At the ramp a young man, noticing us about to embark, comes across and holds the dinghy for us to get in; for which we thank him very much. As we push off I express my regret to David that, given the kind of courtesy we consistently receive here, Spain should receive so much that is less than the best of British. Last week a newspaper reported that the Vice Consul in Ibiza had resigned ‘because of the depravity’ that young British tourists wreak on the island, not to mention fifty drug-related deaths a year. But as David points out, before national guilt can completely overwhelm me, the holiday resorts do advertise for them. Not comforted by this thought, I accidentally turn the air release knob on the outboard engine the wrong way, it jams, and the engine won’t start. David has to row us back to Voyager and spends the next half hour releasing and repairing the spring which operates it.
As we dine in the cockpit that evening two Optimists wobble out onto an almost windless sea.
‘Look,’ I say. ‘Little Angelas.’
Wherever there is water there will usually be Optimists (variously and affectionately known as Oppies or Optis), the little dinghy with a single sail in which young children around the world learn to become sailors. Because of the shape of the sail, and the gentle airs they tend to go out in, at a distance they look like a flock of butterflies resting on the surface of the water with their folded wings quivering. In the shelter of harbours, Oppie sailors – a surprising number of whom are girls – practice capsize drill.
Our earliest encounter with them was during our first trip to Ireland. One chilly afternoon, a short distance from our stern, the class instructor told the group to capsize its boats. His small pupils looked down into the cold, diesel-dappled water and hesitated. The instructor, desperate to motivate his class under the very windows of the yacht club that employed him, called out, ‘Come on, Angela!’
The bold eight-year-old rose to the challenge and began hauling with all her strength to pull the resisting little boat over onto its side. As it passed its point of no return and she began her slow slide into the uninviting water she cried out triumphantly, ‘Wheeee! I’m going!’ to the cheers of her fellows.
‘Well done, Angela!’ cried the instructor, watching with relief as all the other Oppie sailors threw themselves into the water after her.
David and I had adopted Angela and the Oppies into our personal folklore. If the Oppies were out it meant conditions were mild and the auguries good. Angela herself became a symbol of optimism and that liberating sense of all things being possible. Even years later, at moments of petulance when I stand stiff and resistant to the unthinkable task before me, David will call out briskly, ‘Come on, Angela!’
It is so still, lying off the sleepy shore of Ares, and yet the sea roars at the beach behind us as if six-foot breakers were crashing onto it. It remains overcast, but warm.
Without television or newspapers you rediscover books, chess, backgammon, card games, conversation and, when reception is good, BBC radio. Tonight David wins a game of Scrabble. This I perceive as a betrayal. While I expect him to beat me at chess, Scrabble is mine.
The night is as still as the evening had been, but it also becomes rather humid. I opt to sleep in the other hull and wake around 2.30am, steaming. I also become aware of a dull, regular thud. Behind the headland I can see an intermittent flash followed by a dull bang. I wonder if it is heat lightening but the flash seems too contained. I get up for a glass of water from the galley.
In a boat, getting water from a storage tank to a tap requires a pump of some kind. Ours is electric and my glass of water seems to cause an unseemly racket in the silence. After the cold water hits my stomach I set off for the heads. The loo pump sounds horrendously loud with someone sleeping, and the washbasin tap provides a rattat-tatting reprise of the one at the galley sink. I think: why don’t I tap-dance in wooden clogs in the cockpit over David’s head and really wake him up.
‘Heard you get up,’ he says some hours later when he brings me breakfast in bed. I mention my damp problem during the night and ask if he’d experienced the same.
‘Skippers don’t suffer that sort of thing,’ he says. ‘Only other ranks.’
Voyager is brown this morning. It is a constant source of wonder to us how she gets so dirty in such out-of-the-way places.
21
Ares to Laxe
We leave Ares on a collision course with a late-rising seagull. It is too languid to fly away. It simply paddles out from under our bows and down our starboard side towards a fishing boat where it waits patiently for its breakfast.
