The Crossing.

Before

After

I have decided that forever more the Bay of Biscay shall be known to me, in the privacy of my own mind, as the Bay of Bilescay. This gentle nickname will remind me of the flavour of each crossing of it I have undertaken by sailing boat.

But more of that later…

Tis a still night, and the air is thick with fog. The deathly quiet is broken only by the screech of a night owl, the pregnant howl of a foghorn, the thud of driftwood against the hull. Day breaks and it is white with fog. Drake island is occasionally visible from our anchorage in Barn Pool, as are the hulking battleships appearing, then disappearing, appearing, then disappearing, like a poorly spliced black and white film, as they traverse Plymouth Sound out to sea.

We are still without a sail and Dutch Mark and I amuse ourselves by creating various excursions. We visit the Royal William yard, built by French prisoners of war, and used as a provisioning post for the British Navy. It is a deeply handsome site of gigantean scale. This is enhanced for us by the fact that we arrive in Melvin, our put-puttering and temperamental little dinghy. We crane our heads back to see the yard’s dock wall rising above us, atop which huge kleats stand planted, the size of a fat mans torso.

Royal William Yard and the fog beyond

The excursions are also diversions from the misery of the sail situation. The sail was ready, then didn’t fit, to the point where it made the boom clunk dangerously on the frame of the bimini (sun cover). The sailmakers took it back but then there was the weekend and then there was a wedding and we were still waiting. This all seems trivial now but back then it felt like our world revolved entirely around that sail and it being fit for purpose.

At last we hear word that the sail is properly, finally and definitely finished (and will fit). Our final excursion/diversion is an all you can eat carvery at Mount Edgecombe. I comment to Mark that, if we leave tomorrow, this will be his last meal on a flat plate for some time. He laughs and I think he thinks I am joking. Just you wait…

Tomorrow dawns and brings us not only relief from the fog but also the Northerly wind that we have been promised and that will take us South. The sail is delivered and fits! We jubilate by eating fish pie for lunch and filling our tanks with water before setting off on a perfect breeze, flat sea and a perfect course for Cap Finistere, the North Western corner of Spain.

The new sail! Well done Ullman!

(Note: landies ignore this paragraph). We begin goosewinging the main and headsail, then progress to an asymmetric kite alone which we carry until sundown and a mildly frightening close encounter with an uncooperative freighter. We set the main and headsail, progressively reducing sail as the night deepens until, by the time I come on watch at midnight, the headsail is partly furled and the main carries two reefs. Over the course of the next two hours the sea state turns into a nasty, sizeable chop and the wind increases, gusting to thirty-two knots. We are doing well at 9 knots but alarmingly are heading fast in the direction of a set of lights: two white some distance apart, the furthest to starboard carrying a red light underneath. This indicates a large ship fifty metres plus going from right to left but it appears to be stationary which I just can’t understand. I decide to take avoiding action at all cost and bear off the wind to pass in behind it. I am about to reef down a notch when I am suddenly overcome by an overpowering urge to vomit. I am hand steering and cannot simultaneously helm and reach the bucket, which has travelled to the furthest corner of the cockpit floor. I decide the boat can steer herself and launch myself bucket-ward. With my free hand I knock on the hull to call Casper up for assistance. Together we reef the mainsail down two notches and I retire to the pod.

When I wake up it is coming light and Mark and Casper are both on deck. The sea is larger still and the wind still strong. Water is coming over the deck. I feel terrible but resolutely sit out on deck in the hope that the sea air will ‘do me good’. Several hours later I am worse, freezing cold and listless. I want to go inside to get warm but know that this will surely make my sickness worse. Casper informs us that we are 80 miles from Brest and if we change course we could be there in 10 hours. We steer the new course but the motion of the boat (now at a more acute angle to the wave) is so uncomfortable that we shut the sea door on that option. I also know that for me it is best to sit out the seasickness rather than stop and start. Casper understandably is fearful that the weather conditions, already worse than those forecast, may get worse still. He and Mark prepare for gale force conditions: the storm jib is standing by, lashed to the inner forestay, and the sea anchor lies in the gunnel still wet from its earlier sea trial off Eddystone.

Casper and Mark test the sea anchor

With 300 miles still to go to Finesterre, I resolve to sit in the most sheltered part of the cockpit, facing aft, my head supported in my hands, my bucket close by. I drift off to sleep but am soon awake. A slamming fist of water strikes my right shoulder and sends me down, falling heavily on the rapidly flooding cockpit floor. Now sick, cold, wet and assaulted by the sea I gather myself together. I cannot unclip my own lifeline as my fingers have become useless with cold. Casper unleashes me and I stumble to the relative sanctuary of my cabin.

The sea

My holy trinity become my stomach, my bucket and my bottle of water. I eat nothing, I barely drink, sleep it hard to catch. At first I am overwhelmed by the violent motion of the boat. My cabin is on the weatherside of the boat and receives the full force of the sea slamming into it like a press. When the boat is not being slammed she is riding the waves. Climbing up one face of a hillock of water, skating laterally across the top of it before falling off the other side. In the haze of my sickness I am convinced that we are going to capsize. A festering worry develops in me like rot. A series of what if scenarios play in my mind. What if Casper and Mark are swept off the boat and I am the only one left? I try to picture the boat in a state of capsize and guesstimate the amount of time it would take for it to fill with water. I work out which hatch would be the best to escape by and decide to sleep fully clothed in case I have to escape quickly. I try to imagine how easy it would be to swim out with oilskins and safety gear on. And so it goes on.

