Live the Impulse

Home to Hope Cove

2010-06-30T23:45:00.000-07:00

Cold, me? what gives you that impression?

At six in the morning on the thirteenth day, the Scillies lie abeam and into wind. A North Westerly blows, just right for making passage onwards up the channel. So be it. Tribute on Tresco must wait. On we sail, Wolf Rock to port, Land's End too, familiar landmarks - the homecoming starts. We dodge fishingboats, netting their catch in the cold spring sunshine. St Austell Bay, the Lizard, Dodman point - landmarks of memories fondly recalled, our old friends. 'Remember when...?' 'The time that...' ' The place where....' So much has changed but this landscape remains - faithful to us and our memories, never disappointing. Today it is glorious in its rugged beauty. The ash coloured cliffs with bold thumprints of ochre: lichen, gorse? The colour of treasure. I drink in the succulent fields of green, the lemon-sherbert fizz of rape in rapturous bloom. So still is the cool blue sky that it appears two dimensional, the weightless cotton clouds pegged up against its flawless backdrop.

Later, we watch the sun set red behind us, on so many adventures. In the milky pink night we pass Eddystone to port just as a candy floss moon rises, full, from the sea to starboard. Gliding on between, Plymouth abeam of us where so much began, I feel that this is the moment. We are riding the finish line, ending the chapter, dotting the 'i'. The long ribbon of our wake, which has witnessed so much, has finally crossed itself and the circle is whole. We are done, it is over. Something else begins.

The rest of the night we play music in the moonshine. In the early hours we ghost into Hope Cove. A veil of heady scent envelopes us. Sour coconut, sweet almonds. The smell of gorse at its peak, the smell of Devon in Springtime: we know we are home.

Our enemy the Easterly

2010-06-30T23:42:00.000-07:00

Big seas abeam

We are just 50 miles below the latitude of the Scillies. We do not know what winds will come but we think they might be: 1) a interstitial N/NWly running behind the whopping high that is currently centred over London and preceding the next front 2) a SWly heralding the arrival of the low which is now in the middle of the North Atlantic. So eeny-meeny-miney-mo baggsie we go: Northeastabit. If our amateur predictions are correct this heading will pay off. It we are wrong and it blows from the SE I'll be posting this from Galway. From the NE and you'll be reading this next month.

Radio 4 is clear as a bell now but I'm not sure it's such a good thing because all we hear about is the blinking-beautiful-barbeque-summer-come-early. Yeah yeah I know you're at it. Well, if you can just tear yourself away for one minute, raise a toast to us why don't you, sorry to interrupt, stuck out in sea area Sole facing the only pure Easterly in the whole of the damned Atlantic. Grrrrrr. And: that high you're all enjoying appears to be on its second tour of England, once clearly not being enough, whereas we'd banked on it moving off soonish to grace Sweden or Holland or somewhere else that could do with some sunshine giving us a fighting chance of edging East. Another low now seems to have developped over Spain and is rumoured to be creeping North meaning we might get a SouthEasterly after all - Galway here we come.

Today is Sunday and an exciting one for many reasons. Firstly, thanks to the cloud-free skies of this never-ending high, we have brilliant radio reception and I listened to the Archers for the first time since Christmas. Wow, it really is riveting. Secondly, whilst reassuring myself that Tom's sausage empire did not collapse during my 6 months absence from the airways, I hear a distinctly Celtic twang emanate from the VHF. Do my ears deceive me? No no - he definately just said 'wedder furcast'. I ditch Linda and the llamas and tune in, as instructed, to channel 24. I learn that Cork is enjoying sunshine and a light Northerly breeze. Great. But then I have an idea. After rifling through the Almanac I am able to determine the identity of the caller and radio 'Valentia Coastguard' on channel 16. Amazingly someone (no doubt dressed entirely in green and with a pint of Murphy's in front of him) answers immediately and I am able to request a long term wedder furcast. Stand by, I am told, and I do. When Valentia calls back on 67 I can hear him loud as a bell, which is infinately encouraging. But - to my chagrin, each time he begins to read out the forecast for Sole the radio cuts out. We repeat this process several times before I lose contact entirely. Later (during Desert Island Discs) I think I hear Impulse being called on 16. Not Valentia Radio this time but the captain of a commercial vessel in range who has been asked to act as go-between. I relay all our boat details and patiently wait for the wedder furcast forwarded by my Irish friend. But there must have been some misunderstanding somewhere because what I am given is a 24h prediction for Sole which is what I have already. I give up! Despite my disappointment I thank the sea captain profusely for his assistance, hang the radio handset back up and return to eyeballing our dismal Southbound track.

Another gorgeous sailing day in sea area Sole - bloody marvellous (but for our errant course, still doggedly pointing SE). Looks more like soupe de poisson in Brest than a pint of Tribute on Tresco. At worst we could nip into Bilbao's Gugenheim for churros con chocolate I suppose... Do any of the forecasters really know what the weather is planning? No one seems to have the foggiest (booboom). The French, the Irish, the Brits, they all give wildly different predictions of what the key players in this meteorological drama will do next. They can't even decide where they actually are. I mean where is the centre of le fameux barbeque 'igh? The Irish: 'over Cork'. The French: 'sur Cherboug' and so on and so forth... Gripes aside, this chunk of ocean is strangely empty. I'm suprised (and relieved) that there aren't more ships, after all we are only 200 M off Land's End and the seagate to Northern Europe. We haven't seen anything for days despite being able to pick up ships loud and clear conversing with both Valentia Radio and Falmouth Coastguard. The Portuguese Men of War (those little pasty shaped balloons), having progressively diminuished in size the further North we got, have now vanished altogether. So have the strange aenenome clusters, like sugar puffs that stayed in the packet too long. Quite a few birds though. A little fluffy thing popped in for a wee while - definately not a sea bird (it looked like it belonged on a Happy Easter card). The others were mainly Northern Gannets (if I've identified them correctly: white with black speckling and wing tips, yellow headed). Quite relieved that none of these chose to stop for a rest like the sparrow did yesterday as a) they're quite large and b) I washed my hair today. That was a bracing affair and I hope will not have to be repeated before we get ashore. The sunsets have been quite spectacular of late with the sun red like a engorged bloodorange and the horizon blushing pink. We are graced by a plump and waxing moon (scandalously naked in the cloudless sky). Mornings come suprisingly early and evenings suprisingly late. Mercifully the night is now one dark watch shorter than when we started our climb North.

Today, mostly, we be headin' North. Nought to do but tack up as we've just reached Biscay's Northern boundary. Heading further SE with the current string of NElies is just not wise. At 10 degrees, our track is far from fantastic but at least we've crossed the continental shelf without issue whilst the sea is in a good mood. It's a bumpy but beautiful day. The water like jade, electric indigo nearer the horizon. There is a light, transluscent quality to it that makes it appear shallow -more like a Cornish cove than the wild Atlantic. I steal glimpses through the pod hatch, trying to limit my outings on deck in an attempt to stay warm. Recently I've resorted to stuffing a hot water bottle down the back of my oilskins to keep myself toasty but this system is under review having just sprung a leak and emptied itself down my leggings.

Blessed relief (of sorts). Finally we are heading East with the wind gone Northerly. We are almost back on the rhumb line to the Scillies. The wind has changed but also increased - a gusty 7. The waves, whilst not enormous, are solid and beat us like a drum. In a cloud of spray, my stomach lurches, as we tumble into the void behind one of these water walls.

It's now an 8 and, strangely, Impy is coping better - less slamming, a tighter track and able to maintain a steady 5 knots. Apart from that it's pretty filthy and I have spent much of the morning wondering why we do this.

The gale finally released us as night fell and the opal moon rose, full as a bud. What a day of ups and downs. We were on track for the Scillies albeit somewhat uncomfortably. Ten hours and we'd be swinging on the hook uncorking the Cava. Then the wind came round to eyeball us and we were heading back to France. Another day at least before we'll be able to dump the chain anywhere - if we stick to the Scillies we'll have to sail past then tack back on ouselves: miserable. Mustard after the meal, there is now a Westerly forecast which makes us feel like we shouldn't stop at all but simply carry on whilst the wind is favorable. But the idea of even one more day at sea right now is decidedly unattractive... How much dos a set of golf clubs cost?

Hove to with a bird on my head

2010-06-30T23:39:00.000-07:00

The unexpected guest

Believe it or not I am sitting writing this with a bird on my head. Yes, a bird - on my head. A swallow to be exact. There were three earlier (not all on my head but on the boat in general). The other two have flown off. Alarmingly the bird seems to be snacking on something in my hair which doesn't say much for my current state of personal hygiene. Indeed - a shower would be nice. And we are only 288 miles from one. A few days ago, 288 miles represented a mere hop, skip and a jump away but now, beleagued as we are by Easterlies, goodness only knows how long it will be before we can set our cold little toes in that shower tray. Yesterday we hove to on the premise that 'if we can't go where we want to go there is no point in going anywhere'. Both tacks on offer made a poke in the eye look attractive. So a hove-to-holiday it was - a chance to catch up on sleep and take stock.

One man's high is another man's low

2010-06-30T23:38:00.001-07:00

Ah! So now we know who ate all the pies! Tuning into a very scratchy Radio 4 today, I discover that the big fat high is squatting right over England. How the tables have turned - while we are freezing our buts off in a mouldy old low there you are stoking up the barbeque! Well I can only hope the big fellow sticks around long enough for us to see a bit of sunshine in the Scillies so we may at least dry out our bedding (hark! the romance of liveaboard life). We are definately both ready to get there now particularly since the wind has turned Easterly two days earlier than forecast which sees us beating into an ugly wind with a bumpy sea to boot. Struggling to make supper last night, with the cabin sole bouncing vigorously beneath my feet, I was reminded of the one and only time I had a go on a trampoline. That had been fun - this was not. Later, making a hot drink, trying to align the unusually uncooperative trio of cup, strainer and pot, I was 6 again, running the egg and spoon race at school. No cheering crowds however, no promise of a sticky sweet prize at the end. Yet what can we do but make the best of it eh? For soon we'll be sitting at home (damp bedding and cold toes entirely forgotten) thinking 'you know what? I'd rather be sailing'.

We-hey! Sun's out and the barometer is UP! But dammit that wind is still on the nose and we are busy berating ourselves for having been sensible and climbed North early on. A dismal last day of tacking no doubt awaits us (which should be spent savouring ale at Saint Martin's Seven Stones). But Hell's Bell's at the time you just don't know do you?

Grrrmph. We've just crossed the rhumb line and can steer 65 degrees at best which is 20 degrees off course.

Halfway there!

2010-06-30T23:34:00.001-07:00

Followed by big seas

The magic carpet was finally sent to the cleaners by a fierce and shouty wind. This was accompanied by heavy rain - so much as to flatten the chaotic sea. Trying to put a third reef in, with the wind at our backs pushing the dials well over 30, was laboured. One of the top battens whipped past the shroud and wedged itself there. We had to drop the reluctant sail further to fix up a fourth reef, using this then to pull the end of the batten clear of the shroud. By the time we'd finished, the squall had just about blown itself out. Typical.

This afternoon the sun made a dazzling appearance and the wind reduced considerably. So much so that we hauled up the Screecher. A perfect half winder. It was not to be however as the pin on the end of the Screecher's furling block unthreaded itself (thankfully it did not break but it is a mystery sometimes how these things can happen at all). The sail made a bid for freedom, secured at only two of the usual three points, and had to be wrestled down to the trampoline. Now we're under main and genoa and its a bit slow.

We are fast approaching the halfway point of the passage, having covered 628 miles with another 640 odd remaining. This morning we traded the comfortable goosewing with waves from astern for a bumpy broad reach with water more abeam. We are adopting the classic Azores-Northern Europe tactic which is to sail NE until level with the top of Biscay then steer a direct course to destination(wind and water permitting). A classic passage rides on the famous Azores high and sailors steer up like this to avoid being blown into the inhospitable bay by an associated Westerly wind. This however is a strange year, marked in these latitudes by a distinct absence of the usual Azores high. So we are riding a low pressure sytem on winds from the Southern quadrant. We don't therefore run the risk of being forced into the delectable Bilescay but are still adopting the traditional tactic because a high pressure system lies in the bay and we don't want to end up in it (especially given our recently discovered talent for becoming becalmed).

Day five and lots of wind. We are down to four reefs in the main and a mere smidgen of headsail. The waves are not so big but they are running fast, putting the boot in our stern every few seconds. We are the boat that rocks but not in the 1970's groovy sense (I have dug out the Stugeron as a matter of precaution). The ocean is an ugly grey, scored and marked by the clawing wind. The sky is grey, dull and oppressive. We are both tired, damp, cold, dirty and we smell. Miraculously we are still being nice to eachother (all credit to the four-on-four-off watch system). On the bright side: we are on course for the Isles of Scilly, we have at long last found the charts for them and it is not raining.

Onwards on the Magic Carpet

2010-06-30T23:31:00.001-07:00

The wind has continued to blow between 8 and 15 knots from SSE, allowing us to head NNE on a fast and comfortable tack. Sailing towards England (a passage which is usually closehauled) with a following wind and sea is an unexpected treat - our very own milagro! In unison we chant our new mantra: 'LONG MAY IT LAST!'.

The nights are intensely dark. The sea bubbles. We are caught in a two dimensional blackness in which there is no horizon or sense of distance. Ghoulish shapes appear and disappear at random - waves breaking all around.

Rain today - at long last the sails, soiled with the dusty memory of Africa, will be clean. Unlike the sails, my body refuses to yeild its memory of Africa which etched a delicious blaze of heat on my bones. No number of layers can make me warm now. All day and night, my skin is prickled with cold and my shoulders tense with chill.

Impulse is giving us what we call 'the magic carpet treatment' - it feels like she is trundling along at about 5 knots when actually she is steadily cantering on at 9 or 10. It's like she's on rails and this despite the hollow crested waves distorting the water's surface. When the waves whipped up to a mighty height she amused herself by skating down them at great speed - 16.9 knots being her best performance. Much as Impy seemed to be enjoying herself I, the damp squid in the whole affair, felt decidedly nervous. Another reef went in.

Leaving Horta, heading for home...

2010-06-30T23:29:00.000-07:00

Atlantic dolphins follow us as we leave Horta

Impy looking small amidst the big boys at Horta

Pretty as they are, the multicoloured swirls than dance across this week's weather chart fill me with dread. Two tiny red blobs in particular. They sit in the centre of each anticlockwise spiral and herald winds in excess of 40 knots. Plotting our likely position at various projected dates over and over, we determine that we shouldn't be in the hot zone but, in reality, who knows? Oh well, we have gone for it anyway and - so far so good.

We left Horta at the end of the afternoon with a gentle breeze plumping the spinnaker. We coasted past the high cliffs and Faial's emerald green hillside with its Etch-a-sketch of small square fields. A pod of bottlenose dolphins arrived, much larger than the common dolphins we have become accustomed to. Some entertained us with acrobatic jumps and side flops but all were soon gone, to round up supper no doubt.

The wind began to gust around midnight. The asymetric was replaced by full main and headsail on a goosewing. It's quite a caper changing sails singlehanded and this simple swap took ages. I was glad for the exercise though simply because it kept me warm. All the while dolphins swam around us, streaking this way and that, lighting up the otherwise dark water with explosive phosphorescence.

Impulse returns

2010-06-08T23:15:00.001-07:00

Dear friends, a swift post to let you know: Impulse is back in UK waters - the Dart to be precise. The details of the final passage will be posted shortly. Meanwhile if anyone wishes to hear the unblogged version of events we are on the usual numbers. xxxx k

Ola from Horta

2010-05-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

Passing the island of Pico

Festival lights at Ponta Delgada

Saturday morning, main square

The strangest thing in Ponta Delgada - Saturday morning, the imposing Church, busy with lights, the main square, busy with people. A happy scene except that the people were on all fours, mainly women, some weeping, others mumbling something over and over to themselves, many with bloody knees. All looked cold, wet and miserable. A penitence of some kind on the occasion of the festival of Santo Christo do Milagros - Saint Christ of Miracles. It puzzled me why the penitents were almost exclusively women - I don't believe that women are more 'sinful' but are they more inclined to feel the need to repent and if so why? (answers on a post card please)

Pilgrims come from all over the world to honour Sao Miguel's Santo Cristo in thanks for the miracles he has performed. We were hoping we'd be permitted the miracle of sun and warmth but apparently this was not possible. So we set off for the more westerly island of Faial under a cloak of rain. Impulse was in her element with 15 knots of true wind just forward of the beam. Not a bit under pressure she raced along doing 7-9 knots. Passing the island of Pico we were congratulating ourselves, reckoning this would be our fastest passage ever. Inevitably the wind then dropped forcing us to play the hokey cokey with the sail locker.

Now we are in Horta harbour. It's lovely and low key. The rolling hills above the Portuguese townscape have quenched my thirst for green. The chirpy birds have reminded me its Spring and that Devon must be at its best - which is nice given that its almost our next stop.

We are leaving tonight. All being well the wind (plenty of it) will be on our stern. We'll skip along the edge of a low, heading NE, and scoot into the Isles of Scilly to catch our breath. The 1200 miles should take us no more than 2 weeks - but I think I said that once before!

Cut to the chase -

2010-05-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

Impy looking smart at Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, Azores

If you just want to know WHERE WE ARE but don't want to trawl through all them posts: WE ARE IN THE AZORES (roughly opposite Portugal but who'd ever believe that? - it's blinkin freezin, honestly I'm not just saying that to be nice - even the bedsocks have been dusted off). More precisely: we are tied onto a pontoon at the marina do Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel. This is not where we wanted to be but hey ho the showers are hot and my bed no longer lurches about like its lashed to the back of a bucking bronco. The town is lovely - cobbled streets, inviting cafes, grand buildings and towering churches. In the square the horse chestnuts are blooming with pretty pink candles. The cakes are good and my painful longing for PG tips (just one bag) has been momentarily arrested because: they grow tea here! I was suprised when first I found out but now, witness as I am to the heavy rain and fog today, it all falls into place. We have taken up residence in the local shopping centre (can you believe it after all those beautifully empty miles of nothing but nature) because 1. it is warm 2. it is dry and 3. you can surf yourself stupid on their wifi whilst sitting in nice leather sofas. Call me shallow...

Giants and Aliens

2010-05-05T07:28:00.000-07:00

Day 17 36N 27W
We are in the company of giants. Spray cast up 20 feet, a vast net of water, signals their presence daily now. They are elusive. One evening, in the pearlescent light, we caught sight of a back and dorsal fin - an ash coloured island rising from the deep, then vanishing. Time is arrested. To consider the underworld where these giants dwell inspires wonder. And to think we breathe the very same air.
We can both feel the presence of land now. Like a person entering a room unseen and unheard and yet we know she is there. The horizon's infinite vanishing point cut short. A full stop halfway through a sentence. An interruption. She exerts a powerful magnetism. Since yesterday I find myself standing quite unconsciously looking out to the empty space which soon she will fill. If I thought the world was flat and I was ignorant of worlds beyond this horizon - what freedoms would my mind gain?

Day 18 37N 25W
The day was overcast. The sailing enjoyable, if a bit nippy, on a steady South Easterly and a near flat sea. A large whale crossed our bows a reassuring distance off and a pod of smaller mammals were fishing starboard, at least we think so, judging by the frenzied spray they kicked up. Tonight we leave a glittering ribbon of foam in our wake. Ahead of us the horizon has a green tinged and alien glow - land.

Later: the Azores coastal waters greeted us with lots of wind, a caking drizzle and sentry of vicious rollers, breaking beam onto the boat. No problem for Impulse who, like the escape car in Starsky and Hutch, tilted sideways on her wingtips to skim diagonally across their gnashing crests. We gave the breakwater, with its underwater rubble ('plenty have gone aground'), a wide berth. In with the tiny neckerchief of a headsail. Down with the main, by now unruly and uncooperative (my fingernails hurt this morning from clawing at the luff). We tied on just in time. 18 days at sea and our first gale, but only for five minutes!
We are in Sao Miguel in the SE of the Azores cluster. We are well but tired with brains like BLANCMANGE. (ha!)

Update from Irving

2010-05-05T07:13:00.000-07:00

Day 13

30N 28W
Been too tired to want to write, don't fancy it much now but I'll forget if I don't jot it down. Twelve days of sailing and the true wind brings to us twen-tee-hee knots (and a high pressure system in the sector West of here). The dreaded high with it's loathful windlessnes! Even last night we were becalmed again. We'd been sailing well but the stiff breeze came and went like a sneeze. At sunset we dropped the sails. The waxing moon cast a silver tongue over the undulating seascape and at its tip we sat, wallowing. Played chess (Casper winning again - but it took him three hours) and waited. The wind is back but forcing us East which is where we must run, by all accounts, if we are to escape the centre of the high and also avoid a large patch of shallows. We are tired. We are cold. Everything is wrapped in a damp shroud. Everything is salty and salt traps moisture. I could do with a wash. My hair is so dirty I could wring it out and use its oils to fry supper in.
33N 29W
Two weeks its been now. The Westerlies have not come. Today we enjoyed an easy Northeasterly with a near flat sea. A rest after several days of discomfort: cross waves, large rollers and a restless wind. One minute slack sails and the bridgedeck slamming, the next the sheets taut as guitar strings in a vicious 35 knot gust. Just after midnight on the thirteenth day the inner forestay broke loose. The plate connecting it to the forward beam has snapped clean in half. We set out two halliards forward to support the mast in its place. Not a disaster but something to intrude on our long awaited harbour holiday in Horta. We are definitively headed to the Azores now. Which island exactly depends entirely on the winds which are refusing to cooperate with weather predictions of late. Its not so damp now, as we are back in a high pressure system, but the nights are chilled and the duvet has come out of storage. The moon is fat and last night rose behind us like a vast amber disc, casting a long ribbon of light in our wake. The ocean has lost its vivid blue of the lower latitudes but is no less beautiful. When the cloud steals the sun, the brooding ocean turns a pearly grey. When the sun is realeased and shines brightly, without holding back, the ocean becomes an infinite silver carpet.
This morning - a sigh of wind. Barely enough to keep our sails alive. Casper sleeps, enveloped from head to toe in a blanket like a caterpiller in a cocoon. The nights have been cold. But now the naked sun warms the day. I take a salt water shower on deck. The light breeze licks my skin which has been stifled in the same old clothes for far too long. We are down to our last 40 litres of freshwater. I bake, now that the sea is flat and the sun high enough to breathe warmth into the dough. Time is in slow motion. We ghost on. 300 miles remain.

