Presentation time


Last weekend we gave a talk to the Haven Ports Yacht Club - our home club at SYH. It was a disgusting evening, pouring with rain, very windy, generally horrible. I'd prepared a speech which started "We'd like to thank both of you for coming tonight..." Astonishingly about 50 people attended and we got really great feedback. If you were there, thank you!

Thank you also to Judy for the preparation and for inviting us in the first place.

If you would like to see the slides they are at Slideshare.

Home to the Orwell


The Grand Tour is officially over. Kalessin of Orwell sailed between the pierheads of Suffolk Yacht Harbour just after 5pm on Sunday 14 September, after around 4000 miles, and two years and three months since she left.

On 11 September Sam headed back to Calais the old-fashioned way via ferry and train. Ben and I were all set to head off by Eurostar on Friday the 12th. What a pity that the Tunnel was closed by a fire on the afternoon of the 11th...

Anyway thanks to SeaFrance Ben and I did make it to Calais on the 12th (eventually) and we headed for Ramsgate on Saturday - quite calm, quite sunny, an uneventful crossing, except for the moment when a NorfolkLines ferry came straight at us... anyone who has crossed the Channel will know the feeling.

Sunday's passage from Ramsgate was a bit more eventful - north-easterly 4-5 (fortunately perhaps our wind indicator display is broken), horrid Thames estuary chop, and all of us tired and stressed about dealing with bumps for the first time for... well, for Ben and me the last time was a couple of bumpy hours in Majorca last August. We still got sunshine and we remembered the great thing about tides - we were swept home at an average of well over 6 knots.

And last weekend we moved Kalessin on to a mooring on the Orwell, with thanks to Dave who has kindly lent us his mooring until the end of October.

What next? Well, we've started to clear several tons of books and other stuff off the boat, goodness knows where we will put it. There's a bit of catching up to do on maintenance. Hopefully we'll have a few weeks of east coast pottering before laying up ashore. Next year we might go somewhere modest, like the Dutch Delta. And after that Sam and Ben are both really keen on the Baltic...

Moorings seen from the Nacton shore - Kalessin is currently in there somewhere

We made it

Kalessin reached Calais on Wednesday evening after three very full days on the industrialised and busy northern canals.

Here we are on the mooring pontoon in Calais just before the Pont Mollien, where officially you leave the canals and enter the port. It’s very handy for the station and the town hall, but possibly not a place to leave the boat unattended.

We had to arrange locking out with the Calais harbour master, and the impression we received is they are more concerned with ferries than with us, not surprisingly. High tide was at 1123. Eventually they opened the first lock for us at about 1010 but we were stuck in the Bassin Carnot – the Carnot lock was open but the bridge was shut, with a red light. So we lowered the hood and the other tall bits and squeezed under the bridge with about 2ft/0.6m to spare... Ben is still having nightmares. We just missed the bridge opening into the marina and had to spend about 45 minutes on the waiting buoys.

Sadly the chandlery, which operates the mast hoist, is closed until 3 September - otherwise conceivably we could have brought the boat home this weekend. Instead Ben and I came home by Eurostar (incredibly quick) and National Express East Anglia (stuck for an hour five miles south of Diss). Sam is in Calais, cleaning, de-fendering, fixing rigging and occasionally talking to visitors - the marina is very empty. We hope to return in a couple of weeks, weather permitting, to bring Kalessin home.

A typical canal mooring - quite close to the bank on this occasion


Ben helped out with some of the manual locks

Early morning on the Marne a la Saone

Chauny

Our plan today was to get to Pont L'Eveque at the start of the Canal du Nord. (This is our revised plan - originally we planned to use the older, quieter, but much more heavily locked Canal Saint-Quentin, but sadly we don't have time).

Somewhere around lunchtime I re-read the entry for the Pont L'Eveque halt in the Almanac Fluviale and discovered that it only takes boats up to 8m long (ours is 10m). So we cut short our day and diverted slightly to Chauny, the first place we've been with wifi for around two weeks. It's nice to have a short day, time to shop (especially for loo rolls), make a few checks and repairs, and to read my emails. I have 51 and there's almost nothing interesting in there at all.

This is a mini marina with finger pontoons, showers, power etc, and even a nice Dane for Sam to blether to (although listening to the conversation right now I think Sam is doing less blethering and more listening...)

According to my calculations we have 250km and 29 locks to do if we want to reach Calais in the next five days, which seems feasible if nothing goes wrong.

Updates from the canals

On the canals - 22 August 2008

After 10 days on the canals it seems as though we have never been anywhere else. It has become normal to have 0.7m of depth under the keel and to be aground every night. There’s a lock every 20 or 30 minutes. Today we had a interval of 23km between locks which is by far the longest gap since the Saône.

The Marne à la Saône started to feel like “our” canal. On average we met one or two barges a day and two or three pleasure boats. In 224km we never met anyone going the same way as us. On the ascending side, montant, most of the locks were automated, but on the descending side, avalant, we had fantastic support from VNF who provided students or VNF people to escort us from lock to lock, open and close the gates and sluices with little winding handles, open the opening bridges, and check every night when we would be starting the next morning. They did take a break for lunch, which forced us to stop too – very civilised.

On the whole the canal was extremely rural with just a few little towns and many delightful villages. We stopped in Langres, which was a very steep 2km climb to the town but very rewarding when we got there – medieval town walls with great views.

The Balesmes tunnel is one of the longest we go through at almost 5km. We didn’t like it. There seemed to be no ventilation so the tunnel was foggy with diesel fumes, and halfway through all the lights went out. Our 500,000 candlepower searchlight, which isn’t supposed to be used for more than a couple of minutes at a time, did sterling service for almost 30 minutes.

