We decide to stay where we are. Although it is not a good place to be, at least the anchor is holding. And we are away from other boats. But we must be vigilant. We keep a watch together for a while, in case the anchor goes suddenly and one of us needs to man the controls while the other raises the anchor. But as time passes, thanks to the strength of the wind, the anchor seems to be dug in pretty well. Meanwhile, the other boats drag and drift for hours. In particular, a large English motor yacht takes forever to re-anchor. It is one of those traditional wooden boats that is highly varnished with brass fittings and is sometimes referred to as ‘a gentleman’s motor yacht’.
It is always fascinating what a difference a few hours make afloat. After a chaotic night of frenzied activity, by the following afternoon the anchorage has a touch of a 1930s English tea room about it. Some boats have left during the morning and some, like us, have re-anchored. Alongside us now is the gentleman’s motor yacht that had had so much difficulty re-anchoring during the night. It has brass paraffin lamps in the wheelhouse and two sit-up-and-beg bicycles on the stern. Its skipper and the memsahib wear wide-brimmed Tilley hats with chinstraps and have the couple from a similar yacht, which has only recently arrived, over for afternoon tea. They sit on the foredeck around a tea table laid with a white cloth and bone china cups and saucers and haw-haw and boom like Bertie Wooster and his chums.
13
Fornells
We are now into a period of more stable weather and I take the helm as we make the nine mile passage from Addaya to Fornells. We have not yet had the sails out this year and decide to have a look at them. They are a bit dirty from the Saharan dust at Mahon but, with the wind averaging only three knots, having aired them we put them away again.
Menorca contains an extraordinary concentration of prehistoric remains. As well as Neolithic villages and caves the island is littered with Bronze Age burial mounds, funeral chambers in the form of upturned boats, and T-shaped monuments which were probably altars. You pass them at the side of a road or climbing a grassy hill, unfenced and unheralded, a reminder of continuity and time passing. Most beguiling of them all are the large stone burial mounds which overlook the sea. They are thought to have covered a family funerary chamber, with a wooden house for the living built on top. And as you sail around the island, gazing up at the cliffs, one of them will appear above you and, suddenly, there is Bronze Age man staring back down at you.
As you think of the people who have lived and died here over the centuries you wonder, despite some theories, if the original inhabitants of islands like these really did die out; or whether their genes are still alive and well and tending crops behind the dry stone walls of the market gardens, or weighing your fruit and vegetables in the local market. Some years ago, after the development of DNA for forensic purposes, researchers took samples from the residents of a southern English village and compared them with some taken from human remains excavated from a nearby prehistoric long barrow. They discovered that many of the people in the village were descendents of the man in this ancient tomb.
Perhaps even more extraordinary is the recollection of Laurie Lee, author of Cider with Rosie, in a radio interview many years ago, concerning an ancient burial mound in his native Cotswolds. As each new generation came to consciousness, the parents in the villages within sight of the mound would answer their children’s inevitable question by telling them, ‘It’s where the little prince is buried’. When 20th century archaeologists finally burrowed into the tomb they identified it as the final resting place of a Bronze Age chieftain. What so captured Laurie Lee’s imagination was the fact that knowledge of the mound’s purpose and incumbent had been passed, unbroken, by word of mouth from the Bronze Age to the present day, something like 150 generations.
As a famous archaeologist once observed, everything is always older than you think.
Cala de Fornells is a large shallow bay some two miles long and three-quarters of a mile wide. It has a small whitewashed, palm-fringed village, also called Fornells, on its western shore, and two small islands lying off its eastern edge. The bay’s narrow entrance provides excellent protection and it attracts leisure boats of all kinds. Down at its far end, there is a little hamlet called Salinas Vellas. The water there is an ideal depth for anchoring boats like ours. To reach it we have to pass the super yachts, which need the deeper water. One has seven deck levels, plus integral helicopter and enough communications technology festooning its bridge to control a space mission.
