Snork Maiden redux

Saturday 29 June 2013 Ile d'Oleron, France It’s a curious irony that there is much more blogging when preparing for the voyage than during the voyage itself!   Clearly this reflects the time that keeping the boat in a cruising state takes up – also the time spent together actually having a holiday. To bring you up to date: we arrived in Ile d’Oleron (just South of Ile de Re – a stone’s throw from La Rochelle) on Thursday, intending to make for Spain the following day, but deterred by weather reports of rough seas and a generally grey and cold outlook.   Yes – we try our best to be fair weather sailors!   This is not just because we are softies – it’s also because it’s good to get our hands in and our systems tested before setting out on a longer voyage.   We still have winds at a decent strength of between 5 and 15 knots, and a favourable direction – N to NE.   Every day we study all the useful weather reports we can get (about 5 thanks to...

Our new temporary home Another modest event at Marans.  We had to move off our pontoon yesterday to make way for the visiting boats coming in.  As it turned out, the weather was so bad that only half of the expected boats turned up - anyway, we get a different view for a while.  We are lying 4th boat out at the bend.  The weather is very blustery with strong gusts of wind & showers - not really what the town had hoped for in late June, I'm sure. The brave little boats coming in.  We had one slightly embarrassing event - after spending however long up the mast untangling the new, too-thin aft flag halyard (failure to think ahead when the mast was down), and tying it into place for its maiden voyage along the harbour, it escaped its moorings and is now flying free in a F6.  Usually the wind drops in the evening, so we're hoping we can at least hook it with the extending buoy-catching implement (familiar to some off you in its usual role.) We have an embar...

This will be a quick b(log) since it's after 10pm and we are planning to make a start tomorrow, leaving Marans for La Rochelle.     Al now safely on board having wisely brought his English brolly - feels like we never went back to Bristol!  Spent a happy hour or more up the mast late afternoon after the rain had cleared, untangling 25 metres of flag halyard.  You will see that we are now flying our red ensign, and a brand new French courtesy flag. The weather has been a bit on the rubbish side, just cool, grey, drizzly.  Tomorrow might be a bit damp, but the winds from the West will take us to La Rochelle by the early evening.  Yesterday wasn't very special here so we drove up to see our barns in Rigny.  Excellent lunch on the way - real Routiers cafe. The buildings were pretty much as we left them so it seems that Kie & Brett's repairs have held.  Mme Chateau in good spirits, shouting down her mobile 'Les Americans sont arrive' as if we ...

Great evening bike ride. Thia year's bike - found at a French version of a car boot sale - 24€ plus a new inner tube. I'm sure I could have got it for less but too lazy to bargain. The bike ride went alongside the canal - runs from Marans to La Rochelle. Pretty rough and rutted, so back via the road. The 2 other photos are an old stone laundry - I think you probably see them all over Europe & I can imagine groups of women scrubbing and chatting. I KNOW that's not what we want to do now, but the modern French towns and villages somehow seem to have had a sleeping beauty spell cast over them. Built for a communal life that has steadily diminished.

Well, I did promise, although what I have to say seems too obvious really.  So I'll keep it short. It's sunny and warm - feels like time for a siesta but there's really nowhere on the boat to lie down (still not finished with head-linings) and not enough shade outside.      What I have learned is that there is not much that can't be achieved with the 3 essentials in the upper photo - a hammer, a screwdriver and a thing I call pincers - they are sort of Desert Island Tools.  I am sure you can add the other 5. I started to think about this when the proprietor of the boatyard at Charron arrived at the boat to take the rigging down - with a pair of pincers and nothing else except a shedload of experience.  He probably assumed I had the hammer, and I don't think we needed the screwdriver.      The first time I needed to get an old zinc anode off the prop shaft I couldn't think how to do it.  One of the old yard hands showed me how....

