One Less Plane

Bom Dia da Portugal!

Hooray!!!! i sailed, i sailed to Portugal! Eight days after leaving Southampton, i have arrived sunny, warm breezy, palm tree-d Cascais, just west of Lisbon, and i still can’t quite believe it. There is so so much i want to say, but i also have an important bit of cycling to a beach, sunbathing and swimming to get on with today, so we’ll see how long i can keep myself in front of a computer.. I think i’ll write it in chapters:

SICKY TALES (don’t read this bit if you are prone to nausea!)

The first 24 hours, Southhampton to Plymouth, felt like utter hell, and i am not exagerating when i say that i had pretty much given up on the whole trip to Bermuda, because i was so horrendously sea sick. I even wrote a postcard to my poor grandparents, saying that i couldn’t bear it, and warning them that i would probably be getting the train back to the UK, once i got to Portugal! It was cold, dark, wet, very bumpy (all of which i was expecting) and i was constantly either vomiting, or feeling like i was about to. I sat in the back corner of the boat, so as to avoid the wind carrying my vomit all over my poor fellow crew, with my head hanging over the rails, breathing in the diesel fumes from the engine (more about this disappointing pollution surprise later on). At one point, as i retched over the side of the boat i noticed glowing sparkles of phosphorescense in the waves and remembered the last time i saw that was after a midnight Bicycology bike ride on Morecambe beach in the summer… If i needed to sleep i had to plan the quickest possible descent down to my bunk and taking off my complicated array of waterproof dungarees, waterproof jackets, jumpers, and a life jacket, whilst in lying down position with eyes closed, which is the only way i could be down in the galley without vomiting yet more. All this despite my careful preparations of chewing on fresh ginger for 24 hours before, drinking ginger tea, wearing travel bands (pressure point therapy), and taking homeopathic pills, and staring at the waves talking to my brain to stop the signals between it and my balancing ear parts getting confused (this is what causes it apparently) – saying to my brain ‘now, your’re going to go up, then down, because there is a WAVE and you’re on a BOAT, and that’s why it will feel funny’ but my brain and ears decided they would rather make me vomit, much more logical. So in my misery i had decided that my body just wasn’t going to adapt naturally, my pirate genes must have disappeared off down another branch of my family tree. I finally resorted to drugs, just to get me through until we made it to land. But i vomited up the drugs.  HOWEVER – after 4 days of this i finally made, what felt like a miraculous, recovery! By the time a reached Portugal, i was reading and cooking and writing in the log book and watching the navigational charts on the computer all down inside the boat. In conclusion, it is not actually miraculous – i have been told by many many people that if you get sea sick the vast majority of people recover after 3 days at sea, i just simply couldn’t believe this when i felt just SO sick, but now i am a true believer in finding your ’sea legs’! And i must give some credit to Stugeron, the wonder drug, which i did eventually manage to keep down and which i have no doubt helped make the recovery more pleasant (ie.less vomity).

THE SKYELARK OF LONDON, IT’S LOVELY CREW AND MOONLIT DOLPHINS

The crew of the Skyelark were brilliant, and i am extremely grateful for their putting up of miserable sicky me for 4 days, and for their openess and embracing of my strange vegan ways… (though obviously for the first few days, food of any description wasn’t really on the menu for me!).

I learned to love life on the boat, which is a simple one in some ways – you mainly sail, sleep, cook and eat. We took it in turns to do shifts or ‘watches’ – keeping an eye out for other boats, lobster pots, buoys and land, and maneouvering around if needed (and those who know what they are doing obviously do some navigating work). We had a war ship hurtle towards us scarily just as we left Plymouth at dusk, but they radioed after that they were just ‘practising’. So you spend your days watching the sea go by, the huge mountains of waves rising up behind the boat, and then you just float up over it. Exciting moments in the day were when the dolphins came to play! In the day time you can see them coming from a mile or so away, a pod of 7 or 8 like excited children leaping towards you, then we would run up to the bow of the boat and within a minute they woudl have arrived and they would whizz and dive through the waves right by the boat. They were particularly beautiful at night when you could see them glistening in the moonlight and then leaving trails of phosphoresence under the water… Another beautiful moment was sunrise over the mountains, as we neared Bayonna (Spain), i managed to get my watch team (a boat chef\ski guide from Isle of Sky and a retired policeman from London) to sing ‘I’m gonna let the sunshine in my heart’, they cringed at the cheesyness, but i’m sure they loved it really!!