The sea is still. There is no wind. It is overcast and humid. Beyond the beach and around the headland there is a huge quarry, so what I heard and saw in the night may have been blasting. There are also a lot of tall chimneys heaving out noxious-looking smoke. This probably explains why our boat is brown this morning.
We are visited by dolphins. At first it is just odd splashes on the starboard beam that do not quite belong to the natural wave patterns. Then the fins appear above the water. And when we are leaning over the side rail they arc up out of the water in twos and threes so fast that while you are still trying to glimpse their faces their dorsal fins are already going back down into the water.
A fellow-comedian once joked that the late Sammy Davis Jr was such a consummate performer that when he went to the kitchen for a midnight snack, and the refrigerator light hit him, he would be into the second half of his act before he remembered about the sandwich. Dolphins are like that. Provide an audience and they will go into their act. Their performance space of choice is in your bow wave, so to get the best of both worlds they have to lure you onto the foredeck. First they attract your attention by arriving beside your cockpit where you can see them. Then, when you are on your feet, they leap forward so that you have to climb out onto the side deck if you want to go on watching them. When they’ve finally got you hanging over the bow rail, looking down onto them between the two hulls, then they put on a show. There are seven of them below us this morning.
Everyone is familiar with the dolphin’s extraordinary communications system, but it still takes your breath away to see them crisscross above and below one another at high speed while at the same time maintaining only an inch or two of clear water ahead of your moving hulls. They do not so much avoid the sharp edge of a bow as compete with it, individually and en masse. They are the ultimate in synchronized swimming. Their enjoyment is tangible. When they leave, it’s as if a cloud has temporarily covered the sun.
We have sail out for a while but, despite a forecast for a gentle breeze from the southeast rising to Force 6, the wind dies away completely and we haul everything in. Then it rises to 13 knots from the south-south-west so the main and genoa go out again. It falls away and the genoa comes in again; then out again, like washing on a wet Monday and then it settles at 22 knots straight on the nose and we take everything in.
It turns into a bumpy, squally passage gusting to a near gale force 32 knots. It’s a bit squally on board, too. On his second sortie out to the foredeck to tighten the luff on the genoa, David finally kicks overboard a winch handle that I had twice asked him to move, and in between hauling sails in and out we reach an agreement that he will be slightly less focused on the immediate task and a bit more in tune with what is under his feet while we still have some possessions left. And while we are at it, there’s his habit of standing things upright on a moving boat and expecting them not to fall over. We also agree that I will try and focus on nagging less and not saying, ‘I told you so’ all the time.
By 5pm we are glad to enter Laxe (pronounced Lashay). There are a lot of small boats on buoys, and fishing boats packed tight round a corner of the sea wall. We anchor off the beach. With 32-knot gusts on the nose driving us backwards it is difficult to hold the boat in place long enough for David to drop the anchor where he wants it.
One of our transits is an ancient stone church, just above the waterline, with a square bell tower and terracotta roof. Even at s
lack tide, with the water still, the force of the wind on its surface makes a rattling sound like the kind you get when people tie polythene bags to their rigging to scare birds away.
The log shows that we have covered 700 miles since leaving Emsworth a month ago. One of our water tanks is empty again. It is a cold, wet, windy evening. We dine indoors on corned beef and fresh vegetables, served hot with butter melting on them and black pepper. David concedes two games of Scrabble. We have a restful night.
By next morning, after a night of light, intermittent rain, the dirt from up in the rigging has joined the dirt down in the cockpit. Unless it is torrential, instead of removing dirt rain simply shepherds it into corners and around fittings. It forms brown stains where you are going to want to sit in light-coloured clothing when the sun comes out again, and every rope you lift reveals a coiled serpent of fine grit just waiting to grind its way into your gelcoat. The best way to get rid of it all is lots of soapy water. With seawater incompatible with soap and one tank empty we don’t have fresh water to spare for washing the decks.