On the avalant side we alternated between mooring to the canal bank in the middle of nowhere, and tying up to little VNF haltes fluviales, with a pontoon, loos, possibly electricity, and sometimes even hot showers. Possibly our favourite was Froncles, which had all the above plus a car boot sale, where we purchased a crêpe for Ben, a whizzy game controller for his laptop, and a lump hammer for beating in the mooring stakes. Froncles even had a supermarket that opened at 8am – getting supplies has been a bit of a challenge.

From the Marne à la Saône we have zigzagged in a series of different canals which are confusingly named: the Canal lateral à la Marne, Canal de l'Aisne à la Marne, the Canal lateral à l'Aisne, the Canal de l'Oise à l'Aisne where we are now, and the Canal lateral à l'Oise tomorrow.

In the course of all that we spent a rather splendid night at Chalons-en-Champagne, moored in a park, with a really excellent meal in the town. It was followed by a night in Reims, where we visited the cathedral which was absolutely fabulous, bought some champagne, and spent the night between the A4 autoroute and the ring-road, under a flyover – probably the noisiest night we’ve ever spent on board.

And tonight we are back in the middle of nowhere, just across the canal from a huge reservoir, in total peace and quiet. Although Sam cycled off and managed to find a Camping Gaz supplier (8am tomorrow) and a fuel station for diesel (9am tomorrow, from the next lock down), which should see us to the end of our journey – all we really need now is toilet paper (we have eight kitchen rolls but no loo rolls…). We’ve had several goes at getting diesel but each time either we haven’t been able to get to the bank to tie up (too shallow, or full of rocks), or the filling station has been closed.

On the canal, 13 August 2008

Well, after around 500 km of rivers today we’ve finally entered the canal network. After all yesterday’s rain the Saône was very full, running with about 1.5 knots of current, and full of logs and mess. Above the lock at Auxonne we entered the shallow navigation, minimum 1.8m, but in fact it seemed not different from below the lock.

The locks on the upper Saône are automated – you head up to them, turn a bit of hosepipe to tell it you are there, wait for the lock to open, enter, tie up, and lift the blue bar to set the lock filling. That’s the theory, but in practice there might be someone else in the lock, or the ladder is on one side and the blue bar on the other side, or there aren’t enough bollards to tie to… who knows.

At Heuilley we turned sharp right into the Canal de la Marne à la Saône. Unlike the other canals we have passed there was only a tiny sign telling you the name of the canal instead of a big notice. We got to the first lock after 1km and it was totally closed – no traffic lights, nothing. Ever the pessimist, I was convinced the entire navigation was closed. However, it appears that (a) it was lunchtime and (b) they are automating these locks too and the works stop the traffic lights from working. Eventually we were locked in. So far we’ve done four and then stopped for the night – a bit modest out of the 114 locks on this canal, but I felt we needed a break.

We hoped to stop at a picnic area but ran aground about 10m from the bank. So we’re moored up on the other side, using our new “spikes”, driven into the bank with ropes threaded through the top, to hold us against the piling. This side we went aground only about 1m off so it’s possible to cross to the bank. Let’s hope we can get off in the morning! Sam and Ben have gone off exploring but I’m made a bit nervous by the breeze (maybe 8-10 knots?) so elected to stay on board. So far of course the boat hasn’t moved. In almost three hours, two boats have passed us.

The speed limit on the canals is possibly 6 or possibly 8 km/h. Either way our speed will be determined by the locks so it will take us a while to complete the 224km to Vitry le Francois.

A few pictures


The Saone at its most gorgeous - early morning mist rising from the water. Just after I took this we went aground

Moored to the quay in Lyon...

... and leaving very suddenly

An old steamship abandoned in Valence

The famous Pont St Benezet at Avignon, in the early morning light

Getting shallower

We're in St Jean de Losne, just south of Dijon, for a day of rest and stocking up with food and chandlery before we head up the seriously shallow canals (with supposedly just 12cm depth under our keel...). It is bucketing with rain here, which probably makes anyone in the UK feel better. Over in the boatyard they are operating an immensely noisy sandblaster, but the sound of the rain on the cabin roof is sometimes loud enough to drown it out completely.

St Jean de Losne is the capital of the French waterways - where the Saône joins the Canal de Bourgogne, with the Canal du Rhône a Rhin heading off a few km further north, and "our" canal, the Marne a la Saône, a bit further on. There are lots of Connoisseur boats built in Wroxham, the marina is totally full of Brits, and what with the pouring rain it feels just like the Norfolk Broads.

We've had three excellent days on the Saône since we left Lyon. There's very little current, it's wide and deep, and there are only five locks on the section up to here, so you can make good progress without too much effort. As on the Rhone, we are surrounded by names we know from labels of wine bottles - Nuits St Georges is about 15km away.

We spent a peaceful night in Macon (pictured above) and ate out at the Poisson d'Or, a modest establishment by French standards but with a terrace with a marvellous view of the Saône, good service, delicious food and a splendid white burgundy. On Sunday night we were at Chalon sur Saône and spent a lovely evening with Mike and Dee on Annie-Cathie, before they headed towards Paris on a different route from us..

Apparently some people don't like the Saône. I can't think why. It's surrounded by rich, fertile countryside full of Charollais cattle (Charolles is also not far away), with lovely houses, jumping fish, pretty villages, medieval towns and millions of trees to look at. There's a reasonable choice of stopping places, and much of the time it's totally empty - especially if you leave early in the morning, as we have been doing. Not many mountains, I guess.