Be calmed and carry on

2010-05-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

not a puff...

Day 8, still 25N 27W
Thankgoodness we have a boat that makes way even in light airs. If we didn't, I fear I might have lost Casper to the deep blue yonder. It's just not good for an ex-racing sailor to be becalmed. It's been three days now and (if I think about the distance still to travel) it is all rather tedious and frustrating. Looking at our position on the North Atlantic chart, we have covered 1mm in the last 48 hours, and not even in the right direction. At our current average speed of just over a knot it would take us another 30 days to get to the Azores! Of course my logic brain tells me the wind will come back but it's hard to imagine. If, however, I ignore the chart, the distance to destination and our speed over ground, this is really rather special. Who else gets to holiday in such peaceful and beautiful surroundings? I admit it may not be everybody's tasse de the but my boat it certainly doth float.
Day 9, 27N 28W
No no actually it's day 10 not 9. Somehow lost 24 hours in the lethargic fuzz of these windless days (which seem to have lasted an eternity). Yesterday tempers started to fray. We weren't completely becalmed, no. Instead the breeze chose to toy with us like a boy who plays with a cricket before he rips its legs off. Further North they announce "eight, nine, gale, rain, fog" - the dismemberment that awaits. 'Put us out of our misery! Blow or don't blow'. In the end we took all the cloth down and went on strike. In the cabin, now baking in the heat of the day, I fall in and out of a shallow sleep, my dreams filled with anxiety. Will we have enough water to last the trip? They announce rain further up, just as long as we make it, we can collect it in the bimini. If we see a ship should we ask it to relay a message so no-one thinks we're missing at sea? If they throw us a jerrican of water will it float and, if it won't, how best to get hold of it? We have started 'rationing' fresh water - only to be used for drinking and cooking. All washing is done in saltwater. Annoying as it makes everything feel sticky and gives the cutlery rust spots. As for myself, I'd rather be dirty than itching with salt crystals.
In the late afternoon, some wildlife. A colony of petrels bob along with us several boat lengths away. They are European Storm-Petrels I think, although they look very like several other sub-species: dainty, with a cinder coloured sweep across their wings and a white rump. I thought it could be a Leach's Storm Petrel but the book says that they 'do not follow ships'. Ever since our second day out from the Cape Verdes we've been joined every now and then by a Petrel as well as a White Tailed Tropic Bird (unmistakeable with its tail that makes it look like it's got an unfortunate rod up its jacksie). I haven't seen either since we became becalmed. They must be long gone.
Also this evening: polyps (jellyfish to you and me). All at once the sea's soupy surface is interrupted by little blue balloons, complete with a pink rim and shaped like a pasty. I try to catch one in a bucket but miss - thankfully because I have just identified it as a Portuguese Man of War 'which can have coiled stinging tentacles up to 10m+'. The balloon and its colourful trim act as a sail, enabling it to use both wind and current to propel itself.
The cruel boy scout of a breeze obviously tired of playing with us and moved on to taunt someone else. At about midnight, the real wind returned. Thank the gods! Impulse is chewing through the miles again. Immediately our scowls are gone and the outlook is positive. How easily we are affected by the vaguaries of the ocean! With the screecher up we are reaching on a Southeasterly 3 or so. We are not lost at sea, we are coming home! I am sorry that you worry. There is nothing I can do, two thousand miles away, but send a message on the wind (now returned). 'We are safe, we are safe. Have faith.'
We are flying North on the very breath of the universe, the swell pumping like blood through my veins. Beside me, a wavelet bursts with an effervescent chuckle, taking me by suprise. Little devil - and I thought you were a whale!
Night falls - The wind has decreased and veered West. Mild panic rises. Gloomily we study the chart and weather forecast one more time. Where will the depression go? How far South? Which tack should we choose? Both are rubbish - slow and off the rhumb line. Now look - this one will take us to the band of wind. If it comes. Yes but this one points to all the comforts of Madeira (it looks closer but is in fact the same distance from the Azores, and for that matter the Canaries). If the Westerly doesn't come we should head East - but North Easterlies are forecast for the Canaries sector which would head us off at the pass. But Westerlies are forecast. They are coming. Have faith.

Night Watch

2010-05-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

Day 7-8, 25N 27W (still no wind)
The night is dead calm and alive with twinkling stars. They do actually shimmer and twinkle. I wonder why, and how (I know so little). Some come right down to where the sea must start (the horizon is not discernable). Occasionally I think we have company and just then even I shone the torch at one to check it wasn't another boat suprising us 20 metres off. But no, simply a star rising. Ah, the tricks the night can play. We are most totally alone out here in this vast expanse of windlessness. For days we have nursed Impulse through the calm. Coaxing her on. Feeding her limp sails sipfulls of breeze, here and there. She hobbles on through, brave little boat of ours! Wow. So many stars! And what I thought was the Milky Way is but a breath of cloud hanging low. The sky is brighter than the sea although I cannot tell where one ends and the other begins. It must be the stars lightening the sky because the moon set some time ago like a pithless segment of orange held up to a flame.
Later I sit up forward. Phosphorescence tinkles from each bow. The oily ocean is freckled with lights - stars doubled up and more phosphorescence. The Milky Way is clear now, behind that sooty cirrus. I have a strange feeling of disorientation. Where are we headed again? Oh yes. Wherever we can find wind to fill our boots. For a yawning moment there is no North or South to my compass. I am outside myself, time and the linear boudaries of space. Then, ahead, I make out the Big Dipper. That's a demented angle you're lying at son. I think of a shopping trolley falling from a bridge. My mind rattles on, in dialogue with the night. A shooting star scratches the sky. What, I wonder, would it be like to voyage without destination - ever? Another streak of light at the corner of my eye. We are 500 miles from any landfall and going nowhere fast. I have an immesurable sense of space and I am happy beyond belief.

Weird Fish (vegetarians and vegans look away).

2010-05-05T07:01:00.001-07:00

Porcupine fish

Day 7, 25N 27W
Sir Robin, we do declare, is full of poo. This morning Impulse's underbelly was teaming with fish. I think they were trying to hide from the big bad pilot whale that was someway off. Things did not go too smoothly for them. To begin at the beginning: I was doing my early morning round of the boat - coiling lines and checking shackles. I reeled in the fishing line (to perform the customary 'unravel' as the wire trace tends to get in such a tangle with the trolling weight). And there, docile as an underwater lamb, is this strange purple creature. Certainly it is fish-like but I immediately have my suspicions. For us to have caught a fish, there must be a hitch... Catching a fish (however peculiar it looked) was such a momentous occasion that I felt certain Casper would want to be woken up. An aside here: sport fishing is a major tourist industry in Senegal and the Gambia and even there we caught nothing in 6 weeks despite trolling most of the time. Indeed, like a shot Casper was on deck just to verify I was not hallucinating and we had in fact caught something. The purple thing was placidly swimming along behind the boat, rather like a brainless dog on a lead, seemingly unphased by the big metal thing in its lip. I couldn't identify the 'fish' in Ian's Sealife book which confimed to me that we should treat it with caution and certainly not kill it to eat. No sooner had I relayed this opinion to Casper, who was now attempting to net the purple freak, than the strangest thing happened. The little fellow began to inflate. Yes inflate - eventually becoming the size of a basketball, but covered in spines. It looked just like the 1970's plastic ballballs my grandfather used to put on the Christmas tree. Except with eyes, a mouth and tail. It even sounded like a ball being blown up - squeeky rubber being stretched. Try as he might Casper could not remove the hook from the freakster's pout (I am more than useless at this time, wailing like a banshee). We had no choice but to let it go still sporting its piercing. Once returned to the sea it floated upside down (surely this was a design fault?). 'Oh dear have we killed it?' I asked. But just then the basketball's tail began to swish and the whole thing slowly shrank and - plop - it disappeared into a ripple of water.
Well we were both pleased the little thing (which it turns out is called a porcupine fish) had survived but my goodness when were we going to catch one we could stick on the barbeque?
Moments later: silver shapes glimmer beneath us. Dorado? Casper catches one pretty quickly, using a mackerelling kit we bought at the post office. Bargain! Indeed, the unmistakable blue fins and yellow scales of a dolphin fish. It's about 70 cm top to toe and we are about to cook it on the barbeque. The little zebra fish, which keeps the dorado company, is still under the boat and every now and then makes an appearence.

Still no wind! 25N 27W

2010-05-05T06:49:00.000-07:00

A week at sea it's been like and if things carry on like this it'll be at least double before we get to the Azores! As the crow flies we've got another 700 odd miles to go and have covered 500 - not even halfway. The Canaries lie 500 miles ENE of our position. There is a discernable flutter from the NW but at best all we can make is 2 knots and most often just one. We ran the engines until the fuel tanks were depleted (bar of course the reserve stash) which did mean we had enough power to watch a film. Now there's nought else to do but wait for wind. I just depressed myself by calculating that we've made 5 miles of Northing in the last 12 hours. Oh well, at least we are not in the Southern Ocean being swallowed by huge breakers like Sir Robin is (he has made it to New Zealand and is minus a few tins of sardines). I'm slightly concerned that if we wallow too long down here we'll miss the next depression coming over (with its promise of a steady 15-20 knots going East) and that by the time we get into the windy sector (wherever it blinking is) there will be shed loads of it. Every day bar one of this passage Eastward-bound gales have been announced for the Azores sector. Still, if that happens at least we can turn right and run to Madeira with the weather on the stern. The hydrangeas must be magnificent this time of year!
According to Knoxy the deep blue characteristic of the North Atlantic trade belt, in the windless midst of which we currently find ourselves, is that colour because there is no life here. No plancton and that means no fish. So at least we have an excuse for not catching our supper.

Cape Verdes Onwards: week one!

2010-05-05T06:38:00.000-07:00

After 4 days becalmed we are struggling to amuse ourselves...

Very very hot and no shade anywhere but here

Coaxing the asymetric into life

I see no ships

First step North - leaving the Cape Verdes

A much better start to this passage! Indeed we've been treated to a perfect sailing day by good man Neptune! We left Tarrafal a little earlier than expected (gas bottle recovered) as a small high pressure system, with its classic candy floss clouds and gentle winds, sped accross from the Caribbean faster than anticipated. We are hitching a lift on its Northeasterlies in its Southeastern corner. For once our heading is pretty spot on North! We had both almost forgotten the pleasure of passages like this: comfortable and on course. With the weather benign, we are able to relax and continue to credit our bank account of sleep.
Dolphins came to play as we rounded Sao Nicolau to the West this morning wherupon we were met by an enormous lolling swell nonchalently heading South, to Cape Town perhaps for supper.
The sea is again the rich indigo that only the atlantic at these latitudes seems to produce. In the afternoons, the dazzling sun casts half a glittering diamond between us and the solid blue horizon. By evening this is no more than a thin stripe of light, slightly pink. It then disappears altogether as the giant peach of a sun slips behind the vast wall of water, leaving a skyfull of small puffy clouds. The new moon comes up, a slim cuticle of brightness, and the sky slowly fills with a clutch of stars.
Impulse is creaming on through the swell at 4-5 knots which is respectable given that the true wind speed is 3-5. The hatches are open to the cool night air. The oven if full of freshly baked bread. The boat is quiet and sleep comes easily. Perfect.
Our plan is to travel North and slightly West on this high pressure system until we meet a band of variable and very light winds. These will precede our transfer into the South Western sector of a low pressure system, centered around the Azores and moving North East. If we miss this first low, we can cadge a ride on a second which is due to follow several days later. That is the theory at least. In practice so far so good.
Another glorious sailing day. I have been reading the classic voyaging stories of small craft which certainly confirms how lucky we are. Firstly: Clare Francis sailing the Northern route form Plymouth to Newport, US. She wasn't exactly able to don her bikini but instead wore paper knickers whilst she dodged icebergs, suffering freezing fog, frequent gales, a storm 10 with 50 foot waves and an endlessly leaky boat (all this in a one month race). Vito Dumas endured much the same (bar the paper knickers which I don't think anyone had invented then, the 1940's) but at the globe's other extreme. Sailing the 'Roaring Forties' solo he had to contend with gales 80% of the time, frequent bouts of bailing and a sceptic abscess in his arm which, in the end, he was forced to dig out with the end of a marlin spike. Me thinks we have it easy.
We are just beginning to make a small dent in the large quantity of rusty tins of sardines (31 in total) I acquired in the Gambia fearing I may never be able to victual again. I got some stick at the time for this mammouth purchase so I was very pleased to read that Sir Robin Knox Jonson's stores included 24 tins of the slimy critters. "See!" I declared reproachfully "we don't have that many". Casper rightfully pointed out that Sir Robin, with slightly fewer of the fishy items than us, sailed round the entire globe and did it non-stop to boot. Point taken.
I have been dreaming up menus for a half way point celebration meal (sardines anyone?) but the problem is that we don't know where that is as we still haven't decided whether we are going to the Canaries, Madeira or the Azores direct. It all depends how quickly the forecast fronts pass as well as their strength. Every morning we listen to Radio France Inter and cross reference their predictions with the Passage Weather forecast we downloaded in port and which runs for another 6 days. On the basis of these two sources of information we can paint a rough picture of what to expect as we progress North.
Progressing North is rather slow at present. Very little wind but the sea is delightfully flat. We are just managing to keep 2-3 knots of boat speed and therefore avoiding the dreaded flip-flop of an empty mainsail. The night was quiet, we haven't seen anything else since we left Cabo Verde. I decided to leave the helm to Gloria and trust that Impulse would wake me if the anything needed doing - which she did frequently with a flapping sheet here and an unhappy headsail there. We both seem to need a lot of sleep right now and therefore any chance we get is grasped. These calm conditions are ideal for a bit of R&R.
Lots of people have asked us how we organise our watch system. Its simple: whoever is most tired sleeps first. Unless the weather requires us both on deck, after supper we decide which one of us needs to visit the land of nod first. The watch keeper stays on until the early hours, taking a 15 minute nap here and there if his/her head feels too heavy for neck. We use a highly advanced system to ensure that we are not struck by a ship: an eggtimer the shape of a pepper and set to 15 minutes. Why 15? Because, at the maximum speed a ship travels, it would take it 20 minutes to hit us from a position on the horizon. Between 1 and 3 in the morning, depending on how tired each one of us is, we swap over until daybreak. Of course this 'system' changes when the weather is bad when we tend to do shorter watches as they are more demanding both physically and mentally. When its rough we don't sleep in the cabin - down in the hulls it's noisy, you get wet coming on deck and, most importantly, you are just a little too far away if a second pair of hands is required speedily.
Early this morning the wind swung round to SSE and decreased to 2-3 knots. Sailing into it with the screecher close hauled maintained a respectable speed but sent us too far East if we are to catch the Southwesterlies in the area NW of here. The logical sail to don was the asymetric reacher, a lightweight spinnaker which is flexible enough to take the wind from the beam and the stern quarter. It was uncooperative and flew reluctantly before giving up and clinging to the rigging. Not suprising really, there just was too little wind. After a swim and another look at the weather forecast we resolve to motor on NW.
Just now at local noon (16 minutes before the Archers to you and me) the sky looks decidedly different. From my patch of shade immediately under the boom I stretch out an arm. A thumb's width from the horizon lies a heavy band of cumulus cloud. This appears to be moving West. Below it a procession of moustachio shaped cirrus whisks and curls in precisely the opposite direction. It looks like we're on the brink of entering a new weather zone.
On another note I have discovered that although Vito Dumas did not wear paper knickers whilst sailing the 'Roaring Forties' he did wear 'a sack lined with bits of newspaper' (p79). Rock on M&S. And, did you know - creationists look away now - that dolphins evolved from four legged creatures that looked like wolves and are more closely related to hippos than fish? Well I didn't and I'm amazed. Who needs Radio 4 anyway? Oooh, engine's off, must be time to hoist that main again.
Out on deck I find a scowling skipper. The wind has picked up and is coming from dead aft making the ideal sail precisely the one Casper neatly stowed away 15 minutes ago. Anyhow, now it's filling happily. But....
Not for long - back under engine . Feel so much better for a solar shower on deck just before the sun lost its heat. The sky ahead looks grey and menacing (and on the bright side full of wind). Tonight being possibly the last quiet one for a bit we decided to throw a party. Only clean people admitted, wine served and canapes too. Music blasting, we motor on. Chess and perchance a filum later. It feels a bit like last rights - final fling before the weather turns sour.
Indeed as the saying goes - the party's over. In the early hours the wind picked up sufficiently for Casper to set the Screecher and main to gently beat Northwards. I awoke at 4, aware that the sails were no longer happy. The wind had veered South. I set the sails to take the wind at 7 o'clock which gave us a Northwesterly heading. Within 20 minutes the mild night breeze had whipped itself into a shirty 5-6 and we were soon treble reefed. How amazing it feels though to be progressing North with following winds and seas!
Most of today was a little uncomfortable and Casper confessed to feeling a little iffy. This evening though the wind backed NW and halved in strength. We are close hauled again in a force 3. Still the sea follows. Although somewhat uncharacteristically not touched by the dreaded mal de mer, I have been finding it hard to sleep with the boat so noisy again.
My night watch was trying and comical (if only I could have seen it at the time). At about 9, after curry and couscous, Casper went down to sleep in the hull, leaving me with a cup of tea and chapter one of a talking book by Jane Mansfield. I must have nodded off because suddenly Miss Mansfield was on chapter three and I had tea all over my lap. Growling, I mopped up the mess and decided that the boat was feeling sluggish as the wind had decreased. I contemplated putting the Screecher up, waiting a goodly half hour just to make sure the wind wasn't just pretending. After the alotted 30 minutes and no change to the wind I set about hoisting the headsail. Naturally everything takes longer and requires more effort when you are single handing and it took me a good 15 minutes to get the thing set correctly. The boat speed increased by a knot or two - all was well. I was aware that the batteries were a little low as the solar panels hadn't had as much sunshine as they like and Gloria was hungry for power in order to steer downwind accurately on this lumpy sea. A good case for unleashing the water generator I thought. The generator's prop hangs at the end of a stainless leg about a metre long. To get it to run all you have to do is lower the leg until the blades are set in motion by the force of the water. Simple. Well I huffed and puffed over this damn thing for a good 20 minutes. I could get the leg down but it then swivelled slightly so that the blades were no longer square onto the direction of the water. I tried and tried to adjust the little rotter but couldn't. Nothing more to do than take it back up. Just then the wind increased markedly and the pressure of the water against the generator was so great that I couldn't lift the damn thing out anymore. The Screecher was making the unhappy sounds of a sail requiring dousing but I couldn't assist as I was pinned to the water generator, unwilling to let it go for fear that I'd never get it back up again. With my legs akimbo, one hand clasping the leg of the generator and the other outstretched like something out of Inspector Gadget I just managed to reach Gloria's buttons and bore away considerably to slow the boat down. This did the trick and I succeded in tying the generator back up declaring that this was most definately a job pertaining to the blue domain and I would not be doing it again. Now - the Screecher. Of course it refused to furl at first and flapped and flapped in the night air. I didn't fancy my chances of dropping it unfurled without it ending up in the drink. The sheets had disappeared over the side and thus were counteracting my furling action. I pulled them out of the water (at least they weren't stuck round anything) and eventually got the sail down and lashed to the trampoline. Throughout all of this I was wearing a headtorch the front of which kept inexplicably flopping down on the bridge of my nose and blinding me. I got a shoeful of wee when I relieved my self over the davits so as not to wake Casper and managed to whack my head on the entrance to the pod twice as I went to check the apparent wind speed.
Last night's watch was not much better with the wind decreased and the sails lollopping this way and that and Impulse unable to make much Northing. I was incredibly tired which didn't help. Daytime however had given us wonderful sailing weather with a steady breeze from WNW, a gentle sea and a beautiful sunny sky. We spoke to another cat and a tanker on the VHF - our first bit of company (bar two birds) in 5 days. We took full advantage of the comfortable sailing conditions and indulged ourselves: a talking book by Wilber Smith, a freshly baked pizza followed by sponge cake, custard and a game of chess (not such a happy event for me as I lost in 10 moves).
Today, our sixth day of this 1400 mile passage and we are well and truly becalmed. We ran the port engine dry and now are under starboard heading Northwest into that elusive band of wind the forcasters have, annoyingly, been banging on about. The predictions for the last 24 hours have, to date, not materialised. We are making the best of it though, reading, planning fresh adventures and relaxing on the trampoline. We were joined, briefly, by four curious Atlantic Spotted dolphins, beautifully marked as always. Now, an hour before sunset, spokes of light hang from an ominous cloud above a motionless sea. Ominous and perhaps filled with wind?

Tarrafal, Sao Nicolau, Cape Verdes

2010-04-15T05:12:00.000-07:00

Casper fills up with water in Tarrafal

View of Santa Luzia from Tarrafal

Tarrafal is a very sweet village, curled gracefully around a jet beach of volcanic sand. The loud rattle of the surf is never far away as it rakes through the large black stones that edge the shore. A large amount of time and energy is dedicated to the collection of these stones, by men, women and children, carrying them aloft in buckets and grading them into tidy piles further up the beach. Presumably these are used in some form for construction of which there is a lot going on in a low key, bit-at-a-time sort of way. This place is suprisingly busy given its size. A delivery ship arrives daily, offloading building materials and supplies. There is a constant flow of people up and down the seafront. The fish market is bustling. The flavour is decidedly African with a South American twist and a hint of the Canaries. It's obvious that the place has been very poor (and not that long ago) but it's definately rounded the corner on positive development now. The cobbled streets are clean, the cars (mainly pick-ups) in one piece, there are two cash machines, several minimercados and the locals appear to have a goodly amount of leisure time. As I watch the sun dodge the bulbous clouds and come to set picture perfect beside the uninhabited islands of Santa Luzia to the North West I think to myself that the Cape Verdeans have got it perfectly sussed.

