said, was the worst and everything gets better after that. Well, they were right that the storms in the Med were the worst we ever came across, but they lied about the waves. They were awful – long maybe, but nothing smooth about them. The sea was rolly and uncomfortable – it always is rolly when you go downwind actually. Surprisingly I didn’t get seasick. Neither of us slept well at all. Getting anything done, like cooking or washing up was a nightmare. Much as I hate tinned food, I was glad when the fresh food ran out and all I had to do was open a couple of tins of something. On New Year’s Day, we broke our alcohol rule and celebrated with a tepid beer each.

As the days passed, the north east trade winds increased, always at our rear. We goose-winged, with the poled-out genoa on one side, the stay sail on the other side and a reefed mainsail. Huge waves would come roaring up behind the boat, lifting the stern right up, pass under the boat and then we would shoot down the back of the wave at a truly scary speed, the surf breaking all around us. If a wave caught us wrong the boat would swing uncontrollably sideways in the trough at the bottom and the next wave could catch us broadside-on pushing the boat over at a terrifying angle. Those moments were hair-raising and dreadfully exciting.

I had a horror of experiencing a ‘knock-down’ which is when the boat gets pushed right over onto her side, or worse still flips right over. I had studied the mechanics of this and was reassured to read that the buoyancy of the Hallberg Rassy would force it to right itself immediately. However, in that interim period, the boat would fill with loads of water, damaging almost everything, sails and rigging would probably be lost and the crew (me!!) would either be swept overboard or suffer serious injury. Nice.

Actually, it wasn’t all bad. As we went further south and west, it got warmer and sunnier. We both got very brown and Mike’s hair went almost blonde. His hair was getting very long and he refused to comb it or cut it so the dreadlock knots increased - providing an endless source of amusement, irritation or entertainment to friends and acquaintances (depending on their temperament). He also grew a beard, which was quite cute.

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Day 8

Day 14

Day 24

We saw hardly any ships, though we did see quite a bit of bird life which surprised me so far out to sea. There were plenty of dolphins and also a few whales who swam along companionably with us. On day 20 one lovely big whale about 25 foot long, grey with a white belly, joined our boat for three days, simply swimming along with us, occasionally diving slowly under our keel and up the other side. It seemed lonely and we wondered if it thought Forever was another whale. I loved the flying fish – they would come hurtling out of the water, spurt frantically across the waves and then belly flop back in again. Occasionally one would land on deck, always too small to eat, and we would throw them back.

We’d bought a large bag of onions and one of potatoes, all of which lasted well for the entire journey, as did our eggs. Back in Palma we had bought a full shoulder of Parma ham which we’d hung in a string bag in the fore cabin and thin slices of ham were one of our greatest delights on the trip. Like the onions and spuds it lasted right into Trinidad. We saw lots of beautiful Dorado fish, two of which Mike caught and we ate. He also caught a couple of good mackerel. But, basically, neither of us was ever really hungry and we simply ate because we had to. We neither put on weight nor did we lose any.

We listened to the radio and to our own music. I kept up with my Spanish tapes from time to time. We played chess and backgammon, read dozens of books, studied the stars and practiced celestial navigation. Mike had been given a sextant by his good friend Nuel, an American sailor with whom he had sailed that first summer whilst I was running the pub.

Night watches remained a mixed bag for me. The night sky could be so beautiful and the sea immense, menacing and mysterious – so much more so than during the day. Staring out at the sometimes bizarre shapes formed by clouds, the rising moon or the stars and the dramatic effects they can produce on the sea, I could understand why early sailors were such a superstitious bunch. I loved being out there on my own, experiencing periods of quiet contemplation or moments of high exhilaration. But, almost always, they ended in weary boredom, and finally exhaustion.

The problem of sleeping for me got worse and worse. Mike’s antics on deck whilst I was trying to sleep – changing tack, accidentally jibing whilst tending his fishing line, putting the autopilot on and then not hearing the alarm when it (inevitably) went off-course – were driving me mad. I finally threw a complete tantrum and threatened, deadly serious, to abandon ship the moment we hit land. “I won’t even take a line ashore to tie the boat up,” I snarled, frothing at the mouth. He feigned astonishment, but things improved remarkably thereafter.

On day 21 we got plenty of rain and were able to wash the salty decks as well as our fairly manky bodies. We had been a bit neurotic about wasting water as we were afraid of running out and still weren’t totally sure of our tanks. As it happened we had plenty. However, I learned to cook rice, potatoes and vegetables in a mixture of half sea and half fresh water and they tasted fine. I washed the dishes in salt water, and when we did bathe (not often) we lathered up in salt water and then rinsed off in fresh warm water from a solar shower that lay tied in the sun to the deck.

We averaged 120 miles per day until the 22nd day and were convinced we were going to make landfall on day 23 or 24 when, to my deep sorrow, the wind began to die off. We had been warned not to arrive at Trinidad over a weekend as one would have to pay overtime fees to the Customs and Immigration officials and, according to the GPS, our projected arrival time in Trinidad was going to be sometime during the night of Friday the 24th of January . Ever cautious of spending money needlessly, and rather desperate to just STOP sailing for a bit, we made grateful landfall at Scarborough in Tobago on the afternoon of Thursday the 23rd of January 2003. We had been at sea for 25 days and had sailed a further 2960 nautical miles, bringing our new total to 7143 nm. Here is the map of our journey.

Canaries - Fuerto Ventura & Gran Canaria

10 December 2002

Canarian landscape – bleakly rocky and volcanic

We heard the weather was going to deteriorate so we left Lanzarote and sailed south to the next island along, Fuerte Ventura, to the port of Rosario where we hoped to get good shelter. The tiny marina was full so we happily anchored in the harbour. Three days later the storm, forecast as Force 5 – 7 came howling in as a Force 10 and Rosario was not as well protected as we’d hoped. I must confess that weather forecasts baffled us for the entirety of our circumnavigation and most of the time we ignored them completely and suffered no more bad weather (perhaps less actually) than other boats. Some sailors followed them slavishly but only a few seemed really able to interpret them accurately.

However, most seemed to know what was going on that evening, because we saw other boats lifting anchor and moving into the marina, tying up two and three abreast. We thought about it but decided it was getting too full, so we figured we’d better try and brave it out. Bad mistake. As the night progressed so the wind got worse and the waves, having grown huge out at sea now rocketed into the shallow harbour, creating tumultuous conditions. Poor Forever bucked madly for hours in the violent waves until, horrifyingly, at two in the morning the anchor chain was ripped out and we lost it along with our main anchor! We had no choice now but to take refuge in the marina and we wished we’d done so hours earlier.

The next day, the storm began to abate, but the water was so churned up and muddy it was two days before Mike could attempt to look for his anchor. He spent two long tiring days, with the help of a very kind Danish sailor, Jan-Erik, sometimes diving and sometimes trawling the harbour in his dinghy with a small fisherman’s anchor until they retrieved it. Mike was very pleased as it would have been difficult to replace, not to mention very expensive.

