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Turtles in Our Wake

Page 10

by Sandra Clayton


  23

  Carloforte to Calasetta

  After the bluster of the past few days the wind now is almost nothing, but Voyager on the move creates her own cooling breeze on an otherwise very hot day. By mid-afternoon we arrive at Calasetta on the north western tip of neighbouring Isola di Sant’ Antioco.

  This was the site of the Carthaginians’ first colony in Sardinia after their flight from the Roman invasion of Carthage and claims to have been inhabited continuously for over two and a half thousand years. Despite its name it has not actually been an island for a similar length of time, being linked on its eastern side to Sardinia’s mainland by a causeway begun by the Carthaginians and completed by the Romans.

  It was into the port just below this causeway that Horatio Nelson’s flagship, Vanguard, was brought shortly before the Battle of the Nile in 1798 to have some storm damage repaired. Writing to his wife, Nelson complained that because Sardinia had recently declared its neutrality in the French Revolutionary War, his men were not allowed ashore while his ship was being re-rigged.

  Two hundred years later, just a few miles north at the little town of Calasetta, Sardinia is still making life difficult for British mariners. They have remodelled the harbour since our cruising guide was published. The quay against which visiting yachts once berthed has been taken over by the local ferries, and a new breakwater has been built through the anchorage to give the harbour better protection. What remains of the anchorage is now littered with private mooring buoys. We make two attempts to get an anchor to grip in a small patch of mud and weed. Both fail, and after seeing five yachts depart from the long sea wall below the town we decide to go and tie up there.

  Italian yachtsmen are true originals when it comes to parking their boats. Shortly after we tie up, one of the five yachts returns. Two men on the sea wall grab its pulpit and wrestle to keep its bow off the quay. The boat’s skipper leaps over his rail, rushes round between them and grabs it too. The impression given is one of extreme urgency. Then the three of them stand there gossiping for the next 20 minutes, holding the pulpit with one hand apiece with the boat at a 45° angle, the sails only half down and not a rope joined anywhere. They never do tie up. A second yacht arrives and tempts the first back out into the bay.

  Spanish quays and sea walls are always crowded with anglers but they are invariably male. Here women anglers are prominent. One of them, fiftyish and quite stunning in a red and white dress with side slits and a pristine white baseball hat gives us a wide, welcoming smile. Another phenomenon not encountered before is married couples, fishing from adjacent canvas stools and companionably passing knife or bait to one another.

  We go for a stroll into town. Apart from the anglers on the sea wall we seem to be the only people abroad. We have a beer overlooking the harbour and visit the local shop when it opens at 5pm. It is very small but not unnaturally, being Italian, it has all the things you want for Italian cooking that you don’t get in Spain’s corner shops, and what is more it has huge bottle-green sugar melons under a sign saying Offerto – reduced in price. I am very partial to sugar melon but never buy one nowadays because its weight is about equal to a week’s groceries and lugging one over a mile back to the boat with a week’s groceries is a major deterrent. However, this shop is so close to home that distance is not a consideration and being at a bargain price as well it is too good an opportunity to miss.

  I also buy frozen fish fingers, the fish market having long since emptied its trays, but on our way back we pop in to buy ice to bolster our fridge, which we now turn off at night to preserve the propane for cooking. We return to Voyager to prepare the evening meal, a big circle of meaty Italian sausage, potatoes and ratatouille, which is particularly tasty with some baked beans added to it. The melon, which still requires a few more days to reach a peak of perfection, currently fills one of the galley sinks. When buying the melon I had considered only its carriage and not its storage. There is no free cupboard space large enough to hold it and I dare not risk it getting loose on a moving boat. Like some mega cannon ball, it would destroy everything in its path.

  Around 8pm a fishing boat arrives and its skipper walks purposefully towards us. He looks like he is going to make us move. Unfortunately there isn’t anywhere else to go in the harbour, and it is rather late now to go looking for an anchorage along the coast.