The only downside I see to this archipelago is wholly due to my own failure to master Portuguese. I am trying very hard and have learned by heart a number of essential phrases from my English-Portuguese phrasebook. These include the important vai ser operado - you are going to be operated on and better still de-me uma escovadela no casaco - please brush my coat. The problem is that as soon as I start to speak I am met with puzzled and somewhat pitiful looks. My mouth fills with stones. Trying to pronounce the simplest of sentences in Portuguese is true facial gymnastics and good training for anyone planning a future in gurning. But, enough wingeing, I must brush off my coat and get my gurning face into town. Today's missions: dois garraffas de gaz. Let's see what I get...

Two hours later: I was assisted by an unwanted barnacle of a "helper" who has now disappeared with said gas. Now awaiting police to return bottle. Methinks my Portuguesh will be stretched to the max! More anon...

Senegal to Tarrafal, Sao Nicolao, Cape Verde Islands

2010-04-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

Casper whittles a bung en-route - intrigued? Read on...

Last beer before leaving West Africa

Yesterday we set off at first light and, fourth time lucky, we made it out of the Saloum without losing the channel and going aground! A long old day tacking up the coast - South of West/East of North - our progress was looking dismal especially when we changed from the coastal chart to the North Atlantic passage chart. Our heading North East would have been OK but for the large pointy bit of land in the way in the lee of which lies Dakar. The tack Westward would have been fine if we were planning a mini break in Venezuela. Two choices lie ahead of us: sail to the Azores via 1) the Canaries or 2) the Cape Verdes. Each solution presents a problem: in the case of the Canaries there is first the problem of clearing Dakar, thereby necessitating a big tack out West. Secondly, once clear of Senegal's capital the wind will be predominantly against us unless we tack up the Mauritanian coast where the heat of the land often bends the wind round to the West. However Mauritania means pirates to me and also the onshore breezes can become quite fierce and of course there is nothing between us and them in the way of protection. In the case of a passage to the Cape Verdes the problem is that they lie far West (meaning valuable Easting lost when the winds are mostly from the North East) and present a somewhat unrelenting barrier of Northerlies at their Northern extremity to break through before catching a Westerly North and East a bit to the Azores. Whah whah whah whah whah. So anyhow, we are sailing to the wind (NNW 15-20k) and it seems to be taking us to the island of Maio in the archipelago of Cape Verdes. The radio forecast predicts a NE in that sector tomorrow so we can then tack up to a more Northerly island which will have internet so we can check the long term weather picture. Sorry, at it again...

The passage has so far been lumpy, especially when the wind decreases a tad and Impulse hasn't got enough speed to move positively through the oncoming sea. This morning we decided that Melvin was looking a bit fragile hanging off the back so hauled him in over the davits and gave him a good clean before stowing him away in the starboard hull. We both felt pretty quesy after this and the afternoon yawned on, thumping and bumping its way over the stomach curdling waves. The boat's smooth now though, and is carving through the water at 7 knots with just the occasional whack beneath the bridgedeck. We've made pizza and lemon sponge cake to help us through the night. Casper has not been able to sleep yet so I guess that's a long watch ahead for me as a tired skipper is no good to man nor beast.

There are loads of flying fish out here. A real freak of nature, half fish half bird. They have bat-like wings which, once they catapult themselves out of the water, enable them to glide a few feet above the its surface. "Glide" makes them sound like elegant flyers - they are not and natural selection seems to have shortchanged them somewhat in the landing department too. They don't so much land as get swallowed by any old wave that comes along.

Last night the dolphins kept us company for some time. They appeared out of nowhere like a multitude of Halley's Comets, streaking firecrackers lit up by the phosphoresence. Wherever there was movement, the water was bright with light. I have never seen anything quite as astonishing. It was like someone was shining a searchlight upwards from beneath the water's surface transforming the playful dolphins into streaming, glittering comets surrounded by impossibly bright explosions of light.

Day 3, Saturday April 10th

We have got into our stride now, we three. Casper has finally slept - it took a lot of persistence to wake him for the dogwatch last night (who can blame him?). No more wretchedness and little thumping - Impulse too seems to have got back her deep sea legs and is pumping on through the wind and waves. What a brave little boat. I never approved of people calling boats "she" but I just can't help it now - I feel so much affection for her. There are actually clouds out there and I realise now that we have not seen any for at least 5 weeks. The radio forecast announced rain in the Northern sector of the Cape Verdes - shock horror but I suppose we have to get used to it again sometime. The predicted Easterly element to the wind has not come which is disappointing. Our heading is pretty much due West, taking us South of the whole archipelago. If this wind direction persists we'll tack up to one of the islands. The Southern ones are described in the guide book as laregly dry and volcanic making the Northern band, higher, wetter and therefore more verdant, our favorites for a stopover. We will need to take on water wherever we stop and somewhere that does not rely on a desalinator is preferable.

The sunset has colour to it again! Very much appreciated after the sunbleached and washed out Gambian ones. The day was full of activity. Firstly, the leak in the port forepeak (something that has been with Impulse ever since we first set eyes on her but the origin of which is unknown) yeilded several buckets of water over the course of the past few days. Casper valliantly bunged the hole (a nasty job sure to make the saltiest of sea dogs feel unwell) so that, in theory, we'll not need to bail until we next stop. We think that the leak has increased because the volume of water over the bows is greater on this leg than it has been before rather than because whatever is causing the leak has got worse. Secondly, the inner forestay had unpopped itself and needed re-assembling. Thirdly, one of the trampoline battens was trying to do a runner and required coaxing into place and relashing. All three jobs meant that we both were soaked by the time we'd finished. At least it's not cold - yet.

The wind is finally allowing us to point North of West but only a little bit. We are 110nm from the island of Maio which, if the wind remains like this is on our current course. We covered 165nm in the last 24 hours and 300nm (as the crow flies) since we started on Thursday morning - not bad given the amount of miserable tacks we had to do on day one.

Day 4, Sunday

With the overcast dawn came our first sighting of the Cape Verdes archipelago - Maio at its South Eastern extremity. A classic volcanic landscape which the Canaries has taught us to expect of atlantic islands. A stageset of rust coloured shadows, arid and moonlike. The volcano on the island of Fogo is still live apprently, last erupting in 1995. Hard to imagine why people still inhabit these lands. There was a time, some four hundred years ago and until the market moved elsewhere in the 20th century, when the natural salt flats of the Eastern islands kept the islanders in bread and water. Later, Sao Vicente in the North West of the cluster became a vital refuelling stop, in particular for British troops during the Boer War. But the Portuguese, who until 1975 were masters of these islands, levied taxes on the foreigners and they departed, leaving the people of Cape Verdes to face a string of natural disasters. Drought was a frequent problem (and I believe still is). This coupled with overgrazing by cattle, lead to the destruction of much of the useful terrain. Crops failed and the local population became trapped in a cycle of poverty with wide scale famine hitting hard at least once every decade even until the start of the 20th century. Things are better now. Since its first democratic elections in 2001 the Cape Verdes government has achieved a lot especially in the way of securing foreign aid. They are "the good boys and girls of Africa", ranked by the World Bank one of the best governed countries of the entire continent (I suppose the competition is not up to much), the Cape Verdes were admitted to the World Trade Organisation in 2008.

Of course there is the classic story here of a service industry emerging as the archipelago opens itself to tourism (the first international flights began in 2004). The usual trade off will be made between economic gain through tourism and destruction of indigenous cultural markers and natural habitat. Vernacular fishing cottages have been bulldozed to make space for coastal resorts (many unfinished now that the global recession has hit). The should-be-protected sand dunes where loggerhead turtles have for centuries gone to produce their young are being damaged by tourists on quad bikes. The usual story...

We are now tacking up the Eastern coast of Santiago and, all being well, should make landfall in Tarrafal, Sao Nicolau, early tomorrow morning.

Tuesday 13th April

We arrived in Tarrafal, nestled halfway up Sao Nicolau's Western coast, an hour before darkness fell last night. The day had started well with a wind lift and a direct course to our destination. A large pod of spotted dolphins arrived, black at first against the orange glare of the rising sun. As the light softened their beautiful markings were revealed: the white tipped nose, the swept back wave of speckled grey, the wide dark rimmed eyes. Interesting how the dolphins always congregate around the side of the boat that you are on. Quite often I have experimented with changing bows and the dolphins will mostly follow, sometimes swimming on their side directly beneath me gazing up with a big watery eye. I often wonder what would happen if I jumped over the side with them.

It took us AGES to cover the last 25 miles as we lost the wind lift and Tarrafal became absolutely dead into 20 knots of wind and (on one tack) the oncoming Canaries current. The waves, unpleasant benches of rigid water, were snowploughed towards us with military consistency. We resorted to motorsailing which made for a margin of more speed and less discomfort. The wind died completely as we entered the wind shadow under the island.

This morning we awoke late, both very tired. Although the passage only took four and a half days it felt much longer. Sailing upwind puts more strain on the boat than a downwind leg does. Youy are always sailing at the edge of the slot, the margins are smaller. It stretches the crew more. There is the stress of worrying about the boat. There is more to take care of and more to be vigilent about. Simply the day to day life of sailing upwind is less pleasant than sailing downwind. Hatches, which open forwards, are permanently shut. The motion of the boat is more uncomfortable. The boat tends to be noisier. Sitting out on deck is less pleasant - its colder, more hectic and thereful stressful.

Despite this long list of winges I thoroughly enjoyed the passage. Our first day at sea Casper and I sat on deck to muse on what exactly it is that we enjoy so much about being out here. Whilst for some the prospect of losing sight of land is terrifying, we both relish the moment that the land disappears and we are left in a vast expanse of air and water. A jumble of reasons why this is: the immediacy of things, the simplicity (eat, sleep, attend to the boat), the lack of control (the weather does what it wants, always, nothing you can do about it), the sense of control (you are captain, king, queen, parliament of your life at sea), the space, the beauty, the humility it brings. We are frighteningly vulnerable but, paradoxically, experience a sense of strength that is sometimes impossible to muster on land. At sea we are ourselves with few other influences. The complexities of social contact (to fit in, to be this or that) are irrelevant. There is great freedom in this, for us at least.

Don Simon and chess

2010-04-07T07:32:00.000-07:00

Impulse is hobby-horsing on her anchor, the wind blows fresh and Casper is filling up our tanks with the last jerrycan of water. Tomorrow it is for the next step North. The weather picture looks OK although the question remains - can it be trusted? At least the wind strength has decreased and there is evidence already of some Westing in the Northerly pattern that has been somewhat unrelenting of late. Our spirits have been a bit low recently - the unbending wind, the prospect of so many sea miles, the burden of uncertainties which lie ahead. Something had to be done so we've dusted off the chess board and resorted to drinking the wine once (at a time when provisions were abundant, including alcoholic ones) reserved for the purpose of cooking. Amazing how a few weeks with no wine makes a carton of Don Simon taste good. In principle then, tomorrow it is. Our next stop, god willing, will be the Cape Verdes. We hope to be there inside a week and perhaps by then I will have managed to put a teeny dent in Casper's string of chess victories.

Apologies from the post mistress

2010-04-05T02:31:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends, thankyou for your blog comments, they continue to make my heartstrings feel tight because home is so very far away. It is so very lovely for us to know that you are all still there. Not long now. It's been a struggle to get online recently hence the rambling and disorderly blog and the dearth of pictures. A shame because there are some good ones. Later perhaps.. I hope this finds you healthy and happy whatever you are busy with and wherever you are. With love x k8

Safe in Senegal

2010-04-05T02:13:00.000-07:00

Last night in Senegal

I know the saying goes that even the longest journey starts with just one small step but this is ridiculous! Eight hours sailing and only twenty miserable miles covered. Beating North over the shallows towards Senegal, our starboard tack takes us South of West, and as the day wears on and the wind increases we are pounding into short sharp water which puckers across the surface of the reefs hiding beneath. The sun hangs ominously a hand's width above the greying horizon and we decide to cut our losses. We execute a swift and nerve wracking jibe (the wind is hitting the high twenties and the water is less than 2 metres beneath us). Just before we lose the light we shelter behind a thin spit of sand which falls away quickly, giving us 4 metres to anchor in. The wind continues to howl and the water slaps our underbelly all night long. By morning everything is quiet. Our only companions are the many egrets who shuffle together across the sand and every now and then stretch out their wings, akwardly, as if to help them dry.
The sailing is pleasant today, with a flat sea and a light wind. We tack out, looking for the buoyed channel below Pointe de Sangomar. This will direct us North, between a large sand bar and the white sandy coast of Senegal, to our next anchorage at Dionouar. We see the buoys but they appear to lie in very peculiar places. It just doesn't feel right as we approach - too shallow to start with, there are two green buoys that are strangely close to eachother and, alarmingly, a red marker lies on its side, awash in the island's surf. With haste we douse the main and fire up the engine. I climb to the first spreaders and see clearly, for the first time, the wide channel that awaits us beyond the sandy spit. Ignore the buoys, keep calm and carry on. Just as we enter the channel the tide turns against us so we anchor for a while. A classically beautiful spot: white sand, turquoise water, no-one around. We had time to relax and explore the beach on foot - lots of jellyfish, some the circumference of dustbin lids, pretty shells and birds everywhere. The tide turned again and, amazingly, we were able to sail back to our first anchorage in Africa. It's from here that I am writing now, with an internet connection in the middle of a small creek. At Delta Niominka, 80 miles South of Dakar, we will wait for our weather window.

Typical!

2010-04-05T02:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, fully fuelled, watered and provisioned, the Captain and I made our final preparations for passage making: washing the grime of nearly a month in Africa off the sun covers, the mosquito nets and the decks, stowing everything away and, pouring over our charts and pilot guides, planning our passage. Finally, and with much regret, we decide against the Bijagos. We are sailing back to England now, inshallah, which means 3000 nautical miles of mostly upwind work. A detour downwind is the last thing we need. Everything is ready to go, the chart table is clear, the fridge is full of pre-made meals, our oilskins are stiffly awaiting action on their hooks, even our brains have at long last snapped into passage mode. But - guess what? When we woke up this morning we were buffeted by a wind that is decidedly stronger than forecast and from precisely the wrong direction! Another day of waiting I suppose...

Back to Banjul

2010-04-05T02:10:00.000-07:00

Banjul's hazy coastline

Bagging a mud oyster sandwich at Oyster Creek

We had a great sail back to Banjul (beating and double-reefed of course). Making it through the maze of fish pens and nets, our keels grazing the shallows, negotiating the bolon on the flooding tide, we arrived at Oyster Creek just as the sun set. The anchorage here was a bit of a shock after ten days of wilderness. Horror of horrors we could see cars, a vast bridge, a generator rumbled somewhere close by, a siren wailed and fishermen buzzed up and down with outboards attached to their pirogues. We were back in civilisation.
It turned out this was not a bad thing and from Oyster Creek we managed to do a lot. We went to the beach, survived the chaos of Serekunda market, re-provisioned (30 tins of sardines, 3 kilos of cheese, 24 eggs) and basked in the airconditionned luxury of Karaiba Shopping Centre. Back home this would just be a bog standard supermarket selling the usual gear but out here it’s the Gucci of food. It even has ice cream (served in plastic drinking cups). What amazes me is that despite the comparative luxury of Karaiba Shopping Centre the prices are actually lower per item than in the local shops. This seems so unfair given that the poorest here would never dream of setting foot in a supermarket (of which there are only a few in the whole of the Gambia). Local shopkeepers cannot make the economies of scale that the supermarkets can and therefore sell less items for more money. Each shop seems to sell exactly the same products too: "beef" of course, tomato paste, french mustard, margerine, mayonnaise, sardines and the most disgusting looking sweets.
It was time for Mum to leave and although a few tears were shed I knew she had had a brilliant time and that after an action-packed fortnight with basic accomodation and sauna-like conditions she’d be looking forward to a bit of blighty’s bracing weather and the pleasure of home comforts.
Our special guest gone we had no more excuses and set to making ourselves ready for the next leg. Exactly what this looked like was under discussion – Bijagos Islands? (120 miles downwind, meaning valuable northing lost) – the Cape Verdes? (Northwest of Banjul meaning valuable Easting lost) - Dakar? (dead into the current northerly). In the meantime we completed the necessary pre-departure tasks: fuel (check), water (check), sardines (check check check), clear out with immigration (check), obtain weather forecast (check). Nothing more to do now than leave and see where the wind takes us.

Onwards up the Gambia

2010-04-05T02:08:00.000-07:00

Now the tide is with us as we motor on up-river in search of hippos and baboons. Maman is on board and so far we have not had to put a reef in.
Day 4
It was only a matter of time I suppose. The day after I wrote this we stormed up river beating into choppy water with, you've guessed it, a reef in. But only one - two reefs Ruddle had not quite done the business. The trend in the lower Gambia river seems to be no wind before 10 then lots of wind (on the nose if you're heading up) then no wind come 4 o'clock. The tide tables we have appear to be 6 hours out (not the best characteristic for tide tables) so we spent day one confused and frustrated, motoring into both wind and tide. At times the current was in excess of 3 knots. Not suprisingly we anchored up at that point and amused ourselves by swimming behind the stationary boat into our very own wave machine. At dusk we just made it in through the maze of fish pens to the shallow Sami Creek where we barbequed ladyfish (the only ladyfish in the village) and almost set fire to our mosquito net. In anticipation of the attack by flying insects when we reach fresh water upriver we have made what I think must be the biggest marine mosquito net in the world which covers the entire cockpit from stantion to stantion. So far no mozis but plenty of reassuringly named African Killer Bees (which, I am told are harmless - ?).
Day two allowed us more sail, less engine and a favourable tide. We arrived at the tranquil Mandori Creek on the North bank of the river in good time to enjoy the lovely surroundings: tall mangroves interrupted by saltwater rice paddies, shocking green the colour of limes. We were totally alone but for a tremendous number of birds who, once they realised we were harmless, carried about their business unperturbed. A black and white kingfisher was busy catching supper. A black kite circled above us, interested. A fish eagle, with its white underbelly, flew once over us clasping a slippery morsel in its talons. There were herons, egrets and other birds I am too ignorant to name.
Day three was a brilliant sailing day - actually what am I saying, it was just a morning. Having covered close to 60 miles in the first two days of our river trip, on the third we only managed an embarassing 5 and a half. This was because we called an unexpected stop at the village of Tendaba on the South bank on the offchance they might have fresh water and fuel for us. After going aground under full sail (oops) we wrestled Melvin ashore, Mum perched on the bow jostling for space between a clutch of empty jerricans, leaving Casper onboard making a cheese sandwhich and pretending to be afloat.
What a sweet place Tendaba is! We were greeted by a swarm of children who took turns holding our hands as we wove our way down the dusty red 'street' between goats, chickens and lazy dogs Next to the tidy village, complete with suprisingly long pier and cutesey mosque, is a rustic tourist camp which gave us the warmest welcome and helped us fulfill our needs (bread, petrol, water, cold beer and a swim). Heaven. Chores over (Casper lugging jerrycan after heavy jerrycan back to the boat) we spent the rest of the afternoon and evening ashore, lapping up the relative luxury of the camp. The sun set in a hazy sky just after a pod of river dolphins made a brief appearance.
At 8.30 Casper, concerned about a possible lack of water, made a call to get back to Impulse. Timely this was for now we saw why that pier is so damn long - a huge mudflat lay between the camp and our boat. Halfway between the end of the pier and Impy the oars were coming out of the water thick with mud and Melvin's progress felt everso laboured. Another half an hour at the bar and we would have been thigh deep in mud wading home. I'm not sure Mum would have seen the funny side.
This morning we awoke to morning prayer to find that we were again barely afloat. With the depthsounder at zero we tramlined our way off the mudflat to deeper water. Within 10 metres we had 5 metres under us. We've now motored across to the north bank, and are anchored at the mouth of a small creek waiting for the tide to flood. A jumble of bird song resonates from behind the tall mangrove and a white heron is carefully picking its way across the mudflat. Time for breakfast.
Still Day 4 - we anchored off the Southern tip of Elephant island. The mosquitos are starting to become a nuisance as soon as the light fades - thank goodness for the cockpit net!
Day 5 - the river has narrowed considerably, say 250m across. The mangrove are quite different now - very tall and not so dense, interspersed with something that looks like pampuss grass and could be an edible cereal of some sort. Stopped in Kau-Ur when the tide turned against us. Mum and I walked the 15 minutes into the village past cows with huge horns, goats and donkey carts. It was easy to find the market as it was the main event. We stocked up on veggies and wallowed back as the day reached its heat peak. Back at the river bank, the women were still washing clothes. We bought two parrot fish from a man who'd just hauled up his pirogue for the day and met Maram, the boss lady of the local groundnut factory. After a guided tour and two huge bagfulls of nuts, the tide turn so we lifted the anchor and proceeded upriver. We anchored at the mouth of a small creek. Lots of that pampuss grass, rustling in the wind. The heat is becoming intense now, and persists into the night. You'd think the wind would be a relief but when the harmattan blows it feels like you have your face in front of an open oven door.
On day 6 we motored over a net. A languid looking man sat in a dug out pirogue mid river. We thought nothing of it. As we came abeam of him we saw the tiny polystyrene floats that soon became hooked round the keels. Luckily we lifted the propellors fast enough to avoid any further entanglement. Nothing that a small pair of scissors and a swim couldn’t sort out. The fisherman looked incredibly melancholic and, though we were partly annoyed that he’d made no attempt to indicate the presence of his net to us, gave him something to cover his costs. By the look on his face the 200d we offered him (approx 5 pounds) represented a small fortune, probably enough to finance his retirement and an annual holiday on the Costa del Sol. Onwards. By now the vegetation flanking the river is quite different to that further down river: palms, rice, enormous mahogany trees alongside the usual leafless baobabs. The water is fresh here and I can almost here those atlantic barnacles popping off our hulls in disgust.
At Baboon Islands the heat is suffocating and the tsetse flies a real nuisance. The visual feast however is worth the discomfort as we are surrounded by primitive African jungle which is perfectly mirrored by the glassy river. The trees are alive with life : baboons, vervet and colobus monkeys, chimps and parrots, green and yellow. At low tide we watch a group of hippos bathing. One stands guard, teletubby ears and eyes just visible above the surface of the river. The rest take turns flinging their vast heads back, spraying water everywhere, revealing a huge pink expanse of mouth and emitting an incredibly loud sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan. It is really quite magic. Everynow and then, rather disconcertingly, the centurion disappears leaving a massive ripple behind him and a nervous look on our faces. We are careful to maintain a respectful distance but how can we be sure what a hippo considers to be respectful? We must have got it right because all is well. The light is fading so we move on and anchor off the Western end of the islands, just behond a giany mahogany tree in which a cheeky group of chimps are attempting to hide. We spend the sweltering evening listening to the hippos cracking jokes with eachother. Arf arf arf.
There are three reasons we decided not to continue upriver after Baboon Islands. Firstly, the heat was excruciating and the idea of spending any more time in it especially in a dusty place like Georgetown was decidedly unappealing. Secondly, we were coming under pressure given that Mum had to be on a plane from Banjul in a week’s time. Thirdly, our main purpose of coming up the Gambia was to see the hippos and this desire had been satisfied. So, early on day 7 we turned back with the outgoing tide and motored to the busy village of Kuntaur. From here we walked to the ancient buriel stones at Wassu. Such sites are found across the Gambia and Northern Senegal and date back to about 400 ad. In Kuntaur we bought a few more provisions including "beef" which is actually halal chicken luncheon meat. The ex vegan in me could not allow myself to touch the stuff and when I asked Val how it tasted she said "pink". I’m not sure it had ever seen a real chicken.
The next few days is a blur of happy times sailing down river, anchoring as the hazy sun merged with the treetops and not so happily waking up to discover we were aground again. We stopped once more at Tendaba to fill up with water and luxuriate in the tiny pool. We were treated to a visit of the nursery school (I am sure those little ones will eventually grow into those giant desks) where the children, in their scappy pink and blue uniforms danced and sang for us. I can’t believe that in such a poor country parents have to pay for their childrens’ education.
Our last anchorage on the Gambia was perhaps the most beautiful. Tabiere Creek is an isolated spot with just a few fishermen about. The shallows to the West extend a long way attracting a large number of pelicans and flamingos. How beautiful these salmon pink birds are, with their curved beaks and impossibly long legs. They took turns preening themselves and flapping their wings, revealing a bright red and black underside that contrasted brilliantly the soft colour of the rest of their body. After our flamingo safari in Melvin we feasted on a Captain fish brought to us by a croacky fisherman who looked as if he were at least a hundred.