Time was marching on so we left Rosario and sailed to our last port of call in the Canaries – Gran Canaria. We had originally planned to stop in a port called Mogan, on the recommendation of another yacht. However, it had been badly damaged by that same storm we had experienced, so badly that some yachts had been damaged, and they weren’t accepting any boats. So we checked into Puerto Rico instead, a port a little way south east which had also sustained damage, but less so. The island of Gran Canaria was heaving with tourists. Along the southern coast all we could see were hotels, apartment blocks and villas, swimming pools, golf courses, shopping malls, restaurants, bars and leisure centres – zillions of them. However, Puerto Rico itself was a fairly pleasant little port and the town was well laid out.

I had hoped we would bump into and befriend a few other yachts going over the ‘pond’ as Gran Canaria is the usual last port of call, but we met no one. Most of those going had already left, either alone or with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC) which leaves from Las Palmas in the north east of Gran Canaria and makes landfall in St Lucia in the Caribbean. We had read about the ARC and it sounded like fun as there are over 200 yachts and they all get together for social events before and after the Rally. However, it was expensive to enter and your yacht had to comply with all sorts of safety requirements which we couldn’t afford. I can hear tongues clicking and see heads wagging when I say that, but that’s how we saw it. We had to prioritise - and felt that the joy of undertaking this journey far outweighed any small safety concerns. At the end of the day, life can be dangerous (most accidents occur at home, you know) and we figured that we had no more chance of mishap at sea, perhaps less, than we did living on land. Admittedly, help is never very far away on land whereas at sea ...... well.

The ARC had set sail at the end of November, which was rather early in the season in our opinion. Throughout our trip we followed the recommendations made by Jimmy Cornell in his excellent book ‘World Cruising Routes’, and he felt that December was a better month. That year the winds had not been ideal at the start of the Rally and in the rough conditions one sailor was knocked overboard and tragically died. He was apparently attached to the yacht by a safety harness, but his crew mate – and brother – had been unable to get him back on board quick enough to save him from drowning. (I stopped harassing Mike about the safety harness after that, though I never let up on nagging about calling me for sail changes.)

Another reason we weren’t interested in crossing with the ARC was that they make landfall at St Lucia which is half way up the Caribbean Windward Islands. The wind conditions in the area are such that it is easier to sail north rather than south, so if you arrived at St Lucia you would be unlikely to visit the more southerly islands. We liked the idea of starting at the bottom and working our way up all the islands. Secondly, we had heard that Trinidad was a very good spot to haul the yacht out of the water, and Mike had a lot of work he wanted to do. Thirdly, we’d also heard that Trinidad was a good place to get a visa for the United States - British passports needed one in those days. So, Trinidad and Tobago was our destination.

We had a quiet roast duck Christmas dinner, just the two of us, on Forever. My sister Pairose in England had posted us some Christmas gifts, as well as a whole pile of Mike’s precious cds and I had to make a couple of long winded but interesting trips by bus along the coast to Mogan to collect our post, and it was worth it. We sent emails to friends and family and telephoned Melanie and Pairose. By now I was feeling devilishly casual about deadlines and was considerably less neurotic about our arrival date. We knew we would take around 25 days, probably longer, so I told Pairose not to worry until at least two months went by without word before she had to start hounding the authorities. Poor thing, we gave her a lot of needless worry.

Last ice cream

About three days before our departure, sitting in an internet cafe in town, Mike had a sudden ‘bad moment’. He sat immobile for a couple of minutes, just staring blankly, and refused to respond to anything I said. Finally, he came out of it slowly and told me he thought he was having a stroke! I wanted him to see a doctor immediately, but he refused of course. The bad feeling passed and he was now determined to ignore it. I am informed, by well meaning friends, that I can be an enormous bully at times, but in spite of that I was unable to coerce Mike into seeing a doctor that day, so I had to go to sea on a 3000 mile journey with a man who appeared on the brink of another stroke. Nice. I took a leaf from his book and put it out of my mind.

We had now travelled a further 1080 nautical miles since leaving Gibraltar, bringing our total sailing miles to 4183 and adding just one further country, Portugal. Here’s the map.

On the 30th of December 2002 we did our last big food shopping, cleared the boat out of the Canaries, filled up with fuel and water and set off into the deep blue yonder on the third and final leg of our Great Atlantic Crossing.

Canaries - Isla de la Grasciosa & Lanzarote

20 November 2002

We left Funchal on the 18th November and took two and a half days to get to the Canaries on what I thought of as our second leg of the Great Atlantic Adventure. We made landfall on the Isla de la Grasciosa at 2.30 in the morning. Much as we normally hated arriving anywhere at night, the sea was calm and there was a brilliant full moon making landfall easy. The bay, Bahia Francesca, was incredibly beautiful in a barren stark sort of way and we were all alone there which made it very special.

We spent a peaceful couple of days at anchor. We'd row to shore with a picnic, lie on the deserted beach, swim and take long walks exploring around the coast line. Lack of provisions and a wind shift forced us to move south to the island of Lanzarote.

We anchored in a secure bay on the northeast side of the port area of the pleasant town of Arrecife. It was a long and often very wet dinghy ride into the port and finding somewhere safe to tie up the dinghy required luck, imagination, physical dexterity and determination. Despite that, it was a nice but small anchorage which we shared with, amongst others, the yacht Lichen which housed two adults, three children, a dog, a cat, and a guinea pig and Cybele which housed two adults, one child and a dog. They became, briefly, good friends.

We had been sailing now for a year and our insurance with Pantaenius was due to expire. Our first year’s insurance had been for the Mediterranean region only and it was worked out on 1% of the boat’s value. I contacted them and advised that we were now about to cross the Atlantic and they came back with a quote of 2% of the boat’s value. This would cover the Atlantic ocean, the Caribbean and most of the east coast of North America. We weren’t pleased, but what can you do? We sent the cheque.

On our last day in Arrecife, returning to the harbour late in the evening, the wind had sprung up and Mike had parked the dinghy in the usual inaccessible spot where we had to climb over all sorts of broken pipes and then down a rickety set of steps, the bottom few of which were slimy and slippery, being underwater most of the time. It was low tide so we had to walk across these treacherous steps to get to the dinghy, no mean feat in the dark, but we managed without mishap and set off against the wind and the waves back to our boat. We were making slow progress when, about half way there, our little outboard suddenly conked out. Mike checked everything, including the fuel and couldn’t work out what was wrong. Nothing would get the bloody thing going again. Then it started to rain. Perfect.


I looked around to get our bearings and nearly had a heart failure. Whilst dithering around trying to find the problem with the motor we had been blown way off track and were now drifting, quite smartly, towards the harbour entrance. We grabbed an oar each and started paddling madly, but made no progress. In fact, we were drawing further and further out. Beyond the harbour entrance there was nothing but the Atlantic Ocean, stretching 3000 miles all the way to the Caribbean and if we had slipped through that gap.....! We were seriously ill-equipped - no radio, no mobile phone and no water. Just two oars, the clothes we were wearing and a few provisions. We knew no one would think to look for us till the next day and even then, they would just think we’d got up and gone to town early. By which time we’d have been lost, far out to sea. Horrors!

