Collieur was great and full of attractive young holidaymakers, it now being the height of the tourist season, the weather was glorious, we did not even bother to pump up the dinghy but swam ashore.
It now seems odd, but looking back through the log I read a rather anti French attitude in the pages again, this had cropped up from time to time, but I had filtered it out as I did not want to appear anti French, especially as I now love there country. I rather suspect that the French saw us as what we were; a pair of penniless British yachtsmen, and treated us accordingly. The log records that we crossed into Spain and despite being rather surprised to see the General Franco’s Guardia Civil armed like front line troops, we noted that it was really friendly and supplies were half the price of those back over the boarder. A note in the log states that ‘fags were 10p and Gin 60p , its easy to see what our priorities were!
We
kept on westwards, sailing during the day and anchoring at night. At a
place called Llansa we met an English couple with an Alacrity which
they had trailed down from the UK, they were amazed that we had sailed
that far, and we, as always were delighted to talk to ‘Brits’, back in
the ‘70s , sailing as we were, one really felt that one was a long way
from home.
Really
this was just holiday sailing and very unlike the serious passages we
had undertaken in the tidal waters of the Channel and the Atlantic
coast of France, but we were starting to plan ahead for our big
crossing from the mainland of Spain to the Balearic Islands. The jump
off point was to be from Barcelona, and if I remember correctly, it was
a distance of about 150Nm. We did not plan an arrival point, but just
so long as we ended up at either Minorca Majorca or Ibiza we really
didn’t care that much. However I’m getting ahead of myself, there were
stormy waters ahead in the crewing department!
One day whilst washing the old alcohol stove I managed to drop it over the side of the boat, several hours of dredging with various hooks and so on I had to go and buy a new gas driven stove from a local hardware shop; what an improvement! Personally I would certainly rather take the risk of being blown into a low orbit and have properly cooked food to eat!
One day Roger asked if we could take the boat along to Sitges, a tourist resort 20 miles or so down the coast as his girlfriend was there on holiday. “No problem” say I, not suspecting that this was going to be a pivotal point in the trip. We moored in Sitges Marina (see picture below of me looking very slim) and spent a few days in the bars of Sitges allowing Sarah (Roger’s friend) to buy us ice cold Gin and tonics. The ‘bombshell’ arrived after a day or so when Roger, who had looked more and more unhappy, announced that he was going home!
This was a disaster for me, as although handling the boat at sea on my own was not a problem, getting back through the canal system would be very tricky. Coupled with this, as soon as Roger departed I was struck down with a terrible stomach bug, and remained in the baking hot cabin on the boat for two or three days unable to move! Eventually I recovered and feeling very weak sailed back to Barcelona. I hadn’t eaten for days and was looking and feeling very sorry for myself.
The first boat I saw as I re-entered Barcelona was sailed by some new friends we had made, and they fed me up and listened to my problems. I got back onto my comfy pontoon berth outside the Club Nautica again and set about phoning home to try to fix up a new crew.
My first call home went something like this,
“Hi Mum, howsitgoing”
“Oh very well dear, are you in Majorca?”
“No Mum I’m in Barcelona and Roger is coming home”
“Oh, so when will you be in Majorca then dear?”
“I dunno, I probably won’t be going as I can’t do the crossing on my own”
“Oh
so how is Anne going to find you then”
By this time I was getting
fairly confused, but it transpired that Anne had decided that she would
come down and find me, Europe being a small place compared with Canada!
The conversation continued
along the lines of,
“Mum, please tell me she
hasn’t left yet!!”
“Ok dear, I’ll see if I can stop her”
And
so she did!
Anyway in the end it turned
out that she was leaving from Luton and flying to Mahon on the Island
of Menorca, that evening. As she could not change her tickets at that
late stage, she continued to Mahon caught a taxi straight down to the
ferry port and only a matter of hours after my ‘phone conversation with
my mother, stepped off the ferry in Barcelona!
My attractive, resourceful, charming and guitar playing new crew had
arrived! I hardly need to say that things started to look considerably
better! Anne
Dewey’s first experience of yachting was to be a 150Nm open sea passage
on an 18ft 6inch boat from Barcelona to Majorca, and I have to say that
she did wonderfully.
Our
first long passage in the Med was a fairly undramatic affair, with the
usual mix of Mediterranean winds from all directions and from flat calm
to 20kts. We made fair progress and used the faithful Selva outboard
during the calm patches to keep up our speed. Having never made a
landfall on a mountainous island before we were amazed to see Majorca
from a distance of 60Nm or more! It was great to have something to aim
for but with light winds it took us nearly 20 hours to get to an
anchorage. We didn’t care though, the weather was great and we swam and
fished. Fishing whilst a sea had become a major supplement to our diet,
and we ended up cooking and eating all sorts of fish that found their
way on to our hooks!
We made our landfall at Calla San Vicente, we had spotted a hotel on
the shoreline in this little bay near the north eastern point of the
island, and as we closed with land I aimed for the hotel lights in the
increasing darkness until I could see the sandy bottom with my torch
and anchored. We turned in for the night feeling pretty pleased with
ourselves. The next morning however we awoke to see a large reef just
awash about 20meters away dead in line between us and the hotel!