The river Saloum to the river Gambia

2010-04-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

The winding Saloum, flanked by tight growing mangrove and home to herons, stalks and pelicans, lies between Senegal's coastal capital Dakar and, further South, the Gambia's port town Banjul. Along with its sister rivers the Diomboss and the Bandiala, the Saloum re-introduced us gently to Africa and, perhaps more importantly, educated us in the art of sailing through shallow waterways, unmarked of course, and often subject to strong undertows. On day one we nearly had heart failure when our speed exceeded our depth but as the week progressed this became a banal occurence. Often our speed was 4 times the depth under our keel and on one occasion 8 times (my mouth was a litte dry). In no time at all we began to go aground happily and were quite content to motor on with the echosounder blinking 0.0 like two startled eyes, our keel shoes drawing patterns in the soft squidgy mud like toes in the sand.
The Saloum was useful training because now we are motoring up the river Gambia itself, heading East into the predominant wind and, it would seem again, against the tide. The Gambia appears to defy the world's best tide tables, having a mind of its own, surging whenever it feels like it and in either direction. The river at this point (some 40 miles inland) is still 5 miles wide so that the opposite bank is often not visible. When it is, it is hazy with heat. Today it is a little cooler (it's quarter past nine and 25 degrees) but when we first arrived in the Gambia it was blazing. Sailing into Banjul from Senegal, strangely through a cloud of dragonflies, the sun was unforgiving. Going ashore, I was relieved to hear the locals complaining it was too hot - surely it could not always be this uncomfortable? Our main task was to 'make ourselves legal' - we trapsed around the sizzling and dusty Banjul streets trying to find immigration, customs, the port authority, a Visa bank machine. We had a map but it bore little resemblance to the geographical reality of this chaotic city. No street signs. People were very happy to help us but frequently gave us wooly, incorrect or contradictory directions. Eventually we found the offices we were after. We had been forwarned by a Swiss boat that immigration had made them pay 2000 dalasi for their visas (only 50 pounds to us but a good month's salary to them) and an additional 500d as 'danger money' for visiting the boat (many Gambians cannot swim). So we entered the sticky immigration office with some trepidation. All went well however and we were granted a 28 day stay in the Gambia in return for an Ikea tupperware and a packet of teabags. Bargain. Customs went swimmingly (Casper looked a little uncomfortable when asked "who is the master?" and we settled for the answer "it depends"). The port authority big man was decidedly uninterested in us, instructing a young man who was busy browsing the net for "the world's hottest girls" (apparently all blond) to sell us a river permit (a cost of 20 pounds). By midday we were legal and set off to find an international phone booth and an African lunch.
From Banjul we went to Lamin, a tranquil creek in the mangrove and a hot 15 minute walk to the messy, sprawling but friendly village of the same name. Here we bought the friendship of a family: Alex, David, Sophie and their siblings helped us make the necessary preparations for the arrival of a special guest - my Mum. Without their help, provisioning (food, drink, water, petrol) would have been extremely tiresome and difficult. The Gambia is a poor country that seemingly produces little itself. It relies heavily on tourism and therefore, as an obvious tourist (being white not because I wear socks and sandals), we are easy targets for income generation. Yes, you get hassled here but in no way aggressively so. Nevertheless you must feel robust to deal with the constant attention. When you see how little the country lives on, it is easy to understand that anyone would do the same in their position. The Gambia survives on imported goods, foreign aid and the presence of comparatively wealthy tourists, the majority of whom are from the UK.
Alex drove us around in his clapped out car (a prize posession), filled up daily with a litre or so of low octane fuel, the radiator leaking and the accelorator glitching. He took us to find vegetables (easy enough), beer (a bit more tricky) and cheese (difficult). We had to go to the main tourist area Serekunda for this. The village shops are basic affairs all selling more or less the same thing: powdered milk, mayonaise, eggs (even these are imported), bread, oil. Vegetables are grown on each family compound and so aren't for sale locally.
Poor Africa, we kept on saying. It has so little. What little it has doesn't work very well so a lot of time has to be spent fixing things to stay in the same place rather than being able to move forwards. Things are expensive if they are not produced here. Take fuel - it is roughly the same price as in Europe but each low octane litre is burned up faster by crappy engines in old cars. And then you might be had filling up with fuel, like Alex did, the pump attendant giving him a third less for his money. Perhaps he thought he'd get away with it with us two cash cows chewing the cud in the back.
The official language in the Gambia (which used to be British and still seems proud of this past connection) is English, with indigenous languages being Wolof and Mandinka. For the first two days in Lamin I thought that Wolof for hello was "toubaminty". But only the children seemed to greet us this way. I then witnessed some very white people throwing sweets out of their taxi window presumably meant for the children scrabbling around in a cloud of dust to retrieve them, excitedly screaming "toubaminty". The penny dropped and I asked Alex just to be sure. Toubab means white person in Wolof and minty is pidgin for sweets. It breaks my heart to see these children doing this. The Gambia is living off Europe's cast-offs and its children learn fast to beg Westeners for treats.

We're still here!

2010-04-01T08:40:00.000-07:00

Dear all - we are safe and still in the Gambia. Leaving tomorrow for the Bijagos islands of Guinea Bissau (100 odd miles SW of here). Plan to spend a week there then go North to the Cape Verdes (about a 5 day sail). Am hopeful that getting online there will be easier - it's harder here than getting an all over tan in a Cornish winter. Love to you all x k8 n Casper

El Hierro, Canaries to River Saloum, Senegal

2010-03-07T09:37:00.001-08:00

Pirogues at Djounouar, Senegal

Day 1 - Sunday 28th Feb
Got the two anchors up without too much problem. Unfortunately on retrieving the line to the mooring block we discovered that it has chafed badly with the strong wind and choppy swell - needs splicing and a new outer sleeve sewing on. Saw spray from two whales some 50 metres off as we left El Hierro. Boisterous sail to start with. Winds not as forecast - we are beating! The evening brought reprieve to the point where we reefed to minimise the floppy sail flogging in the abence of breeze. A huge full moon to keep us company. Waiting for deep sea legs to take root - uncomfortable feeling of mild nausea all the time. The higlight of the day is that THE WAITING IS OVER - by this I mean our long and comendable restraint from eating Saori's Christmas cake (saved for our first passage on from the Canaries) has come to its end. Ah! Nectar! I am still keeping it in the starboard hull for I fear if it makes its way to the pod permanently it won't last long.
Day 2 - Mon 1st March
Happy Birthday Ian! A stunning sunrise which took over an hour to reveal the firey orb. The sky was a strange shade of yellow - pale like creme anglaise - for a very long time. Perhaps dust from the white sand off the coast of Mauritania gives it that subtle colour?. I've not seen it before. I was more pleased than ever to see the sky lighten this morning as all night I struggled to stay awake on watch. Uncomfortable rubbernecking. The first nights are the worst. Trying to make sense of celestial. Plotted two position lines and drew up a fix which showed us to be on land. Oh dear. Am so aware that Africa if just to our left. It was all our time in the Canaries but it seemed more distant because we were in Spain, in the EU. Slightly apprehensive about Mauritania. Only covered 100 miles yesterday. Rubbish.
Day 3 - Tues 2nd March
The bad weather they predicted today for the Canaries came earlier and further South. Last night we were caught on the edge of it. The wind wasn't so bad (25 k on the nose) but the sea was ugly and aggresive. On putting the 2nd reef in the car to the 2nd batten popped out (by this I mean broke). Not entirely sure why which is a worry - think possibly to do with the line not being in the right place, therefore pulling the sail down at the wrong angle. Luckily Ullman sails had given us a spare so Casper was able to fix the problem quickly. Other casualties were the wind vane and VHF antenna which have vanished. At least we have the handheld VHF and I have tied some red ribbon to the shrouds in lieu of the vane. Oh and another thing - the fish chomped another line taking trace, hook, lure and 12 oz trolling weight with it (poor thing). Only Melvin has managed to secure a catch - a tiny flying fish got stuck in the dinghy, unfortunately dead by the time I found it and too small to eat. The weather is good today and we are no longer being headed! The sea is still uncomfortable - leftover lumps from the big weather NW of us. Visit from 20 odd dolphins this morning just after sunrise (custard coloured again) - they showed off delighfully as usual. A little bit of traffic - last night Casper saw two ships and a boat with its nav lights back to front (or was it sailing backwards?).
Day 4 - Weds 3rd March 2010, 11h
Last night rates as one of the best watches ever.
The night began black but jampacked with stars. Then the moon rose, bright enough to cast shadows across the deck. A few days off full now, she was a strange shape like she was being gently squidged in the middle between an invisible thumb and forefinger. The wind was steady, blowing at around 15 knots. We sailed between a reach and a run. I barely had to adjust the sails at all, just tweeked our course occasionally when the wind blew directly from behind us. As the wind and swell increased this morning I gave Gloria a rest and took the helm - what a joy! Surging, heading 180 degrees - due South - to the Gambia. How exciting. I can picture the markets, the bustle, the wide white smiles in shiny black faces. Exotic. Suddenly it was very much dawn and Casper's head and shoulders popped out of the open hatch like a merecat on red alert, ending the night watch. Unlike last night (matchsticks between eyelids, mild feeling of nausea, head too haevy for neck) this night watch was effortless - the only hiccough being my wild panic at the sight of some lights between us and land (Mauritania). I convinced myself briefly that they were the lights of a pirate ship, stashed everything, changed course by means of a jibe, managing to trip myself up and fall very hard against the main sheet in the process. My escape course, being off the wind, gave us a miserable speed of 2 knots! Then I realised that it was a commercial ship and anyhow why would pirates have lights on at all? Had a brief try at fishing just before sunrise (apparently when fish can see best - how do people find out this stuff?). No luck. We are doing some mighty speeds making even reeling the gear in hard work so I'm not sure how we'd cope with a catch. We've just put two reefs in the main as surfing down the ever increasing swell at 11-12 knots felt alarming. Waiting for the bread to rise before I have another go at cooking it in the pressure cooker. 420 miles covered and we are 72 hours in. Almost halfway there - but who knows what the winds hold for us tomorrow.
Day 5? - Thurs 4th March 2010, 17h
More of the same. Blue skies, hectic but following seas, steady winds (now Northerly with a touch of East, between a 4 and a 6). I LOVE GLORIA (the autopilot) because without her we wouldn't be having such a lovely time. Am about to start Attention all Shipping, about the shipping forecast, and just reading the description on the sleeve reminds me of the pleasures of Radio 4, sorely missed, just like other home comforts I could mention (a good brew with real milk - from a glass bottle with a red foil top delivered by the milkman). Aaaah England! How quaint you are. (We really are racing down these waves! Wow!) We haven't even attempted fishing today - too fast. Found a tiny squid on the trampoline this morning with huge bulbous blue eyes. It was dead, poor soul. What else? Long chats on the divan over Saori's delicious Christmas cake (we have decided to keep half for the return leg, a wholly head-based decision). Much reading. Continuous struggles with celestial navigation (today I was 60 miles out but at least the fix wasn't on land). Ouch just crazed down a wave at 13 knots, maybe time for another reef? Thai green curry with porc tonight.
Day 6 - Friday 5th March 2010, 14h
The wind is still racing Southbound at 20-30 knots. The night was exhilarating but tiringly so. Handsteering to avoid the wild, theme park helterskelter. If the swell were a ski piste it would be a red. An ugly clatter and cutlery and soup cups hit the floor (luckily empty). Can't find sleep. Partly this is because I am so damn excited about arriving in Africa (we are heading to the Saloum River in Senegal first) with its promise of flamingos, hippos and river eagles. But mainly because the cabin is loud, noisier than the urban rush hour with the whooshing, hissing, slapping, thumping and whistling of water the other side of the hull (just 5 mil away). At sunrise, the top mainsail batten popped out of the end of it's pocket. A minor repair to take care of when things are still. Dropping the main (already carrying 2 reefs) was a revelation. The mad slipsliding stopped and Gloria is happy again. Not quite sure why we didn't think of it earlier but we are now running under headsail alone. Still galloping onwards towards Dakar (77 miles away du South East). Beautiful day - just too bloody windy!
Day 7 - Saturday 6th March 2010
Happy Birthday Di!
No change with the wind. The sea became more confused, Radio France International's forecast described it perfectly: 'forte et croisee' - rough and crossed. We started getting the odd wave in the cockpit and at one time through the open hatch and onto my head whilst I tried to sleep. By 5 this morning the glow on the Southeastern horizon had mutated into the smokey ligths of a city - Dakar! As we passed the Presqu'Ile du Cap Vert, protecting Dakar from the West, the water flattened and the wind became fiesty with regular gusts of 35 knots. We were reaching with an apparent wind of nearly 30 knots and 3 reefs in the main! Typically an hour later our empty sails were flip flopping and we were scrabbling round trying to get the spinnaker to fly. Coaxing a reluctant spinnaker into life on a hot morning when neither of you has slept enough the night/week before is rather like having to clean up after your dog/cat/child with the most dreadful hangover in the world. It's really the last thing you want to spend your time doing. Eventually the chute was convinced and agreed that we should sail downwind more or less on course to Saloum. The water was becoming strangely shallow - 9 metres under the keel - given that we were 15 miles off the coast.
What a great sail this had become: a steady breeze, flat sea, a stiff current nudging us along from behind, the kite bellowed pompously up forward. It became clear that we had arrived in Senegal on the very day of the Shallow Water Spinnaker Slalom Cup. A forest of slalom poles lay ahead of us, each topped with a pretty little flag. But we appeared to be the sole participants - where was everyone else? No sooner had the question been asked than the answer came in the shape of a fleet of fishing of about 50 boats - pirogues, slim and elegant with their long pulpits stretching out over the water. The figures of men, hands behind their backs, leaning in to the rythym of the water stood forward looking for fish. Once spotted, the engine man at the stern did his best to follow the shoal (much shouting and finger pointing). Then swiftly a net was deployed by the men at midships and the fishing began. No one seemed a bit suprised to see us amidst all this action, whistling past, just pleased.
Soon we were sailing with just 4 metres beneath us, the slalom poles were thinning out and it was time to start looking for the 'large whitish water tower that looks like a tree' mentionned in our pilot guide. Given that sailing to West Africa was an after thought, the only guide we were able to get hold of in time for our departure, dates back thirteen years (and then states the author was 'written from memory'). Not only this but erosion on the West African coast is such that the underwater landscape is constantly on the move, making charts and guides obsolete by the year. Oh great! So we were looking for a 'narrow gap in the coast' that might or might not be there anymore and a water tower that looked like a tree. There were lots of trees. There were two water towers. And there, do you see that? THERE WAS THE GAP IN THE LAND! The 1997 guide ('written from memory') told us to expect no more than 2.5 metres of water at mean low water springs. Now we knew that we were no longer at springs (because we left with a full moon 6 days ago) but had little idea what the state of the tide was at 17h on the March 6th 2010 off the coast of Senegal. After much head scratching and pencil chewing we'd come up with the tide times at the Cape Verdes which are not a million miles away and certainly closer than Dover. So if the tides tallied at all with the CV's, we were at something like dead low . This was a mixed blessing (if the assumptions made were true at all) because it meant passing the bar when there would be least water under us but once in the river we would have the current with us, helping us up the river. The village of Djifere streamed past us in a blur: trees shaped like boxes on sticks, palms, white sand peppered with white things that must be shells, goats, a donkey, a woman - clothes billowing in the wind, some small people playing with a ball, a man crouched down - having a poo?, a mess of houses, thatched and corrugated roofs, the end of the beach sliding into a strip of surf.
By this time we just had the headsail up and were goosewinging dow the wind. The water had a brownish tinge to it now, presumably owing to it being shallow and near the mouth of the river. When the equation of depth minus speed yeilds a negative answer its only natural to worry. We were approaching the 'narrow gap in the land' at 4 knots with less under the keel. A few pirogues passed ahead of us - good for them but they have less draught than us. Waiting waiting waiting - and we made it! The echo sounder announced 6 whole metres. We were home and dry.
We must remember not to sing victory too early. A while later as we headed northeast up the channel to our anchorage for the night, pleased with ourselves and coiling ropes in anticipation of the cold beer to be opened on arrival, we both neary had heart failure as the echo sounder apologetically blinked 0.4. We had somehow lost the channel and appeared to be moving forwards very little. In retrospect I think this was more because of the headwind than because we had gone aground as neither of us felt the keels bump. The bright faces in the pirogues around us, ferrying their catches back, were clearly unaware of our plight and smiled broadly, hands offering up huge fish - 'vous voulez du poisson?' 'Non, non' I replied 'merci' (could they not see we were going aground?). Politely declining the fish again, I asked where the water got deeper. Ten arms flung up, dark hands beautiful against the shock of bright orange sleeves, indicating the channel. We followed them in, ignoring the depth sounder (still blinking woefully 0.4, 0.6, 0.5).
We are now anchored outside the pretty if somewhat false tourist camp of Delta Aniominka. All is well. We have slept, eaten and are pleased to announce that our legs no longer feel like blancmange.　