This horrible realization made us double our efforts and we started to make some progress, eventually pushing forward enough to miss the port entrance but now found ourselves on the rocks inside the harbour wall. With the tide so low the rocks were all exposed and we were in danger of puncturing the dinghy. We jumped out of the dinghy into the water, scraping our legs against the rocks, and tried to move ourselves out and away from the wall, but the wind was pushing us back again as hard as we tried.

Hearts hammering, gasping for breath and on the brink of despair, we heard the chug chug of an outboard and our neighbour, the Frenchman Luc, from Lichen, arrived and threw us a tow rope. There are no words to describe how glad we were to see him. By chance he had gone out in the night to check his anchor and have a manly pee off the back of his boat when he saw us in the rocks and figured something was wrong. Actually, he said, before he saw us he heard us shouting at each other in our panic which is what made him look out. Lucky for us I have such a screechy voice.

Madeira

10 November 2002

After four nights at Porto Santo, we took a day sail over to the main island of Madeira. We’d heard that Funchal harbour was desperately overcrowded so decided to try out the new marina, Porto Quinta do Lorde, at Machico on the east of the island.

Upon arrival, the wind was blowing a bit stiffly, the gap between the pontoons was very narrow and the pontoons themselves were set lower than usual, only inches above the waterline. Mike steered up towards the pontoon, bow first. I was sent forward with a rope (It took me a long time to get into calling them ‘lines’), the one end of which I’d tied to the boat, the other end clutched in a loose coil in my right hand with the bulk of the middle bit bunched up in my left hand. When the gods are with you there is someone to assist your arrival in a marina and when close enough to the dock I would heave the wad of rope at them and they would tie us up.

Godless, as was the case that day, I was supposed to jump off the boat carrying this cumbersome load and tie it onto a bollard. Then I’d run back and take a second rope which Mike would throw me from the back of the boat and tie that to another bollard, securing the boat firmly to the dock. Easy. Yeah, well it is, usually.

But as mentioned the pontoons were set very low on the water and the bow is the highest point on the deck. The wind had pushed the boat away from the dock but Mike was determined to get in there so instead of backing out and trying again, he persevered and pushed the nose further in. I couldn’t move further back on the boat to find a lower spot to jump from.

“Jump!” Mike yelled.”

I was standing about two metres above the dock. Could I do it? I had to. He eased off on the engine, the boat stopped and whilst I dithered in fright the wind blew it back again. It was too far and too high. I knew I’d either break a leg or jump too short and land in the water, or not be able to stop my momentum and roll in an undignified heap right over the dock and fall in the other side. I was in my fifties, fergawd’s sake. For sure, I’d misjudge it.

“For Christ’s sake, woman. Jump!” There was now a sharp note of hysteria in his voice.

I shook my head. “I can’t. It’s too far,” I squeaked.

“What are you talking about?” he screamed, purple in the face. “Jump! Please!”

He’d lost his cool by then - no longer ‘Master and Commander’ like that sexy beast Russell Crowe. Right then he was a panic stricken small yacht skipper terrified his precious boat was going to be dinged. Rightfully terrified, as it happened, because I downright refused to put my own precious little person at risk to try. Bit of a pig’s breakfast all round - just when I thought I’d got the hang of this mooring business. Luckily for us, someone heard all the shouting and came running over to help. We eventually got tied up with only a small scrape on Forever’s side which I polished away, but it was some time before I was forgiven.

Construction of the marina was not actually finished and management was being handled by a hotel on shore. Charges were high and facilities few, but we did manage to make a telephone call on the 11th to Melanie for her birthday. There were no shops anywhere so one had to hire a car to get to the main city of Funchal. We did this once and managed to share the cost with another yacht, but it was totally impractical. However, the marina had it’s inauguration party during our three day sojourn and the few resident yachties were invited to attend. Most of Madeira’s big wigs were there, including the governor, dressed in their finest. We stood out like scruffy sore thumbs but felt confident we added to the flavour of the occasion. The food and drinks were excellent and a fine time was had by all.

We decided to move to Funchal after all and try to anchor outside the harbour. We set sail west along the south coast in fine weather, but as we approached the harbour we hit a very nasty storm and felt compelled to take refuge inside. Our informants were right about the overcrowding at Funchal - it was a joke. There were hundreds of yachts squashed into the harbour and we were tied up five abreast against the wall. We were stuck in the middle and had to climb over two other boats to get to and from ours which was physically challenging for us, particularly when laden down with heavy grocery bags, and an invasion of privacy for them, and then we had another two yachts tied to our other side and they had to climb over all of us. We stopped apologising after the first day. It didn't take long to get friendly with the neighbours - cold beers and glasses of wine were passed along the decks in lieu of apologies!

There is quite a large tidal range at Madeira and at high tide one almost stepped straight onto the quay. But at low tide the inside boat was a couple of metres below the wall making it a nerve-wracking climb up some rusty rickety iron steps to get off. Getting back on again was even worse and positively nightmarish at night or when a swell came into the harbour. Some of these yachties are well into their fifties and sixties or even seventies and it’s astonishing how well they managed to negotiate this hazard. (Needless to say there were no signs admonishing one to take care!) Cruising is an active life and I was getting better at all this climbing and leaping, pulling and pushing, lifting and hoisting. I felt fitter then than I had for years.

Funchal is a beautiful town and really lives up to Madeira’s reputation for gorgeous flowers. Never have I seen such an exquisite profusion of flowering plants, shrubs and trees, many of them nostalgically reminiscent of Africa.

Mind you, there is a bank of black cloud that hangs, permanently it seemed to me, over the island and it rained almost every day. No wonder everything grows so well.

The official language is Portuguese, which I had imagined would sound a little like Spanish. However, I was unable to discern any words at all, with the exception of ‘obrigado’, meaning thank you which is the first word, and in this case the only word, we try to learn in a new language. To my untrained ears, Portuguese might just as well have been Russian.

The Beatles once had a yacht, the Vagrant, now tied up permanently in the harbour which has been turned into a restaurant. We went and had a look but didn’t go in – a glimpse at the prices on the menu outside was enough!

Funchal harbour’s breaker wall was once again covered in colourful graffiti done by sailors over the years, but this wall was less interesting than the one in Porto Santo and had been defaced in many parts, so Mike declined to paint something for Forever.

I spent a little time working my way through the MaxSea program to see what it could do. It’s really amazing and I loved it, but electricity was always a problem. Despite the extra batteries, the new solar panel and good sunshine every day, we never seemed to have enough power for all the things we wanted to do. Most of the other boats we met had more solar panels, or they had wind generators and of course they all ran their engines regularly, something my excellent skipper absolutely refused to do.

Porto Santo

6 November 2002

At 9.15pm on the night of the fifth day, having travelled 588 miles in five days and six hours, we arrived in Porto Santo, just north east of the main island of Madeira. Madeira was actually totally out of our way on the route from Gibraltar to the Canaries, but as we only intended to leave the Canaries at the end of December, we had the time to spare and I was dead keen to go there.