I am only relieved when Casper appears round the hatch, his face alive with colour and the sea. He does this periodically: once with breadsticks, once with the promise of kinder weather, once with his “catch of the day”, a smart little black and silver suited Marlin the size of a dinner fork. Casper is my seafaring hero.

I must have slept because I wake up and the sun has a fat, warm hand on my cheek. I squint out of the hatch and am shocked because I have absolutely no idea what time it is or even what day it is. The motion of the boat seems slightly less violent although I wonder if this change is in the weather or in me. I feel human at least. I try to work out, with a very fuzzy brain, how long I have been down. I remember seeing a dirty orange smudge of light on the top of a wave against a payne’s grey sky. I thought it was a ship at first but then watched it rise into a tangerine segment of moon. I remember a glowing globe of fire kiss the horizon, against a sky the delicate colour of lacy blue hydrangea. Not so long ago I remember the sky a cheap peachy pink like Angel’s Delight. I deduce that I have been here two nights.

I make a detailed plan to wobble to the basin and clean my teeth. It takes me an hour or so to execute it. I then make another equally meticulous plan to lurch at my oilskins and scramble them on along with my boots and safety gear. Several hours later I am fully kitted up and on deck, much to Mark’s astonishment. I am slumped on the cockpit floor however pouring with sweat fighting the urge to feed the fish. I literally develop a dialogue with my stomach and after twenty minutes or so of stern talking I am beginning to be able to take interest in my surroundings. No surprises, they are the sea, the sea and the sea.

The sea again

I feel slowly better and better and take over the helm from Casper. My surroundings widen to include the sails, the precise direction of the wave and the fearlessly calculated flying displays of the seabirds. I am actually enjoying things now and when Mark joins me on deck we just grin at eachother and revel in the wonder of being hundreds of miles from land. I spot a small pod of dolphins far out jumping a picture perfect jump like some seaside memento.

Later that day, by now Saturday, three days after our departure from Plymouth, the wind finally eases. If ever there were greater proof that whilst we cannot be indifferent to nature, nature is completely indifferent to us, it is this: having suffered three days of near gale conditions we arrive ten miles off the Spanish coast and the wind drops completely. We are by now running on a very tight schedule if we are to arrive by daylight (preferable with any new landfall but particularly here as there are numerous hazards flanking the coast). We are forced to run the engines and accept that darkness will fall before we arrive in port. The first sight of land eludes us for longer than we expect and we realise that a thick, fat fog envelopes it. From the sublime to the ridiculous, first far too much wind then none at all, and now fog.

We are headed for Camarinas as passing Cabo Finisterre in these conditions with night falling would be plain stupid. Predictably, once we round Cabo Villano and enter the Ria de Camarinas we become disorientated by the different lights now visible. We are looking for a flashing white on port and starboard and a red straight ahead. It sounds simple enough but the fog muddles the distances and once the lights of two towns become clear we are dazed and confused. I furiously plot our GPS position, Casper slows the engine down and Mark stands at the bows eyes peeled for any new information. And suddenly as if by magic, it all falls into place. We spot the red flashing light at the end of the Camarinas breakwater, behind which we will make landfall.

All is good and then the engine fails.

Luckily there is zero wind and a very slight tide so we drift whilst we switch to the other engine. We proceed past the breakwater to the Club Nautico, trying to hail them on the VHF. Nobody replies. Deciding to help ourselves to a berth and sort out the details in the morning, we cautiously motor towards the pontoons. I can taste the calamari fritos already.

All good and then the other engine fails.

Fortunately we had set the anchor out already in case the marina was full so I fling is out on a short leash as we are only an alarming 10 metres from a large expensive looking monohull. Casper tries to coax the engine back to life and she revives for a short while before dying again. We repeat this several times until we spot the owners of the said expensive monohull returning home after supper out (it is now about eleven o’clock). I establish that they are French as ask permission to raft up alongside their steel hull. Mark and I set the boat up with fenders and lines. I jump in Melvin the dinghy and take the fore and aft lines with me to the French boat where Monsieur is manning the bows and Madame is at the stern. Casper pulls up the anchor and the gentil French couple pull us round, our port to their starboard.

After profuse thanks, we eat and thank the gods that the engines did not choose to fail further out, forcing us to anchor in both water too deep and solid fog. Perhaps the universe is not so indifferent to us after all?

It was also immensely lucky that the night was so benign because, as I am writing this, Impulse is riding up against the French boat, chomping at her bowline, fenders squeeling as she is squeezed up by twenty five knots of wind and a nasty chop.

Washing, drying....

...and fixing in Camarinas

We are committed to stay in Camarinas a tad longer as the winds are far too great out there and we have had our fair share recently. It is a sweet port, busy with fishing trade and apparently famous for its lacemaking (although we have seen none of this yet). In fact we have not done any adventuring here as we have spent our time straightening the boat out: drying, washing, fixing. Oh and eating and drinking like there is no tomorrow, as they say in Spain “que bueno, no?!”

The Ria Camarinas before the day gets going