There is something eccentric about somebody washing things in the rain, but on a boat you learn to take whatever opportunities are offered. By mid-morning the downpour becomes moderate and constant so, while David spends some time with the chart and cruising guide, I go out in wellies and bright orange waterproofs with washing-up liquid and a large sponge. It is like being a child again, playing in the rain. And at the end of it the boat is clean. The sun comes out and dries it and we lunch in swimsuits at the cockpit table, on tuna and butter bean salad, in blazing sunshine. We had always assumed such erratic weather was quintessentially English. Yet wherever you go somebody will say of these sudden bursts of cold and rain in high summer, ‘This is so typically French/Spanish/ Portuguese.’ And it amazes us how often it rains on Sundays and public holidays, just like at home.
The Guardia Civil roars into the bay, hovers near the beach, ferrets about with fenders and shore lines and then shoots into the fish dock causing a mammoth wash; the only one thus far since the fishermen here are perfect gentlemen.
The forecast says possibly Gale Force 8 so we decide to leave Voyager where she is for another night and go ashore late afternoon, when the shops seem to open. In the meantime David catches up on our mail and I am lazy. Rías are such pretty, languid places and, since there are few bolt holes along the Portuguese coast, while the weather is so unsettled there is no better place to be. Two other boats come to anchor in the bay. The Englishman settles down with a fishing rod off his stern, while a couple of Swedes in a dinghy spend some time recovering a lost anchor.
We take the dinghy into the village around 4.30. Initially we go to the ramp at the fish dock, but a small boy begins untying our dinghy before we have even turned away from it. We shoo him off and retie her, but when we look back a larger boy is jumping up and down in it. Afraid that we shall return to find our dinghy either under water or floating out to sea, we take it round to a beautiful long beach of fine sand and drag it up above the waterline. Directly in front of us, above the beach, is a building. In one of its upper windows is a small sign. It says Spar. This is most unusual in Spain. They tend to put supermarkets where only the locals know where to find them and visitors would never think of looking.
Before shopping, however, we wander round the town, starting with the church that forms one of our transit points. It is very old, and locked, its dirt yard sheltered from the open sea by a high wall with funerary niches in it. The winding street leading from it into the village looks as if it hasn’t changed in centuries and is so narrow that the two facing rows of houses are joined by a small archway. At bedroom level, the houses on the sunny side of the street are festooned with laundry.
We have a beer at the Bar Mirador off the square. It is owned by a descendant of a family of photographers active from the 1870s whose pictorial history of the area covers its walls. Their pictures of the village, not least the road with the arch, look as if they might have been taken yesterday. Only the villagers’ suits – as they haul boats up the beach or enjoy local celebrations, and the formal poses that getting the right exposure with early cameras demanded – set them in the past.
A young girl with a cough is running the Spar supermarket single-handed: weighing fruit and vegetables; cutting, weighing and wrapping at the cheese and the meat counters; receiving deliveries from impatient van drivers and manning the checkout. Everybody else in the town seems to be either standing about talking, or sitting on a wall dozing. It is still siesta, after all. We buy chicken, which is yellow, and I hope this is because it is corn-fed. It smells all right which is usually a good indicator. Back on board David cuts himself boning it and I end up dismantling a locker to find a plaster.
Before leaving England I had emptied our home medicine cabinet as well as buying from the local pharmacy all those things I had been advised were necessary to be self-sufficient in isolated places. Then I had stored them in the lowest locker in the port hull, below water level, where they would remain cool.
Accordingly I pull out an emergency kit for burns, another for injections (in case one was needed where hypodermic needles were suspect), Jungle Fever drops, aspirin, homeopathic rescue drops, eye drops, cough mixture, cold cures, antiseptic dressings, bite cream, sore throat remedies, a sling and enough rolled bandages to stock a cottage hospital. But a small plaster? I finally find a box, see to my patient and then set about putting everything except the box of plasters back in the port hull locker. Cold remedies in a Continental summer seem a bit pointless, yet everywhere we go in Spain people are sneezing, so they might be needed yet.