Mouse yer shackles afore ye go

2010-03-06T14:47:00.000-08:00

We are 50 miles off our destination, meaning we are some 950 miles from where we started, and almost 7 days from when we started. Soon we'll be there. Arriving sometimes feels like a mixed bag. Take today: I am exhilarated at the thought of closing the passage because that means we have achieved what we set off to do, mostly in one piece, safe at least which is most important. Whilst arriving means escaping the uncontrollable whims of the vast ocean, and that is a relief, it also introduces a new set of parameters to adjust to. We will have to deal with the complications of checking in, changing money, filling up with clean water, buying provisions. In the light of these tasks, life on passage is simple: provided you have prepared correctly you will have all you need, you point the boat in the right direction (wind allowing) and deal with whatever comes up with the unconditional rule that (barring physical injury to self) the boat comes first.
Preparing correctly is key. When I first started sailing I was relatively fearless. When I say 'relatively' I mean relative to now. Because in those first years I had no knowledge of the sea or boats and therefore had simply very little idea of what could happen to two folks on a small craft in a huge expanse of water. With time, experience, and hearing and reading about other yotties sailing anecdotes I am now heart-stoppingly aware of 'what could happen'. The more I understand about how Impulse works, as well as each item of gear that completes her, the more I realise that we are only ever a widget away from potential disaster. Because sailing when everything works is easy. But it takes just one line to chafe, one batten to splinter, the tiniest split pin to vanish for things to start to go wrong. This is because that line, that batten, that split pin had a very precise function. If you cannot replicate this (by replacing or fixing the widget) you are stuffed - either now or sometime in the future depending on the conditions you are sailing in and the amount of time you have before you can replace or fix in port. So preparation is everything. My Dad without fail reminds us to 'mouse our shackles' before we set off. Whilst this makes me laugh (something to do with the quaintnoess of this old seadog expression), the undertone is dead serious. 'Mousing your shackles' is a euphemism for so many things: checks the lines, check the rig, check the blocks, the engines, the sails (I can go on) - and not once but check continuously. What it also means is look after yourself: fill the lockers, eat well, stay rested (weather permitting), stary warm/dry/cool as appropriate.
By doing these things we minimise risk. After all, sailing is a very risky business. But then most things in life are. It's just that on land we have a greater illusion of safety - those sirens you hear in the distance, the emergency services just a phone call away, the help of a friend next door. Out here there is little of that so it appears more risky. I know however of plenty of people who put themselves at far greater risk than we do out here (something I'm sure my mother will not believe). Take the 3 Swedish 'boys' we met in Las Palmas. Chris (unusually dark for a Swede) bought a 20 foot boat built before Abba even formed. He had no sailing experience so advertised for crew (on Facebook naturally). Two replied, nice enough just a shame they had never sailed either. They set off in November - from Sweden. They spent Christmas day in the middle of Biscay. It was snowing. They wore dry suits to keep warm whilst they took turns at hand steering (the boat, called 'The Flying Teapot', has no self steering gear). With one of them out in the snow, the other two were down below in a space approximately 14 by 4 feet (crawling because, to create room for provisions, Chris had brought the floor up several feet). The original standing height wouldn't have done anyway given that all 3 men are over 6 foot tall!
On the other end of the spectrum, I have seen cruisers with huge, luxurious yachts (in particular I think of the 60 foot ketch named, pleasingly, Modesty) equipped for everything. The crew however (invariably a semi to competent man with a less than competent, fumbling wife who enjoys cooking and is in it for the pontoon parties and because 'it's his dream and I love him') is not so well equipped. I find myself thinking how do they manage bad weather so short handed on such a large boat? Of course - everything is electric. That helps. But, then again, does it? What happens, for example, when the electric winch, windlass or in mast furling goes wrong and those complicated bits of kit can't be bodged together a la Heath Robinson? What then? That to me is just as risky as the Flying Teapot brigade.
Risk is always present. What matters is what you have done to minimise risk and what you will do when the situation changes. We met a man in Gran Canaria who had named his dinghy Plan B - and that's exactly what I mean.
　

Note from the end of the world

2010-02-27T10:48:00.000-08:00

El Hierero's Camino de la Virgen,

snowy El Teide in the distance

It's only 50 odd miles from La Gomera to El Hierro but the passage took us 28 hours! The wind blew directly from our destination, La Restinga, at all times. We had between 0 and 35 knots of wind which made for an infinite number of sail changes and a real old hokey-cokey of reef in and reefs out.

West coast of El Hierro, sailing in to La Restinga.

Still we made it to the most westerly point of the Canaries chain and of Spain as a whole. Thankfully we didn't arrive earlier as last week they had 76 knots of wind in the harbour and much breakage.

Casper calms the traffic on El Hierro

El Hierro is a cross between the moon and the West coast of Ireland in a heat wave. The backbone of this island, some one and a half kilometres up, is most definately lunar, the colour of ash and rust. 100 metres down grows a scruffy tight pine forest which stops abruptly, opening to pasture - cattle and sheep graze.

Beneath this, wobbly volcanic stone walls separate the hotchpotch of small fields. Most are cultivated - with figs, almonds, lemons, potatoes. Poppies and buttercups grow wild between the cultivars. On the winding empty roads rickety folk in straw hats herd goats. The bleating and the bells carry a long way in this otherwise silent landscape. The lower third of the island, reaching into the sea, is the vast lava field that flowed two centuries ago. Here and there the lava looks fresh, arrested in mid ooze down the mountain side like a giant cowpat caked dry in the sun. Some of the lava field has been cleared, allowing thickets of lime green cacti to spring up. There was a time when cacti formed the scaffold to El Hierro's economy. The cactus was host to the cochineal insect which, once dried and crushed, provided a valuable dye. In the 1800's the cultivation of cochineal was El Hierro's monoculture. Today this has been replaced by the production of tomatoes and bananas for international export. The cacti fields are largely abandoned although some folk still harvest the akward fruit to make jam and liquor.

El Hierro is only minimally geared to tourism and perhaps because of this the Herrenos are exceptionally friendly. The bus driver ('without your ticket you will not be able to claim in the eventuality of an accident') recognises me already and we have only been here 2 days. On this small island nowhere and everywhere is a bus stop - "just put your hand up and he'll stop for you". I stumbled into a bar this afternoon (whilst Casper nursed a cold on the boat). A couple were having a traditional sing song to the accompaniment of a cow bell and a guitar plucked from behind the counter.

We've just weathered another angry Westerly (35 knots and 3 metre swell). The wind is now more reasonable. Provided we can get our two anchors up tomorrow we will be leaving for Banjul, capital of the Gambia. This will be our longest passage to date on Impulse - some 1000 miles due South and East a bit. Next time I write we'll be in Africa!

Aiiie la Sardina!

2010-02-20T05:58:00.000-08:00

The day following the big storm we walked through Valle Hermosa, the beautiful valley. The air was thick and heavy with the brassy smell of rainlogged earth sweating in the near noon sun. Out of the village and climbing the wooded track, nobody else but us. Everthing still, but not silent - birds, bees, the rustle of something in the hedge, scampering lizards. Reaching the high point of our ramble, at 900 metres, a breathtaking view across the water to Tenerife's Mount Teide, sugared white by the recent rains. How lush the mountains have become in a few months. We wove down the barranco to the sound of gushing water. The tinkle of a goat bell across the valley. Rounding the ridge, there lay the village again, pretty and white, neat terraces either side red and ridged, freshly planted.
We crammed on the guagua back to San Sebastian, the driver shoving two bottles of wine in the glove compartment before collecting fares. Country folk were off to town to celebrate Carnival, and more precisely this evening the Sardine fiesta. This was a strange affair involving a procession of folk (mostly crossdressed and in costume the theme of which was death - cobwebs, black veils, crying into hankies, skulls, the grim reaper) following a giant sardine through the streets to the beat of a drum and the shrieks of 'aiiiee aiiee, la sardina!' Arriving at the beach the sardine was set alight with a spectacular amount of fireworks leaving the general public to grab the 'safety barriers' and use them to shield themselves from the fast exploding fish. Tonight is the final night of La Gomera's carnival so tomorrow we will need to be scrubbed clean and hence will be going to sea.

Any port in a storm

2010-02-17T10:55:00.000-08:00

Motorsailing into San Sebastian

The wind has turned. But not to a desirable direction. Yesterday, with an increasing swell and gusts in the high twenties, we increased our holding by rowing out another anchor and tying a stern line onto a buoy. We watched the barometre fall then stabilise, the cumulus clouds swell until they swallowed the horizon entirely, the wispy stratus in the higher atmosphere merge to form a milky halo around the sun. With two anchors and two buoys we were well setup for the bad weather that was forecast. What happened however was not forecast. The wind did not blow hard overnight and this morning, when it did start, it veered far more southerly than predicted, blowing straight into the harbour from the open sea - nothing between us and the South Pole. Decision made, immediately and unanimously - haul anchor, slip free of the buoys and motorsail back 6 miles to the relative safety of San Sebastian (unfortunately open to the South but as they say 'any port in a storm'). By the time we had unspun the web of lines from bow and stern the rain was falling, lightly at first and then in fat drops. Passing the breakwater the sea was surging and laboured, white caps here and there. The wind blew steady just around 20 knots. The rain thickened reducing our visibility. The thunder started and lightening lit up the brooding sky.
In the harbour the water is red with mud and thick with debris that has surged downriver from the island's interior. Because the current was so strong and the heavy wind beam onto us we manoeuvred into a tight berth using long lines in addition to our engines. Fortunately half a dozen pairs of hands sprung into action to halp us fend off, tie on, avoid any breakages. And here we are, in port, the wind squeeling through the rigging of 300 odd boats, the relentless rain washing our decks clean, the barometre still falling. The pressure has dropped 9 bars in the last 3 hours. We're in for a big blow.

(just seen 46 knots on the anemonemometre)

Leaving Las Palmas

2010-02-17T10:49:00.000-08:00

We are back at sea after our anchor vacation in Las Palmas. Amazing how a few extra days in the city fast became two and a half weeks.
- Yeah two and a half weeks.
- Two and a half weeks?! Two and a half weeks of what?
- That... is hard to say...
We were busy every single day yet precisely busy with what is still puzzling. If you are reading this from your upright and ergonomic office chair with a heaving inbox stealing your eye I apologise. And if it makes this any more palateable I do feel whole heartedly self conscious (and guilty) owning up to this. Continue to ignore the intray...
I'll explain - there were days tracking down elusive pots of antifouling (brown only, delivery date indeterminate). This mission began on foot - a two hour walk at least before we mastered the complex circuitry of guaguas (buses to you and me and it's 'wahwah' not gwagwa). This task highlighted the benefit of owning a foldup bicycle which set in motion a second mission. In searching for a bike we made new friends (incidently with a boat from Dartmouth) and so we stayed another night. Then there was the shopping delivery that turned up 48 hours late, delaying our departure on the favorite North Easterly. Inevitably a Southerly then kicked up glueing us to the boat for a further 24 hours (and rescuing someone else's from a sticky end in the shape of a dragging anchor a too-close-breakwater). By the time the wind returned from a sensible direction a band of friends arrived so it would have been rude to leave. Then there was the saga of the missing package of ardently anticipated engine spares (arrived but promptly sent back 'because the package was small', interesting logic). So you see how a few days quickly turns into several weeks and it's not through laziness.
It's not all enjoyment either. There are many days when I curse the boat and long for bricks, mortar, a warm shower, a kitchen in which I can stand up and more generally a home which does not run the risk of blowing away, blowing over or being holed by another vessel. This thought crossed my mind most recently when we were just going out and the wind became quite lively. We decided it best to pop a second anchor in lest the first one drageth. I swung into Melvin, Casper passed me Bruce, our second anchor, and I attempted to row out to place the anchor. This proved silly as I was immediately blown back on the boat and almost under the trampoline. I cranked the ever-temperamental outboard into life. It obliged momentarily, then died. I started it again, and again, and again just managing not to wrench my arm out of its socket in my fast swelling anger. Not a great idea doing this in my 'shore clothes' (I am wet through). The wheezer obliges and we make it out to the choice spot to throw Bruce overboard. But what's this? No longer moving forwards are we. Scanning the possible explanations for this setback, the favorite is that Bruce's anchor rode is caught around the propellor of the dinghy outboard - CORRECT! I tip the outboad up to lift its leg out of the water and free the prop, forgetting to close the fuel cap, and thereby releasing half a tank of petrol down my favorite shorts. Great stuff.
On Casper's birthday we set sail at last. He was treated to a chirpy Northerlywesterly. We sailed off the anchor, executing a gracefully lap of honour to say goodbye to new friend Marinus on the hearty Mare Liberum before leaving the harbour on an ample goosewing. We ran downwind the length of Gran Canaria, making trifle as Impulse surfed the gushing waves, hitting 13 knots every so often. The coast here is attractive but greyed by tourism. The real stunner is the complex theatre of shapes and shadow which forms the volcanic interior, layer upon layer of alien landforms heaved up from the earth's core centuries ago and now, in the beginnings of Spring, veiled in the dewy green of a million fresh shoots.
I wrote earlier that in cruising South we do not witness the change in seasons and that I find it disorientating, uncomfortable. This itch has been scratched as we've been in the Canaries for sooo looog now. We've seen the steady trade winds of the autumn weaken, overtaken by Southwesterly gales. Right now, anchored in the sleepy (comatosed?) village of Santiago in the South of La Gomera, we are hostage to one of these. The wind threatens to blow West for another 4 days - again the package awaits us in El Hierro, Southwest of here! Before the barometre fell through the floor and the rain squalls started we took a bus (no, the bus) into the hills. From the clutch of whitewashed houses that is the village of Imada we walked down the valley through a meticulously terraced landscape, once (probably in my lifetime) farmed but now mostly left fallow. How quickly a place comes to rely on imports and, within a generation or two, the skills necessary for self sufficiency are lost. Still a few plots are worked, by hand as access is difficult, and as far as I could see by people at least twice my age. An abandoned almond orchard, in full bridal white bloom, kept us occupied, filling our shirt bibs with its bounty. Further downhill we stood lightheaded on the edge of a huge drop, a waterfall stretched below us, feeding a valley of luminescent green. The cobbled footpath, testament to some earlier activity than walking simply for pleasure, kept the river to our left and the sea ahead of us. We ducked under palms, sidestepped cacti, brushed against fragrant wild lavender, accompanied only by the occasional fat furry bee or speckled butterfly.
When will the wind turn? That's the current nagging question. The anchorage here is ok but not comfortable. I am anxious that if the wind turns Southerly in any way (though it is not forecast to) the swell will become nasty. If it does we will have to sail downwind, backtracking East to the island's capital San Sebastian. It's simple and not lifethreatening so why am I worried? I think the answer is that I don't know what will happen. If it happens at all I don't know when and I don't know how. We cannot plan ahead. We are just waiting. It is this loss of control that stresses me. It is the constant quicksand of parameters that underrides every mini decision, each mini decision shaping a future outcome and therefore another set of slipsiding parameters to be decided upon. It is like this in landlife too except the outcomes are more immediate out here and these decisions have to be made more often. Plus you cannot shut the door and ignore the weather like you can in a house. Every 'clunk' has us up to check the lines, the anchor, that nothing has broken or fallen into the drink. This morning I jumped over the side fully clothed to retrieve some rugs I'd left to air 'in a safe place'. I forgot to let go of the dustpan I was using at the time. All Casper could do was laugh at the sight of me trying to swim upwind hampered by clothing, two rugs and a bright pink dustpan.

Casper in Architectural Wonderland

2010-01-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

'Wow, wow, wooow!' The conversation was a tad limited as we strolled through town today. The place was sleepy in a beautiful Sunday sort of way. The Canarians really do know how to do Sunday well - none of this Sunday trading nonsense, nope, Sundays are not for shopping, but more for strolling, chewing the cud over endless tiny cups of coffee, wheeling the new baby/ies around (today we saw a tandem pram), eating an infinate number of courses over a verrrry loooong luuuunnnnnch. Casper was in architectural heaven (and so was I) as we entered the old town, deliciously quiet and strangely empty. Every building facade is different. Each decorated, mostly colourfully - pink, blue, yellow and none of those timid pastel shades, here we like BOLD. Old gothic features sit comfortable next to stark new interventions. It's brave and it works. The old town is a tad crusty which absolutely adds to its charm. I feel embarassed that we so nearly missed this, that we almost dismissed Las Palmas because the port was, what? ugly? slightly seedy - what did we expect? We will now be staying a few more days...

Chasing the wind

2010-01-21T03:00:00.000-08:00

The sea is oily calm, for hours, before it starts to pockmark with the promise of a breeze. Everywhere we are it seems the wind is a little further off. We've raided Impulse's wardrobe to try every possible combination of light air sails, all of which have names that should feature in a Harry Potter book - the Reacher, the Screecher, the Monster. It is only a matter of minutes before each sail insists on embracing the mast and spreaders. We lower the engine and motor towards an elusive patch of wind. Finally a breeze! Ah but - it is coming from where we are going or rather want to go.
I say 'If the wind were a person it would be diagnosed as having a borderline personality disorder - constantly shifting, relentlessly unreliable, shockingly unstable'. But then everything changes because the wind sets in from the right quarter and we enjoy a fabulous sail straight in to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Just like a person, the wind can be shocking one minute and you hate it, then it acts nice again and all is immediately forgiven.
The rumour mill was wrong about Las Palmas.. it's not so bad! It's a big marina and busy with people doing stuff. We are outside at anchor just off the beach. As the day fades into darkness the sprawling capital is transformed. The orange glow of the urban lights gives it a softness which daytime cannot. Faceless windows become theatres of life as lights switch on in offices and homes. I'm glad I'm not in it that city, but to watch it from the comfort of our home, nudging at its anchor chain, bobbing about, its all quite charming.
It's funny, I feel our attitude has changed to this cruising lark. No longer compelled to sightsee we spend much more time on the boat and entertain ourselves with other cruisers rather than going ashore. One such cruiser is Vijay - I tell you what, he's a character with his super tippy dinghy and supermarket bag for a wallet.
Tomorrow promises no discernable wind so we will go in search of widgets, mostly.

HAPPY 2010!

2010-01-15T05:49:00.000-08:00

For once in the Canaries, we are waiting for wind. Just at the Northern end of Fuerteventura, the lively town of Corralejo is our temporary base. The sea is glassy and only disturbed by the whitewash crests that thunder across the volcanic reef in the distance. When the breeze sticks we will head southwest, close to Fuerteventura's sandy coastline and around the southern tip of Gran Canaria before heading northwest to La Gomera to fill our tanks with sweet sweet water from the mountain and our lockers with fresh provisions. This is the plan and is naturally likely to change. Hopefully we shall catch some fish (now that all that boasting has ended).

Feliz Navidad a Todos!

2009-12-16T06:47:00.001-08:00

Wishing you a very happy Christmas and a colourful New Year, we hope to see at least some of you in 2010 and perhaps even aboard the good ship Impulse - ?!

With much love from us x K8 n Casper eeeeeeeee,eeeeee

La Graciosa in pictures

2009-12-16T06:14:00.001-08:00

Downtown Graciosa

Lagoon at low tide

Playa Francesa

Footloose

Rainbow at Montana Amarilla

We have arrived!

2009-12-11T05:38:00.000-08:00

Dear all, just so you know and can sleep tightly (!) we had a safe and even enjoyable passage back to La Graciosa, that oh so gentle island. The winds were kind and the seas even more so. All is well. More later x c n k

ps...

2009-12-07T04:06:00.000-08:00

On passage now to Lanzarote (where we fly back from), not a brilliant prospect given that it is NE from here and that the prevailing winds are also NE. The good thing is that the forecast is for light airs so we can head up more than we could with stiffer winds. No offence Mum but we are glad ur not with us so we might have an sail "mas tranquillito"! Besos para todos xxx

Back to La Gomera

2009-12-07T03:49:00.000-08:00

Beating into it, El Teide of Tenerife in the distance

Well this is a nasty little sail on a wicked little sea! Stiff wee waves are frothing at the mouth with knuckle white crests clawing back their heads, hanging on for dear life. If only they could decide where they were going but some are going this way and others tother making a merry confusion and slapping our nacelle rather hard!

Nanas of La Palma

We were unimpressed with La Palma – even in the knowledge of its annual 132 million kilo banana turnover – and in the end the prospect of beating into a mucky sea with a headwind was better than staying at the “marina” on the pontoon that ate through our lines and prevented us from walking in a straight line.

Moon rising over the toblerone cliffs of La Gomera

We are back in San Sebastian de La Gomera (since with the current wind direction we couldn’t make it anywhere else we liked). This town really is becoming a favourite. Early this morning I wandered the back streets, mostly up and down flights of crooked steps adorned with tubs of hearty geraniums. There’s a surprising number of stray cats and tumbley down cottages. The few main streets empty out into a big square that is completely dead between noon and five but electric with life thereon. I sat there this morning and sketched the huge trees that give shade to the East side of the square. The waitress served me a “branquito” (without the “liquor”, I insisted, given it was not quite 9 o’clock). Out came this drink (I had never had it before). It looks like any other “café con leche” served in a small glass but my god what a concoction. When I enquired, all starry eyed, the waitress assured me there was no alcohol in it – just coffee, condensed milk, lemon peel and cinnamon. The strangest thing was that it tasted good.

El Capitan in La Gomera

The rest of the day was spent jobbing. Washing, fixing, sewing, sawing etc etc etc. A night-time excursion to dunk long thin doughnut-like “churros” in thick hot chocolate followed by some serious people watching whilst clasping our bellies vowing never to eat anything deep fried ever again. Day off tomorrow as the Christmas market has come to town!

Webbed Feet in the Banana Republic

2009-12-07T03:32:00.000-08:00

Santa Cruz de la Palma, bananas and rain.

All I can think is that we are being broken in for our return to Devon. We are in (the currently very wet) La Palma at the North Western end of the Canaries cluster. From our (currently very bumpy) berth at the (currently under construction) marina at Santa Cruz I am watching the blankets of rain roll in, from the North East (from Devon in fact). Out to sea the muddy sky is breaking open and puddles of blue are appearing, tantalisingly promising some hope of better weather. But when I look back at the island, it’s hard to believe that it holds a beautiful mountainous core rising to over 2500 metres – all I see is an uninteresting hill standing in front of a bank of fog (I could be in Plymouth).

Sheltering from the rain in a banana grove.

We have spent several days attempting to dodge (mostly unsuccessfully) the bulbous clouds botoxed with rain. I’m sure it’s all very beautiful here – if only you could see it. I’m whingeing, sorry – inexcusable really given the amounts of sunshine I’ve been blessed with just recently - and I should mention that we did see something quite spectacular yesterday on the Southern end of the national park. At the col of La Cumbrecita we watched banks of clouds whir in from the sea, skate across the mountain top and tumble into the valley where they lay, thick like whipped cream and strangely suspended above the villages beneath.

Cloudscape at La Cumbrecita.

With all this rain La Palma is, needless to say, very lush. Flowers abound (and it’s winter). There’s a curious mixture of pines, brooms, bracken with succulents, bougainvillea, drifts of bright orange climbers with trumpet-like flowers. Driving up the foggy mountain, with copper coloured leaves falling all around, the road rusty at its edges with plants losing their summer green, we realised that we’d missed autumn. It’s a strange thing to be constantly travelling South. When you’re in one place you witness the seasons changing and therefore can make sense of time passing. But we have cheated this process and the result is disorientating. It’s hard to explain.

There are other aspects of this life at sea that are also bewildering, leading to some soul searching. We build nothing, we plant nothing, we are not part of any community. Our lives on the ocean are transient, we touch everything lightly, taking little but also we give little back. There is a pointlessness to cruising (note the meaning of the word itself) which I find disconcerting. But then, I suppose, life itself is rather pointless when you look at it with logic, and perhaps all the things we achieve (building, planting, knitting booties for the next generation) all give us a sense of purpose, which helps us survive the strange enigma of our lives (we are given life and at some point it is taken away). In this sense then, our voyage is enlightening although not necessarily in a comforting way.

