Dolphins Under My Bed

by Sandra Clayton

  A guillemot hovers by our port hull, then dives under it and emerges with its breakfast wriggling in its beak. Out in the town a fishy treat awaits us, too. An anonymous metal shutter, lowered yesterday, is raised today revealing a pristine wet fish shop. There is no need to make the long hike to the supermarket. I buy fresh cod and prawns to take with us, and salmon for dinner tonight.

  I have never before been to a place so completely dominated by a foreign nationality. This is doubtless how other nations feel about going to parts of Tuscany or Provence and finding that nearly everybody there is English. Porto Cristo’s harbour and lower town, meanwhile, is full of Germans. This wouldn’t matter if they didn’t keep you awake all night, or insist on walking three-abreast along narrow streets and expecting you to leap into the traffic to get out of their way. Even the Spanish woman in the baker’s greets me in German. I fear I am a little short with her.

  Nevertheless, we relish her soft-centered, crusty bread with hard Spanish cheeses and salad for lunch, followed by the Sharon fruit that we bought from the over-ripe supermarket yesterday. They have split since being washed and we scoop the flesh from their skins with a spoon. It’s like apricot jam, sweet but not sickly and utterly delicious. We will buy them again, in other places at other times, but they never taste as good as these.

  It is another very hot day. David does not seem to feel the heat like I do and after lunch is happily working at the bench in the workshop. I feel exhausted. He needs some screws to finish what he is doing and is about to set off into town to find some. Just the thought of being out in the white-hot glare of mid-afternoon makes me wilt.

  ‘Just sit in the shade and have a rest,’ he says. ‘Put your feet up. We’re retired now. You don’t have to do anything.’ I sink back onto the cockpit cushions. No sooner has he gone, however, than the gangplank begins to graunch and groan with every rise and fall of the boat. I get up and go to the bow. Oddly it isn’t the plank scraping on the dock, as I’d expected, but the rope around the cleat on our bow. It is soon so loud that I begin grinding my teeth and the customers at the restaurant opposite all have pained expressions. I try retying the rope but that makes no difference. Then I tie on a second rope, to spread the pressure on the cleat. That stops it until I get back to my seat, when the noise immediately starts again. I go back and tie more rope around the original one, to inhibit the friction.

  A middle-aged woman with a large fishing rod appears and points to our stern. She tries hard to engage me in an arrangement, but finally resigns herself to my failure to understand what she wants and goes away. I know very well what she wants – to fish off our stern. Every Spaniard is an angler, and every angler will do anything to get an extra forty feet out over the water. Had I relented, in half an hour the stern would have been full of them. What with anglers at the back, and a perpetual photo shoot at the front, I’d get more peace on the centre strip of a motorway.

  There is a telephone call from the estate agent. The purchaser has halved our moderate valuation of the carpets. Take it or leave it. Letters are being exchanged. The rope begins graunching again. Desperate, I try a damp floor cloth between the rope and the cleat. As I form it into a garrotte I think about our purchaser’s neck. The estate agent had also said England is experiencing severe gales and flooding. It will at least be a relief to sell the house before the winter really sets in. I suppose.

  There is no reduction in the noise from the rope. I am becoming demented. The restaurant opposite has emptied. Its proprietor leans expressively on his door frame, arms folded, watching me and sucking his teeth. I have a brainwave. Haul up the gangplank; relieve the pressure on the rope completely! Why has it taken me so long to think of this? I have just sat back down thankfully in the shade when I hear David calling my name. He cannot get on board until I lower the plank for him. I get up and go to the bow again. ‘Did you manage to get a bit of a rest?’ he says.

  At sundown there are hundreds of garden birds in the trees on the quay and the smell of roses is headier than ever after the heat of the day. I’ve just put salmon julienne on the cockpit table when a boat bearing six young Germans motors past. Finding no space available further up the quay, they reverse and begin to squeeze in between us and another German boat. This leaves only three inches between their gunwales and ours. We move fenders to accommodate them, give them one of our lazy lines – we are currently using two to try and keep Voyager straight – go and scrub our hands and return to our dinner. People invariably arrive just as you sit down to a meal.

