Dolphins Under My Bed

by Sandra Clayton

  We have spent very little time in marinas and the few we have stayed in have been obscure and very quiet. I therefore feel something of a debutante in this very busy and rather fashionable one. Any chance of maintaining a low profile, however, is quickly lost as we encounter for the first time a yachting phenomenon. They tend to be short of stature, elderly, affluent, and behave as if they are personally responsible for the great in Great Britain. They wear navy blue blazers and caps with braid on them. They are members of yacht clubs whose names contain the word Royal. And to convince themselves that they exist above the common herd they name their boats with French nouns denoting superiority: Elite (dictionary definition ‘the most powerful, rich, or gifted members of a group or community’); Élan (‘a combination of style and vigour’); or Éclat (‘brilliant or conspicuous success, social distinction, acclaim’). In reality they are arrogant, class-obsessed, selfish and unbelievably ill-mannered.

  Before we can get our first rope tied, one such in full uniform bawls at us from his foredeck three boats back on the opposite pontoon that he intends to leave at 8.30 next morning and we shall be in his way. The couple on the Westerly beside us, and to which we are trying to tie up, say that they want to be off at 5am anyway so there won’t be a problem. I pass this information on to the incandescent little man in the blazer behind us.

  ‘Can’t hear you!’ he bawls.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ I call back. ‘You’ll be able to leave.’

  He continues to bawl that he wants to leave at 8.30am.

  I keep saying there will be room from 5am.

  He begins shouting that he has a right to exit.

  I say go and talk to the marina manager since he put us here.

  He says he can’t hear me.

  ‘Give up,’ says David.

  By now, people’s heads are popping up through hatches all over the marina, like gophers.

  ‘I have a right to exit!’ he roars, as if his civil liberties are being violated, and as if there isn’t another exit behind him that he could use anyway.

  I signal five with an open hand. ‘We’ll be gone by five,’ I shout at the top of my voice.

  ‘Can’t hear you over your engines,’ he bellows.

  I climb over the other two boats to the pontoon to put on shore lines and wonder how people like him survive into old age. I can only assume it is a tribute to the tolerance and humanity of the rest of us. Deprived of one focus for his petulance, he immediately finds another and begins barking orders at the docile young woman washing his boat.

  Once tied up, our location provides an ideal opportunity to observe cultural differences, given that we have French yachts to starboard and English to port.

  The first noticeable difference is that each of the two outer boats in the English raft (us and the boat next door) is not only tied up to its neighbour but has ropes attached to the pontoon as well. These shore lines prevent the combined weight of the three boats from being borne by the inner boat’s mooring lines. They also mean that the raft is stable and maintains a constant distance from the pontoon.

  The French have not put out shorelines to their pontoon and all three boats undulate back and forth on the current like the middle bit of an accordion, sometimes almost touching us, sometimes a boat’s width away. Had they used shorelines, there would have been ample space for yachts to pass between us, including that of the man in the cap and blazer three boats behind. As it is, only the operator of the little water taxi is able to do so, and only then by leaning over the side of his boat and heaving the three French yachts back towards their pontoon.

  The second major difference is that while the occupants of the two English boats are closeted below, the French sit around cockpit tables, talking and eating into the late afternoon. These tables sport a remarkable array of condiments, and new dishes emerge from their galleys at regular intervals.

  The town quay is only yards away from our pontoon. However, because these visitors’ pontoons are attached to the seabed, and not the shore, you need a boat to reach the town. We can either crank our dinghy down off its davits or, for £1 each way, we can take the water taxi. I summon the taxi on the VHF, and once aboard David and I push the French boats aside to give the taxi driver a break. Above us their crews chew on.

  St Peter Port is a real pleasure. The waterfront is a delight with its tall narrow buildings and the prominent belfry of St James. The town rises steeply with a wondrous mix of granite mansions, colonial stucco and white-washed Mediterranean-style villas. We conclude our tour at an 11th century church at the top and make the journey back down past precipitous guesthouses via steep flights of steps and narrow alleyways, and imagine staggering all the way up there with two weeks’ holiday luggage.

  Near the bottom we slide our noses round the door of the Royal Channel Islands Yacht Club, as recommended in the information sheet given to us with the Customs form. It is clearly not a good time, and the two women wiping tables in the deserted bar glare at us. We back out again and descend a few more stone steps to the Ship and Crown with its ancient timbers, framed photographs of old ships and nicotine-stained ceiling. It is throbbing with life and good humour.

  Channel Islanders are very polite. You collide with them, and they apologise. The two women from Hamburg with whom we share a table agree. They have been in the islands two weeks and are sorry they have to leave.

  As we return to Voyager in the water taxi I discover that I have committed a cardinal sin. I forgot to turn off our VHF after calling up the taxi channel. Its cockpit repeater is currently squawking pleas for transport across the entire marina. I curse my amateurishness as we push back the French boats to get the water taxi through. Above us, dessert is now in progress.