Lyon, 8 August 2008

Lyon is France’s second largest city and is on both the Rhone and the Saone. At present, however, it has no dedicated yacht harbour. It has very attractive riverside moorings, right between the Presqu’Ile de Lyon and Vieux Lyon, just under the weeping willows. However, I have to report that these moorings have a stone shelf about 2m deep and extending a couple of metres from the bank. If you moor a sailing yacht drawing 1.7m to the bank, and a big motorboat goes past much too fast making lots of wash and bouncing you up and down a couple of feet, your sailing yacht crashes its keel very hard on to the stone step, which is a Bad Thing.

We arrived in Lyon about 3pm. We moored entirely on our own (there are lots of houseboat-style barges in Lyon but apparently no passing traffic) and Ben and I went off to explore, leaving Sam to assess whether crashing on to the step was really a problem or not. It wasn’t… until Ben and I came back. Perhaps we are just heavy enough to push the boat down on to the step. Anyway we left Lyon rather hastily about 6.30pm and fortunately managed to find a sheltered and deep mooring on an old lock about 10km north of the city centre. As Ben said, rarely have we been so pleased to tie up to a rusty old lock gate with no facilities. And it was a really beautiful evening to be sailing through Lyon, almost (as ever) alone on the river.

Vieux Lyon was also lovely, although my back was a bit stressed by climbing to the basilica and Roman theatres, and descending again to the cathedral

We left Valence on Thursday after lots of careful testing proved there was nothing wrong with the alternator (although the green not-charging light is still flashing, but we haven’t established why). We managed not to set off on Wednesday because Sam went to pay the engineers for the testing work at 12.05 – and they were closed for two hours for lunch. Of course. Still, we did have a very nice swim at the hotel pool.

Les Roches du Condrieu has a nice little marina just across the Rhone from Condrieu, where they make one of the world’s finest white wines. We thought perhaps we could pop into the supermarché and pick up a bottle. It is open every night until 9pm – except Jeudi 7 Aout, in the evening, when there was a fermeture exceptionelle. Fortunately we are re-reading Terry Darlington’s wonderful Narrow Dog to Carcassone, in which he observes that, for example, restaurants in France often close because it is a Tuesday, or a Sunday, or August, or February, or because it is dinnertime, or because the proprietor’s grandmamma is unwell. So we are able to laugh at such things.

It buckets with rain in Condrieu and this morning was cool and cloudy. The Rhone said farewell to us with its last worst stretch, the dreadful canal leading to the lock at Pierre Benite. Fortunately we didn’t realise this was notorious until after we had done it. At times the current was running at almost three knots and this is in August. From here, however, there will be almost no current, which is a blessed relief. Depth will become our greatest problem.


Valence, 5 August 2008

We’re in Valence, south of Lyon, for a few days sorting out a problem with the alternator, which is not charging the batteries properly. It’s essential that it works, unfortunately, otherwise the batteries will die and they are even more expensive than the alternator. This is a proper marina with two mecaniciens. Both are closed at the weekend, one is closed on Mondays, and the other on Tuesdays. Ours is the Tuesday closing one. We arrived on Sunday, they extracted the alternator yesterday (Monday) afternoon, today the alternator is somewhere else being bench tested (fortunately somewhere where they do work on Tuesdays), and tomorrow our guys will be back at work and may be able to refit it. Fingers crossed we don’t need a new one.

Valence is pleasant, with the marina in a park-like area. The peace and quiet is only slightly marred by the roar of the A7, the Autroute du Soleil, roaring past a couple of hundred metres away. At this time of year it must be one of Europe’s busiest roads. Apparently 50% of the French take their holiday within 500 metres of the sea, they prefer the Mediterranean, and most French people are on holiday in August. Ergo a lot of them must be on the A7.

Anyway my back is getting better every day, which is good. Today Sam and Ben have gone off on the train to visit friends in Geneva (we planned to go from Lyon, but as we have so much time here it seemed like a good opportunity). I decided six hours on a train would probably set me back several days, so I went into Valence on the bus with them, did a bit of shopping and sightseeing, and walked back by a route described in the guide touristique. It didn’t mention that after going through a very pretty park, the route included 1km along a totally deserted, unshaded concrete towpath, with the empty Rhône on one side and the jam-packed autoroute 20 feet above my head on the other. I don’t often worry about being mugged but this was quite creepy and I was glad to get onto the little road down to the marina. In fact of course I didn’t see a soul on the path.

Our previous halt at Viviers was a total contrast, a wonderful spot, very peaceful (except for the live music at the little Café du Port in the evenings) and surrounded by trees and fields. From the mooring you cross the country road, take a short path across a field which joins a track, and five minutes later you are in the middle of a partly-medieval little French town with a chateau, cathedral, hospital (!), various shops (including a very mingy supermarket), bars, restaurants etc. We spent two nights there recovering from the heat of Avignon and letting Sam’s stomach settle down – he had a bit of an upset.

We woke on Sunday to find one slight snag – the water level had dropped. Only by about 30cm, but instead of our keel just touching the bottom, we were well and truly aground. We were rescued by the wonderful crew of Annie-Cathie who came back to give us a tow. Sadly we then lost an hour at the Chateauneuf lock, where they apparently didn’t notice us for 30 mins (what do they have to do from their control towers all day except watch for approaching boats?), kept us waiting for another 30 mins for another boat who must have left Viviers more than an hour after we did, and then filled the lock a drip at a time. Very frustrating.