These islands are considered by some to be Plato’s lost continent of Atlantis and they have remained more or less unchanged since they were originally inhabited by the Portuguese in the 15th century. Then, in 1974, a revolution in Portugal brought independence and progress. The group is now an autonomous region of Portugal and, since 1986, a part of the European Union. Madeira is famous for its mild pleasant climate and the islands are covered with large forests and thick vegetation. It is from this that the islands get their name, Madeira, which means ‘wood’ in Portuguese. Madeira and Porto Santo are the only two inhabited islands. A delightful little island, Porto Santo is the second largest in the group but considerably smaller than the main island of Madeira.

The little harbour at Porto Santo

Nervous about arriving in a strange port so late at night, we had tried to radio the authorities, to no avail. We crept in carefully but found no harbour officials around to point us to the correct place to tie up. Luckily for us, a friendly Dutchman on another yacht helped us tie up on the end pontoon. This turned out to be the visitors’ pontoon but no one moved us so we just stayed there for the next four days. I left Mike standing around on the dock chatting to the few other yachties who had been awakened by our arrival. Men (sailors, that is,) can stand around on chilly docks in the middle of the night and talk about boats and things for absolutely hours. Beats me. I went below and wrote up our final log, which I’d forgotten to do in the excitement of land fall. Our position then was N33.03 and W16.19 so we had moved one time zone west of GMT and 7 degrees south of the Balearics. It was rather good fun to think of our longitudinal position in terms of time zones East or West and our latitude in terms of getting warmer and sunnier the lower we went, down to 0 degrees at the Equator.
I did a bit of tidying up and hung our bag of rubbish at the back of the boat. I was really proud that we had only this one small bag after five days and all it contained was the plastic non-biodegradable stuff. Everything else had been shredded (paper), crushed or filled with water (cans, tins, bottles) or left whole (vegetable matter) and thrown overboard on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, as cruisers we lived an incredibly green lifestyle. We sailed almost all the time so used very little fuel, we used solar panels for our power, were sparing with water and collected a lot of our own from rain and we sometimes even caught our own fish! And of course there are those who don’t even use deodorant! I definitely felt I was doing my bit for the global warming cause, although personally I’m a believer in the Gaia effect.
Gaia was the ancient Greek goddess of the earth, and the Gaia theory is that not only do living organisms help shape the environment, but environmental conditions also shape how life evolves over the long term. Thus life and the environment evolve together, as a coupled system, through geologic time and mother earth always heals herself no matter what changes are visited upon her, either by nature or by man. Since the beginning of time she has experienced enormous climatic, environmental and atmospheric changes, sometimes disastrously so, but conditions on earth continue to sustain life as we know it. Life evolves around the changes and the environment is in turn affected by the living organisms, the whole process the most amazingly delicate balancing act. (I filched that neat description off the internet.)
Because I believe this doesn’t mean I think we should all just bang on making a mess of things. It breaks my heart to see plastic bags, bottles and polystyrene cartons floating on the sea.

There was not much to be found in the little port of Porto Santo, so after an uncomplicated check-in with polite and courteous officials the next morning we took a 20 minute walk past the longest and most fabulous sandy beach I have seen in a long time (since Africa, in fact) into the town where we found internet cafes and a phone to call my sister Pairose who was, needless to say, extremely relieved to hear from me!

At the top of the sea breaker to the port of Porto Santo there is a long wall on which sailors over the years have painted colourful graffiti pertaining to their yachts. There were some remarkable artistic efforts, some funny, some romantic and some rude.

Mike grabbed a pot of paint and painted one for us – it was such fun to see our names on a wall in this exotic place.

Our obliging Dutch neighbour, Minky, was good at electrics and he and Mike worked the next day on connecting the new solar panel to our batteries, which would hopefully improve our power capacity. We found good restaurants in the port, one of which let us have free ice every evening. We had given up on having a fridge by then and decided to try and get ice wherever we went. It was not a bad alternative and ideal with a gin and tonic!

Night Watches

Once out of the Strait of Gibraltar, we noticed that the fridge definitely wasn’t working – not at all now. I had bought piles of fresh meat for the beginning of this trip, some of which I had already prepared as meat sauce and curry, but was now obliged to cook the whole lot and keep cooking everything up for a couple of minutes every day – an extremely tiresome business on a rocking boat. Fortunately the weather had cooled off a bit by then; unfortunately neither of us was particularly hungry to begin with - we never were at the beginning of a trip whilst our stomachs settled. The sea was in its usual lumpy, uncomfortable mode and I suffered my usual day or two of seasickness. Mike loved to trail his fishing line and a couple of days out he caught a mackerel, which annoyed me considering how much fresh meat we had on board, so I refused to eat it.

Amazingly, most of the food lasted fine and we were still eating the last of the chicken curry the second night into port – seven days later! I learned that it was the vegetables that went off and made food go sour so for future excursions I cooked only meat and added any veggies later. Our storage methods would have given the ‘Elf and Safety folk the heebies. We bought cheap eggs and kept them, unrefrigerated, for months and ate the yolks raw in home-made mayonnaise. Bottles of sauce, mayonnaise, mustard, etc. were also kept unrefrigerated, sometimes for years, with no ill effects.

We also discovered along the way, that the new solar panel had not been correctly connected so no power was going to the batteries, which quickly went flat as we were using the autopilot, George, most of the time. We didn’t have a self steering system (wind vane) so always had to use the autopilot. Amazingly, and wonderfully, it was working well at that time and was our biggest power drain. This whole 12 volt power system still remained a real mystery to both of us (actually all electricity is still a mystery to me), but it needed to be sorted out if we were to have a proper life on board. Then there was the fridge - ha ha, good thing that didn’t work actually - the computer charts, the lights, GPS, etc.

I slowly got used to the night sailing, which was so different from day sailing. The first hour usually passed pleasantly enough. If there were no moon it would be absolutely, densely, black all around the boat, the sky inky, studded with a zillion stars. We had a small tricolour light at the top of the mast, which didn’t illuminate anything - it was just there to let other ships know we were there and the direction we were taking. Forever heaved along merrily at a good five knots in that lively sea which sent one-to-two meter waves snickering up from slightly aft. Sometimes they would break just as they reached the boat, sending a frothy dollop onto the deck, even reaching the cockpit. I put all the cushions and sundry lose items that tended to gather in the cockpit out of harm’s way down below.

There’s more noise than one would expect on a boat under sail. The waves spit, hiss, roar, growl and splat; the wind rustles, whines, whistles and shrieks; the boat groans and creaks; the sails snap, flap and crackle; the rigging clanks, hums and twangs. Your ears get used to it and take it all in as background hum just as city dwellers don’t ‘hear’ traffic.

So, when there’s a sudden quiet, wet gasp in the water to my left, I know immediately it’s a dolphin. There are dozens of them, in exhilarated mood. Because of the dark night, the phosphorescence is pronounced and their graceful bodies leave long trails of sparkling, silver ‘fairy dust’ – just like Tinkerbelle. They twist and twirl around and under the boat, sweeping in large oval circuits way behind the boat, then surf just under the surface on a long wave up to and alongside the boat. We never go fast enough for them, so they then dive down, turn under the hull and streak off back again to do another torpedo-like approach. Though they pop up for quick breaths of air, they mainly remain underwater, as if they know how beautiful they look. I can watch this amazing unchoreographed ballet for ages, as long as they stay with the boat in fact, charmed beyond words to be the sole spectator. The unstructured form of this magical display is both elating and soothing.