PORTUGAL BONITO

Now i am enjoying learning Portuguese, the blog title took me 20 minutes to compose – and thanks to my Brazilian friend Elie, who gave a me a personalised vocab list e.g.’ i came to Portugal by boat’ and also some embaressing not so useful phrases which i only just discovered..

I am very very happily gorging on oranges, pomegrannets, pink grapefruit, peaches and grapes, oh wonderful juicy grapes! At home in the UK I have been experimenting with living on a local and seasonal diet for the last few years, particularly with fresh food (e.g. bananas) – because this is often flown in refrigerated containers on planes and ships, causing massive amounts of pollution, to get to our fuit bowls. This means that i havenºt eaten oranges, grapes, bananas and any other non-British fruit for three or so years (well, maybe very occasionally one or 2 oranges or a grape). This may seem quite self-depricating but boy has this way of life now come into it’s own – i was already salivating at the thought as we turned headed for our first stop in Spain, and i am in total heaven and appreciating so much all this lush lush fruit! I am holding off on the bananas – as they are all from the Canary Islands anyway here – i can have them in just one week!!! Which leads me to…

NEXT STOP – THE CANARIES

Incredibly, just as i had been advised to by fellow trans-atlantic saily people, i jumped off the boat when we arrived in Cascais on Sunday morning, walked down the next pontoon and asked the first boat on which i saw people, if they knew of anyone looking for crew to go the Canaries, and by Monday evening i had a place on their boat!! So on Thursday or Friday i set sail on the ABIM, a brand new 50 foot yacht, with Bjorn, Aud and Erik from Norway, so i’m sure i will be talking a great gobbledy gook of Norwiegien, Portuguese, Spanish and English by the time  i get to Gran Canaria.

Right, i’ll try to post some pictures, and then i’m off to the beach on one of Cascais’s nice red free public bikes!

Love and juicy locally produced fruit to you all!

Charlotte

Hello Again,

Just thought i should put in a word for Portsmouth, as it deserves a mention as much as any other exotic town i hope to sail to! There are loads of bikes here, yey! I have been happily cycling round on a borrowed bike getting my cycling fix, It seems like it is a much more ‘normal’ thing to do here, than in most UK cities, here it seems like everywhere you look there are all sorts of people cycling.

It is quite industrial, and a suffers from a big motorway winding through the middle and round the side, and haven’t found a particularly pretty bit yet, but bikes everywhere is enough for me! ANd it is home to my new fellow saily friend Fran, who i am staying with and who is a proper old salty sea dog (well not old really, sorry Fran!, it just fits with the phrase!), and has her own little old boat, which is like an old fashioned caravan, but with sails (hm, not sure i’ve got the description right there). We went out for little sail yesterday which was great, but i got extremely sea sick, which doesn’t bode well for the coming months, oh pants!!

x Charlotte

Hello from sunny…. Portsmouth!

Yes, i have not only not left the UK, i have actually gone backwards to exactly where i left from!! On Tuesday morning our boat was literally in it’s slings, hanging from the crane thing by the dock, seconds from being lowered into the water, and one of the boat yard men wandered underneath it and gave the keel a sort of absent-minded push, (as relaxed as when you’re on your bike and you just give the brakes a squeeze whilst your chatting or something), and he looked back at us all and mouthed ‘THAT’S NOT GOOD!’ The keel was wobbly!! The crane stopped, looks of horror and utter despondancy all round us crew. For those who don’t know, ‘cos i didn’t until recently, the keel is the long heavy fin that comes out of the bottom of some boats (you can see it in the photos i’ve posted). Ironically, just the day before, my excellent friend Mukti-the-sustainable-boat-builder, rang me after reading my last blog post about capsizing fear, to inform me that it was extremely unlikely that we would ever capsize because of the KEEL. So, on this kind of boat, the weight/size/shape of the keel is pretty much the only thing which keeps the boat from capsizing, or coming back up if you do capsize, when you are hit by strong winds and big waves. So, i am told, if we had set off with the keel as loose as that, then it was unlikely that it would have been able to withstand the high pressure put on it by the winds and waves of the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic and it would have snapped off, and we would… well you get the picture!