By contrast, between Avignon and Viviers we passed through the Bollène lock (above), one of the deepest in Europe with a 23m rise (it’s 195 m long and 12m wide, and Ben and I spent the time in the lock trying to work out how many gallons they pump in to lift us up – we made it 11 million, does that sound right?). The Bollène was open as we approached and we were in and out in less than 15 minutes. The filling itself takes just 7 minutes. Incredible.

Speed of progress up the Rhône has improved from a low of less than 3 knots on the first day to around 4.5 knots between Viviers and Valence (not counting messing about in locks). The river is still pretty empty, although there are a few sailing boats here. Considering the French passion for sailing it’s astonishing there aren’t more, but I guess the Rhône is not often as tranquil as we see it at the moment. In addition there are very few stopping points on the river south of Lyon, so you have to cover at least 60-70km a day – not exactly relaxed pootling. There are a couple of new stopping places, one just open, one being built as we passed, so things could improve.

There and back

I'd just like to make it quite clear that the TGV was brilliant, highly recommended, the seats were great, the view was gorgeous, and altogether considerably better than Luton airport and Easyjet.

Here's the downside. Ben had his beloved Opinel knife confiscated at St Pancras, I left my favourite jumper on the Eurostar, and getting on to the TGV at Lille I hurt my back lifting my vastly heavy bag. Heavy doses of ibuprofen, French muscle relaxant and Ricard are gradually improving things though.

The worst bit was running through Avignon TGV station with 10 minutes to get the Arles bus (the TGV was running a bit late). I didn't realise until we arrived that none of my texts had reached Sam due to a problem with the French Vodafone network, but fortunately he called while we were on the bus, met us at Arles station and we got a taxi to the gorgeous mooring across the river.

We spent a lovely day in Arles with me limping very slowly around the cathedral, the Arenes (Roman arena) and the Roman baths. In the evening we met Harry and Liz, and their dog Zigmundo - Harry and Liz have been taking great care of Sam during his sojourn in Port St Louis. We saw the Van Gogh bridge (below) and had a slightly dodgy meal.



This morning we couldn't leave Arles until we'd paid our canal toll, so it's been 40km in full heat to Avignon where we are now, moored almost under the Rochers des Dom but sadly even closer to the ring road. It is 34deg C down below, so please excuse me if I still sound a bit heated.

The Rhone was quite amazingly empty; until we reached Avignon we probably saw no more than 15 peniches (barges), two hotel boats, half a dozen pleasure boats of various shapes and sizes, a dredger and one very large lock. I expected it to be more like the Rhine, but certainly not yet. Progress was a bit slow in the lower reaches where at some points we were making only about 2.6 knots against the current - above the first big lock progress was a lot better. We are hoping to reach Viviers tomorrow, a longer run but hopefully a much earlier start.

Under way


Sam left Port st Louis this morning with a volunteer crew of two. He says there's only about half a knot of current and they are making really good speed which is fantastic news. Can't wait to meet up tomorrow.

Thanks to Liz for the great pictures...

Almost off

Sam has been in France since last week, and has managed to refit the heat exchanger, sort out a few other problems with leaks, and get Kalessin into the water. She has moved from the hard standing at Navy Service, just outside Port St Louis, into PSL itself. We're communicating mainly via text but it sounds like he's having a good time, after a few days of Mistral (strong northerlies) last week. Lots of mosquitoes though.

By the time Ben and I arrive on Tuesday, we hope he'll have moved her upriver to Arles, which saves us 25M of stress on our first day and means an easier transfer from the train. The Rhône will be a bit of a trial as we plug against the current, and there are very few places to stop below Lyon. However the ever helpful Grehan is a couple of weeks ahead of us and says water conditions are good - not too much flow in the Rhône, enough water in the canals. Fingers crossed.

Canoeing on the Waveney

We didn't take a camera when we went canoeing because we really didn't want to drop it in the Waveney. If we had taken a picture it might have looked like this - only longer.

We had a four-man canoe with me, Ben, Guy and Beth aboard. Initially we wiggled a lot, and argued a bit, but eventually we settled down and did some very enjoyable exploring. The rain held off, although eventually the wind got up a bit. We even managed to scrape our way down a very shallow backwater (and under two very low footbridges which Ben and I crossed last week) where at one point Guy got out and towed us (just as well he was wearing wellies).

We said hello to lots of cows, saw some gorgeous dragonflies and damselflies, saw fish (and fishermen), ate mini lemon meringue tarts and generally had a great time. Highly recommended.

Not much is new

My friend Anne has told me off for not posting since May. What can I say?

Not much has changed in the last three weeks. We have ordered a folding bicycle (pictured right) and some giant balloon fenders to be delivered by Compass straight to Naval Service at Port St Louis, so hopefully they will be there when Sam arrives on 17 July.

We haven't done much boating here. Well, none, in fact. We hoped to go canoeing on the Waveney this afternoon but it's still raining and not very encouraging. Ben is planning to build a folding kayak for his GCSE project (ambitious or what) so this is a chance for him to test whether he actually enjoys it. Guy and Beth also wanted to come. If it stops raining in the next hour we might still go....

Sam is motorbiking with his oldest son Tim in France, so other than that things are very quiet. In the general mayhem on National Express East Anglia's trains over the past couple of weeks, I have managed to read Yachting Monthly and Practical Boat Owner cover to cover... which I haven't done for a long time. and I reread Secret Water - now I really want to take Kalessin in there (Walton Backwaters) again soon. Preferably before global warming opens it up to the see.