However, a night watch lasted four hours and by the end of the third, I would be dead beat and struggling to keep awake. I’d listen to a tape of Teach yourself Spanish, listen to music, sing along loudly, dance about in the cockpit and study the stars. Anything to keep lively. But, always, the final hour was absolute torture. I would watch the clock every two minutes until the four hours were up and the relief when I went and woke Mike would be immense. I’d make him a cup of coffee, write up the log, brush my teeth, fall into my bunk.... and lie there wide awake and rolling about for the next two and a half to three hours!

Part of it was worry – Mike would scramble about on the foredeck in heavy weather in the middle of the night, changing or tweaking the sails to go a little faster. He would never wear a safety line or even a life jacket and I’d lie below wretchedly, imagining him going overboard. Then me, some hours later, getting up and going on deck to find myself all alone in the middle of the ocean. The odds of finding someone in the water at night, hours after they have gone overboard, are almost nil, I had been needlessly but reliably informed. I begged him constantly to wear a safety line, and to wake me to do sail changes, but he wouldn’t. During my watches, I’d sit tight and do nothing to alter the rhythm of the boat unless absolutely necessary and then I’d call him and get him to help me. Mike could never understand my complaints, as he positively enjoyed the night watches and when over he slept like a baby. He never offered to do more than his fair share, however.

Gibraltar

27 October 2002

At the end of October, we left Almerimar and headed towards Gibraltar. I began to notice that the fridge did not seem to be working properly, but put it down to incorrect charging on the alternator. The autopilot, which we had affectionately nick-named George (in honour of Forever’s previous owner) had been giving us problems for some time now, frequently breaking down for no apparent reason. We would switch him off for a bit and then later he’d work again.

At Gibraltar we stayed in Queensway marina; the staff were helpful on our arrival, but we met no friendly yachties during our stay. It was amazing to come into this little patch of Englishness in the middle of Spain – the pubs, the food, the language, the shops and supermarkets. There was a lot of strong feeling at the time about the forthcoming elections, with British flags everywhere and vans driving around with loudspeakers exhorting the population to vote NO to being reunited with Spain. We didn’t do much sightseeing and didn’t get to see the Barbary Apes, which I would have liked.

We did our big shop for the Atlantic here, stocking up on tinned food and luxury items like poppadums, mango chutney and English mustard. The variety was fantastic but it was expensive compared to Spain. The duty-free fuel was cheap, so we filled our tanks with diesel.

I had recently read the deeply affecting book ‘Adrift – 76 days at sea’ by the (then) young American sailor Steven Callahan whose boat sank in the Atlantic. He had drifted in his lifeboat for 76 days until he reached the Caribbean. His EPIRB (emergency position-indicating radio beacon) was the old fashioned 121.5 MHz type and it had been activated but no one had responded despite constant requests by his family. He survived (obviously) to tell his harrowing tale but the odds were stacked very highly against him. He wrote that during his long lonely journey across the Atlantic in an extremely uncomfortable life raft, he had actually seen nine ships, some passing quite close by, but he was unable to contact them. As a direct result of that book we put together a very effective ‘grab bag’ in the event of our little ship going down and our most important item was the VHF hand held radio, fully charged and with plenty of spare batteries. Our EPIRB was this same 121.5 MHz, and we had been reliably informed that the authorities no longer even pretended to respond to them, on the (I suppose) reasonable grounds that too many people set them off by accident.

Prior to our departure, I telephoned my sister Pairose in London and advised her that we should take no more than 10 days to get to Madeira at which time I would call her again. I told her about the official lack of interest in Epirbs and asked her to make a monumental fuss in the event that we were never heard from again. She found all this very discouraging, I think, but promised faithfully that she would indeed hound the authorities if we disappeared in mid-ocean.
I can tell you now, I was quite nervous about this, the first leg of the trip. The longest either of us had ever done before was five nights and that was in the little old Mediterranean Sea where land is not ever THAT far away. Admittedly, even a good, strong swimmer like Mike wouldn’t be able to swim to shore, but still, one feels, rightly or wrongly, that help in the form of a coast guard or even another yacht is never too far off. This was another beast altogether and very soon the nearest land would be that directly beneath us - just 3 miles down! I tried not to think too much about the things that could go wrong, but it was difficult as there are so many. The stories yachties go around telling each other are quite dire.

There’s the one about the sailor who needed to go up the mast whilst out at sea (never an advisable thing to do) so his wife hoisted him up. At the top, he tied himself off with a security line to the top of the mast to be safe and then promptly had a heart attack and died. As he was tied off his wife was unable to bring him down again. She had to sail the boat alone for many days with him swinging about up there until she reached land. Imagine that! Then there’s the one of the sailor who came into port, awash with tears, reporting that his wife had gone overboard and he had been unable to rescue her. Two days later a fishing boat came into the same port. The fishing net had scooped the poor dead woman, securely tied to a 45 kg anchor! We met sailors that had been in the Portuguese port when that happened so we considered it more than just hearsay.

The fact is, ‘falling overboard’ is not an uncommon method of losing an unwanted relative or shipmate and probably rates as the almost perfect murder, there being no witnesses and usually no body. The chap just mentioned was rather unlucky on that latter score. There are many more stories, most of which don’t bear thinking about, though one does tend to on those long nights when standing watch or trying to sleep in a rolling, lurching boat.

But it was too late for second thoughts. We would leave Gibraltar the next day, pass through the Strait leaving Tarifa in Portugal to starboard, with the Moroccan coast to port and the beautiful islands of the Azores dead ahead. Thereafter we would alter course slightly south for our next destination, Madeira. The whole thing was scary but exhilarating. I felt quite light-headed with anticipation.

This is a map of our travels so far in the Mediterranean Sea. We had sailed 3102 nautical miles and visited four countries.

And so, having shopped and filled our tanks with diesel and water, then, ‘laden to the gunnels’ as they say in sailing circles, we set sail at the beginning of November for Madeira - the first leg of our Great Atlantic Adventure. It was so exciting to be going across the Atlantic that I always thought of it in capital letters.

Navigation & Equipment

24 September 2002

We set sail for Ibiza in the last week of September and I finally met my first flying fish, which landed on deck with a wet plop in the middle of my night watch and nearly gave me heart failure! By the time I located the source of the ‘plop’ the poor thing had expired.

We anchored in the harbour off the charming town of Santa Eulalia for two days then went across to mainland Spain, heading for Cartagena. On this trip I made one of those awful faux pas that I suppose have to be done at least once, though Mike thinks I shouldn’t admit to it.

The longitude for Cartagena is W000.41.00. Now, we had been sailing for the past eight months in easterly longitudes, and with the Waypoint format already set to E, I neglected to amend the E to W, so entered into the GPS a waypoint of E000.41.00, which of course yielded a conflicting and lower mileage from that of my carefully plotted course on the computer. That should have alerted me (mad cow) but being in a hurry I ignored it, and for once, Mike didn’t check my workings. So, we sailed gaily along and when near what we figured should have been land, nothing appeared. Much mystification until we realized the error. Fortunately, no harm was done, though it took us slightly out of our way and made the trip a little longer. And, of course, I didn’t hear the end of it from my ‘old salty dog’ for days after.