Balconies in Santa Cruz
(apparently where the loo was in olden days, nice)

Church in Santa Cruz.

Impulse is like our very own time-travel machine, moving us through different seasons, climates, geographical zones and cultures. We have seen places that have long been devastated by the greed and opulence of mass tourism. Others are at the very beginning of this process. Yesterday we drove through a strikingly beautiful lava field. Peppered with bright yellow diggers, it is about to be carved up for a housing development, undoubtedly to attract foreign investors. But who am I to deny a small island its chance of achieving greater wealth? It is just sad to witness irreversible changes being inflicted on yet another landscape.

Poinsettia and cobbles in San Andres

Two Reefs Ruddle the Stugeron Queen

2009-12-07T03:12:00.000-08:00

Two Reefs Ruddle at the helm

Taking a break...

I swear that everytime we went on passage with my mother (a history of seasickness, feels ill in the bath) we were down to two reefs in the main on a stinky sea. The important thing is though that she survived it and seems quite happy to join us again… Thankfully in between the two uncomfortable day passages we made (Tenerife to La Gomera then La Gomera to La Palma) Old Man Sea granted us a stint of hot almost windless days allowing us to drop the hook in some lovely bays.

Home for one night.

There is nothing quite like wild anchoring, especially when you are the only boat in the cove. Days become timeless as you busy yourself with the important things in life: catching fish, preparing food, swimming, exploring, gazing at the stars, sitting still, thinking…
We had one especially good day anchored off an abandoned fish factory now inhabited by a Belgium revolutionary. I went spear fishing and caught three parrot fish which Val cleaned up and Casper cooked over the barbeque.

Parrot fish - almost too beautiful to eat.

The night, not dulled by artificial lights, revealed a moon that was just off full and a parallel world of tiny stars. Magic…

Moon rising above the cliff

Our grinning Stugeron Queen Val

The lovely La Gomera

2009-11-26T11:36:00.000-08:00

With Love from La Gomera...

It seems like absolutely ages since we last added to the blog. Perhaps it is? I’ve calculated that we’ve been on the road for two and a half months now but it seems like an eternity… in a good way you understand.

Chapel in Lanzarote

The stainless leg for the water generator worked out in the end. It’s a shoddy job but it will do. What can you expect when there is not a flat surface in the whole shop and the man does not possess a set square? My Spanish was most definitely pushed to the max. However, finding words to explain ‘point load’, ‘flange’, ‘R pin’ was a doddle compared to interpreting for a (by then) very irate Casper. The generator itself pumps the power into the boat brilliantly, providing an excellent addition to the wind and solar generators, so my hair straighteners run fine and we have a constant supply of ice cubes.

Montañas de Fuego, Lanzarote

We grew very fond of ‘Arry, as we nicknamed the Lanzarote’s capital, with its white cityscape, doors and windows edged with fresh blue and green, its ‘charco’ lake and fortresses. Thanks to Manrique’s tireless dedication to conservation, Lanzarote, unlike it’s island neighbours retains its traditional character and beauty. Fuerteventura was a whole different kettle of fish. To be fair we only stopped in one port, Corralejo, which was a good base from which to explore the outlying Isla de Lobos, but an architectural carcrash. Lobos means ‘wolves’ but the meaning intended in the island’s name is ‘sea wolves’ or seals. These inhabited the island shores until, in the 15th century, a group of French mariners were shipwrecked there and ate every one of them to stave off starvation. We only day anchored at Isla de Lobos because the swell was very pronounced.

Big surf at Isla de Lobos

The sky was moody and dark when we left for Tenerife and once night came she was splintered with lightening and shaking with thunder. The heavens flickered with light as we sailed on, surrounded by storms but thankfully never actually in one. The odd squall hit us with the thud, the lines groaning as they were yanked harder round the winches. The anemometer jumped 10-15 clicks and the clouds delivered sheets of hard but warm rain.

The 125-mile passage was very fast and, not wanting to enter Santa Cruz in darkness, we stood off the North Eastern coast of Tenerife until daybreak. The baby pink dawn revealed the island’s velvetine peaks. The colour of sage and rust, and arranged in tidy piles, they looked like some mystical hand had plucked them skywards.

Rainbow arriving in Tenerife

The refreshingly green beauty of Tenerife’s Northern tip was an unfortunate place to start circumnavigating the island since it would seem to be, by far, the best of the coast. As we bore away and cruised downwind, the bone dry shores became increasingly littered with ugly developments catering for fish and chip tourism.

Pico de Teide, Tenerife, seen from La Gomera

We had an unhappy few days trying to find a decent place to stop. An extra dimension was added to the habitual list of requirements in the form of a visit from Val, my mother. We needed to be in a ‘nice place’, sheltered from the prevailing winds and swell, a bus trip away from the airport, a ‘sensible’ dinghy ride away from shore or alongside. Somehow it took us ages and many arguments to find either and we eventually settled for Los Cristianos (where the charm of the old town has not yet been entirely obliterated by the bucket and spade brigade).
The weather really doesn’t care whether you have plans. Given that I had once witnessed Val getting seasick in a dinghy on a flat calm sea with no wind, I was rather anxious to make the intended passage to Tenerife’s neighbouring island La Gomera on a sunny day, with a gentle breeze from behind and a small following sea. Instead we thumped our way into a heavy sea with two reefs in the main, a miserable force 6 periodically heading us, forcing us to alter course so much that darkness fell way before our arrival. It was, apart from Biscay, the worst sailing we have had thus far. Poor Val had no option but to retire to the ‘divan’ huddled in blankets, an emergency bucket close. Amazingly she still wants to sail with us.

The 3 of us having made it to La Gomera

La Gomera is Onbelievable. The most beautiful island I have seen so far. Cathedrals of rock, lush deep valleys, palm trees, pine trees, banana plantations, beaches of fine sand, dark and chocolatey.

Val & Casper pulling faces, Alto de Garajonay, La Palma in the distance

It is unspoilt and I hope to God it stays that way…

Descending to Chuipude, La Gomera

I need to go back to sea to have a rest! Being in the marina here at San Sebastian is a social whirl. We hooked up with friends made at previous anchorages, eating, drinking and going to bed late. It’s amazing what we end up talking about over supper now – twiddle buttons and self-digging anchor tips. God help you friends when we come back at Christmas*!

With love from us all x Capn Casper, First M8 K8, Chief Bottle Washer Bal

Imogen, our mascot (twice for some reason)

* December 19th to January 6th

Some pics to set the mind alight

2009-11-11T09:18:00.000-08:00

My favorite Manrique print:
Wind sculptures by manrique:

We went to Cesar Manrique's house - inspiring! He built it in the black 'lava fields' which colour the plains surrounding the 'calderas' (craters) which pockmark the arid moonscape of Lanzarote. The volcano blew and rolled lava down the hills and plains in the 1730's. This brilliant artist come architect took the natural bubbles forged by gases popping within the lava and tweeked them into a series of underground rooms, some partially open to the sky. A palm grows up from the centre of a circular living space, its leaves whispering as they touch the open air. A window stretches the artist's studio seemlessly into the jet black lava garden. It's truly magical.

Lava field from Manrique's studio

We walked up an old volcano and picnicked at the top. It was blimmin windy and I was glad not to be at sea.

On the stainless steel leg for the hydro generator front (are you still with me?) it's dissapointing, unfinished and frustrating and not entirely due to my blunderings in Spainsh but our fingers are crossed for the best. It simply HAS to work as Casper tells me this will be "the end of our power problems" and i can plug my hair straighteners in...

Hola y muchisimas gracias from Arrecife!

2009-11-06T07:20:00.000-08:00

With love from us

Dear all - well, I was wonderin why no one was postin comments havin asked me how to do such a thing... then I see that the ether fairies had been hoarding your messages in a secret computer compartment which I have now discovered. THANKYOU SO MUCH for yr comments, I haven't felt so tearful since we ate Skip the baby tuna...

RIP SKIP

Things continue to go well. I feel slightly cagey since there have been a few groanful complaints about the descriptions of the what was it 'implicit barefootedness' and the persistent accounts of fair weather. No, I can't pretend it's a hard life but it did rain the day before yesterday.

In fact it is blowing a hooley and we are weather bound in Lanzarote's capital Arrecife until further notice. Arrecife is a workaday town, and we are at the workaday end of it in the grubby harbour of Naos, brilliantly protected from both wave and wind.

We arrived in a gusty 6, heaving in the genoa and yanking down the mainsail just past the cruise ship and the tugboats strung up against the commercial pontoon. We motored up the creek in between the channel markers, arriving at a pool that was heavily crowded with small fishing gaffs and barnacle ridden no hope yachts. Eyeing the perfect spot right at the end of the shop, we cautiously picked our way between boats, most tugging at mooring buoys, some at anchor. The wind way shouty in our ears after the fast five hour sail. Halyards chattered and masts clanged. Above the din we became aware of some whistling, then some shouting. We ignored it and continued, with just enough throttle to keep us moving forwards against the persistent wind. Then there was shouting and whistling combined. Looking to see where it came from I see two guys on shore waving their arms furiously. I make out two words: 'piedra' then 'roca'.

"S*** - rocks gobackgoback" I jabber at Casper who is on the engine. Follows a disorderly but ultimately succesful retrieval of the situation. We are blown onto several small fishing boats, so I am hanging off the pulpit fending them off. Casper is trying to keep steerage whilst not hitting anything or moving forwards to graze our keels on the 'roca'. We recover our cool and turn back, scanning for an anchoring spot. There isn't really any space in the scruffy port for us.

At this point we are flagged down by Angel the man in the stained Y-fronts with the drooling rotweiler. He is standing in his full semi clad glory on a rough looking cat rafted to a second.

After some negotiation we 'rent' a mooring of 'his' for a week. It is all a bit vague and a scetchy and I can't decide if this is down to my faltering Spanish or to his dodgy business sense. Anyhow, we are on someone's mooring and its a good thing thanks with this gale blowing through.

Que? My head hurts...

Whilst we wait for the storm to pass we are having a stainless stell leg made for a newly purchased water generator. My brain hurts from having to explain words like 'flange' and 'R pin' in Spanish. I'm slighty dreading the moment when we see the end product - I just hope it fits and that not too much is lost in translation...

Whale and surf but this time no skipper in it, innit?

2009-11-02T05:42:00.000-08:00

Madeira - Salvagens - Canaries

Madeira is nothing more than the crushed silhouette of ash grey peaks above a huge rolling cloudscape. Much as we enjoyed the island, it is a relief to leave Funchal and its zooped up nightly covers of the most manic songs by the Gypsy Kings, played on a land yacht once owned by none other than the Beatles.

The sea is lively but not boisterous, the wind is steady and coming from the East – more than expected but not too much. Impulse strides on. I relax as Gloria, our beloved and melodic autopilot, manages our course, which is for now rather perfectly on the rhumb line to the Ilheu Salvagens, the cluster of deserted islands lying 150nm south of Madeira and the same distance north of Gran Canaria.

Then I see spray ahead of us. Strange I think because neither wind nor wave is big enough to produce it. Then emerges a large object - charcoal coloured but shiny like a puppy dog’s nose, a blunted square in shape. It dawns on me.

“Whale!” I shriek, and lunge at Gloria to swing us away from it. Casper scrambles out on deck. We pass alarmingly close still and by now can clearly make out the rectangular head and low rise hump that are characteristic of a Sperm whale. It appears to roll on its side, a fin stretched skyward, the head and hump submerge and it is gone. However scary it is to see a whale it is scarier still when it disappears – is it coming at us? Will it bump us from below? It didn’t and despite the brevity of this monster’s visit the buzz of its sighting, and so close, stayed with us from quite some time.

We read later that we Sperm whales are not often seen as they spend most of their time diving up to two hours at a time and to depths of over 3000 metres. It was hard to see exactly how big it was but at least as long as Impulse. Sperm whales, at least the males, reach 18 metres in length (their dainty partners only getting to 12 metres or so).

I muse at the sighting way into the night, a waking dream, the sky milky with stars and the moon buttery and bright.

We arrive at the largest of the Salvagens the following morning and join two other boats in a small but deep anchorage on its Southern end. The island rises up above us, dry and barren. The water is so clear I can watch the lazy fish from the boat. We relax, happy there is no music to be heard especially not by the Gypsy Kings.

Driftin on

By the next morning a small swell has developed in the wee bay. This is unfortunate as we have work to do up the mast. Landlubbers skip this: the sheave to the block of the double purchase main halyard is crumbling and needs replacing which requires the halyard to been unknotted at the top of the mast. Its my turn to go up and so do. I unknot the thing and send the end down to Casper to thread through a new stainless block. I enjoy the view for a while. It’s uncomfortable up there, legs threaded through the rigging, bum going numb in the boson’s chair, head fixated on the numerous potential but very unlikely ‘falling scenarios’. It’s also very hot and, as the pole begins to lurch from side to side more with the increasing swell, I begin to feel sick. Casper sends the end back up and I wish I could skip the next bit but feel I can’t because that would be censorship. I struggle for ages trying to poke the damn end of the halyard in between the top plate of the mast and the pin that traverses its vertical flanges - ages and ages, swearing and sweating and feeling sick. Eventually I give up. Lying in the pod waiting for the Stugeron to take effect, Casper mentions the split pin at the end of the main pin, which holds it in place and IS REMOVEABLE. Grrrraaaagh! I had been so fixated on the task in hand that I hadn’t swung my thoughts laterally to this possibility: releasing the pin, putting the knotted halyard end in place, followed by the securing pin. Sometimes I despair of myself.

View from up top

Anyway, it’s by now too hot to carry on with the job so we shelve it for the following day. The halyard end is secured at the top of the mast but the main sail, with the block change unfinished, is unusable.

Unfortunately the anchorage becomes untenable that evening with a 6 metre swell rolling in to produce tubes of surf over the reefs surrounding us on two sides. We motor round to the bay on the Eastern side of the bay, which is initially calm enough for a barbecue but becomes uncomfortable overnight.

Surf develops just outside the anchorage -
you can just make out the mast of the remaining yacht to the left of the wave

We leave in the morning and, because we have to be able to use the mainsail, Casper climbs the mast this time to finish the work that his dumb blond girlfriend didn’t do. Even with the engine on tickover, the swell keeps our speed up. I try to steer at an angle to the swell that minimises any lurching for Casper’s sake. Then somehow, whilst I’m on the foredeck, I lose a shoe. With Casper yelling and pointing from his lookout 14 metres up I bumble up and down the length of deck, boathook in hand til I retrieve the damn thing. The lurching gets momentarily worse for no apparent reason. Casper screeches “future generations are in jeopardy!’ as the softest part of him snags in the rigging. Anyhow, he succeeds and I release him from his torment.

Blood red sunset

Follows an amazing day. Not much wind to be had, so little in fact that we end up swimming off the boat (holding on to a line because even at 1knot she moves away pretty quick). We also catch a fish – and not a mackerel! A female dorado, so beautiful with her yellow and blue flecked coat, that I cry (just as I did with Skip the tuna we caught just out of Madeira). She tastes good though, dusted in flour and fried in butter. The sunset is red, the glassy sea bloody with the sky’s reflection.

Dotty Dorado

It takes ages to get to the Canaries, even after we see the bright lights of Lanzarote. When I wake up a few hours after sunrise La Graciosa is finally in view. The wind has picked up and we are reefed down coming in the straight between Lanzarote (to starboard) and La Graciosa’s southern coast (to port).

Sailing into the Canaries

What a spot! The anchorage is great because the water is not too deep and there is good holding in sand. From the boat, we see no signs of civilisation at all, just raw nature: the beach stretching out of sight, interrupted here and there by the age old remains of lava flow, black and pockmarked. Several hills rise up, one, the closest is streaked on one side with brilliant yellow (Canaries yellow?). Lanzarote appears as a volcanic cliff face, rising high above the sea to a flat and deserted top.

Montana amarilla, yellow mountain, Graciosa

In La Graciosa’s main village Caleta de Sebo, I expect John Wayne to turn the corner pistols blazing and sweat-drenched neckerchief hiding half his face. The streets are made of sand and the occasional wind hardened palm tree interrupts the whiteness of the single story façade of the houses. I love it. We love it. And are in no hurry to leave or should I say ‘saddle up an’ ride right outa this goddam town’.

Shy whales, sunbathing turtles and skippers in the surf

2009-10-23T04:52:00.000-07:00

Porto Santo´s bay

Whale spray and tens of turtles sunbathing – nothing else disturbed the glassy sea as we ghosted away from Porto Santo, with its long white sand beach and arid interior. This is where Columbus met his missus, amidst the cacti and palm fronds. There is nothing much more to say, being on Porto Santo is like stepping into a one horse town Western. Strangely, one of the islands gastronomic specialities is ‘lapas’ grilled limpits with garlic. Nice but not something I will try at home. I digress...

It was a slow and hot passage. Several miles from our destination twilight faded into dusk and dusk to semidarkness. The amber lights of civilisation collected in drifts on the skyline ahead framed by fat fingers of cloud and the ebony silhouette of Maderia’s outling island, Ilheu de Fora.

Eastern tip of Maderia

It took ages and ages to get to the Enseada da Abra, lying to the East of the island. The night was too dark to take the shortcut between the mainland and the island so we stood out, our eyes peeled for the fish pens and platforms that our pilot book warned of. At last we reached the wide bay, no obstacles encountered, where several other boats were tucked up. We barbequed fish (regrettably not caught by us), topped up our alcohol levels and slept well.

Enseada da Abra

We woke the sun rising over the tip of the island, swiftly as always and a tangerine red. Cliffs towered above us, at first dark and foreboding, but as the sun rose higher and turned bright white a startling rainbow of ochre and green was revealed. Walking through this landscape later was like walking through the earths internal organs, deep red veins surging through flesh coloured rock, once bubbling with gas and alive with fire. Surprisingly, for such a dry looking landscape, the isolated patches of vegetation are a vibrant green, revived overnight by heavy dews.

The snorkelling in the bay was great and, it being my first time in warm waters, I was astounded not just because I could swim with my head underwater and not be blinded by an ice cream headache but mainly by the amazing colour palette of the underwater world. I swam through clouds of silver fish, small like butter knives, darting hither and thither near the water’s surface. In shallower water fat fingered starfish lazed on rocks, some a rusty orange colour, others a vibrant grey-blue with bright orange suckers. There were brown fish with yellow spots on their tail, black fish with electric blue rims to their fins so bright that it looked artificial, like neon. There were long nosed glittery fish like stiff pipe cleaners. Fish that lay in the sand almost completely camouflaged. My favourites were long and technicolour, starting with a turquoise head and graduating through yellow, pink, orange in zebra stripes to its slim tailfin. The most amazing thing for me was their total indifference to my presence. I could dive down and practically rub noses with them (if they had noses) and they were non-plussed. It gave me a tremendous sense of awe for these splendid sea creatures, of privilege and also of shame that I had even contemplated bringing my speargun (thankfully they were all much too small for eating).

Another day at the office

Casper kept himself busy doing jobs, scrubbing the boat’s bottom, cleaning the engine jets and then dismantling the steering gear. In doing the latter he disregarded two most commonsense rules in the book: a) taking something apart when it is not broken ‘just to see’ b) starting a job after 5pm when there is not artificial light to be had. I came back to a cockpit full of greasy ‘bits’ well after the sun had set and the light had all but disappeared. Needless to say there was also a terrifically grumpy Casper there too. But all’s well that ends well and the following day he put it all back together and no stray bits were left over. What is it with this Dutch work ethic? – it was a Sunday too!

With steering gear intact and a good bit of wind we blazed over to Funchal, the island’s capital. It is an elegant city, bustling and alive with spirit. The tree flagged streets of the city centre are cobbled black and white. The planting is exotic with hibiscus and birds of paradise. Cafes spill out onto the wide pavements. The car is secondary.

The capital’s wealth has been used well. Along the rest of the coast, from what we have seen it is quite different with sprawling tourist condos destroying the old villages. We are not impressed with the coastline but the heart of the island is really where it is at. The island’s interior, which surges up to 1800 metres at the highest point Pico Ruivo, is a jungle green of lush vegetation. The vertiginous roads are lined with blue, white and dusty pink hydrangeas, agapanthus and towering bamboos. The woods are heady with eucalyptus and pine.

Look at them peaks

The mountainsides are busy with small terraces planted with bananas and irrigated by ancient ‘levadas’ or waterways. The island changes dramatically from one elevation to another and from one aspect to another. We drove through cloud and swirling rain to pop out in another world of moorland and grazing cows. The North side the island appears much wetter, with the trees flanked with moss and bellshaped datura flowers the colour of apricots growing in abundance by the roadside. In the blazing afternoon sunshine we walked to the top of Rico Ruivo to look down on blankets of cloud. The silence was overwhelming.

From Pico Ruivo

Today we are going to the market to buy the island’s speciality, swordfish, and to generally stock up because we are heading next to the isolated Salvagens which lie between Madeira and the Canaries.

postscriptum (sadly no pictures to illustrate the tale): Casper has just returned to the boat having been dispatched to recover Melvin´s missing paddle (quite how it dissapeared when it was ´secured´in a rollock I really don´t know and the irony is that the loose one is still in the boat). He is wet from head to foot and looking flustered. And so the story unfolds.... The mission took him to the beach where he became an innocent victim of the atlantic surf. Having landed neatly on the beach and ´secured´Melvin, the little rat (the dinghy not Casper) proceeds to float away, then (somehow) ends up fulls of black volcanic sand and water. Casper wades in to save the dinghy much to the enjoyment of the locals fishing off the peer. He then takes the dinghy back to the marina pontoon to remove the black grit from it. It gets tangled in some lines or other and Casper again provides the morning´s entertainment for the bystanders there. Sadly the mission was fruitless and paddling is off for the time being.