OK, that's it. Must go and install Firefox 3 now. If I think of anything else to say I'll let you know....

This is why...

...Kalessin made slow progress from Badalona to Blanes:


Sam spent one day last week worrying at the back of his mind about whether he had remembered to turn the sea-cocks off before leaving the boat... then he remembered that Kalessin is out of the water.

Mast lowered

Kalessin is out of the water and her mast removed and ready for storage or transport. Sam said that the hull was clean and lovely, but the poor old propeller was totally coated in growth - it's not surprising they made such slow progress when motoring from Badalona to Blanes, and just as well they sailed all the way from Blanes to the Rhone. Fouling on a prop is always a problem as you can't paint it with hull antifouling (it attacks the bronze or something).

Sam phoned me on Friday morning to apologise for being bad tempered. He said they had a really good passage with four rolls in the jib and one reef in the main, around about a force 5, and at times were making 7 or 8 knots through the water.

He's managed to meet up with the people he contacted through the ybw.com forums, who have been really helpful and offered transport to Arles for shopping or catching trains, and in addition on Thursday night they were tied up next to someone Robin knows from years ago. Sam has even acquired a couple of the essential Navicarte charts for the canals, for free. Sailing is a small world.

Must go and start hoovering so Sam comes back to a clean house on Monday...

Right, this is what a fouled propeller looks like (this is not ours)

Update: nous sommes arrivés

I have just had a brief conversation with Him Outdoors. He is very cross and says "the whole thing has been a f***ing disaster". Which translated means, as far as I can see, that they sailed the whole way, 120 miles in around 28 hours, in great conditions, but when they arrived in the Golf de Fos they went the wrong way and arrived in the wrong marina, and in crossing to the right marina they went the wrong way again and blew the magic putty out of the holes.

Actually this is all my fault. I put their route into the chart plotter at Easter but because I didn't know at that stage which marina they would be going to, I only did the plot to the waypoint at the entrance to the Golf de Fos. Mea culpa.

I am quite glad they got to France without sinking, and I am sure we will have a more civilised conversation later...

Getting there (we hope)

Sam and Robin had a really bad first day - it took them 12 hours to get to Blanes at an average speed of 2.2 knots, heading almost straight into the wind. An overnight in Blanes and they were all ready to set off again on Tuesday, but a few miles offshore a leak developed in the engine cooling system and whenever the engine ran, water pumped into the boat! Lots of bilge pumping and a quick return to Blanes followed.

On Wednesday morning they met Juan the engineer, who advised that a full repair could take too long but a quick fix was possible with Magic Putty ( super duper epoxy resin). So they set off again at 1300 local yesterday, expecting to sail all the way to Port St Louis (120 miles?) rather than motoring in the slow bits. No word yet, but I hope that just means that the winds are light and not that they have sunk....

They're off...

Sam and Robin and Kalessin have left Badalona today, heading for Port St Louis.

Sam says:

We are going! Forecasts look OK, still a lot of cloud and rain threatening but I think we will have to go for it. We are going in one hit (to get it over) so will be incommunicado for approx one day. Left mobile on by mistake last night so down to one bar. Had brainwave that I could use the other phone I brought for the French sim card but that isn't working either. So I'll save what I have with the Razr to report in when we arrive....

Closing down now. Adios Badalona. I think I'll miss it.

Am I worrying about them? You bet!

Here's the Theyr.tv weather map for 4am (UTC) tomorrow. The line is the coast, Barcelona is the bottom "14", Marseille the top one. The darker the blue, the less wind, so they will mainly have F3 on the beam... actually, wait, I'm quite envious.

Nasty weather in Barcelona

Sam and Robin are still in Badalona. Sam says there are strong easterlies blowing, and Windguru shows cloud, rain, wind gusting up to 40 knots and a temperature of 15 degrees. Tomorrow looks better.

Oh dear. Here in Hoxne it is up to 25 degrees, blue skies with little fluffy clouds and light easterlies. What a shame.

RailEurope have exchanged our TGV basement tickets for 29 July for two facing each other on the top deck, hooray! They were really helpful and actually phoned me twice to confirm, and tried several different booking systems before getting the tickets we wanted. I was forced to leave a very important workshop to take the calls, such a shame.

A blog about sailing in Mallorca

I promised to include a link to www.sailinmallorca.com/CaptainsBlog - a blog by Nicholas Lovell. He kindly included a link to this site, so fair's fair. Interesting to read someone else's sailing experiences in the Balearics.

About to leave Badalona

Our 2008 voyage is about to begin. On Wednesday Sam flies out to Barcelona where he'll meet up with his old friend Robin. Their plan is to set off from Badalona towards the end of this week with a short hop to Blanes, just to check that everything works OK, engine runs, rigging holds up etc., then another run up to L'Estartit which is almost on the Spain/France border. Then a long passage heading north-east to the entrance to the Rhone, just west of Marseille - around 110 miles.

At the moment Windguru shows moderate north-easterlies in Barcelona on Friday and Saturday, which is very unhelpful, but at least at that point they should be heading north. Further north there is less wind and the direction looks a bit random, so a lot of motoring is likely.

Sam has been worrying, planning and emailing a lot. Kalessin will be stored at Navy Service at Port St Louis (above) - lifted out of the water, because it's cheaper, and also good for her to dry out for a bit They should lower the mast on 16 May if all goes well, and Sam has to remove and label all the standing (wire) rigging, and all the bits and pieces like the VHF aerial and masthead lights - the radar scanner and reflector stay on the mast, but have to be wrapped up. Sam's been consulting Big Nige who runs Rig Magic at Suffolk Yacht Harbour - we're very fortunate to have one of Britain's top rigging experts in our home port. So we now have complex diagrams for the order of removing and tensioning the rigging.