  ‘Domani,’ I say, hopefully pointing a finger towards the open sea to make it clear that we do not intend becoming a fixture here. ‘We go tomorrow.’ The man stares at me thoughtfully, gets us to move as close as possible to the small day boat in front of us and then ties up his boat behind us. Fifteen minutes later another fishing boat arrives behind him. Its skipper looks at us resentfully and an unintelligible conversation ensues with hands thrust vigorously and repeatedly skywards. We assume he is saying we must go, but when we look to the first skipper for clarification he says cheerfully, ‘No problem.’

  He and his crew unload lobsters in an assortment of plastic laundry baskets and what look like scrubbed emulsion paint containers, load up their cars and drive away. They return soon after, climb aboard their boat, start its engine and take it away. The second skipper, with very bad grace, then begins shouting at his two-man crew to haul his own boat up into the empty space behind us. David goes ashore and takes the bow rope, as much in the cause of self-preservation as good neighbourliness, and rapidly ends up pulling against the two crewmen hauling at the stern. These men can’t see how close their boat is to Voyager. Their skipper can but, in what seems to be an act of pure bloody-mindedness, continues to shout at them to keep coming forward until it is only moments before our dinghy and davits start to bend. With my feet still on our stern, but the rest of me at full stretch across our dinghy, I pit all my strength against the fishing boat’s bow. They are very heavy, fishing boats, even medium-sized ones, and this is not a good angle at which to try and exert pressure. Between us, however, David and I manage to hold it at bay two inches from our dinghy.

  ‘Domani,’ I say, still horizontal across our dinghy and glaring up at the skipper. ‘We go tomorrow.’ For a moment he eyes me balefully. Then he yells something back to his crew which finally makes them stop pushing. The trawler is tied up, still only two inches from our dinghy. This will make our exit in the morning worthy of Houdini, since fishing boats don’t go out on Sundays and we are already almost on top of the small day boat in front of us. The fisherman knows and relishes this. However, it is a relief that all the pushing, pulling, shouting and arm waving has stopped. The catch is unloaded and driven away.

  We vaguely assume that the crew will return to move their boat elsewhere for the next one to unload, although we can’t imagine why, as it is a long wall with enough space for half a dozen fishing boats, and we wonder how many times we will have to go through this performance and for how long into the night. It is only after the skipper from the second boat does not return to take his boat away, and other boats tie up and unload their catches until the sea wall is full to capacity and all the crews go home, that we realise that the first skipper had very generously moved his own boat so that we could remain for the night.

  There is a most glorious sunset.

  At around 10pm we stroll into town and wonder again where everybody is. It is Saturday night and the wide quay is deserted apart from a man at the bottom of some wide steps who is teaching his small daughter to play football. When you are born into a nation as obsessed with football as Italy, and God gives you a daughter, what are you to do? His wife looks on proudly at the little girl’s agility. We climb the steps, up to a large church surrounded by narrow streets. One of these leads to a square with a war memorial in the middle and the Smoking Ice café on one side. We have found where the townspeople go on a Saturday night.

  The square is absolutely packed with people; promenading, sitting at tables eating gelati from large glass bowls, or simply standing around together and talking. They are mostly families, some large and extended, some young couples, and
lots and lots of children, especially very small ones. It is always a surprise to see such young children out so late in southern Europe. Yet oddly, far from crying with tiredness and irritability as their northern cousins tend to do at such an hour, they are surprisingly cheerful. Even the odd group of adolescent boys, so often a disruptive element at gatherings at home, is good humoured and smiling.

  Only the noise is shocking. The sheer volume of so many voices trapped in a small square by tall houses is overwhelming. Clutching enormous ice-cream cones we make our way back down to the tranquillity of the sea wall. There are almost as many anglers there now as during the day. One of them wears a miner’s head lamp so that he can see to bait his hook throughout the night. Back on board, reaching for the light switch above the galley, I recoil at an unfamiliar shape in the darkness until I remember that there is an outsize sugar melon lurking in the sink.

