Belt Up

 

 

I have just had to repair a coolant hose which was resting against an alternator belt with predictable results.

 

The thing is, it was a real struggle back there to write alternator belt and not fan belt and even as I wrote alternator belt I was thinking fan belt.

 

This is despite the fact that, by my best guess, it’s 15ish years since I last changed a fan belt – when I last had a mini on the road. Since then I have removed, replaced or adjusted power steering pump belts, alternator belts, an air-con pump belt and now raw water pump belts. I even changed the cam belt on a dual overhead camshaft engine (I can honestly say that everything was crossed when I started that engine and I was genuinely surprised when it didn’t go bang.)

 

I now care for two engines with four accessory belts between them and no fans at all.

 

Did you spot that there – their real name is accessory belts in the general and whatever they spin in the specific case.

 

They’re still fan belts to me though, and probably always will be.

A bit of fun came through facebook the other day:

 

 

It's funny, isn’t it? The French customs have always been friendly to us and they respond positively to our RAF sailing association ensign (the biggest flag on the boat), and we don’t just walk through a gate – they enter our home. I just don’t recognise even the possibility of this sort of behaviour from such a professional service. I have been privileged enough to have met men who went ashore on those beaches, and they wouldn’t have whispered those words to any lady, French or otherwise.

 

There are memorials to foreign forces everywhere in France (mostly American admittedly), and also many holocaust memorials. The entire Island of Sein, on a really nasty part of the Breton coast (trust me – the currents are scary, the waves are enormous and the gales just sweep through unless you have modern weather forecasts, electronic charts and gps to babysit you) is exempt from income tax after every single man on the Island got into fishing boats and sailed to Britain to join de Gaulle and the free French forces after his famous radio broadcast. Let me repeat that – every single man old enough to fight.

Memorial to American WWI troops at St Nazaire

 

Then there was the family that protected and fed the remains of Major Blondie Haslar’s team on their way to raid Bordeaux. Not resistance members, just ordinary farmers who would have been shot on the spot for what they were doing.

German built submarine pens at St Nazaire

 

France was completely overrun by the German army, having been persuaded by the UK government to go along with appeasement and then surprised by new and terrifying tactics. More recently the country has been accused of talking up the efforts of the free French forces and resistance fighters in order to maintain some national pride. But those people did exist and the ones that fought on did so with family and friends living in a country occupied by a ruthless army. In a country which contained people who might sacrifice someone else’s family in order to save their own.

 

I have been touched as I walked through the fields of stones marking graves for American soldiers who would never come home. I have been saddened as I walked through cities which have been flattened by that war. I was impressed by the architecture of the church in Royan which took the materials of bunkers and gun emplacements and turned reinforced concrete into something curved, dramatically folding and reaching for the sky. I have walked through the submarine pens of St Nazaire, the only things left standing by the RAF in that city, now turned to positive use – because how do you demolish something that turned out to be indestructible? My sons have played in craters and run through trees still scarred by gunfire. I have been fortunate enough to sail, in safety, the treacherous waters braved by those few free French fishermen who would leave their country in the hope of returning to fight and free it. Among the countless Avenues de Charles de Gaulle I have stopped to read the road signs named after local resistance fighters, often with dates of death between 1940-44. The latest such was named after Doctor et Madame de la Marnierre, who helped rescue at least 40 Allied airmen and French Resistance workers who were being sought by the Gestapo.

Memorial to cockleshell heroes at the mouth of the Gironde estuary
(google them, there is a great documentary on youtube)

 

Probably before I left British shores I may have laughed at the joke above, but not now. It’s based on a prejudice with no real grounding, in the Second World War the French paid for Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement in the worst possible way. We had the English Channel (Le Manche, peut-etre?) and then Churchill, the RAF and some very important errors on the part of the Nazi leadership during the Battle of Britain. During the First World War the French lost more lives than any other nation with the exception of Russia (they had a bloody revolution as well).

 

There has been a long history of Francophobia in the UK, mainly because we seem to have spent quite some time at war with them. The fact is though that the current rise of it has spread from across the Atlantic, and to join in with the taunting of a dignified and grateful former ally should be beneath us.

Still, it’s only a joke, isn’t it.

 

 

 

 

I wrote this sat in our boat just outside the French naval base in Brest, where this happened at the end of the war:

 

http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/17922598

 

Almost the entire city was flattened in the siege.
 