The mast will be stored at Port St Louis for a while until the mast shipping company happen to be passing that way to collect a yacht. Then they either drop it off in Calais, or if it's more convenient they may bring it back to the UK, store it here, and take it back to France later... sound ridiculous but apparently it may be easier for them.

We have decided rather reluctantly that our end point in France, having gone through the canals, will be Calais. We really, really wanted to go to St Valery sur Somme, having missed it several times over the past few years, but its transport connections are pants, while Calais is perfect of course if we need to leave the boat there and get back to the UK.

Finally, Ben and I are now all set for the canals leg. My contract with Aviva ends on 25 July and we have booked our train tickets via Eurostar and TGV to Marseille on 29 July. A huge thank you to the brilliant site of the Man in Seat 61 which gave us all the information we need. Sam was so inspired he is now coming back from Marseille on 17 May by train and travelling out again on 22 July. We'll let you know how it all goes.

Mixed messages


On Tuesday we caught the train to Girona (above), which is a really lovely medieval town about 40 miles north of Barcelona. It has a cathedral with the widest nave in the world and an 11th-century tapestry of the Creation, beautifully-restored Arab baths, lots of narrow streets and steps and extensive walks around the old city walls. Best of all it's quiet (well it is on a Tuesday) and the peace was very welcome. we had a really nice lunch where we managed to get both pizza for Ben and a menu del dia for Sam and me, all for €30 altogether (including wine).

The train was good too, although at the station where we got on (the memorably-named Barcelona Clot-Arago) the only announcement made was of the end destination (Portbou, a small town on the French border) - just as well we had a sort-of map of Catalunya. On the train to Girona there were no announcements at all, but the views were lovely and it was wonderful to see spring arriving – it was a beautiful, clear, warm day.

We walked a lot in Girona and as a consequence were all rather bad-tempered and out of sorts on Wednesday, although we did get some washing done. On Wednesday evening three insect bites at the base of my left-hand ring finger swelled up and I had to remove my wedding ring for pretty much the first time ever, which made me quite unreasonably upset. I managed to fit it on to my right-hand ring finger which is better than not wearing it, but I’m a bit worried it may never come off again…

Sam was quite keen to go to the Dali museum in Figueres on Thursday but I felt it would be too much of a repeat of the trip to Girona (it’s on the same railway line, a bit further north) and also rather expensive given that pretty much the only thing to see in Figueres is the Dali museum and it’s the third most-visited museum in Spain. Also, it was our last chance to go into Barcelona, so we headed into the city. We toured El Corte Ingles (huge department store), walked over to see the modern art museum (MACBA) and then back to the market, the Bocqueria, to get some lunch.

Ben and I had an unpleasant experience where he was approached by a woman who was asking him something incomprehensible in Spanish and her male partner tried to steal my purse – fortunately he failed, but we were all rather upset. At that point we nearly went straight back to the boat, but it seemed a shame to end our time in Barcelona on such a sour note. So I dragged a reluctant son and husband to the park in Montjuïc and up the paths to the cross-harbour cable-car station. There where you might have expected to get to a dead end and a rusty fence in the UK, we instead came across a sophisticated and secluded garden, and on up the steps to a café with possibly the best view in Barcelona (below). After a beer each (and an iced tea for Ben) we all felt much better.

Petty crime in Barcelona is a real blot on an otherwise stunning city. Twice in two weeks we suffered theft or attempted theft, and I know Alan and Joan on Moonstruck were troubled by theft and vandalism in the Real Club Nautico. In spite of London’s reputation I’ve never actually had anything stolen there, nor in any of the other cities we have been on the trip. I’m glad Kalessin is out here in Badalona where things seem to be more low-key.

We’ve been sailing

We planned to go sailing this afternoon but by 12 noon everything was ready – kit stowed away below, sails and engine rigged and tested, visit to chandlery completed. So we thought we might as well go.

The only downside was a huge bank of black clouds. In the UK they would have meant a nasty squall but here they just seem to mean it gets a bit dark for a while, and the visibility is poor. We sailed down to Port Olimpico and back (about four miles each way) with a nice south-easterly wind blowing about 10 knots – perfect for our first sail for six months. After about half an hour our speed suddenly increased by about a knot, so we suspect that we have may have lost whatever enormous lump of marine growth we were trailing.

Everything worked fine, although the mainsail was very dusty. In spite of the grungy visibility we had a great view of Barcelona from the sea, including the Sagrada Familia. As we came back the wind died away, so our timing was excellent.

Our neighbour across the pontoon has just mentioned that there is a major water crisis in Catalonia. We had worked out that there is a hosepipe ban but apparently water reserves are down to 20% of their normal level. It poured with rain the day we arrived so we hadn’t realised things are so bad.

Wind gone

After five days of constant wind we woke this morning to peace – that is to say, less noise from the surrounding rigging, wind generators, hollow masts etc, but the sound of building, passing buses and trains is suddenly much more audible. I woke up early and worried about whether we should be hurrying to bend on the foresail during the lull, but in fact it’s now 2pm and still lulling.

Anyway the sail is now raised and furled (we took it down in early September to reduce wear and tear), the mainsheet is rigged, and Sam has changed the coolant and run up the engine. So we are ready for a sail, except there is absolutely no wind at all. The engine generates hot water which makes washing up a bit easier!