When we had set off for distant shores I’d wondered if buying food in foreign languages would be a problem for the linguistically-challenged like us, but in Spain food shopping is made simple by the supermarket labels. They contain a picture of the main ingredients, and a can of pâté, say, will have a leaping tuna or a sedentary duck on it. A jar of spaghetti sauce will show a tomato, a red pepper and a clove of garlic; a meat sauce will include a stylized bit of steak. They may do this at home, too, but in your own country you tend to read the words rather than look at the picture. And in ours the picture is likely to be a serving suggestion which in today’s compensation culture is probably the manufacturer’s self-protection against being sued for not including the plate shown on the label as well.
At breakfast next morning, however, I discover that a picture on a product is not infallible. The carton of red grape juice I’d picked up from among the fruit drinks at Spar the previous day, and which I now serve chilled with breakfast, turns out to be rosé wine. Sipping it with his cereals, David frowns at me over the rim of his glass. ‘Starting a bit early today, aren’t we?’ he says.
The shipping forecast now threatens the possibility of Strong Gale 9. There is a danger with shipping forecasts which for a period are consistently wrong. For days you shelter from threatened gales that never come, sitting at anchor in sunny, windless conditions or – even worse – perfect sailing weather. This leads to frustration and, after a time, a tendency to say, ‘Oh, sod it! We could sit here for weeks like this. Let’s go.’ This has led to many a sea-going disaster.
For short journeys, however, the other side of the forecasting equation is to look out at the conditions around you, divide this by the estimated length of the passage to be undertaken, subtract the general difficulty of entering the new anchorage in the event that the endlessly-promised blow should finally arrive, and with all things being equal to shove off.
Our objective has been to get Voyager safely into the Med before September is out. She spent ten days longer in La Coruña than expected and now the first week of September is almost gone. Despite the seductive charms of these lovely rías, we need to push south whenever we can.
22
Laxe to Ría de Camariñas
Next morning, under a cloudy sky, we set off on the 19-mile passage to Ría de Camariñas. There is a 12-knot wind on the nose, so it is a
lumpy passage. Camariñas is a long and very beautiful ría. At the bottom of it is a sheltered little bay called Ensenada de Merejo and four hours and forty minutes after leaving Laxe we negotiate its mussel beds and anchor off its long, beautiful, pale sandy beach. In the afternoon we take the dinghy to a little cove with two small wooden fishing boats pulled up the beach above the rocks, a path leading up past a solitary house, and a lane leading to a narrow road.
An elderly, dapper man in a three-piece suit and black beret desperately wants to engage David in conversation, in Spanish, about Voyager’s twin engines. Sadly this is not possible as we don’t have the necessary Spanish words. The road into the village is heavily wooded, mainly with pine and eucalyptus. A large pine tree has recently been felled and its trunk cut and neatly stacked ready for winter fires. The smell from it is heavenly.
Although our journey to this ría had been overcast, windy and cold, its village is sunny, warm and windless. Everywhere is closed, except a couple of family bars. Apart from us there is no-one about. We have a beer in one of the bars. Its only occupants are the family matriarch all in black, the bar owner, his wife and one other customer besides ourselves. They are all very civil with greetings and farewells.
It is a quiet night, but towards morning it becomes windy and wet. The forecast is again for Strong Gale 9 but this time we stay put, for though the wind early this morning is relatively slight, it soon begins to rise and the incoming sea is wild. Enormous breakers come thundering in through the heads and crash against the eastern headland at the entrance to our bay. Gradually the surging water rushes down through the mussel beds and tumbles even our secluded little corner.
Dolphins Under My Bed Page 11