One of the few really old buildings left in Brest city

Asturian sealife

 

We saw something blurry in the distance today, so took a picture to study on the computer.

 

Still a bit blurry, but I'm sure we can clean it up a bit...

 

There we go, it's starting to show up now. If we can just zoom in a little bit more...

There we go, it's amazing what you can do with a little bit of free software. It's enhancements like this that make the internet what it is today.

Sitting in Gijon.

We've been sat here in Gijon for a very long time now. Far longer than anywhere else so far.

 

Longer than when I had to replace a rotten stem and fix a hole in one of the bows.

 

Longer than when I had to replace the engine mounts (and, of course, wait for them to be delivered).

 

Longer than when we had to wait for an exhaust part so we could stop ourselves from (technically) sinking every time we ran the port engine. Okay, it would have taken us a very long time to sink at the rate the water was squirting in (weeks maybe) but we would end the day with more water inside the boat than we started with - that's sinking.

 

I digress (of course)...

 

Gijon has been good to us - it's safe and comfortable as a marina and we have been made very welcome here. We are still on the edge of the Bay of Biscay, and plan to remain so for some time as we move towards the Basque coast and then up the side of France.

 

It is very important around here to keep a close eye on the predicted weather and, as ever, we will almost definitely be moving outside of the recognised season for such things, which will increase the need for caution. We also have children aboard. It's an old boat, even if it doesn't start sinking (again - I must stress - very slowly, glacial slowly, continental drift slowly) every  time we start the engines.

 

So we won't move until the weather is right. A bit warmer wouldn't hurt either.

 

When we do go it will be a bit more of an adventure because, for a while at least, we'll be sailing where few cruising sailors go and trying to squeeze our fat old catamaran into harbours which are a little less visited. I would say that I'm looking forward to seeing the Guggenheim in Bilbao, and the village where they have to turn the bus on a turntable so it can get back out again. I am getting a little superstitious about saying I want to see somewhere but these are places we'll have to pass - so maybe...

 

The French coastline between the Spanish border and Bordeaux is meant to have noting to recommend it for the cruising sailor, but we're boat gypsies really so we'll probably find something. Watch this space or, more likely, the facebook page facebook.com/tarquilla and I'm sure we'll let you know.,

Communication

Isaac Asimov wrote of a society which had become so isolated from itself that the only people who had direct physical contact with each other were married couples. All interactions were performed by ‘viewing’, a holographic projection of the participators in a conversation being present giving the illusion of a real presence.

This sort of thing has appeared in all sorts of science fiction for years, but as with so many of these ‘inventions’ it was Asimov and others among his peers who first came up with the idea. It wasn’t so much the technology, though, as the social implications and the language surrounding the technology that he wrote about, understood even, with the most precision and detail.

The reason I mention this is because of the use of Skype, which enables me to regularly ‘see’ and talk with my parents in Somerset, or Sarah’s father in Portishead, in an almost natural way, much as if we were sat in the same room. It feels very much like meeting up and conversations run in a much more natural way than they would on a long distance phone call, involving everyone present with sometimes chaotic results. The boys, in particular, have taken well to the concept but have also injected a generous amount of anarchy into the proceedings.

Hanging up is particularly difficult, and no-one really likes pressing the button to close the conversation, and this brings me neatly back to the point. Asimov wrote about a society in which the inhabitants of a single planet were limited to very low numbers living on huge estates spread over vast distances necessitating the form of communication mentioned. The vocabulary which was used was a familiar one which was adapted, so that they spoke, for example, of seeing each other although actual physical presence was not involved.

I just wrote of ‘hanging up’, a phrase which is beginning to lose it’s meaning with telephones in general and has absolutely no meaning at all if you consider either Skype or even a mobile phone. I also used the term ‘pressing the button’ and we use this constantly with computers when we are using a mouse to click on an icon, which is often even shaded to look like a 3D button, to perform an action. These changes in the use of language are interesting in themselves, or they are to me anyway, but the one to which I alluded earlier is more than just a question of language. The fact is that I can see my parents, have them in the same room as me, and have a conversation which involves everyone in the room(s) with all that entails even down to the chaos. This is a change brought by the evolution of technology which affects so much more than just language.