  It has been all-change in our absence among the boats behind us, according to the couple next door, who tell us they assisted, thereby protecting our boat from damage. We thank them very much, but I don’t admit that I can’t see any difference and that to me the boats behind us look pretty much the same as the ones that were there before we went ashore. They seem such old hands, this couple, as they talk. When we tell them our next destination is Tréguier, on the north Brittany coast, they correct our pronunciation and say we’ll love it. They talk of many lovely-sounding places. They seem to have been everywhere. Before we go to bed I get David to explain what we have to do next morning to get them away at 5am in a seemly manner. I don’t want to look like the amateur I feel.

  Our alarm clock goes off at 4.30 next morning and we get up immediately. With my aversion for ropes, it gives me time to run through again what I have to do with the wretched things. I also don’t want to be late and keep our neighbours waiting.

  They do not appear on deck until 4.50am. We ask if they are ready for us to begin untying. ‘Five minutes,’ they say. They seem very tense.

  David hovers on deck, keen to carry out a manoeuvre we have never done before: letting an inner boat out without losing contact with the pontoon ourselves – or in this case, with another boat tied up to the pontoon. It is not difficult, needing only a little preparation and a degree of co-operation. It does not require the use of an engine by the boat that is going to remain, merely judicious handling of the mooring lines. It is a standard technique and David knows it from his textbooks, although the previous day the man on the Westerley had instructed him how to do it anyway.

  Now, however, despite having started their engine, instead of preparing to leave our neighbours stand about looking fraught. Taking pity on them I go below and hoik David in after me. ‘I think they may be having a marital moment or something,’ I whisper. ‘Give them a bit of privacy to sort themselves out.’

  The five requested minutes pass, and then another five. When we finally squint discreetly through the curtains what we see sends us leaping on deck. They have untied themselves from the inside boat and show every sign of leaving, despite the fact that they are still tied to us and we still have two shorelines attached to the pontoon, one of them across
their bows. Our careful plan collapses in ruins.

  In retrospect I could have untied our bow shore line on board, although this would undoubtedly have wrapped itself around their propeller as they left. Instead, without even thinking, I sprint over their deck, across the deck of the boat inside them, and onto the pontoon to untie it there. As David hauls it in, however, the Westerley’s owners begin to pull out, leaving me on the pontoon and with our boat still tied to theirs. I just manage to scramble back onto the Westerly before the distance becomes too great and vault the guard-rails onto Voyager as David unties the last of the lines holding our boat to theirs.

  The couple on the Westerly neither look at us nor speak, but simply motor away staring ahead, faces grim, jaws clenched. We are left to blast our engines into life and shuffle Voyager backwards alongside the inner boat without fouling a propeller on the stern shore line I had not had time to untie.

  At 7am, the three cheerful people on the inside boat discuss their departure with us, and we are finally able to put the textbook manoeuvre into practice. It goes off without a hitch.

  The man in the blazer and the peaked cap, meanwhile, has been patrolling his pontoon since shortly after sunrise and shouting orders at the young woman getting his boat ready. Having woken all his neighbours with his noise, and then instructing them on how much room he needs to exit, patrolling is all he does until 8.30 when he takes the helm of his 30-foot sloop.

  As he motors past, with the docile young woman now tidying away his ropes and fenders, he eyes me triumphantly and with a toss of his head cries, ‘At last!’ as if he has just relieved Mafeking singlehanded. As his stern passes I read the lettering on it. It says, Éclat and Royal ****** Yacht Club.

  At 10am we paddle the dinghy ashore and spend the fare saved on the water taxi in the café of Castle Cornet instead. You make your choice at a counter with domestic artefacts from the museum on the wall behind it – pewter and pottery and a wooden trencher dated circa 1510 with an indentation at one corner for precious salt. We carry our coffee and banana cake outside to a small table on the ramparts, where cannon once stood, and gaze out at the sea.

  The castle, begun in 1204, contains some super museums but it is the people we find most extraordinary. They are so spontaneously helpful. We are looking at the Civil War display at around 11.50am when one of the attendants climbs the stairs to tell us that the cannon will be fired on the battlements at noon if we would care to watch. At the same time she makes a special point of warning us that the explosion is LOUD.

  When we reach the site there are warning notices all round the battlements to the same effect. We wait behind a rope barrier with lots of other people. First comes the sound of bagpipes through a loudspeaker, then a very thin Redcoat and a rather portly Redcoat march to the cannon. The portly one rams the explosive down the barrel while the thin one puts a brass telescope to one eye and stares at the church clock down in the town, waiting for noon.

  I look around the castle walls and observe the warning signs. I had misread them yesterday. Because of my own inexperience I had accepted the couple on the Westerley at face value. Yet no-one with any skills, not to mention a basic concern for somebody else’s boat and personal safety, would have cast off in such an irresponsible way. They were as phony as the absurd little man in the blazer, and a day trip from England’s south coast to Guernsey is probably as far as they ever venture. And when we do reach Tréguier, even their pronunciation of its name turns out to have been wrong.

  In any other circumstance but sailing I should have recognized their self-aggrandizement for what it was, but our sailing has nearly all been done in the Irish Sea. And while its conditions may be challenging, it is sparsely populated and largely marina-free. I need to be more alert to human hazards. In future I shall take better notice of the signs.