  We have a home-recorded video for our evening’s entertainment. We didn’t choose it specifically. Our movie collection still resides in large plastic storage boxes at the back of the big saloon locker, which was where David stowed them when he loaded the boat at Emsworth ready for our departure at around the time he did in his back. The boxes are unmovable, so you just reach in at arm’s length and rootle around until your fingers prize out something you haven’t watched lately. Like most of our home recordings it has a short on it, usually a half-hour comedy programme, to fill up the spare tape left by the film. This one has on it a half-hour episode of Dad’s Army, the popular TV series poking gentle fun at British character traits via the members of a Home Guard platoon on the south coast of England during World War II. With our six new German neighbours sitting on their deck only inches away, however, we both leap for the volume button as its signature tune – Flanagan and Allen’s Who do you think you are kidding, Mr Hitler? – booms out. So much for not mentioning the war. Fortunately our neighbours have gone out for the evening by the time the main feature, the classic film, Cabaret set in 1930s Berlin, gets underway, so they miss the Horst Wessel song.

  ‘I bet they’ll return at 2am and sit on deck talking for the rest of the night,’ I grumble as we prepare for sleep. Whatever time they do return, we do not hear them.

  48

  Mallorca: Porto Cristo to Ratjada

  We leave Porto Cristo after lunch. Despite the wind rising momentarily, just as David reverses, we make a tolerable exit. Better than our arrival, anyway. We motor the thirteen-and-a-half miles to Ratjada and arrive around 3.15 in the afternooon. The wind is mostly 5 knots until shortly before our arrival, when it rises briefly to sixteen. We tie up port-side on to the visitors’ quay facing out to sea. The barometric pressure has dropped seven points since this morning and, because the stretch of water between Mallorca and Menorca is known for its high winds, we must get a forecast before we set out tomorrow.

  A lone Frenchman, with a beard and ponytail, arrives in a small sloop and circles. The wind rises again, just as he approaches, and blows him off the quay.

  ‘You help me?’ he calls, pointing to a spot behind our stern. ‘I come in here’. We run to grab the light little sloop’s rails before its topsides can collide with the concrete as he drives it hard at the dock to compensate for the wind. It is difficult for single-handed sailors sometimes, and this one is nervy and fretful. We hold onto his boat until he has enough ropes tied to be secure and then leave him to himself. He ties and reties his shore lines and springs a number of times but still does not seem entirely happy with them.

  While I set-to in the galley a couple of jet skiers emerge from the marina and roar up and down alongside us. Then they spin in tight circles and perform a few aerobatics. Their wash sends Voyager and the little French sloop crashing against the quay, the twenty foot-high jets of seawater shooting up from behind their seats splatters in through our open hatches and their exhausts fill the air with evil fumes. As I grip the edges of the sink to keep my balance, I can see through the galley window that they look extremely pleased with themselves, gazing about to see if anybody aboard the two moored yachts is admiring them. Jet skiers would be despised less if they sought somewhere more challenging than a visitors’ dock and its captive audience to go through their paces. When they’ve finished their display, they throttle back and make a decorous return into the marina at the speed of rowing boats. Yet surprisingly, when
other water users shout obscenities at them, jet skiers always look surprised and hurt.

  With the jet skiers’ wash still receding I observe a kindred spirit through my galley window. A cormorant on the ramp opposite has spread its wings to dry its flight feathers and stands there in a state of tranquillity until one of a pair of nearby seagulls takes an unprovoked lunge at it. With a look of almost human resignation, the cormorant leaves the ramp and flaps off to settle onto an adjacent rock jutting just above the water. The rock is only just big enough for one pair of webbed feet to balance on it and, offering its laundry up to the breeze again, the cormorant glares resentfully at the gulls.