The bay is home to very small boats, too. Those belonging to the local fishermen bob on buoys in the shallows while the dinghies from the sailing school – especially the single-handed Piccolos with their vivid mauve sails – quiver like flocks of exotic butterflies.
David rigs our own dinghy into sailing mode and on windy days we go out with the boy racers, the Hobie cats and the windsurfers, flying along at speeds impossible with our small outboard. It is exhilarating. The lack of an outboard, however, does create a problem in getting back on board a boat swinging at anchor. In high winds the answer is a full-out run down Voyager’s side, a flying right-hand turn and a feverish grab at her stern.
By contrast, in light airs we bob along with the beginners and the unhurried little tour boat called La Pinta and after a blissful dawdle around the bay return home horizontal with our feet dangling over the dinghy’s sides.
During the hottest part of the day we simply sit in the shade of our awning and the bay’s denizens come to us. Three Spaniards on a Laser – one hanging from its trapeze with a terrified face – roar contradictory instructions at one another as they hurtle past. An apprentice windsurfer, his concentration and back muscles devoted to staying upright, is eager to show off his newly-acquired skills. He is using our starboard quarter as a marker. As he hurtles towards it, his eyes widen with the recognition that he has miscalculated. There is a howl as he falls off his board, a better alternative than impaling himself on one of our davits. A canoe passes with two panama-hatted women in it, straight-backed, paddles synchronised. In between them sits a huge black dog, as tall and straight-backed as they are, but motionless apart from its great head turning slowly and rhythmically from side to side as it observes the scenery. Small children on the nearby diving pontoon cry ‘Olá!’ in high, fluting voices as they hurl themselves into the water. A naked middle-aged woman throws herself repeatedly off the stern of the German boat next door to us.
Most places have something memorable about them: sounds, smells, sights or tastes. Fornells has a peacock. It calls in the early evening and a horse whinnies in reply. Further along the shore, someone in the little hamlet of Salinas Vellas is learning to play the trumpet. At first the notes seem as mournful and tuneless as the peacock’s, but over a period of days the strains of I Did It My Way become recognisable.
Fornells’ restaurants are famous for their lobster stew, but a bowl each costs more than our weekly food bill so we leave it for the super yachts and patronise the local baker instead. His shop is in the small village square and his pies and pastries come hot from the oven. We chug carefully back in the dinghy with a warm tuna pie dangling in a bag from one hand, a ham and cheese lattice on the other, and a chocolate confection balanced across the knees. Healthy living? Forget it! Being rather partial to a really good savoury pie, after tasting these we return again and again.
14
Cuitadella
We take a taxi from the quay early one morning and spend the day in Cuitadella. The cruising guide emphasises how crowded its narrow harbour is in high summer and we are concerned about the difficulties of finding a space wide enough to berth a catamaran. A taxi ride makes a nice change and gives us a chance to see more of the island’s interior. Menorca is famous for its cheeses and much of the land is given over to dairy farming, dotted here and there with a few small villages and the occasional market town. The taxi is air-conditioned and so bitingly cold that it is a relief to emerge into the warmth of Cuitadella.
The name mean
s little city in Aragonese and it was once the island’s capital. The Romans used it, and the Moors. When the Aragonese expelled the Moors they also rebuilt the town. Corsairs then attacked it repeatedly until finally it was razed by the Turkish pirate, Barbarrossa – Red Beard – in 1558. He also carried off many of the inhabitants to Istanbul’s slave market. The survivors re-built the town behind fortified walls, in the grand style with grand mansions, some with colonnaded loggias along their frontages where today you can buy a sarong or a straw hat or sit and have a cup of coffee. Tiny artisans’ houses in blind alleys also survive; built that way, it is said, to discourage invaders by making them fearful of becoming trapped.
It is a lovely old town whose architecture was saved as a result of a military decision. In 1722 the British, the occupying force at the time, transferred the capital to Mahon because of its superior harbour. So while Mahon developed, Cuitadella and its old nobility stagnated. In doing so, however, it escaped further foreign architectural influences and its beautiful old centre has been preserved intact. It sits high above the harbour and along with its street markets of local goods is a very pleasant place to wander.