The marina at Cartagena was reasonable, the town was interesting and we spent seven days there, meeting new yachties, including some Americans who gave us lots of useful information on the trip we were vaguely planning in the States. We had this very ambitious plan of sailing up the east coast, taking the Hudson River and Eire Canal through to the Great Lakes and then coming down the Tennessee River all the way to New Orleans. It was a grand plan and we figured it would give us a good tour of the country. As it happened, we never did it.

We bought a bicycle at Cartagena - an ordinary ladies bike, not one of those fancy, expensive, collapsible sailing bikes. Mike took the wheels and pedals off and we stored it in the fore cabin.


7 October

We left Cartagena and headed southwards towards Almerimar stopping and anchoring at a pretty bay with a long beach called Playa de los Genoveses. Mike caught a fish on the way, Dorado we think, cooked it on our little barbeque at the back of the boat for lunch, then went for a swim to the beach and took a long walk.

It was so pleasant that we had made plans to spend the night there, but at about 4pm a nasty swell started setting in making the anchorage untenable so we decided to push on. Within an hour we were caught in a most horrendous storm, which just went on and on. It got dark quickly, we had the port of Almeria right behind us, and the wind on the nose, of course - it always is in the Mediterranean. We didn’t want to attempt going into Almeria in that sort of weather at night and we couldn’t just leave the boat or we would have floated into the harbour anyway, so we had to keep going just to keep off-shore, constantly dodging all the other traffic in the area. Morning brought no respite in the wind, but we took in the sails and started to motor. Painfully slow still, thumping head on into the wind, waves and but at least now we were travelling towards our destination. It took us a full 24 hours to cover a distance of 70 miles! We were accompanied by lots of dolphins for a while which cheered us.

We stayed in Almerimar for 18 days and had a grand time. The marina is large and well designed and a popular warm spot for yachts to spend the winter. We met lots of very nice people and had a good social time in the waterfront tapas bars where we were fed tasty little snacks free with every round of drinks - so much food that towards the end of the evening you had to say “no more”. I had by now really settled into and just loved the cruising life and I was prepared to put up with the sailing to achieve all that. Mike, of course, loved the sailing and put up with being in port as a part of the deal. Jack Sprat and his wife!

Although Mike had had a boat before this one, it was a long time ago, and we were still very much the ‘new kids on the block’ when it came to cruising. Everyone we met had been cruising and living aboard for years and years and we felt very inexperienced by comparison. They were all so kind and helped wherever they could; people lent us charts and pilots to photocopy, books and videos to swap, and gave us loads of advice and help on the boat. I was looking forward to the day when I would be the one dishing out help and advice.

One kind friend, Ken, spent all day fixing our fridge for us at a nominal charge - so exciting to have refrigeration at long last. We had a stainless steel arch fitted to the back of the boat, upon which we mounted a new 80-Watt solar panel, and had two new batteries fitted, doubling our domestic bank. Forever had three radios aboard: two VHF (Very High Frequency) radios, one fitted and one hand held - VHF radio has a line-of-sight range of up to 70 miles and allows you to communicate with other radios within that range; and a small SSB (Single Side Band) radio receiver only. Mike had planned to buy a more sophisticated SSB radio including a transmitter which would have permitted us to keep in regular contact with sailing networks. However, new ones were prohibitively expensive and we were unable to find a decent second hand one, so we decided to do without and make do with only the VHF.

All craft at sea, including yachts, are required to monitor VHF Channel 16, the emergency channel, at all times. The VHF radio is used to call up port authorities and marina staff prior to entering a harbour for permission to enter and for giving or receiving information that may be pertinent, like weather conditions, shipping movements, etc. and vessels at sea (or in port) can communicate with each other.

Yachties, naturally, love their radios as it is their form of local telephone amongst each other. However there are those who chat away on it ad nauseum, and whilst I admit that it is not only the Americans, they do tend to be the worst offenders. Channel 16 is supposed to be the hailing channel only and then the two craft communicating are required to move to another, agreed, channel. But, in their excitement and enthusiasm many callers forget to move to another channel and the rest of us, tuned in just in case of an emergency, are obliged to listen to their tiresome chatter. It goes something like this:

- Dreamboat, Dreamboat, Dreamboat. This is Saucy Lady, Saucy Lady. Dreamboat, Dreamboat, Dreamboat. This is Saucy Lady. Come in please. Over.

(If there is no reply, Saucy Lady repeats her plea. You have to imagine the drawl.)

- Saucy Lady, Saucy Lady, Saucy Lady. This is Dreamboat. Go ahead. Over.

- Hi there, Frank. It’s Marian here. How’re you guys doing? Over.

- Oh, yeah. Well, we’re fine Marian. Good to hear your voice again. When did you get in? Over.

- We just got in this morning, about nine o’clock. Had quite a good southerly all the way in, actually. Over.

- Yeah, we had much the same yesterday. Heard there’s going to a bit of a blow later today, so we’re glad to be in a safe port now. How long’s this bad weather going to last, do you know? Over.

- I’m not sure Frank. Hang on I’ll just ask the skipper here. (Voice raised) George honey, Frank wants to know how long the bad weather’s going to last.

(Crackle, splat…. Change channe… ..diots!)

- What was that, Frank? Did you say something?

- Oh, I think it was someone telling us to change channel. We’d better move off 16. Do you want to pick a channel, Marian?

- Uh, ok. Roger that. How about 68? Shall we try 68? Over.

- Roger, roger. 68 it is. Going up. Over.

If the callers are friends of yours or you think they are going to talk about something that interests you, you also move to the alternative channel and earwig on their conversation. It is a fairly common occurrence to be having a quiet little chat with one boat and have a third and even a fourth suddenly butt in with comments. Needless to say, we were careful about gossiping about each other on the radio!

We met a number of yachts that had children aboard and always found them surprisingly mature and resourceful for their age. They would scamper around the marinas, their own and other boats, up and down the rigging, cute as little sea monkeys. Of course, this was usually the only life they could remember so they took everything in their stride. Though they had to spend some hours every morning with a parent (usually the mother) doing correspondence school work they would spend the rest of the day running around, having made friends wherever they could amongst the other cruising kids as well as local children.

I’d watch them, even tiny tots, handling their dinghies and outboards with amazing dexterity, putting me to shame as I still battled with ours – particularly the outboard which, to my eternal embarrassment, never wanted to start when I pulled that ridiculous rope thing! Why couldn’t we have had a simple key start? I saw some large smart outboards with those, but then they also had a proper pivotal seat, rather than a saggy fender suspended across the middle, and a steering wheel as well as both forward and reverse gears, rather than a long tiller handle I had to swing about to steer and swivel right round for reverse. Mike had no trouble with it.

I forgot to mention Henrietta earlier. Having neither kids nor pets aboard I bought an African Violet pot plant, the hardy purple variety. She thrived and bloomed in her pot on the shelf in the main saloon and survived all manner of unpleasant conditions.