  We have an early dinner of succulent thick cod and large tender prawns with fresh crusty bread, tomato in olive oil and basil and a green salad, followed by an apple Danish bought this morning at Porto Cristo’s bakery. On our way out of the harbour for a walk around the town we stop to look in at the marina’s window but the forecast there is two days old. As it is now Saturday evening there is little chance of there being an up-to-date one tomorrow morning.

  Ratjada turns out to be quite a large town. In a small square a scene for a movie is being filmed by a German film crew which somebody says is starring TV actors. The director, in a little motorized cart, looks grey-faced and anguished, while the boom operator leaning over the set looks as if he suffers with back problems. When they get to a wrap, the Director says, ‘Thank you’ in English.

  Back on board I smoke a cigarette on deck before bed, and observe the French boat at our stern. With every movement from passing vessels it ducks and dives, leaps, plunges and chafes at its ropes. Rather like its anxious owner. And I wonder if yachtsmen become like their boats, as dog owners are said to resemble their pets. If so, David and I are likely to end up broad in the beam and bandy-legged.

  49

  Mallorca to Menorca

  It is 8 o’clock on the morning of November 1. All Saints Day. Spanish clocks went back overnight. David sets off into Ratjada in search of an English Sunday newspaper and a weather forecast. He returns empty-handed. The news stands are closed and neither the marina nor the yacht club has a current weather forecast on display. David makes another sortie at nine.

  While he is gone a young officer of the Guardia Civil appears on the end of the quay. I go and ask him if he has a forecast for the day. He is very pleasant and does his best to help. ‘Probably like yesterday,’ he says. David returns from the town with a newspaper this time, but still no forecast. On his way past the French boat, however, he finds its skipper hunched over his SSB radio listening to the French forecast. He is having great difficulty hearing it but finally straightens up with a triumphant, ‘West 3–4!’ It is currently Variable 1 and the only hazard of the day turns out to be the fishing buoys off Ratjada’s harbour mouth. An upturned wooden crate with a twig stuck in it may be a cheap option for local fishermen, but it is almost impossible to see with the glare of a low, bright sun behind it.

  Once clear of the crates, and of Mallorca, David sets a course for the south-east tip of Menorca and turns on the autopilot. The Windy Isle attracts only light and variable winds all day and we have a sunny motor there with the current behind us. As we approach the island our autopilot stops working, which is at least a change from the GPS packing up.

  Menorca is the second-largest of the Balearic Islands and the most easterly. A mere 26 miles by eleven, its strategic position in the western Mediterranean means it has been coveted as a naval base by maritime nations since the Phoenicians. By mid-afternoon we have entered the long, narrow, beautiful bay which leads up to its capital, Mahon. Between 1708 and 1802 the island changed hands six times and each time the prize was the port of Mahon.

  As you sail up to it you can see why: deep water for a fleet of warships, surrounded by hills offering protection from bad weather and an easily defended entrance. For us it is a voyage through part of British naval history since many of the fortifications lining the north shore date from Britain’s occupation in the 18th century.

  Near the far end of the bay is Isla Pinta, an island joined to the north shore by an isthmus and the most prominent part of the naval base. It is a complete surprise. The words naval base conjure up barracks and an industrial environment: cranes, workshops and fuel dumps. The last thing you expect is long, low white-walled buildings with terracotta roofs set in immaculate lawns with a white stone balustrade around the water’s edge. More like a Governor’s residence really.

  Just before you reach the naval base you come to the first of two floating ‘islands’, in reality large square wooden pontoons attached to the seabed to which around 20 boats can tie up using lazy lines. One is completely full while the other has only a single yacht tied up to it. A young French Rastafarian emerges from this boat and comes over to help us tie up, for which we are very grateful. He has colonized one end of the pontoon with diving gear and other equipment which, when he goes ashore shortly afterwards in his dinghy, he leaves in the care of a very large German Shepherd. We are getting low on water but do not attempt to attach our hose to the water tap as it is alongside the dog’s bowl. We decide to wait until the young man comes back.