Anyway, it was all high drama, there were yet more twists and turns in the story and we had a horrible angry showdown with the owner of the boat. The trip has been cancelled, as the boat needs structural repairs around the wobbly keel (it’s not just loose bolts) and it will take months. Mostly, we are each counting our very very lucky stars, and god and Mother Earth and the man in the boat yard, anyone and anything, that we didn’t set off for the Canaries in that cursed boat!!!

Needless to say, this hasn’t helped my nervousness, and i will definatley be asking a few more questions of every boat owner i will potentially sail with – are you sure there are no HOLES in your boat? And are you sure that the keel is STUCK ON PROPERLY?

So, it was back to square 1,  and i spent a frantic day e-mailing, phoning, researching other potential boats. The other women, as well as looking for more boats, were looking at maybe flying to Portugal, the Canaries or going for yachting holidays in Greece instead. I had my first vague confrontation with the dilemma – do i fly, just a little bit of the way? Is that alright? But it wasn’t really much of a dilemma, as i have pretty much decided that i will only fly if it is due to an extreme medical emergency, or something like that. And it would be giving up far far too soon, and i still have lots of options…

Anyway, to cut an already much too long story, short, our skipper from the condemned boat, managed to get us five places, as paying extra crew, on a posh yacht with a friend of his, up to Caiscai in Portugal. Obviously i would have preferred to be non-paying but working crew but right now i really  just need to SAIL somewhere TOWARDS Bermuda, and will just have to be careful later, so actually Hooray! We, the refugees of ‘Diamonds are Forever’ are all happy that we get to stay together, as, as you can imagine, we have bonded well throughout all this drama.

The last week has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster ride, from sadness at leaving family and friends, to extreme excitement and exhiliration of sailing away from Portsmouth, to quite extreme fear as we bailed water out of the boat and then as we discovered we came very close to hitting the Bay of Biscay in an unseaworthy boat, to utter disappointment and despondancy, and wishing i was back in Leicester working and doing something useful for the world, and now to, i just don’t know what, i can’t actually believe it’s going to happen….

HOWEVER, i will, very hopefully,  leave in Saturday morning on the Skye 51, or something like that. It’s massive (51 foot long), with too many ropes for me to understand, a beautiful wooden deck, and a very snazzy saloon (sitting area in the galley). I will try to learn as much as possible, so that i am maybe more employable by the time i get to Caiscai, and so that maybe some nice safe and sane person will take me on their nice safe boat to the Canaries!

Until next time, over and out!

Charlotte

That darn holey rudder tube thing

After 4 days of living, very surreally, in a boat 20 foot off the ground in the middle of an industrial boat yard, we MAY, just may, be back on the water tomorrow morning!!! I THINK it’s quite certain, but i’m not going to let myself get too excited as there are no guarantees… I’m going to try to upload some photos of my predicament, but it is my first attempt, so no expectations please!

They have put in some kind of gooey stuff in to reseal the hole around the rudder, and it is setting at the moment, and the longer we leave it, the more likely it is to work properly, so i’m quite glad they’ve decided to wait till tomorrow to leave! Then we’ll have to give it a test run before we properly leave, and check the bilges for water.

Hm, it’s been a strange few days waiting and waiting, and, much like when you keep rearranging all the pens on your desk to put off working, we have been rearranging and tidying all the cupboards and drawers rather a lot, in constant preparation for when we finally set sail. It’s been good for me in some ways - i’ve nearly finished everything on my ‘BIG LIST OF THINGS TO DO BEFORE I LEAVE THE UK’, which i didn’t finish before i thought i was leaving the UK! And i have installed a recycling system on the boat, in the shape of two different plastic bags, but then consequently found you can’t recycle paper and plastic in Cowes, grr.