The harbour itself has been in use for more than three and a half thousand years, since long before even the Phoenicians arrived. As well as being long and narrow it is also difficult to enter under certain weather conditions. And although sheltered, it is subject to sea swell at times, which gets an added boost from the wash caused by commercial vessels including the regular ferry service. It is nevertheless very popular with yachtsmen and is very crowded. And we are glad we came by taxi today.
Like the town above it, however, it is very picturesque. We stroll along much of its length and enjoy a three-course lunch at one of the restaurants on its quay. Quite early on in the meal David falls victim to an exploding mussel. He rarely leaves a tablecloth unmarked by his presence, but always claims it is not his fault. The mussel, he says, shot from his fingers, spiralled upward and landed on the cloth. I missed this, having been distracted by the large, temperature-controlled lobster tank at the restaurant next door. One of its temporary residents is gazing at me with mute but eloquent pleading.
‘How could you eat it once you’d looked it in the eyes?’ I say to our waiter. ‘It’s just too personal.’ He nods compassionately. He can afford to. His restaurant doesn’t have a lobster tank.
Thankfully, our taxi ride back to Fornells is less chilly than the outward journey.
15
Fornells to Mahon
Next morning I wake at 6am into a day too beautiful to stay in bed any longer. Beyond our stern is a very small hill with a rectangular stone house on it. A full moon, huge and russet gold, is slowly setting behind the stone house. It is an image from a cartoon: a circle behind a rectangle on a pyramid, in intense glowing colour, unreal and unbelievably lovely.
Our awakening the following morning is anything but tranquil. At 4 o’clock we come roaring out of sleep and struggling to our feet simultaneously. There is a shrieking, the like of which we have never heard before. It pierces the brain and drives us up onto the bridge deck with two compulsions: to know what is causing it and to make it stop. Its cause becomes apparent as soon as we near the galley: it is the propane gas alarm.
Gas! We are leaking gas! A spark causes an explosion. A switch causes a spark. Don’t switch any lights on!
And with images of airborne body parts filling our minds we blunder about in the dark, throwing open all the hatches in some muddled notion of reducing the impact of the inevitable explosion.
But since gas is heavier than air and finds its lowest level, it won’t be up at hatch height, will it? It will be filling the bilges, won’t it?
While I rush out into the cockpit to man the bilge pump, David tears up the galley floor coverings and the bilge-covers below the gas stove and water heater, which is where the gas alarm sensors are located. He comes to fetch me from my fevered pumping in the cockpit.
‘You’ve got a stronger sense of smell than me,’ he shouts above the screeching, and moments later his hands are round my ankles and I’m head-first into the bilge.
‘Nothing,’ I shout, the word echoing around me from the bilge’s sides.
Although there is no smell of gas, and we have done everything we can to expel even the slightest trace of any that might exist, still the alarm tears into our brains. We cannot bear the unbearable sound any longer and David disconnects the wires of the alarm. After a few minutes respite from that terrible clamour, the brain can begin to function rationally again and David notices that the battery volt meter is showing a very low reading.
The gas detector has a safety circuit which sets off an alarm when it has insufficient power to perform its task. And that is what it has been doing; not telling us that there is gas about, but that it has too little power to detect any if there should be a leak. We turn off all the electrical circuits to relieve the batteries and go back to bed. Later that morning, after running an engine to recharge them we discover they are not holding a charge. When batteries go, they go quickly. We need new ones, but there is nowhere to buy the sort we need at Fornells. Our best option is to return to Mahon.
It is a four-hour journey. When we are just over an hour away I swear I can smell crème caramel pastries. Our old spot on Joss’s pontoon is unavailable because of a weekend regatta, but he lets us tie up to his crane dock further down the quay. With water on tap again we embark on two weeks’ laundry and a general clean up.