When we say ‘see you soon’ in normal conversation we have always meant more than just seeing someone, we imply the physical presence of the person. This is because the language involved has developed over time and until very recently the possibility of seeing someone without their being with you did not exist. Now when I say ‘speak soon’ to my parents, because that was what are used to saying on the phone I mean ‘see you soon’ because that is how it feels. It’s still not quite the same as being in the same room, but it’s so much closer.

So thank you Skype, for making the conversations possible, and thank you Isaac Asimov for giving me the vocabulary to think about this and helping me to not take it for granted.

It's interesting - to me it is anyway - but the selection of a sailing boat to see the world from was based on logic. No fuel, most places are connected by the sea, there is unlimited freedom of movement, it may have been twisted logic but that was it. Sarah suggested a motor-home but the discussion was not too long, if you restrict yourself to a continent and have the cash for the fuel then fine, any strong dislike or fear of the sea would probably seal the deal too.

The thing is though, that from the first time I raised the sails then cut the outboard engine on Kate I have been hooked. I don't think I'll start racing any time soon, but the moment when the engines stop and the sucksqueezebangblow rumbling behind or below you gives way to the rush of the water, the occasional creak of the rigging and flap of the ensign is describable but inexplicable. It is a magical moment filled with romance and possibilities, especially if you are master of your own vessel. People will spend their every last spare penny chasing this dragon, the true yachties supermarket isn't Waitrose, it's LIDL.

I never meant to let the sea into my blood , but I think I have.


It may well have been quoted so often it hurts, but it would appear that ratty was right when he said:




"There is nothing- absolutely nothing-
half so much worth doing
as simply messing about in boats."

Crossing the Channel

As ever leaving the harbour was one of the harder parts of the day and as you haven't really left the Solent until the Isle of Wight's firmly behind you this took even longer than usual.

I tried to sail for a while but must admit to failure because we had light winds mostly dead astern and I wanted to get to Cherbourg with enough light to 1) find the way in and 2) moor without too many dramas. This certainly won't be the last time this happens.

So, for the day, we were reduced to the status of a big slow motorboat, which is expensive on the diesel but otherwise no big problem.

We tried the autopilot for a bit but it's compass keeps changing by about 2 degrees either side of an average bearing which means that when it's steering it keeps correcting itself and then magnifies it's errors because it's fluctuating around its correction which was made for it's original error which was... Needless to say I disconnected the thing before it took us to Norway via the Canaries and/or my head exploded chasing the logic of it's actions. I have since been told it will work better taking it’s directions from the GPS, so we’ll give that a go soon.

The areas which are dead in line between the Traffic Separation Schemes (TSS) either end of the channel were predictably busy but safe, we came close to one ship who replied to my admittedly nervous call, saying that we were fine where we were. I throttled back a little bit anyway because I'm a bit chicken when I have my entire family floating out of sight of land on a 40 foot piece of plywood. With less visibility, more traffic or a little more paranoia I can imagine it being a little more hairy.

Being out of sight of land was also less dramatic than I'd expected, yes it was strange at first. It was a good type of strange with a strong feeling of freedom.

One small surprise was what the strength of the tides outside Cherbourg did to the boat speed and direction. It was only a small surprise because you prepare for these things in your plan but when theory becomes practice it is a whole other ballgame. In this case the concept of travelling at 12 knots at an angle to where you're actually pointed. 

Arrival in Cherbourg couldn't have been simpler and it was days before customs visited us. When they did come round the French customs couldn't have been nicer they seemed most interested in the boat, it's equipment and crew. I was asked if I had more than 50,000 euros in cash and also if I had anything to declare but it was almost nice to be acknowledged by this point, we were beginning to feel like illegal immigrants or fugitives from the law.

As I write this we have sailed across Lyme Bay/around Portland Bill, crossed the English Channel and "gone foreign", braved the tidal streams around Cap de l'Hague, entered a port after crossing what is (at low tide) half a mile of occasionally rocky beach, locked into a port, braved the rocks outside St Malo in force 6 winds and never once gone into the same port twice. We said the other day when we sailed most of the way to Carteret that we felt like proper sailors, and I think we are genuinely getting there. We spent a couple of years driving to Weymouth and sailing in and out of Weymouth harbour (very infrequently) and learnt more than we admit about boats doing that but what we've done since has taken that a lot further.

In preparation for our adventure I soaked up all the theory I could on all aspects of voyaging on a small sailing boat including the RYA syllabus on the longbow dvd - much recommended to anyone who doesn't have the time for a formal course or as a supplement to those who do. I have added the link to the right.