  24

  Calasetta to Malfatano

  It is an almost windless morning, which is fortunate otherwise we should have to stay here until the fishing boat behind us goes to sea again on Monday. I push our stern out as far as my arms will reach and then haul myself up onto the bow as David reverses from the dock. It is indeed an escape worthy of Houdini.

  The forecast for the day is a moderate breeze from the west becoming east. Once out at sea the wind for the first half an hour constantly changes direction before settling down to a south-easterly, which is on the nose. It quickly reaches 16 knots and our progress slows considerably. The plan had been to anchor off Nora, a Carthaginian city like Tharros only much larger. However, we shan’t reach Nora at a reasonable time at this speed and David opts for Porto Malfatano instead. It turns out to be a good choice.

  There are a number of anchorages here and we choose the one to the west of the Isla Teredda. It is an attractive spot and well protected from the wind. We anchor among an assortment of motor boats. Pottering between them are canoes and pedalos and the beach is dotted with tables, chairs and green umbrellas.

  Being Sunday and a popular spot, there isn’t really room for us. The bottom is also very weedy. It takes two attempts to get the anchor to bite and we are rather too close to the rocky island of Teredda in front of us. Pretty soon, however, the other boats begin to set off home for the night and we move into a nice big patch of sand in five metres of translucent water.

  A Hallberg Rassy flying a red ensign enters the bay. The English are famous for being antisocial to fellow countrymen abroad. Having arrived in a foreign paradise they are resentful at having another Englishman join them when they thought they had it all to themselves; or even worse, finding one already there. Accordingly, the middle-aged couple on the Hallberg Rassy, pukka in polo shirts and pressed shorts, stare steadfastly ahead as they pass our red ensign and anchor as far away from us as it is possible to get without beaching themselves. There may also be a fear of scratched topsides involved here, too, for this is a shiny, expensive new boat and it stands aloof and to our left. As the last day boat leaves, a Swedish sloop arrives and settles to our right, making just the three of us. And then an Italian Benetteau arrives.

  I am frying fish fingers salvaged from melted ice; a bit soggy and not a particularly inviting colour. David is trying for Monaco Radio’s evening forecast. The mellifluous voice on Channel 68 has been absent from the VHF all day and when Channel 16 announces a gale warning about to be broadcast on another channel, although we re-tune to it immediately there is only silence. The Benetteau’s cheerful young crew plunks its anchor beside the Hallberg Rassy’s and settles alongside.

  ‘Good grief,’ I say, looking over at the middle-aged couple. ‘They won’t like that.’

  They don’t. They stand on deck in disbelief that the Benetteau could have anchored so close. The half dozen Italians aboard, blithely unaware, begin to party. The Monaco Radio forecast is for variable light-to-moderate breezes.

  During the night the wind gusts up to 35 knots, or Gale Force 8. It is a starry night and warm, but very dark and it is difficult to see where water ends and rock begins. The sea rushes from behind the island in front of us and crashes against the eastern face of the rocky cliff behind us. As the noise of water hitting rock gets louder with the increasing pressure of the wind there is the uncomfortable sensation that Voyager is edging closer to the rocks.

  At dawn the Italian Benetteau dances away backwards toward the east cliff dragging its anchor behind it. After a struggle, several groggy revellers raise the anchor and leave the bay for another one next door to try for better holding. An hour later the Hallberg Rassy drags too. It is rather a shock. They had seemed too well-bred. They depart for the bay next door also.

  After breakfast we are on our stern, hunched over the radio, with its aerial joined to a steel backstay for improved reception, listening to Monaco Radio. Its forecast for Sardinia is a fresh breeze from the south-west moderating in the evening, but we have difficulty hearing it because of the Force 8 roaring at us from the north-east. However, it’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good and there’s enough power going into our batteries via the wind generator to run the fridge off them for a while.