I also managed to get a (shaky) internet connection for the first time, checked a few emails and uploaded a blog entry or two. Perhaps the wind had been blowing the wireless waves in the wrong direction.

Yesterday we went to the mega-enormous hypermarket, Alcampo, at Santa Adria. It really is much too big, it’s so easy to miss an entire section and never get bread, or meat, or whatever. It’s about a 20-minute walk along the coast road to get there and we got the little bus back, so really a very painless way to get €100 of shopping. We even looked at bicycles for the canals (the towpaths, not the water), but didn’t buy one.

me on the beach at Barceloneta; Port Olimpico and copper fish behind

Catching up

Finally have a flaky internet connection - so a quick post. Will polish later.

Wednesday 26 March

Monday – a public holiday here, as it is in the UK - we flopped about a bit, slept and read, cleaned up the boat, fitted the new bilge pump, watched a DVD – nothing strenuous. Then while cooking dinner on Monday night the gas, already a bit half-hearted, ran out completely. What a blow – we’d already, as we thought, emptied the other cylinder. Fortunately we discovered that we had enough left in it to concoct a strange meal of corned-beef in tomato sauce and instant noodles.

On Tuesday Sam and I set off towards the fleshpots of Badalona in search of Camping Gaz. We managed to find the middle of Badalona, which we have always missed before – it’s laid out on a grid pattern with we don’t find intuitive (a map might help, if we could find one). At the third try, five blocks up and about fifteen over from the marina, we found a ferreteria (ironmonger) which sells Camping Gaz, huzzah! Opposite was a small supermercado, so we stocked up on the basics, fortified ourselves with coffee and beer and walked back along the seafront, taking 30 mins or so. Hooray, again, for Sam’s new trolley – without it we would have no fingers left. It carried a full gas cylinder and much of the shopping with ease. What a fantastic invention the wheel is.

Today I insisted we went into Barcelona and got Ben to pick the destination. He went for the Museo Picasso – a good choice, we thought. En route we climbed to the roof of the Cathedral to introduce Ben to the view of the Barri Gotic, the old quarter of Barcelona. There were thousands of youngsters from school parties around but fortunately they aren’t allowed on the roof. There was a queue at the museum but it wasn’t too full, and we saw the collection of paintings owned by Picasso (some lovely Cezannes, Renoirs, Mattisses et al) as well as the museum collection which goes up to 1917 then stops dead and starts again in 1959, which is quite a big gap. Back via the Born area and home again on the tram, which we like a lot.


Sunday 23 March – Easter Day

We arrived in Barcelona late on Saturday after a very uneventful flight. The transfer to Badalona was a bit more interesting, though. The bridge from the airport to the station was closed so we had to get a bus (a mile on the bus to cover about 150m in a straight line). Still, once again the Renfe train tickets were free. We decided to transfer to the Metro at Passeig de Gracia because it was late on Easter Saturday and we might not be able to get a train to Badalona either at Sants (the main station) or França (the end of the line). Big mistake on three counts: (1) the transfer at Passeig de Gracia is about half a mile up and down steps and we all had heavy bags, (2) Sam had €100 nicked from his pocket on an escalator, and (3) because of repair works the last few stops on the Metro were replaced by a bus.

Not all bad, though: by the time we got to Pep Ventura it had stopped raining, and Sam’s new trolley worked superbly. In all the transfers we never had to wait longer than two or three minutes, could you imagine that in the UK? What’s more we never heard a train as we walked down to the boat, so we might have made the right choice. We got to the boat about midnight having landed around 9.15pm.

On Sunday we finally caught up with Alan and Joan Teed on board their stunning Hylas 49 Moonstruck. On the way we strolled along the beach at Barceloneta (Ben barefoot, of course) which was bracing, and interesting, but really not very warm. Moonstruck was very impressive, beautifully made with lots of great design features. The switch panels open to display an immaculate and beautifully labelled wiring loom behind – remembering those two days we once spent trying to thread through the Navtex cable on Magewind, we were extremely jealous. Ben asked lots of impressive engineering questions (e.g. “I see you use Raymarine instrumentation, I suppose that’s all on SeaTalk?”

I probably last saw Alan when I was 17. I can just see the face I think I remember, and he looks very young, but he has changed a bit! He and Joan seem very happy together. Sam told me later that she rarely helms the yacht, which I find amazing considering the mileage they have covered in the past 18 months, up and down the US east coast and across the Atlantic from the Caribbean. Still the downside of me doing the close-quarters helming (which I usually do) is that all the scratches in Kalessin’s gelcoat are my fault. Moonstruck has no exterior scratches, although a few internal scars from objects taking off at sea. This despite the fact that initially the bow thrusters didn’t work so all the manoeuvring had to be done the old-fashioned way.

Since we arrived the weather has mostly been cool (8-14deg), clear, sunny a lot of the time with a F4-6 wind roughly from the north. This could be a Mistral, but unfortunately it doesn’t come with a label and there are few Brits around the marina to ask. So we don’t know yet. Moonstruck was due to leave on Tuesday for Blanes and then Marseille, and in fact we saw a large yacht sailing north on Tuesday lunchtime which could have been her – with winds so much from the north it could have been a rather tough sail. Easier in a 16-tonne Hylas with 75hp engine than in Kalessin, though. So far I am very glad we took the decision not to move at Easter, it would have been a cold, wet, difficult passage.


Planning, planning

We spent an excellent couple of hours down at Haven Ports Yacht Club for which we have finally paid our sub this year, talking to a couple who have spent quite a bit of time in the French canals. They had some great photos which I suspect might well come from 2006 as the weather looked fabulous at all times.