Sao Martinho to Madeira

2009-10-14T04:40:00.000-07:00

Passage distance = 560M
Passage time = 3.5 days
Wind speed & direction = mainly NE, 8 - 35 knots
Rhumb line course = 220 degrees
Packets of biscuits consumed = 6

The passage indicated by the pencil

We made a safe and very enjoyable passage to Porto Santo, Madeira’s sister island 21M away to the Northeast. In fact the passage was magical. The seas were initially lumpy and uncomfortable departing Sao Martinho do Porto. Once we crossed the shipping lanes (never a pleasant experience), the waves became longer and deeper with the great Atlantic swell.

Crossing the shipping lanes

The first night was fast and furious. The night was so black it was scary. All that I could see beyond the boat were ghostly white explosions of wave caps. With the swell on our stern, at times Impulse was lifted up and hurled down the face of the wave, a flash of frothing white sweeping ahead of us. During daylight, this felt exciting, like surfing, but in the blackness of the charcoal night it felt more akin to the terror of bungee jumping. I confess to shedding tears of fear and, travelling down the waves at 13 knots as the wind gusted to 32 knots suddenly I experienced mental and physical paralysis. Only Casper’s kind words from the open hatch below helped me overcome this and give me the edge to reef down considerably.

The sea was an extraordinary colour during the daytime. Was it Prussian blue? Electric blue? It’s so hard to define. It was a blue of such intensity that I believe only comes from the immense depth beneath us, at times in excess of 2000 metres. The water was thick, its surface leathery and timeless like a sunbaked face. Waves broke in whispering crests often leaving behind a crisp turquoise patch in the water. The sun made a fan of rays through the clouds like the picture on the cover of the Good News Bible I had as a child.

The second night with the wind a steady 20 to 25 I was able to appreciate the magic of it all. The jet sky spattered with stars. I think I have never seen so many. The brilliant phosphorescence - fireflies, a million small tinkerbelles dancing in our wake.
On the third day the clouds hung low and pregnant, the colour of a fresh bruise. We thought they would bring us the rain that was forecast but it never did.

The air gradually got warmer and warmer. The salt crystals that lay in drifts on the boat got fatter and fatter. The wind eased and at first light on the fourth day we traded the genoa for the spinnaker. We lazed on deck watching a merry turtle paddle by. They swim so very strangely with funny asymmetric circular motions that it’s a wonder to me that they make it so far. We mused that, its little flipper in the air, it was waving at us so, naturally, it was only right to wave back. No dolphins but we did see the spray, far off, of what we believe must have been a whale of some considerable size.
In the late afternoon we caught sight of the very faint shadow on the horizon that was Porto Santo. We were very excited as it felt like we were arriving at a proper foreign port, neither of us having ever been to this volcanic island. How incredibly exciting this would have been for the explorers who, after days at sea, found this unexpected landmass rising up before them.

Porto Santo at sunset

Another few hours and we were ghosting in just after sundown to the island’s only harbour.
Impulse is now in the game with the big girls as we have entered serious cruiser territory now. Every boat is set up for long distance sailing and the sailors themselves have the sun and the sea etched deep into their skin.
I can’t get over the fact that we are out in the Atlantic. It feels so strange. I can’t quite put it into words but its something like awe at the tremendous space surrounding me - that if I swam out to sea I would be lost forever.
Today we visit the island and then we will move off to Madeira itself. Love to you all my friends. I can’t believe that Totnes has had its first frost. What a large world this is!

The Northerly wind bloweth.

2009-10-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Sao Martinho do Porto

After a near week of heavy hot skies and fat rain, thunderstorms and lightening the wind has finally edged North, giving us a fine day for savouring the sun and drying everything out again.

We have become very fond of Sao Martinhoa, with its womblike bay, the Atlantic crashing just beyond its mouth. The sand here, once whetted by the whispering waves, sparkles brilliantly silver and graphite. Once a day the tide leaves the shore rimmed with jewels: shells of all sorts, the vacant remains of urchins, perfect like tiny skulls, paper thin and fragile. Most of all the people here are a delight, infinitely patient as we blunder on with our nascent Portuguese. My achievements in this domain continue to be severely limited – after much preparation I asked the lady in the corner shop if it would be sunny tomorrow. Smiling broadly she replied “yes, yes, we are open all day”.

Obidos

Weather bound, we decided to explore inland and take the autocarro (bus) to Obidos (pronounced, we discovered, ‘obidj’). This hilltop cluster of whitewashed houses enclosed within 14th century castellated walls is straight out of a fairytale. It was apparently Isabel of Aragon’s wedding present from her husband King Dinis (not bad I say). We walked the length of the castle wall peering down at the painterly scenes. The white houses framed with bright colours: blue, yellow and red. Brilliant purple bougainvillia and delicate eggshell blue plumbago growing in drifts over balconies and rooftops.

Bougainvillia and cobbles - oh and a tourist looking gormless

The following day we hired a car and drove to meet our St Just friends Anne Marie, Martin and their little one, Alina, in Ericeira. This old fishing village perched high above the Atlantic holds a significant place in history because it was from its harbour that the last King of Portugal (Manuel II – not Alfonso) sailed into exile as the Republic was declared in Lisbon in 1910. Strangely, with all the places he could have gone to, the banished king settled in Twickenham. There are many links we have noticed between the Portuguese and the British that punctuate history. We were told by an old friend of mine that the oldest treaty in Europe was signed between both nations and this perhaps explains why, for example, at Torres Vedras, another town we drove through, Wellington assisted the Portuguese in resisting Napoleon’s army by building lines of fortified defences after which the town is named.

A door

We sped through Mafra but, overwhelmed at the sight of its massive baroque palace and monastery, white and majestic, made a U turn to take a better look. Inside, the amount of creamy pink marble beggars belief. Clearly no expense was spared by King Joao V, who commissioned it (initially just the monastery) apparently to assuage his guilt at being a naughty boy. This was also where, later, Manuel II had lived before emigrating to Twickers.

Then there was Sintra, which was another royal haunt though just for the summer because it is high up a very windy road in the cool hills. It’s a strange place owing to the fact that it looks very un-portuguese. Standing in the middle of old Sintra feels like being in a Swiss mountain town. This may have something to do with the fact that, at some stage, a German Architect was appointed by the royal family to do a makeover but who knows…

And on to Cascais the ‘trendy and cosmopolitan’ suburb of Lisbon where we were taught (by means of a delicious practical) how the trendy and cosmopolitan Portuguese eat by Fernando and Rita. In a restaurant hovering above the crashing surf, in a minimalist modern surround we ate juicy prawns and buttery clams, meaty grilled fish in garlic oil, honey coloured bread made of maize flour and, best of all, we drank the crisp white wine that has been produced by Rita’s family for four generations – how brilliant is that?

Now it’s back to bread and cheese (in a bowl) for we are on passage again tomorrow – to the Portuguese island of Madeira. We will send news from there. Until then: Impulse out.

Walk over the dunes at Sao Martinho

ps...

2009-10-05T04:32:00.001-07:00

... we think we may be changing plan and that our next stop will be Madeira, followed by the Canaries, rather than Sothern Portugal followed by Morocco. Love from us both x

With love from Casper n K8

News from Impulse!

2009-10-05T03:57:00.000-07:00

Natural sculpture etched by sand and wind
Islas Cies

Okay okay! The blog is back (we were busy having a bit of a holiday after all that storm – bucket – bucket – storm stuff). The storm – bucket incident makes far more exciting reading than the events of the last week or so (what day is it?) but the last week has been by far more pleasant.

New moon at Corrudedo

So, following the Ría de Muros, we drifted down the coast and nestled in between the many fishing boat moored in the harbour at Corrubedo. We marvelled, before bedtime, at the pretty place, ‘so sweet’ we said, so real. The very real fishermen then kept us awake most of the night zipping in and out of the bay, laying pots, picking then up, engines growling like they too needed to rest.

Casper seeks shade under a horreo

On to the equally pretty Combarro (less ‘real’ and more touristy than the last – oh how well we slept!). Old Combarro sits at the very end of the Ría de Pontevedra, its water frontage crammed with horreos. These Galician maize stores are made of stone, set on legs to protect the produce from rodents and water and adorned with simple crosses and scallop shells.

The winding streets of Combarro

As the sun rose and the land breeze set in, we drifted out of the Ría de Pontevedra under spinnaker, weaving through the large muscle rafts. At last we caught some fish but alas it was mackerel (something about coals to Newcastle) and they were so teeny that we felt compelled to throw them back in. By the time we got to the Islas Cies, lying just outside of the Ría de Vigo, the wind was all but gone, the air hot and the water inviting. We anchored with a handful of visiting boats, in the lee of a short but long white sand beach, framed at each end by a bristling forest of pine and eucalyptus. We spent the next few blissful days walking, swimming and soaking up the sun – and doing some easy but important jobs (fitting the external sun shades to the pod, lengthening the sail cover to protect the new, bigger mainsail from UV ware).

Sewing - Islas Cies

The Islas Cies are a nature reserve – for birds the rare book says – but we only saw seagulls, and very brown topless women.

The Islas Cies (spot Impulse in the bottom RH corner)

The mornings were peaceful and windless, a light breeze arriving only after lunch along with the daytrippers from Vigo. By Sunday our small island paradise had become a fascinating but mildly chaotic pantomime, if there ever were such a thing in Spain. Sixty boats, and then I lost count, now jostled in the bay. Many were rafted up together, some three deep. The bay was a hum with music. Dishes of food were ferried in dinghies from speedboat to yacht, and then back, empty. Most of the small boats were heavy with people, and almost exclusively men. There seemed only to be a female on board if: a) there was also a child under 10 or b) she was fit, tanned, topless and draped over a PVC cushion. By Sunday afternoon we were happy to leave and, as the wind looked promising, did so. We showed off disgracefully, sailing off the anchor under headsail and then bearing away immediately to whip up the huge kite. Luckily it all went to plan but, as if to castigate us for our immodesty, within 15 minutes the wind had vanished completely.

View down Islas Cies towards Baiona

And so we motored into our next port, which was only just down the ‘road’: Baiona.

Impulse in Baiona Bay seen through this funky piece

Baiona is the first landfall that Columbus made after discovering the Americas, and you can understand why. It has a superbly protected bay, which sits right at the top of the Portuguese trade winds. Carrying news of the new lands to the West, Columbus would have been blown straight in on the Atlantic trades. On the Southern end of the bay is a knuckle on which a royal palace was built by one of the many Alfonsos (IX?) who ruled a large part of Galicia in the 1200’s. We had a leisurely stroll around its 2 kilometre perimeter, enjoying the spectacular views North West over the Islas Cies from whence we came and West, an uninterrupted deep blue, towards America.

Skippy looks out to sea from Alfonso's joint

After some excitement in the form of a dinghy rescue (not ours, thankfully) and a phone loss (Casper’s – irretrievable - burial at sea), we sailed off Southbound once more. It was a particularly hot day and the wind was temperamental. We made slow progress towards our destination, Viana do Castelo.

Hoisting our home made Portuguese flag

With the sun still a decent way off the hazy horizon we decided to cut our losses and to sneak in behind the tiny island of Insua Nova just off the mouth of the river Minho which forms the Northern border between Spain and Portugal. The island houses nothing more than a small fort which we think was used either to protect the Portuguese from the Spanish in the 1600’s or from the French under Napoleon in the 1800’s. Reading up on Portugal’s history we were struck by the country’s immense wealth in the past and also by its problematic relationship with neighbouring Spain. This Northern band of Portugal is the oldest part, having been founded as a state (Portucale) in the 1100’s by another Alfonso who declared himself King.

Alfono, the man com el plan

We anchored just around the ancient fortress town of Caminha in which, I was tickled to read, there is a picture of a man bearing his bottom to Spain (just across the river Minho) engraved on the Northern façade of one of its ancient buildings. Caminha was Portucale’s first major trading port, and continued to be one of its major ones until its trade was diverted to Viana do Castelo, our next port of call.

Sunset at Insua Nova, river Minho

One can really tell that Viana was a major trading post. Its architecture, ornate and elegant, speaks of riches from afar – not only financial, to fund the projects, but moreover aesthetic, inspiring the design and spirit that was to imbue these buildings. The narrow streets are carefully paved, carving the beautiful town into small quarters, each with its own charm. The streets have a labyrinthine quality but the town is not oppressive thanks to the abundance of airy Plaças and the wide promenade along the dock where we were moored.

Casper takes a rest on the stairway to heaven

Casper and I celebrated my birthday in Viana, picking up cards and gifts sent posta restante to the correios (thankyou!!!), eating puffy custard filled cakes and climbing the stairway to heaven and the Church of Santa Lucia, a popular pilgrimage sight. We had lunch in a very local joint, which although decisively ‘no frills’ was brilliant. No one spoke anything other than Portuguese but we managed because there were only two things on the menu and we were given one of each: sardines and chicken (which much to my amusement is called frango who I am sure was a character in the Muppets).

Feeling my age in Viana do Castelo

It seems that when you are cruising and you finally arrive somewhere where you think ‘how nice, let’s stay put for a bit’ the weather changes or threatens to at least and you are compelled to leave just in case you get stuck in that ‘very nice place’ for so long that you begin to hate it. So it was with Viana – the wind threatened to blow South, South, South FOREVER and so early on October the 2nd, a day into my 33rd year on this mortal sphere we headed out, not South but West because the wind had already started misbehaving. Despite not being able to steer a preferred course, we had a great sail over a day and a half, tacking out to sea and back in again. The wind was wildly variable and so were our sail settings: asymmetric, white sails, screecher, reefs in, reefs out. The engine came on overnight as the fog set in thick. Motoring in fog is eerie as things suddenly appear with no warning - and with the engine on you can’t hear them approach. I jumped out of my skin when three dolphins broke the soupy silver surface besides me and entertained themselves, briefly, in our wake.

Perfectly timed by our skipper, we slipped into the strangely perfect bay of Sao Martinhao do Porto just before losing the light. Sao Martinho (between Porto and Lisbon) is a circular cove with a crescent of fine sand at its lip, entered through a slim shallow passage between two scraggy cliffs. Looking at it on a chart, it has the appearance of an ink stain, where the sea has bled into the land.

Sao Martinhao at dawn

Behind its flashy façade of restaurants and holidays apartments, the old town has a crumbling and sunbleached beauty, which no new building could ever emulate. I cannot say more at this point, because we have yet to explore fully. This week the wind continues to blow South, until Thursday. We therefore have time for some inland excursions: Obidos and Lisbon. So my friends, até logo!

El capitano maravilloso

The Seven Spiritual Laws of Liveaboard Life

2009-09-21T04:51:00.000-07:00

1. The wind will increase if you shake a reef out
2. The wind will decrease if you put a reef in
3. The wind will increase if you take your oilskins off
4. If there is only one other vessel in sight on the vast ocean surrounding you, sooner or later it will be on a collision course with you
5. If something needs doing, do it now and do it properly
6. If you think it is going to happen it will happen and when you least expect it
7. Pray to god but tie up your camel first (from old Arabic saying introduced to us by Marc)

Ode to our Biscay Saviour

2009-09-21T04:41:00.000-07:00

We have just said goodbye to Markimarc at the Portosin bus station. A strange mix of feelings as it’s sad to say goodbye when you have shared so much but also this marks the start of another chapter, the umbilical cord cut, finally (although we are still eating Dartmoor potatoes).

Marc, if you are reading this: phew – you made it! Hopefully the crossing was much more comfortable than the first (and far less exciting!)? Thankyou so much for your help, generosity and company over the last few weeks. We will miss you. Just a few pics to remind you… Much love from us both xxx

Reefin - I think you were saying 'gun it in there' -?!

Passing Finesterre

Isla Quiebra

Landsick in Noia

Shoes and broken sleep.

2009-09-21T04:19:00.000-07:00

Noia's church

We made it right up to the end of the ría – a town called Noia. It was a lovely sail, under spinnaker, navigating the various rocks awash and numerous ‘viveros’ (big platforms used for mussel farming). Taking care to avoid the dredged channel, marked clearly by substantial poles and lit markers, we anchored in shallow water – literally at the end of the line – and soon were aground. This was all part of the plan only when the water came back up the tide and Impulse played some strange little game and we woke in the early hours to the sound of the anchor lines groaning. Somehow Impulse had got her bridle stuck round one hull and her anchor rode twisted round the opposite keel. This sorted we resolved to move her to deeper water at daybreak.

The dredged channel leading to Noia

The day broke wet and foggy reminding us of Devon and our plan to sail SOUTH. We moved Impulse to deeper water as planned. She appeared comfortable even though she insisted on turning her stern to the wind and lying the opposite way to every other boat in the bay (none yachts).

We made a run for town between showers, enjoying the earthy smells of autumn, marvelling at the sudden apparition of sweet chestnuts, acorns, rusting bracken in the time we had been at sea. We strode out, our lazy legs now happy for the exercise.

Our pilot book dubbed Noia ‘Little Florence’, which is pretty far fetched, but it had some sweet pockets in the car free old town: arches and cobbles and heavy timber doorways. We spent a good few hours, managing to squeeze in some beers and octopus before setting off again for the boat.

Noia is approached and left, from the North, by a bridge from which the anchorage is visible. We made a dash over the busy roundabout onto the bridge and cast a glance down river. What we saw is what no boat owner wants to see, ever: their boat in a place where they did not leave it. Impulse had drifted. I muttered something about taxis before breaking into a trot to catch up with Casper.

We sped the 1.4 km walk back and confirmed our worst fear. She was 40 metres or so downwind of where she had been, now sitting in the middle of the dredged channel, having dragged past the starboard marker light, a mini lighthouse on a huge concrete base. As Casper rowed us in I felt sick at the prospect of the damage that could be awaiting us under Impulse’s water line.

Impulse peeking out from the light and concrete stump she drifted past - the little tramp

We tugged up the anchor and sped off as fast as possible. Once anchored again in the comfortable lee of Isla Quiebra, I donned mask and snorkel to assess the damage. We’ve lost most of a keel shoe on the starboard side, but I reckon the sea pixies were looking out for us and we got off lightly. A postmortem pillow talk has brought us to the conclusion that it was the fault of the anchor trip line which was too long and had too big a fender on it. Next time we’ll try a shorter line with no fender but with a looped end, which we can grab with a boat hook or dive on.

I thought that was enough excitement for one day but soon after midnight I woke my heart pounding in my ears. We flung the aft hatch open and looked up to the source of the frighteningly loud noise: a helicopter flying worryingly low, hovering infact just above, shining a search light at us before making off North.

Bewildered and shattered from the sudden adrenaline hit we crashed.

But there was more to come.

I kid you not but and hour later I was awoken again with a kafuffle in Spanish. I grabbed the nearest garb and scrambled on deck afraid that some fisherman was about to motor over our newly devised anchor trip line. A big vessel lay to our starboard a boat length away, rolling and rocking and grinding its engines, blinding me with torchlight. I could just make out someone yelling ‘Capitano! Capitano!’ so I just responded with ‘que?’ (it was a bit Faulty Towers) and shone the torch back. This is when I was able to see that the boat had nothing to do with fishing but was in fact a customs vessel. I switched on the VHF waiting for them to communicate something other than ‘capitano’ but nothing came. They went quiet but for their grinding engine and I noticed three specs of orange glow at the bows of the vessel – the buggers who had just interrupted my night (again) and refused to tell me why were now nonchalantly having a smoke before motoring off up the ría. Bastards.

Isla Quiebra, before the peace was broken...

Camariñas and Muros

2009-09-21T04:05:00.000-07:00

Gallego Maize Store

After a very hectic day and night rafted up along side the yellow and blue hull of Capàl’ouest, the steel boat from Brittany, we screech off, engines (refreshingly) blasting to just the other side of the ría. What a difference this makes and we luxuriate in the calm(er) waters far from anyone else. We spend the day completing small tasks interspersed with much sitting and talking and soaking up the sun. In the evening Casper and I take a jaunt in Melvin to collect mussels and go ashore making fresh footprints in a stretch of flawless sand like two Robinson Crusoes.

The next day, the mussels immobilised in a bucket lashed to a lifeline, we set sail early to take advantage of the kinder winds. We understand that, daily, the north-easterly winds pick up dramatically whilst siesta is taken and persist until sundown. They are locally called the “nordeste pardo”.

We enjoy an extremely varied sail past Finesterre, starting with 3 metre rollers with a gentle breeze up the stern and ending in a flat sea flying upwind with three reefs in the main.

Finesterre: the end of the world, a fêted destination for thousands of pilgrims over the centuries who have walked the Camino de Santiago in search of spiritual insight. For us, Mark suggests, it is also a significant landmark as it geographically separates two bands of wind. South of Finesterre the Portuguese trade winds start, blowing North to South through the summer and into autumn. Perhaps this is like Caesar’s rubicon, a point of no return, the journey South has well and truly begun.

We are now in Muros, in the Ría of the same name.

Whilst the façade of the town in a clumsy mishmash of ugly new and old, the layers of urban fabric in behind are charmingly rustic. Narrow streets, labyrinthine, wind up, across and down and back to the same place you were before without even realising it. Mark and I go exploring and meet the priest in the church (of course) who delivers us to the ‘correos’ (post office) and introduces us to everyone standing in line there bar one. Whilst we wait to be served he tells us about the strict rules governing the collection of ‘mariscos’ (shellfish) on the vast expanse of beach that is only revealed at low water, ensuring that they continue to reproduce effectively. The turquoise shallows that shone gemlike as we arrived yesterday had this morning become a dull donkey brown peppered with people bent over looking at the sand. Other locals waded waist deep in the (cold) water with big fishing nets in hand, catching I don’t know what. It seems this region harvests not the land but the sea.