We are not alone in tackling personal hygiene. Just yards from us an elderly man is encouraging an elderly Labrador off the quay and into the water. The dog is reluctant, but finally succumbs to its innate sense of loyalty. At first we fear the dog is being drowned. Then we realise he is being given a bath. The man and his dog live in a cave across the quay from our berth. The cave has a brown wooden door with a crop of healthy-looking string beans growing up canes on either side of it and a small patch of grass in front. He is not supposed to still live there, apparently, just use it as a chalet. But early next morning his presence is betrayed by two seagulls waiting at his door for their breakfast.
When next we see him, the elderly man is sitting on a short-legged chair on the quay cleaning a fish he has just caught. While he gets his dinner, as men have done here since the Stone Age, on the other side of us another man earns his bread by using his tug with impressive skill to ease a tanker past us, stern-first out of its confined commercial berth and into open water. Suddenly, the steel hawser between them snaps. There is a great disappearing of heads from rails and quay as it flails wildly like an angry snake, but the tug’s skipper has it under control and another one attached within moments and all the heads pop up again, like prairie dogs.
As for ourselves, our laundry is done, our food cupboards are re-stocked and our new batteries are in place. We are ready to move on again. This time the plan is to leave the Spanish island of Menorca for the Italian island of Sardinia.
Sardinia
16
Menorca to Sardinia
Today is the first day of July. At 7 o’clock Voyager slips from the quay into a still morning. I take her out. As we motor down the harbour under a bright blue sky there is a full moon setting to starboard and a huge rising sun to port. The sea is so calm that even beyond the heads there are no waves, just an unbroken surface quivering – the way water does in the washing-up bowl when the engines are idling – as if the planet is vibrating ever so gently.
Three hours later the sea is very roly and we have porpoises alongside. An hour after that the sea has settled back into a gentle rhythm with just enough wind to put out the genoa. We also put up the cockpit awning, making it shady and restful. Just us, in a big blue empty sea.
During the afternoon, over the course of several hours, a large number of turtles of varying sizes paddle laboriously towards us wearing that look of intense concentration peculiar to reptiles on the move. They are so close to us as they pass that they are almost touching ou
r sides. It is unknown, in our experience, for a turtle to get so close. They usually dive and disappear long before a boat gets anywhere near them. Instead, these divide and sweep around us as if we were nothing more than a large rock in their path. Once past our stern, they simply merge in our wake and continue on their way.
Judging by their size, some of them must be quite old. Two of the smaller ones on our port beam hover, noses only inches apart, waving a front flipper each, for all the world like two gossips exchanging the latest news. We have never seen turtles en masse like this before; only the occasional solitary one, raising its head once, for a breath of air and a look around, then not to be seen again however long you keep looking.
There is something of the turtle about us, come to think of it. Our pace is leisurely. We are vulnerable to gales and strong currents and we carry our home with us wherever we go. Our journeys are usually solitary although we do occasionally meet up with our own kind at marinas and town quays and have a gossip. But with such a vast territory in which to roam, we rarely meet up with the same people twice. This time last year, wary of our capabilities and all too aware of our inexperience, we were more akin to the dolphin: rapid in our movements, darting and diving, a little edgy. Watching the group for confirmation. But twelve months on we have settled into our new world and in pace, rhythm and restful solitude this is our summer of the turtle.
The flotilla currently making its way down our sides makes me think of the mass migration of yachtsmen that takes place every year, as hundreds of boats embark on an Atlantic crossing to that ultimate in warm waters, the Caribbean. It is a migration in which, this coming autumn, we plan to take part.
The present journey to Sardinia will take around thirty hours and this is a lazy sort of day for doing whatever you fancy. During the daytime at sea we don’t keep a formal watch. Apart from the time spent in the galley or at the chart table by one of us, we are both out in the cockpit anyway so keeping a lookout is not arduous. With one of us up in the helmsman’s chair facing for’ard and the other one propped against the cockpit cushions pointing astern, we only have to look up from our books and turn our heads to cover a 360° radius between us. Only after our evening meal, with night approaching and one of us below, do we keep a dedicated watch.
Turtles in Our Wake Page 6