I think we are inclining towards the Marne route, coming out at St Valery sur Somme - Sam now says he is OK to skip Paris, which is good as it will save us 150 miles. If Blogger would let me I would attach my spreadsheet of options here.

We're looking at trains for some of the to-ing and fro-ing. The new St Pancras connection opens up a whole range of opportunities. It would be possible for Ben and me to get from Diss to Sete or Nimes with just two changes (London and Lille). Prices for singles are stonkingly high but I found a superb site, the Man in Seat 61, which gives you all the info - the options are either to book a return (£50 instead of £150 for a single) or to lie and say you come from Spain. You can only book three months ahead so it's all rather speculative at this stage.

In addition we need to think about how we'd get back from St Valery (if we have to leave Kalessin there for a few weeks), which is not exactly a hotbed of transport options. There are good train connections from Abbeville, and I thought I'd found the perfect connection with a little steam train which runs around the Baie de la Somme - sadly, it reaches the key station 1 minute after our connection would leave. I'm not quite brave enough to grapple with French bus timetables on line.

Our canal friends last night pointed out that if we really wanted to go for speed, we could take the Rhone/Rhine canal and then get swept down the Rhine to Rotterdam in about four days. It's full of huge barges, masses of traffic and tremendous currents, so perhaps not...

Random picture of the Saone...

Our route - 2008, revised

This is the revised route through the French canals:


Still subject to confirmation and possible argument. We have to confirm that Calais is our end destination before we leave Port St Louis, as our mast will be shipped to the destination port separately. It would have been possible to take the mast down and lay it on the deck, but because it's quite tall we'd have a fair bit of overhang at the front and back of the boat. It only takes one lock where the end of the mast gets stuck in something... and the water is rising... to cost considerably more than the price of shipping the mast by truck (about £800).

We now expect to bypass Paris and to finish at Calais instead of at St Valery sur Somme - the latter rather regretfully, as we keep hoping to get to St Valery, but transport home (for us) is so much easier from Calais, if we have to leave the boat there.

See our 2007 and 2006 routes.

For archive purposes, here is the original plan:

Drifting away

With the boat so far away, sailing seems very remote at the moment. I'm not reading the yachting magazines very avidly or even logging on to www.ybw.com very often. Not sure if my enthusiasm is waning or just that it's a while since we had any really good sailing - apart from part of the passage from Menorca back to Majorca, probably the last really good sail was almost a year ago, last Easter in the Algarve and Andalucia. Our first sail in the Med, from Europa Point to La Duquesa, was truly magic (that's Ben below, helming at 7.5 knots with one reef in).


Sam, Ben and I will be going out to Badalona this Easter. Because Easter is so early this year we decided not to move the boat up to France, but we must get the sails on and go sailing, otherwise I think we'll lose courage and never sail again.

The other evening we were discussing things we wanted to do before we die. I'd like to sing in the Messiah and also sail on a tall ship. Sam surprisingly said he would like to sail the Atlantic. I don't think I'd want to do it in Kalessin, but perhaps we could follow the example of Kate and Davey from Roamer and crew in something large and luxurious? Darren Cornish's Aviva blog pointed me towards www.my50.com which is a great place to log all the things you vaguely think would be nice but never get around to. Wonder if I could get the boys to use it too?

La Mer

Having acquired a ukulele I've been exploring all the website which provide ukulele chords. Yesterday I found the chords for Beyond the Sea, and discovered it was originally written as La Mer by a French singer & songwriter, Charles Trenet. Apparently he was inspired to write it on a train travelling from Paris to Narbonne, and lacking a notebook at the time, he wrote the words on to SNCF toilet paper.

The lyrics of the first verse read:
La mer
Qu'on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d'argent
La mer, des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie.

If you paste these into Babel Fish, it helpfully says:
Sea That one sees dancing along the clear gulfs With money reflections
Sea Changing reflections Under the rain.

What a great site it is.

What we got for Christmas

Our presents were much less sailing-related this year than in many previous years. Perhaps that's because we already have a lot of what we need?

By special request, my present from the boys (although I do suspect Sam of organising it) was a purple ukulele. They are said to be the easiest instruments to learn and I thought it was about time I caught up with Sam and his Fender. A key attribute is that a ukulele is also small, light, tough and cheap, all ideal attributes for an istrument played on a boat. I can already play half a dozen chords. If you fancy playing a uke there are some great videos on YouTube (including one from the Penguin Cafe Orchestra) and an excellent training site written by Pineapple Pete in Toronto.

I bought Sam an EcoBlast, a very loud horn for alerting French lock-keepers. Unlike most cheap horns which use gas canisters this one can be recharged with a bicycle pump or a garage air pump. The boys love it, because it's deafeningly loud (literally). I suspect there may not be much oomph left by the time we meet our first lock.

Sam also got a book, Sailing's Strangest Moments, which is good for dipping into when you want a slightly odd experience.

And I got Dee Caffari's Against the Flow. This is quite odd because in my current role at Aviva (who sponsor Dee) I've been publishing quite a bit about Dee on our global intranet, and the Ocean Racing website is coordinated a few feet from where I sit. When her mast fell down in a force 9 in the Bay of Biscay I was the only one in the office, so it was all down to me. I got a fair bit of stick from Sam for mentioning Aviva even more than usual when I got home... and it turns out he'd bought me this book anyway.

Merry Christmas from just me

Video of photos made for Sam's funeral    Dear friends and family As I hope you all know, this year has been a difficult one for me. On ...