  At sunset, from somewhere unseen on the naval base, The Last Post echoes softly into a feathery red-gold sky. The afterglow of the sun’s dying rays warms and deepens all the colours of the water front. The pretty white houses scattered along the lush green hillside, and their white steps meandering down to the water’s edge, all turn a soft pink.

  Menorca

  50

  Mahon

  Monday dawns fine and bright. After breakfast the French Rasta begins preparing his boat in readiness to leave by filling a large number of water containers. He has no English and I have little French but we manage. He is off to Gibraltar. I was very grateful for his assistance in coping with the lazy line yesterday so although he seems very self-sufficient, as solo sailors usually are, I risk asking if he needs any help.

  ‘Meteorlogica?’ he asks, without much hope of one. We actually have a forecast for today, off Monaco Radio. I tell him Easterly 4 to 5, which pleases him. It should do. Had he been contemplating the opposite direction, towards Corsica, he could have expected Force 9 or 10.

  The French boat is soon replaced by an English one. The couple aboard have been here before and warn us that the lazy lines on this pontoon are unreliable, which explains why the other pontoon is so popular. They lift what they judge to be a sound one and we help them tie up. I am delighted to find someone even worse with mooring ropes than me. She says her husband is planning to write a book called Single-Handed Sailing with Your Wife. Despite their best efforts in selecting a lazy line, in no time their boat is at a crooked angle to the pontoon. Then our port bow starts bumping against it, too.

  We adjust our own lazy line and with their offer to protect Voyager from mangling her bows in our absence, we set off in the dinghy for a look around the bay. As well as providing a secure environment to leave our boat, Mahon looks like a very pleasant place to come back to for our coveted warm dry Christmas. I have already begun working out how to cook a traditional Christmas dinner with all the trimmings in an oven a quarter the size of the one at home. All we need now is a safe berth.

  Our first stop is the other floating island. In terms of security it is ideal, since as well as being offshore it has all these other yachtsmen dug in for the winter. And their pontoon has reliable lazy lines. However, it is full to capacity and no-one is planning to leave. They have obviously established a community here if the camaraderie and the small Scandinavian paddling pool in the middle is anything to go by.

  From there we go to have a look at the marina down the far end of the bay, but it is virtually empty and there is no security. The moorings on the town quay are exposed too. In both places anyone so disposed could simply step onto your boat and there is no-one to notice. Then, on a walk down the quay we see a T-shaped pontoon behind a locked gate. A notice on the gate gives the address of an office fur
ther along the street where its manager, an Englishman called Joss, offers us winter rates we cannot refuse. He and his family have been resident in Mahon for some time and have recently bought a house here.

  Joss is a man of infinite patience, good humour and useful information. He apologizes for the fact that, because of necessary repairs to a damaged stretch of pontoon, we shall have to go on the inside of the T and it will be a tight fit. It is. And naturally, by the time we get Voyager over there, the wind is gusting 15 knots. It is also a long jump down from the bows onto the pontoon, where I tie up and fend off while David takes care of the lazy line but, since there is no-one around to see, we manage rather well. There are a handful of other boats but none is occupied. We are to have this little stretch of Paradise all to ourselves.

  Our companionway doors and cockpit open onto a terrace of five three-storey houses – two white, three cream and pale apricot – with terracotta roofs, green shutters and white chimney pots. They are domestic above, with casement windows opening onto small balconies, and garages or businesses below. One is a restaurant, with a dark timber interior and blue and white check table linen. Another sells locally-caught shellfish, including large lobsters. Behind them is a high, sheer cliff with a palatial white building and palm trees on the top.

  Outside the houses the leaves on the sycamore trees lining the pavement are turning yellow. A few brown ones lie crackling in the street. A narrow two-lane road runs between the houses and the water. A low wall prevents its traffic from encroaching on the water-front and at the same time creates a protected, narrow promenade. Directly opposite us, on the other side of the water, are the long low white buildings and manicured lawns of the naval base. To the left of them are three long docks for warships, although the only resident is a 225ft Patrol Boat. We can identify it precisely thanks to that copy of Jane’s Fighting Ships we bought in Gibraltar.