We stayed a couple of days
before pushing on around point Formentera and picking anchorages where
the we felt like it, life was good and I wish I was doing it all again!
Our final stop on Majorca
was Puerta Polliensa, and we beached Hotfly for the first time in
months. I wanted to check her bottom as we had noticed that barnacles
and weed grew on the inflatable dinghy almost overnight in the warm
Meddy water. It says a lot for the antifouling qualities of the now
banned TBT that the boat was as clean as the day we left, and remained
so for the entire trip.
For some reason that I
cannot recall I had decided to do the crossing to Menorca at night, it
may have been that the winds were steadier, and certainly that night it
was a good strong breeze. It sticks in my mind that our navigation
lights were powerful enough to ensure that we could be clearly seen by
an alert lookout with 20/20 vision at a range of about 10 meters, so we
had a policy of avoiding anything we saw at night. This particular
night we got rather to close to a big inter-island ferry which rather
shook us up, and then some time later in the night, (and it was pitch
black, no moon) we missed a huge fishing pot buoy with long spar
sticking out of the top by no more than a meter. I remember that we
were flying along and it was quite rough with the occasional breaking
sea, when this object appeared to rush past us, I nearly died of
fright! Actually what I thought was that it was another blacked out
yacht, it was only when it was astern of us that I could make out what
it was.
By daybreak we were nearly
at Menorca, and finally dropped our hook in a little inlet called Calla
en Porta. Here we made lots of new friends and Anne started dropping by
at some of the bars with her guitar to do some pickin’ ‘n’ singin’. She
was fantastic with a endless repertoire of songs, every one loved her.
I loved it as it brought a new and unexpected source of income!
Additionally we started to get the sort of invites onto other yachts
with had previously been closed to a crew of two scruffy young men!
We sailed from Calla en
Porta, and slowly made our way around to Mahon and finally to
Ciudadela, taking it easy and enjoying life. But time was rolling on
and we knew we had to be back in UK waters by October at the latest,
although it was difficult to imagine grey waters and shorts days whilst
enjoying a Mediterranean summer.
We
made plans to depart from Ciudadela and make landfall back at
Barcelona, although as usual our passage planning was pretty open
ended. The passage started with a fantastic southerly breeze and we
were sailing as fast as some other yachts considerably larger than we
were, we were in high hopes of a quick passage back to the mainland. I
remember that we were surprised to be able to see Majorca as we sailed
away to the north, the air was so clear, (we later heard that this was
a bad omen for the weather). I handed over to Anne to helm, whilst I
got some sleep as it was by now late evening and we were still roaring
along and making great time.
Some hours later I was
awoken by Anne calling down the hatchway that she thought I had better
get up on deck! I remember two things, one that it was full moon and
that the clouds were scudding across it at great rate, and secondly
that the wind had really got up. Because we were on a broad reach Anne
had not really noticed how things were developing until it all started
to get somewhat out of hand! We got the main rolled down on the crude
reefing system and chucked a few items of clothing into the ‘roll’ to
pull the aft end of the boom up a bit and I crawled forward to get the
jib off and set the storm jib, the first time I had ever used it.
The night became wild and
the wind backed to the north east, when dawn broke it revealed big
breaking seas under clear blue sky. We steered the best and most
comfortable course we could but it was exhausting work, and by the
evening I was starting to hallucinate due to exhaustion, it was
imposable to eat or rest and I just am thankful that it was warm and
the sun kept shining. The gale blew for about 24 hours and started to
abate towards nightfall, about 36 hours after our departure from
Ciudadella. By this time we also starting to come under the lee of the
mainland, but by now we no idea where we were. I do however remember
eating sardines out of the can with my fingers.
Amazingly we still had our
faithful Metzella inflatable dinghy, on open sea passages we would tow
this behind us as a bit of an insurance policy, but it had spent most
of the day flying out on the end of its painter, spinning first one way
then the other. The paddles of course were long gone.
We were too tired to find a
safe harbour but could make out in the moonlight a wide beach ahead. In
the now rapidly calming seas we shone the torch over the side until we
could see the bottom and dropped the anchor over the side. The boat was
so full of water that the floorboards were floating and all our
provisions were in the bilges, the coffee had broken and added to the
picture of disaster. We were so tired we collapsed onto our waterlogged
sleeping bags and slept. The next morning when were awoken by the sound
of voices outside the boat. It turned out that we had anchored off a
popular swimming beach and we were now the centre of attraction to
every kid that had an inflatable beach boat! All very surreal!
Somehow we had survived
what we later found out was a Tremontana, this is a wind that blows
much like the better know Mistral, when we finally made it to a port,
the harbour master could not believe that our little boat had sailed
through this weather, I remember him saying that even the fishing boats
had stayed in port and that at one point it had reached Force 9.
In the next part we refuse a rescue from a French lifeboat in a
gathering storm, and head back north through the canals to grey
autumnal Atlantic seas.
Continue to part 4
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