  In northern climes wind strengths like these are invariably accompanied by cloud, cold and rain. Here it is hot, sunny and the sky is bright blue. People still come to the beach, although they tend to hold on to small children a bit more tightly than usual. It is also best to have nothing loose about you in the way of belongings or beach furniture. A traditional day on the beach is out of the question.

  A couple with a young boy arrives first thing, carrying a large amount of luggage: umbrellas, chairs, food containers and a drinks-cooler. They stand for a while at an acute angle as they lean into the wind and then, with their luggage banging against their legs, set off back in the direction from which they have come. It is not the holiday they were expecting. The last to go is the boy, who looks wistfully at the water’s edge and then trudges after them.

  While it is an improvement on British cold, rain and cloud, it isn’t the relaxed sailing we’d been hoping for either. The constant howl of the hot wind and the possibility of dragging are quite stressful, and one of us is always ready to sprint for the ignition keys the moment the anchor gives way.

  Every country names the winds after the direction from which they come, but somehow they sound more romantic in the Mediterranean. The Sirocco is the hot southerly which carries red dust from the Sahara. The Levanter comes from the east. The Bora is named after a character in classical mythology representing the North Wind and can blow from two to twelve days. We hope we’re not experiencing this one as twelve days could put a severe strain on the food cupboard. Still, the dark green sugar melon, currently in the cockpit and balanced on the rim of a bucket like the egg of some enormous mythical bird, should hold us for a day or two at least.

  Our north-east wind, whatever its name is, rises steadily. Within an hour of the moderate forecast it is 41 knots and the beginning of a Strong Gale Force 9. On the beach, a large red-hulled sailing dinghy, beam-on to the wind, finally gives up the struggle and falls over onto its side. A family of four in swim suits settles down in its shade. Gradually, during the morning, the wind slackens to just below gale force and remains there. No-one leaves their yacht except at 1pm when a red rubber dinghy hurtles out from the other bay and disappears behind our small island. A middle-aged woman stands in its bow gripping the painter, Boudicca-style. Curious, I switch on our wind speed indicator. It is blowing 33 knots.

  It is still doing so at sunset when two yachts enter the bay. One is an elderly French Hirondelle catamaran with a failing exhaust, so that its engine goes clatter-clatter clatter-clatter. It clatters slowly down the anchorage and in due course passes behind us.

  The other is a new Italian monohull. It has a vigorous man in his sixties at the helm, a sulky youth hunched in the cockpit and a young woman in a bikini on the bow. It roars down to the anchorage, bouncing violently on what is, after so much wind, a pretty rough sea. It halts beside
the Swedish boat to our right and the helmsman begins a lively conversation with the startled couple in its cockpit. To hold a plunging 40-footer so close to another boat in such conditions without a collision takes skill. Or luck.

  ‘By heck!’ we say admiringly. ‘There’s style for you.’ At the same time, given the increasing agitation of the Swedish couple, we are grateful that he hadn’t been in a position to socialise with us.

  Pleasantries over, he roars away to his chosen spot a short distance from the Swedish boat, which also happens to be the spot where we originally anchored on entering the bay and had trouble because of the amount of weed on the bottom.

  Some years ago there was an advertisement on television which suggested playfully that Italian car drivers know only one speed – flat out – and that they drive as if they are descended from Roman charioteers. This must extend to some boat owners, too, for this man appears to have modelled himself on Ben Hur.

  Charging towards the shoreline, he bellows at the woman on the foredeck to drop the anchor. As he hasn’t yet come to a stop, the boat naturally rides over the anchor and, since she hasn’t had time to let out enough chain, the anchor fails to bite. Without waiting for the woman to retrieve the anchor, the helmsman goes into a violent turn. Unfortunately, because the anchor is still dragging along the seabed it restrains his bow and causes his stern to swing instead, sending it hurtling at high speed towards the beam of the Swedish yacht. The Swede and his wife stand in their cockpit watching it approach wide-eyed and with their knuckles between their teeth.

 

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