The bread here is quite spectacular and is sold by weight. Some of the loaves are real doorsteps, at least the size of a workman’s toolbox. We are escorted once more, this time to a ‘panadería’ where we by a perfect cube of maize bread as heavy as a bowling ball. I am tempted by a crusty white loaf, the diameter of a serving plate and shaped like a mammoth breast, but we are running out of carrying capacity. I settle for a picture of it instead.

Booby Bread

The brooding weather breaks just as we get back to Impulse, who is serene at anchor. The rain falls often here apparently. I don’t care that it’s raining as rain gives us blessed relief from the tiresome wind that has sent me nearly crazy these last few days. It may sound counterintuitive that a sailor is tired of the wind but it’s constant frenetic whistling and jangling can get too much. It Cataluña, where the Tremontana screams through on an annoyingly regular basis, anyone who is a bit special is referred to as being ‘tocat per el vent’ (touched by the wind). I can see why.

The Crossing.

2009-09-14T08:04:00.000-07:00

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

OMG wish u were here!!

2009-09-03T15:11:00.000-07:00

Wow! What can I say? The beach is heavenly, the sun is hot, the water is crystalline and warm enough to melt the ice in my mojito... take a look....

For those of you who are over 40 and or do not have your reading glasses on - this is not us. We have not made it to southern Portugal, we have not made it to northern Spain, we have not made it across Biscay, in fact we have not even exited Devon.

WE ARE IN PLYMOUTH (how bad can things get?).

Personally I am getting pretty desperate to leave now. If there was ever anything that would convince me to sail South and never look back, it is surely the weather that this week has delivered to our door, adopting an impressive array of unpleasant disguises.

Type 1) Mean, hard rain with an icy tang of winter

Type 2) Circus clown cartoon rain, fat and falling in buckets, mostly just above your head when you try to do anything outdoors, followed by a full frontal custard pie

Type 3) The infinitely worse, imperceptible to the human eye car salesman variety of wet stuff that cons you into stepping out in shorts and hangs on long enough for you to get a good distance away from your wet weather gear before drenching you in an everso fine mist of very wet rain (I am aware I have used wet three times this sentence but you get the picture)

Note: All 3 varieties listed are summed up by the Devonshire expression ‘tis rainin pesh’.

So, weather: poor. Equally, humours: poor – not only because of the damned weather but also because we are STILL WAITING FOR THE SAIL. Casper and I have been reduced to relaying information to each other through a series of scornful grunts that, if they were a VHF communication, would be described by the coastguard as “poor, barely readable”. We also have some lurgy the symptoms of which might identify it as a mild case of swine flu – time to bring in the oinkment.

Anyhow – the said sail was due to arrive this morning, having been flown in from South Africa, cleared customs and been titivated to (fingers crossed) perfection in the finishing shop here in Plymouth. Whilst the sun shone (briefly) Casper and I have spent a bracing half an hour taming the beast that is the old sail into a transportable form. Tricky given the size of the thing (50 odd square metres) and the speed of the wind which channel 16 (the coastguards on VHF radio) confirmed was a force 9. Despite the sail being ready, wind has stopped play. Tomorrow we hope it will ease.

Things are certainly not all bad. We are alongside at Mayflower Marina, which, although expensive, boasts a bar that serves tapas and a new washroom block with not only power showers but a bath too. Living on a boat through a soggy English summer elevates facilities once considered mundane to truly sparkling luxuries. There is nothing like, freshly showered, slipping into a freshly laundered berth, sheets still warm from the tumble dryer, and being lulled to sleep by the play of wind and tide.

Mayflower is close to town and, contrary to commonly held gender stereotypes, Casper's state of mind has significantly improved thanks to a very recent footwear purchase. You boys, it's just shop shop shop.

We've done it!!!

2009-08-27T12:00:00.001-07:00

Tender action - Casper does dinghy surfing

Dear all - we have made it up the Dart without going aground!!! The river gods were smiling on us (must have been that dram of Jamaica Rum over the side).

Amidst the chaos and bunting that is Dartmouth Regatta we are hooked up and resting. Thankyou to the farewell party waving us off at Steamer Quay and to Victoria for the bottomless bag of sandwiches - and to John for steering us all the way down the river.

Much love to you!

x k n c

The very amazing red arrows

The highs and lows of leaving

2009-08-26T02:53:00.001-07:00

Impulse alongside Totnes Town Quay at high and low water

Someone wrote once that leaving is the hardest part. Given that we haven't gone yet this remains to be seen. However, what I do know is that we seem to have been leaving for a very long time. Leaving the house in Totnes to move to the house in Newton Abbot to move to the cabin in Millbrook to move onto the boat. We have sifted our posessions down and down and down to the 'bare minimum'. What remains is enough to keep us comfortable in both body and mind. I have discovered through this sifting process that my definition of comfortable and Casper's are quite distinct which has lead to a fair few heated disagreements (yes I DO need those silver sandals on board - clearly - but why DO YOU need a handcrafted backgammon set the size of a liferaft?).

Captain Casper and the Booker bunting

Leaving has really put in focus for me what counts in life. This can be summed up simply as folk: my friends and my family. Whilst we are only going on a wee jaunt for 9 months, leaving feels like a tremendous loss right now. No, contrary to all expectations, I am not remotely excited by the glorious adventures that will inevitably unfold with the sea miles travelled. I feel blank at the thought of it because I am tangled up in the painful beauty of loving my friends and family as well as the overwhelming fear of losing them.

If this sounds over-egged forgive me, it must be the Totnes water.

This week we have sat alongside the town quay in Totnes with Impulse riding the spectacularly high and low tides. We have enjoyed watching swans take flight, ducks bicker over bread and a seal rise slowly out of the muddy river.

We have spent time with friends, eating, drinking, talking under the stars, in their kitchens, in their workshops, over a pint, over a game of boules. It has been so special and I hold this time dear and am grateful to have such good people in my life.

Boules session on Vire Island:

Petanque champion Mr J Moore

Heather with Nemo

Mademoiselle Trow in action

Non mais! C'est un serieux business...

Thankyou for all the good wishes we have received and in particular thankyou to:

Brue for feeding our mind and body with Celtic spiritualism and shephard's pie.
Lesley, Ian and Rowan for the 'last supper' (NOT fish pie) and handmade bunting.
Sue for the Sharpham wine to remind us of home.
Jill for the South African beads to bring us good luck.
Shaun and Hannah for the Chivas Regal and the Penn fishing reel (no excuses now).
Roger and Dana for the flowers and champagne.
La famille Moore for our friend Nemo and reading material.
Canvas Mark for the loan of his sewing machine.
Electric Mark for healing our charging system.
Matti and Saori for essential pre-departure news information (Heat magazine!)
Alex Galliard for the mystery gift (to be opened 7 days into the Altantic crossing - we promise!)
My parents, Val and Mark, for inumerable acts of generosity, too many to list.

Highlights of this week in pictures:

John giving us some last minute sail trim advice

Sue looking nautical

Rowan helping us get shipshape

Terrace folk on the Town Quay

Glossary of boating terms for the uninitiated

2009-08-02T09:42:00.000-07:00

Mainsail = the biggest sail on the boat generally at the mid point of the boat (ish)

Headsail = smaller sail at the pointy end

Reef (verb or noun) = taking a wedge of sail in when the wind gets up to slow down and avoid capsizing (there are generally 3 or 4 reefs in one sail)

Bear away = go left a bit if the wind is coming from your right and you are facing forwards (towards the pointy end)

Luff up = go the other way

Stern = what the skipper is when you mess something up

Bow = what you do when people wave at you as you sail past

Pulpit = railings at front of boat (pointy end)

Pushpit = same but at blunt end

Guardrails = what stops you from falling in

Davits = what the dinghy hangs off at blunt end

Moor (verb) = tie boat onto a) a pontoon b) a buoy

Pontoon (noun) = floating raft that generally leads to land at one end

Hull = the bits that sit in the water (one on a MONO hull, two or three on a MULTI hull)

Pod = middle bit that does not sit in water but is suspended between the two hulls

Galley = like a kitchen but a whole lot smaller and much more impractical

Heads = ridiculous bloke name for the lav

Impeller = something that makes the engine work (blue domain)

Anchor = expletive delivered when holding screwdriver/spanner/mole grips in teeth because hands are busy

Drag anchor (verb) = when you come back from the bar and the boat is no longer where you left it

Row (verb or noun) = a) propel small craft with the use of oars b) heated discussion with loved one after him/her/you left oars somewhere and outboard engine fails to work

Outboard engine = motorised propulsion (on a good day)

Wind over tide = as suggests, uncomfortable situation leading to nasty choppy sea and going nowhere fast

Recession - what recession?

2009-07-29T05:02:00.000-07:00

Today I went for a swim in defiance of the severe rain warnings issued by the MET office. It was indeed bracing and a little choppy on account of the strong wind. Hurray for character building English summers, I thought, and then felt glad that I was swimming back to a house (with shower and hot water) and not Impulse (without either of the aforementioned comforts).

The swim started well as I was moving with the tide upriver and I was still able to feel my limbs. Reaching a point where I thought it best to turn around lest my heart stop, I turned around and was promptly slopped in the face by a fat grey wave. Once my eyes had recovered from this salt fest, I saw a strange sight on the horizon. I am perhaps a low tech girl in a high tech age but I do still think of Dartmouth, even with its abundance of 1 million+ houses for sale and despite the fact that I had opened the door to a red ferrari passing that very morning, as a quaint little fishing village. So I was taken aback, not only by the mouthful of saltwater, but by the sight of a huge super motor yacht thingy entering the mouth of the river Dart. Not only that but it appeared to be heading right for me and although my rational self knew that it wouldn't possibly run me over because the water under me was far too shallow for it's huge draft, I started to swim quite rapidly shoreward just in case. Once safely perched on a rock, I watched this great hulk float by. Not only did it have a helicopter on the aft deck but at midships it had a full blown 007 speed boat twice the size of a tank and a sailing yacht bigger than Impulse. I contemplated waving but decided against it as they might think I was in trouble and feel obliged to skip drinkies and deploy the Bond mobile to rescue me. So I watched this super craft pass and wondered whether its owner had any inkling there was a recession on. Disgraceful behaviour, whatever happened to "we are all in this together"?

Addendum: I have since found a photo of the aforementioned beast as well as some astounding facts. For example, Le Grand Bleu is one of the largest motor yachts in the world at a length of 370 feet (114 metres). It's tenders include Sirius A, a 67 foot Sunseeker, and Bellatrix, a 74 foot sailing yacht - go figure!

(the lovely) Gorren Haven to (the muddy) Millbrook

2009-07-26T03:34:00.000-07:00

The sail back from Penzance started rather hectic with a 6-7 and lumpy overfalls. We stood off the Lizard under these subsided which coincided with the wind dropping, the sun coming out and us bearing away to take the waves on the stern which made for a lovely evening sail.

We stopped in Gorren Haven at last light. The next day we collected mussels and whelks on the beach and ate bacon butties at the Palm Tree Cafe before sailing back to Millbrook where we cooked moules marinieres with our good friend Alexander Galliard.

In Millbrook we repaired and replaced a few things (trampoline, sailbag, split in the underside of the pod, engine impeller) and committed ourselves to having a new mainsail made by Ullman sails (ouch).

Impulse at the mouth of the river Dart

Running ahead by truck, I waited in Kingswear for Casper and fellow cruisers Mark and Sally to arrive on Impulse. Just missed their high spring tide acrobatics getting onto the yachtclub trots with Casper and Sally holding onto Mark's ankles as he performed a handstand on the mooring buoy.

Lafrowda Day, St Just, Cornwall

2009-07-19T14:10:00.001-07:00

We left a very wet Scillies after multiple games of Canasta and a good British show of moaning about the skin puckering weather as well as the lack of wind. Anyhow, the latter situation improved gradually and by the time we arrived in St Mount's Bay we had something else to moan about namely that there was too much wind. We piled into the wet dock at Penzance just as a messy 8 was setting in and rafted 4 boats out from the tall harbor walls.

St Michael's Mount, Mount's Bay

We spent the next fun packed 48 hrs with St Just friends Anne Marie and Martin and little Alina, going to the annual Lafrowda festival which filled me with a warm 'wow the community thing still does happen' fuzzy glow (Casper's same glow fuelled by Tribute and pasty - see below).

Isles of Scilly

2009-07-17T01:05:00.001-07:00

Arriving in the Scillies was like arriving in paradise - I know it's a massive cliche but this is how it felt as we coasted in on the early morning high tide with the sun shining, the sand beaming white and the water glistening turquoise with belts of emerald. I've never been to the Caribbean but this is how I imagine it (though clearly a bit warmer).

Despite the reputation the Scillies have for difficult anchoring, we immediately found a place to anchor and were feeling rather pleased with ourselves only to realise, whilst eating breakfast, that we were nearly aground. We walked around the boat pretending we meant it and when we thought no one was watching we gingerly motored off to a better place blaming the error on the failure of the depth sounder to work amidst all the weed rather than our inability to work out tidal falls. On reading the pilot we noted that the fall is indeed huge in the Scillies and that the Spring tides we were at meant a 6 metre fall. We had a great time in the Scillies despite the almighty winds, as the following diary entries testify:

Wednesday 15th July
It blew hard to 37 knots last night and we were beam on to a grating little swell. The French boat next to us dragged anchor out to the rocks in the middle of the sound (thankfully not towards us) so, in between downpours, we threw in a second anchor (7kg Bruce). Slept not brilliantly but woke up to flat water and a warm sunny day. Plenty of boats leaving to make the most of the still stiff but not bone whipping breeze. This gives me the ‘we should be off’ itch but there is no point arriving in Penzance early as it’s expensive in the harbour there.

Impulse on Old Grimsby Beach, Tresco

Thursday 16th July
Yesterday we landed Impulse on Old Grimsby beach – third time lucky! The barometer flew up overnight and gave us a tranquil blue sky and calm water by morning. However, despite the perfect conditions and countless landing reckies over the last week, we still managed to beach Impulse on a less than perfect spot which not only saw us listing ungainly but, more importantly, that never quite dried thereby defeating the object of the beaching exercise entirely! This led initially to much cursing and was followed by much more cursing as work on the wind vane commenced and a socket end fell into the slushy sand only to be immediately sucked dreckly into the bowels of the beach. The evening was beautifully warm and quiet and tinged with pink the colour of summer sweet pea. I swam and Casper tended cooked sausages on the barbeque and we felt like this summer would last forever.
Now, however, it’s raining and not just a shower but the kind of fat rain that you can catch and collect to make water, so we are.

Galway to the Scillies

2009-07-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

Three Sisters from the South

After being rained in for an entire 'pyjama day' in Galway, we were keen to leave on the fresh North Westerly. Once clear of the Aran islands (with their strange little walled fields and occasional donkey) we found ourselves out in an increasingly rough sea, aware for the first time that there was absolutely nothing between us and North America heading down this beautifully wild coast. The white crests were increasing in frequency and the waves becoming more and more confused, crashing into one another from different directions thumping Impulse under the bridge deck so violently that it made the chart table jump skywards. It was only a matter of time before I was wretching into a bucket and clutching a packet of water biscuits, leaving Casper to deal with things on deck. Seven hours later and we were seeking shelter in Smerwick harbour, the mouth of which was white with breaking water. By now fully reefed and losing ground to the wind and waves, we surfed in down large rollers towards the promise of a quiet anchorage. This took some time to find but eventually, to the South West of the bay, we dropped anchor, relieved, under the watch of the Three Sisters.

Looking out to America from the Third Sister

The next day we walked the length of the beach and up the third of the Three Sisters to check out the sea state beyond, which unsurprisingly looked calmer than the day before. We left that evening and sailed through the night with following seas and a Westerly wind, two reefs set in the main, our destination Old Grimsby Sound in the Scillies.

Shakedown: Kingswear to Galway

2009-07-13T04:19:00.000-07:00

The winds have been very kind to us - we left Kingswear on an easterly and had a nice little sail under screecher and main until the fog set in later in the day and the wind inevitably vanished. We motored into our favorite Hope Cove, catching two mackeral in the way. Fisherman Chris appeared out of the mercurial overfalls, rather we saw the silhouette of a huge sombrero with a man sheltering under it and guessed it was Chris. Taking up his invitation to supper we happily rowed ashore to the Watch House to eat mackeral and spider crabs (which I myself plunged, alive, into the boiling water, eek). Much taking the piss and merry talk of nets and lures.

Followed, a sweet sail on a flat sea (wind from behind) then a very fast approach to the fortress-like Porthleven to meet mother and friend. There was some confusion on entering Porthleven as the pilot indicates to go right into the harbour however the mouth is very narrow and the harbour walls tall and devoid of anything discernible to the human eye to tie on to. We settled for a mooring buoy (someone else's naturally) West of the pier and rowed in for food and the Harbour Inn.

Crookhaven

Next day on around Land's end with one then two reefs in the main. The sea was lumpy and confused even though the tides were moving with us.
The passage across the Celtic sea was uneventful (which is a good thing). The weather and water kicked up as we approached the Irish coast, passing between Fastnet Rock (to port) and Cape Clear. The seas and wind were both following as we sceamed on North Westward with a doubly reefed main and headsail. We tucked right in behind a long finger of land at the South Western most end of Ireland, which protects the village of Crookhaven from the vicious bursts of wind and water blowing in from the Atlantic. Once anchored up East of the bay, we ventured ashore to satisfy the hunger and thirst that come from passage making (with fish chowder and a Murphy's, naturally, and not that 'foreign muck' from the East side). Grand, grand.
We spent the next week(ish - I lose track) making it up the Western Coast towards Galway. This part of the coast is utterly astoundingly flabaghastingly beautiful in a rugged, sparse, majestic, dramatic and green sort of way. The most notable stopovers included Adrigole, a very sweet and quiet little anchorage with cows grazing down by the edge of the water and rolling hills envelopping the whole.

Groovin up Bantry Bay, 11kn and hoonin!

This was on the Northern side of Bantry Bay which we stormed up and down in a few hours of blissful sailing in conditions that Impulse was made for: pancake flat seas and a stiff wind ahead. We also enjoyed Derrynane, with its difficult approach but sweet beach and elfin woods. Impulse tugged at her chain here as the Easterly blew a 7 and we collected water in the bimini overnight it poured so. The best anchorage was undoubtedly landward of Inishvickilane, one of the isolated Blasket Islands.

The majestic Skelligs

Reputedly the home of the fairies, it certainly emanates a magical quality. We arrived in last light, the island towering above us. Atop this black mountain, a herd of deer gathered, only their sihouettes discernable to watch our approach. We awoke the next morning to an otherworldly place where we were uninvited guests, strangers in a mercurial world that is home to creatures living on both land and in water. Puffins pleased us immensely with their clown-like faces, wide eyes, waggling bottoms and swift exits seaward. Dolphins made me laugh and shriek like a fool, approaching quickly in bounces to then show off in the bow waves riding white tummy to white tummy, spinning under one another, chancing at biting a friend's tailfin. The whales kept a respectable distance, moving carefully through the thick silver water, measured and steady as a clock.

Galway we approached with ease, mooring outside the dock and waiting for the gate to open. We hazarded upon a goldmine of a restaurant (Ard Bia) beneath the Spanish Arch happily eating and drinking amidst a crusty, arty decor of original carved wood panels, elegant French floor tiles and the occasional art deco piece (enter red vinyl sofa). Each candle stick was overcome with years on years of dripping red wax. Every shelf was heavy with dusty bottles of wine, jostling for the picking. Just beyond the squatt and red rimmed doorway, the hard arsed Galway vibe slipped a little further away with each sip of full bodied Corbieres, with each taste of carefully balanced flavours, tarragon, citrus, fennel, the notes of summer - elsewhere.
This is not to say that we did not like Galway - far from it. The city has stacks of gritty charm. At night time the carfree streets are alive with music: saxophone, (angry) samba, electric guitar space jam and so on. I've seen this elsewhere but not with so much grit, so much attitude. The Galway regulars are easily set apart from the tons of tourists here as they dress with determined indifference to any one trend. Each one is an orb of individuality and this is underlined by their appearance.

Then on to Aoife & Kevin's wedding. We managed to blag a shower at a local hotel beforehand (Galway harbour welcoming yachts but bizarrely not offering any shower facilities) which I'm sure fellow guests were thankful of. Undoubtedly, Casper and I managed the most unorthodox wedding attire - Marie, a friend from school, put it succinctly on laying eyes on Casper's black jacket, jeans and Keen's and my migraine-inducing maxi dress: "oui, c'est original". Anyway, scruffy or not, we had a blast and were enthused by the generosity of spirit that Kevin and Aoife's family offered us.

Kitchen Sink

2009-06-21T15:05:00.000-07:00

Moving out of the cabin with the kitchen sink and all - how did we get so much stuff??

Winter at the cabin in Millbrook

2009-06-20T04:38:00.001-07:00

Winter at the (porta)cabin was predictably cold and damp and would have been far more so had we not been saved by Arthur. Arthur the wood burner which kept us warm, stoked with wood reclaimed from the house build and 'found' in the nearby wood and washed up at Mayflower marina. Arthur who we cooked on and sat with and coaxed into life in the frosty first light of the quiet mornings.

Impulse on icy pontoon just before a sail, brrrr!

We withstood seeping window sills and gale force winds and the coldest winter for some years.

Impulse sat on the pontoon until mid January and once lifted out work started, slowly and painfully as it was cold and wet and the days were far too short.

Impulse in front of the delectable cabin

February 2008, building a bimini template in the rain

2008-05-28T08:37:00.000-07:00

The morning after, 2008 begins on the water!

2008-05-28T07:48:00.001-07:00

News Years Eve 2007

2008-05-28T07:43:00.000-07:00

Dawn beaching at Wonwell

2008-05-28T07:34:00.000-07:00

Sunbathing Dutchman up forward

2008-05-28T07:31:00.001-07:00

Sailing into Mothercombe

2008-05-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

The big launch - August 2007

2008-05-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

Summer 2007, lots of work...

2008-05-28T07:15:00.000-07:00

First sight of Impulse in 2007...

2008-05-28T06:53:00.000-07:00