Bella Italia

2 August 2002


Upon arrival in Italy, we went up the Fiumicino River canal and stayed a couple of nights in a co-operative marina (cheap for Italy but twice as expensive as France), then moved to the canal wall outside the Customs office. This was comfortable and secure and constantly decorated by a string of dashingly good looking young Italian men. Where in the world are customs officials good looking? Officially, we could remain there free for seven days, but effectively we stayed for about ten days. There was water available but, sadly, no power.

The view up the Fiumicino Canal

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We had a great time here. We met some very nice people and went to Rome by bus a number of times. Rome was every bit as fabulous as we expected and we did all the touristy bits, like the Colliseum, the Trevi Fountain and St Peter’s Cathedral. Public transport in Italy was cheap and so was food in the markets. The countryside is very pretty, green and fertile. We were unlucky with restaurants. My favourite food is Italian but the couple of times we dined out the food was not remarkable.

The Collisseum - tourism thrives

Roman Ruins

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About a week into our stay a bad storm blew in with heavy rains that washed the most extraordinary flotsam down the river from Rome – huge tree trunks and branches, lots of rubbish and many dead animals. The terrific amount of mud washed down from the surrounding countryside fouled up the water and it was heartbreaking to watch hundreds of fish desperately gasping out of the water, trying to clear their clogged up gills. The wind eased after three days and we were ready to leave. Inside the canal, of course, we had been pretty well unaffected by the wind.

On our last night we were told there was a bit of a festival in town so we set ourselves up in a café with the captain and two young crew members from the Canadian boat Stitches Explorer. We never did find the festival, but managed to have a splendid evening tucking into numerous bottles of local Vinho Rossi Frizanti (cheap, sparkling red wine). The next morning at 7 am, Mike was up and bustling about, ignoring my pathetic pleas that we leave it for another day to recover. I seemed to recall the Canadian skipper pointing out that though the wind had now dropped, there would still be a big uncomfortable swell outside the canal, and I felt sick just thinking about it. But Mike’s ears were switched off; he untied the boat and headed into the middle of the river. The bridge attendant blew his alarm to warn foot traffic off the bridge and prepared to lift the bridge. Mike was still a bit pissed I think, because he throttled up and headed towards the bridge, which was lifting very slowly. The outgoing and still very strong current got a good grip on Forever and we started shooting down river. I squawked frantically, which served no good purpose except to probably distract him further. He finally swung sideways and went hard into reverse, but it was too late and we smacked the top of the starboard shroud against the bridge in a long grinding slide, and then pinged off backwards. No harm done, and thank goodness there were no large vessels waiting behind us. Somewhat chastened, we did a full swing round again and then slid through the now fully opened bridge, praying that none of our new friends had witnessed this debacle. Hopefully they also were nursing hangovers in their beds.

As predicted, when we got out into the ocean, there was a horrible swell, which combined with my hangover, put me in a wretched heap on my bunk all day and the valiant Mike was left to sail alone. I thought it served him right.

The approach to the island of Capri.

From the top of Capri - Forever is somewhere in that huddle of boats.

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We continued south and visited the islands of Santa Ponza and then Ventotene, island of many exiles. Octavia, the wife of Nero, was exiled on the island at the request of Nero’s mistress, Poppea Sabina. Later he had her head cut off and presented to Poppea – nice lady. The emperor Caesar Augustus exiled his promiscuous daughter Julia here and we visited the palace ruins where she had lived and entertained her many lovers.

The anchorage at Ventotene was very rocky which initially pleased Mike as he figured the anchor was well hooked, but our chain suffered terribly. Eventually, a fellow sailor suggested we put a nylon snubber on the chain to ease the jerking and that really worked. After that Mike always put a snubber on every time we anchored, no matter what the conditions. After a couple of days we went back to the Italian mainland and anchored in Miseno, took a bus into Naples and a short train ride to the ancient city of Pompeii, buried by ash and rock when the volcano Vesuvius erupted in 79AD. The reconstruction work is ongoing, but they have uncovered most of the original buildings, and it was awesome to walk around what must have once been a very beautiful, sophisticated and thriving city so long ago. Hopeless creature that I am, I forgot to take my camera that day, so there are no photos.

From Naples we motored (no wind) to Capri where we anchored off Isola Faraglioni, and then moved on, ever southwards to Agropoli, again in very little wind. Here we found we could stay in the harbour on the visitor’s quay for three days free, so we did just that. We befriended the New Zealand boat A Different Song and I toured the ancient Greek ruins of Paestum with Jane, whilst Mike did boatie things with Fenton.

The Basillica at Paestum

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25 August

After our three free days, we headed south towards Sicily in calm sea conditions. Three days later, only eight miles from Ustica, we changed our minds and decided to sail straight back to Majorca. This was going to be my first really long trip, in preparation for the long haul across the Atlantic, to see if I could hack it. Unfortunately, soon after turning west, we hit a weird storm that raged on for days. I say weird because there was not a cloud in the sky, ever, but the wind just kept howling. The sea, of course, got very lumpy, and we then discovered, with huge waves constantly washing over the bow of the boat, that there was a leak somewhere into the forepeak, soaking everything in salt water. After five days, we reached the southern tip of Sardinia and dived for cover into the port of Villasimius where we rested for two days until the weather eased. Investigations into the cause of the leak in the forepeak revealed that the yanking on the anchor chain in Ventotene had loosened the windlass. This is a vital piece of equipment with which you hoist the anchor up, and put it down again. Another lesson learned and another job to do when we got back to Palma. I spent two enchanting days washing everything in the forepeak, including the mattresses, and drying it all on deck!

It took us a further two peaceful days to sail slowly back to Majorca. The wind had died off again (one extreme to the other!) and we had a flat glassy sea most of the way which produced amazing sunsets.

Glassy sunsets

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We saw two turtles, loads of dolphins, small striped fish and jellyfish. We just stopped the boat at one point and had a swim in the sea - one at a time, of course. The thought of the boat sailing off and leaving the two of us stranded in the ocean didn’t bear contemplating. The weather was perfect; warm and sunny but not too hot. With a flat sea the boat's motion was no more than a soothing roll and we could sleep easily at night. I loved to lie on my bunk and look up through the hatch overhead and watch the night sky, which is infinitely clearer and far more beautiful at sea.

Dolphins under Forever's bow

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5 September

Returning to Majorca, we stopped briefly in Porto Colom, then day sailed to Colonia San Jordi, where we spent a couple of restful nights at anchor, and got back to the marina in Palma at the beginning of September. It was great to bump into numerous old friends again as well as Jane and Fenton on A Different Song. In between all the socialising I got to play with our new electronic charts and had lots of fun with that – more entertaining and useful than my normal ‘mad cow’ prevention - crosswords. We also had loads of work to do on the boat, and were successful with some and not others. We bought an inverter so I could run the computer off the 12 volt system and Mike promised we would sort out the power problem. Ha ha - watch this space later on!

The quote to fix the fridge, which had never worked, was too expensive so we decided to carry on without one - for ‘we’ read Mike, as I still pined for a cold gin and tonic. We did manage to get our sails re-stitched where necessary, and Mike spent days firmly re-attaching the windlass to the deck. We intended to try and get things like extra batteries, solar panels and an SSB radio in Gibraltar. There were dozens of other things we would have liked such as radar, wind generator, self steering wind vane, but couldn’t afford, so we’d have to manage with what we had. There are actually yachts out there with every mod con you can think of including satellite phones, televisions, deep freezers, washing machines and microwaves - imagine that. I tried not to.