I keep having ups and downs about it, getting very anxious about the ocean sailing. The main thing i seem to get shivers of terror at is the thought of capsizing, and i keep asking what do i do if we capsize – keep myself clipped on to the boat (we have clipping on life line things for when it’s rough)? But what if the boat sinks and your clipped on? Arghhh! But the boat will probably right itself, and it’s much safer to be attached to the boat if this happens, so maybe should stay clipped on. I think you just have to decide at the time, but what if i make the wrong decisions!! Mainly i think i’ve had too much time to think about it now, i just need to do it! 

Anyway, must stop spending money in the internet cafe, so i’ll be off. And HOPEFULLY next time i write will be from Spain or even Portugal!!

Lots of thanks for all the e-mails and comments, and lots of love to everyone,

Char-not-so-many-knots

Hello from…… the Isle of Wight,

First of all, in case i panicked anyone with the title (particularly my Mum!)- i am well and safe and not drowning in the sea! So we left Portsmouth on Thursday afternoon, and had the most beautiful sunset sail for a few hours down the Solent and just as i was gazing at the first star to come out, down in the galley Heather lifted up a floorboard to get a a tin of soup out of the bilges (the inside bottom of the boat), and discovered the tins almost floating! To cut a long story short, we headed for Cowes (ISle of Wight), and moored up and spent the next 24 hours doing a lot of bailing out – at one point 9 buckets full in 2 hours! The skipper and the rest of us taking it in turns to squash down in teh galley and help, spent the whole of yesterday doing incredibly frustrating investgations and experiments, involving bungs and sponges, food dye, and all jumping together on each side of the boat, to work out where the leak was. And FINALLY, late in the afternoon, just as i was having a little lie down in the sun on deck and munching on ginger nuts, there was a relieved AHAAAAAAAAA, from down in the galley. So it turns out there’s a leak in the seal around where the rudder comes up through the hull (the outside bottom of the boat), or something. So NOW, the boat’s been lifetd out of the water, and i’m stuck in Cowes, which is lovely, but we should be sailing with whales in the Bay of Biscay by now!!!!

Am quite anxious about whether we’ll have to abondon the trip or not, what will i do?? So MIGHT have to do some frantic internetting and e-mailing to find another crewing position, or head down to Gibraltar by train and try to catch one from there…  

Just to finish – the rest of the crew and the skipper are absolutely lovely, very down to earth, happy and open. The crew is all women - a retired electronics teacher, a Design Technology high school teacher, a marketing lady for Orange, and a luxury boat chef/ecologist/ski guide. The skipper is a man, which was a surprise to all of us who had booked with this ‘all female crew’ company, (it’s called Girls for Sail), but he is great, a calm and patient teacher, and doesn’t have any of the machoism and sexism that had put me off male skippers. 

However - i have a lot to learn about this crewing idea – it seems very confused – some of us think we are working, some are on a cheap working holiday, and some of paid, a lot, for a luxury sailing holiday, but we are all doing the same thing – which yesterday was spent on our hands and knees sponging out the bilges!

Thanks for the photo up at the top Reevesie – much more appropriate than trees!I just wish i really was sailing off in to the sunset!

Love to everyone, hope you are all having as nice weather as we are down here!

Charlotte

Hello!

(Do you write Hello! to blogs?hmmm)

This is my first blogging attempt, so bear with me! Let’s see if it works!

After a lot of stressing and crying and hugging and excitedness i’m finally on my way, my bag is packed, i’m halfway to Portsmouth (a London internet cafe). I’ve just bought some horribly light pink ocean-going waterproofs (they were in the sale). Light pink’s just not going to help me achieve my old salty sea dog look. Still it’s nice to have ones without great gaping ripped holes in the armpits – my usual wet weather attire.

For those who don’t know – i’m about to attempt to visit my grandparents, who live in Bermuda, by windpower!This is to avoid flying and shipping and the pollution they cause, and also i’m just really excited about the idea of travelling by the wind and crossing the ocean and going to foreign countries, new people, new languages, different everything!!!

Well, i will try to write a much better introduction another time, but right now i really should go and get my train to Portsmouth.

Bye my beautiful England!

xx Charlotaknots