  An elderly woman beside me aims her camera at Castle Cornet’s cannon. I’ve already taken my picture so as to leave my fingers free for my ears. ‘It’s very loud,’ I say to her. She presses her lips together and smiles in that grim sort of way you do to people stating the obvious. At noon precisely, the plump redcoat lights the fuse and, fingers in ears, David and I are ready for the bang. It is LOUD.

  The elderly woman at my elbow is so shocked she never does take a picture. Her camera falls to the length of its strap around her neck and she just stands there with her eyes glazed and her hands still raised at the level they had been when they held her camera. Almost everybody seems to have ignored the warning notices, so the soldiers march away to stunned silence instead of applause, as people stand around blinking and waiting for their ears to stop ringing.

  After Castle Cornet we go off to stock up the food cupboard, to a pharmacy for recommended anti-mosquito remedies I had failed to get at home, and for another half a pint in the Ship and Crown. Back on board I change into a swimsuit and begin to get lunch.

  ‘David stares at me. ‘How did you get all those bruises?’

  They are worst on my upper arms and thighs. Several of them are whoppers in various shades of purple.

  ‘Walked into a door,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that what I’m supposed to tell people?’

  Actually, it is not far from the truth. Three of them relate to various door handles, one to the temperature adjustment knob on the refrigerator, and the piéce de résistance – a real corker on my upper thigh – to the corner of the saloon table.

  When you first go on board your boat after a long period you are out of the habit of both its movement and confinement. The result is bruises. The strange thing is, you are not aware of acquiring most of them; you just get up next morning and there’s another bit of you turning purple. After a while, you simply get accustomed to not making expansive gestures in a confined space, and automatically adjust your balance in advance of any approaching wash. I had started every sailing season with bruises, but had rarely been on board this long before to gather so many; or found it warm enough in the Irish Sea to wear a swimsuit and flaunt them.

  9

  St Peter Port to Mouillier Bay

  Our next port-of-call is Tréguier on France’s Brittany coast and, as with any place you’ve not sailed before, a vital source of information is yachting magazines. A first-person account can be invaluable for discovering the hidden pleasures of a place whilst avoiding its pitfalls. A recently-published article had stressed the need to enter Tréguier’s marina on slack tide because a 5-knot current rushes through on the ebb and the flood, which makes tying up very difficult.

  To be sure of arriving at the marina at slack water we need to leave Guernsey marina around midnight. More boats will probably be arriving soon to replace our two neighbours from this morning. Faced with the problems of getting off the pontoon in the dark, from the inside of a three-boat raft-up, David suggests we go somewhere and anchor until after midnight, and set off for Tréguier from there.

  We leave the pontoon at 2pm for Mouillier Bay. The chart warns of a large rock in the centre of it, while its shore is strewn with them. There are also a lot of fishing buoys bobbing on its surface. A cruiser’s natural enemies are fishermen.

  Although Voyager has no leaks David has apparently been mulling over possible damage ever since our encounter with rocks in Braye Harbour, so once we are anchored he goes over the side with a snorkel and mask. He surfaces to say that there is only a long thin gouge along the port keel boot. Keel boots are there to protect the bottom of the keel, and it can easily be repaired when Voyager is next out of the water. It is the very least we could have hoped for, and he feels much happier. It is a bumpy anchorage, though being a catamaran we don’t roll too badly. The mast of a nearby monohull, however, thrashes like a sapling in a storm. We tidy the boat, have dinner and get out the hurricane lamp.

  An anchored boat is required to show a light after dark to warn others of its presence, but many cruisers choose to save vital battery power by using a paraffin lamp. We fill ours, light it and hang it up on the foredeck. We go to bed at 8.30pm totally exhausted,
but sleep little given the turbulence. The skipper of the monohull abandons the anchorage during the night.

  We rise for the shipping forecast at forty-eight minutes past midnight and set off shortly afterwards. The forecast is for a moderate breeze from the southwest, possibly strengthening to Force 5. If it occurs, it will give us a sail. For the moment there is only the lightest of breezes and the sea is still very bumpy. The previous afternoon David had taken a compass bearing by which to leave the anchorage safely if the night was overcast. Apart from missing the rock in the middle, and the fishing buoys just waiting to wrap their ropes around our propellers, it would also make sure we kept away from the bay’s rocky edges, since it is easy to stray when you pull up an anchor in the dark.

  As it turns out, a clear sky allows a bright half-moon to shed its silver light around us. Unfortunately, half way through raising the anchor the chain jams in the windlass and David has to haul up the rest of it by hand. While I steer out of the bay, David takes a spanner to the windlass. Thus we set off tentatively for France. I look for signs of rain. In the past it always rained whenever we went to France.

  FRANCE

  10

  Guernsey to Tréguier

  The voyage to Tréguier is only the second night passage we have ever done alone. The first had been several years ago and forced on us when a gale kept us overlong on the Irish coast and we had to sail through the night to get back in time for work on Monday morning. Our only other experience of night passages was bringing Voyager back to England with Ian. He favoured three-hour watches and we plan to do the same.