We’d had a superb summer travelling around and had learned lots, about the boat and about ourselves. The words 'mutiny' and even 'divorce' had been bandied about quite frequently (by me) and we still had moments of great irritation with each other. But as no one had been pushed overboard yet we thought we might survive the journey and hoped we were past the worst of it. To be perfectly honest, I had not enjoyed that last five day sail, but I felt I could hack it and felt rather (inordinately) proud of myself. Whereas I had been a little anxious about the looming Atlantic trip, I was now looking forward to it. The prospect of what was awaiting me on the other side was quite irresistable. I still got seasick occasionally, but it didn't usually last long. Mike never got seasick (or if he did he didn’t admit to it), but then he was out on deck all day and it was me (‘er down below) who had to try and cook, clean, make tea, plot courses on the computer, fiddle with the GPS entering waypoints, etc. Who wouldn’t be sick?

The Anchoring Song

(We have been away for five days staying with very dear sailing friends in France, enjoying sunshine, fresh fish, cheese and wine!)

19 July 2002

Sailing south we arrived at the town of Calvi on the north of the isle of Corsica. Corsica was the birth place of Napoleon Bonaparte and since the island was in French hands at the time of his birth, Napoleon was a French national. Corsica is politically French, called a territorial collectivity of France, but the island has historically had close ties with Italy. The islanders maintain a fierce sense of independence and have their own flag; a dinky little white pennant with a roguish looking moor wearing a knotted headscarf tied round his head, a big gold earring and the words ‘Ile de Beaute’. We bought one and hung it below our French courtesy flag.

At the Calvi anchorage we were charmed to meet Liza and Andy Copeland on their yacht Bagheera , co-authors of numerous sailing books, notably one in our own library called ‘Cruising for Cowards’. They came for drinks on Forever, and Andy patiently tried to demystify boat electrics and refrigeration for us. He gave us a couple of very useful leaflets which I spent hours studying, though I confess not much of it made sense to me then.

We sailed on down the west coast of Corsica in short hops stopping in various anchorages. Mike’s and my first attempts at anchoring had been pathetic but with all this practice we were getting somewhat better. However, conditions were always so variable that our success rate ranged from easy, quick and smooth to difficult, lengthy and embarrassing.

The theory of anchoring is this: you turn the boat up into wind and disengage the motor which brings the boat to a standstill, then you drop the anchor and reverse slowly backwards, paying out chain as you go. The wind also pushes the boat backwards. If you’re really clever and the wind is suitable, you can do all this without the engine, de-powering your sail at the last moment. Mike and I hadn’t yet tried it without engine, but we talked about it and were determined to pluck up the necessary courage one day, but only if there are no other boats around to witness our attempt.

After one particularly appalling effort in the anchorage of Anse de Tuara we were barely speaking by the time a neighbour rowed over and invited us for a drink on his boat. Deciding this was preferable to bearing each other’s company we went and they proved to be good fun. We all managed to have a laugh about the ‘anchoring dance’ as our host called it, comical of course only to the spectators. The same goes for the ‘anchoring song’, which goes something like this:

Him: Ok, dear. I’m going to go between this green boat
to starboard and the large white catamaran to port.
Her: Fine.
Him: Alright, you can put the anchor down now.
Her: What?
Him: I said, put the anchor down.
Her: I thought you said the green boat? This is blue.
Him: Never mind. Just put it down.
Her: Ok, Here goes. There you are. Slow down Jack,
we’re going to hit this boat in front!
(A lot of frantic reversing)
Him: For Christ’s sake, woman! You left it too late. Pull
the chain up again. I’ll have to go round again.
(Wife lifts the chain back up)
Ok, once again, when we get between the blue boat to starboard
and the catamaran, please put the bloody thing down straight
away. Got it?
Her: Yes darling. Got it. But don’t go so fast.
Him: What?
Her: You’re going too fast, Jack.
Him: Rubbish. Just do as you’re told. Put it down, NOW.
Her: Ok, hold on. Oh dear, hang on, the chain’s stuck. Ooof.
Right. There she goes.
Him: Jesus wept. You’re too bloody slow.
(Much frantic reversing again)
Now pull it up again.
(Wife lifts the chain again)
Him: Right, let’s try it again. I’m going to stop just behind
the blue boat. Let her go when I say. Okay, put her
down.
(Wife drops the anchor chain)
Him: Well? Did you let it go?
Her: Yes.
(He starts reversing and keeps on reversing until he
realizes the anchor is dragging)
Her: We’re dragging, darling.
Him: Oh, for God’s sake. You put too much chain down all
at one go. You’re supposed to let it out slowly, woman.
All right, I’m going forward again, pull it up.
Her: No.
Him: What?
Her: I said No. You want it lifted up, you come and do it.
Him: Fine. I’ll do it. (Muttering) Want anything done properly
you have to do it yourself. Here, you come and steer
the boat, and make sure you stop right there behind
this white yacht and keep well to port of that fishing
boat. Think you can manage that?
Her: Yes dear, and a darn sight better than you can.

And so it goes on, and on, until they get it in, by which time they are both snarling blue murder.

We continued down the west coast and stopped for fuel and provisions in the lovely old town of Ajaccio, Napoleon’s birth place. It was all good cruising until we reached Bonifacio in the south where we were turned away by the port authorities on the grounds that the harbour was too full, although we could see plenty of empty berths. We tried to anchor but the only available holding was awful, so we gave up and sailed south to the island of Sardinia.

Sardinia is a part of Italy and is called the Sardinia Region. Our gentle sail through the north of the island was made quite hazardous by numerous huge, fast motor boats – there seemed to be hardly any sailing boats – all trying to run you over or give you a good wobble with their wake. Italians are SO macho.

I was dying to try out our new electronic chart software. With our small battery bank (2 x 100 amps), only one solar panel and a skipper who hated to motor, power was an endless problem. Mike is what you might call ‘an old salty dog’ type sailor and tended to leave all the new fangled stuff like GPS, 12 volt power systems, the computer, email, mobile phones and now this clever software, to me. I was delighted to have the electronic stuff as I couldn’t navigate my way out of a paper bag without the GPS, but without adequate power I might as well have thrown the whole lot in the ocean. However, finances were always exceedingly tight and there was no such thing as a cheap marina in Sardinia so after a couple of days anchoring we left to cross the Tyrrhenian Sea to Fiumicino, which is the nearest harbour to Rome.

The trip across was a bit variable, but OK. As seems to be always the case in a long trip, the wind dies just in the last hour or so before you get in. There I am, dreaming of a good wash and a sit down with a glass of wine and a tasty little snack within the hour. Then the wind dies off and the boat slows down - to three knots, then two, then one, and finally when the GPS refuses to register any forward motion at all, and my sighs have progressed through pleas to snarls, I finally have a hissy fit and threaten to decamp on arrival before my captain will put on the engine. He can be heroically determined!