--> Thursday, June 13, 2013 This is a catch-up.   I thought that a daily dose of the minutae of life in preparation mode might be a step too far – too much detail for the determined landlubbers & too much personal stuff for the sailorpeople. I think I will mainly let the photos tell the story on the maintenance side – understand that this is a diary for us as well as a public (let’s not kid ourselves) document.  Last year's engine anode - in case you were thinking of skipping the change! BUCH DV 20 Primary filter in situ - we did move it to an accessible position cf. Nigel C. A fuel filter that has done its work for at least one season, but maybe more. Engine maintenance becomes slightly less scary as we get more familiar with the little red donkey under the stairs. Buch DV20 is generally well-behaved, if noisy.   All it asks is an oil, filter, engine anode change once a year and it will carry on with its suck, squash, bang and blow like a good little diese...

Now I am on the final job list - Al arrives in 6 days' time - well, technically 7 but I have 6 days left to get the rest of the work done.  A small setback today - I was about to go to Brico Depot or whatever the local monster DIY supplies place is called - and the car wouldn't start.  There followed an afternoon of calls with helpful Chris from the RAC assistance partner in France.  Unfortunately helpful Chris misdirected the breakdown chap (old truck, no GPS, no mobile phone) and so I passed the time putting together my new workbench on the pontoon, and he apparently passed the time driving in circles.  As luck would have it, there is a Citroen repair garage in Marans.  The breakdown chap agreed with me that the battery was fine and the lack of electrics to the starter motor was something else.  (Probably something else expensive.)  He got me going with jump leads and told me not to stop on the way to M. Citroen.     I walked back - not far...

So - at last the great day dawned - and a showery one it was too!  The above photos were taken around 1700 and when I left at around 2015 it was just getting going with much thicker crowds!  I am trying to mount a video of the act on the right.  Their singer was very talented with a huge voice and a talent for mime in that very French style.  When I arrived there was a pretty average rock band getting a lukewarm reception, followed by the bunch in the middle - a brass oom-pah band that got the little kids dancing and a lot of adult feet tapping. There was a very small amount of sponsorship in evidence but it was recognizably a community event, with no admission and local catering.  The benches and tables came out as they do at every French village event.  People sit where they can, the kids don't throw food and at least that early in the day nobody was noticeably drunk. I feel a bit pathetic for not having photographed the huge portion of moules and the...

So yesterday - back in the water, courtesy of M. Philippe Julien and his 3-wheel travel lift.  I invited Desislava & Frederick - I met her in Pune and she and Frederick moved from Paris to the tiny village of Villedoux last year.  Villedoux is just a few Kms from Marans - and Charron.  They were both completely new to boats and so were wide-eyed with it all.  It was nice to have their company, and Frederick was able to give me some help with the lines.  Approaching the Brault lifting bridge, a bit later than I said we would be, the bridge remained obstinately closed, and the indicator light red.  I asked Desislava to rummage in my bag and find my iPhone and asked Frederick to speak to the lock / bridge keeper.  Oh yes, just wait a bit and I'll open it when I've finished with the lock...  So we circled a bit and then up it went, with a line of huge lorries waiting for us to amble through.  The lock was empty and our entry smooth and calm -...

That’s approaching sunset in the sense of time – not distance-time since we are still out of the water, the Snork Maiden & me.   It is warmer this evening and the wind has dropped to a mere whisper.   The ever-present cuckoo is still going, and the swallows are twittering in the trees that surround the abandoned house.   The evening heron has done his / her evening scout and a pair of ducks head West.   I suppose this is bucolic.   I had to ask Gayle Kidder what that word meant – I think I had always avoided it, made up as it is of ‘bubonic’ and ‘colic’ – neither of which are any fun at all.   I try using it sometimes but it still conjures up nasty bodily states, so I think I will officially abandon it.             I really want to write about writing, and I’d appreciate comments from other blogsters out there, and their (and my) readers.   First, a technicality: does anyone kn...

First an apology – I really should have taken a photo of my birthday lunch, hosted by Philippe Julien – proprietor of the boatyard here at Charron.   He asked me in the morning to join them for a barbeque. I took long some prawns with tex-mex sauce (courtesy of Super-U), salad and strawberries.   There was more salad, bread, beer and for desert a fabulous gateau and a champagne toast.   I can’t quite imagine this sort of celebration in any of the other yards we’ve stayed in!   Anyway – sorry about the absent photo, but the table and benches were improvised, the barbeque was a pile of wood lit by an electric heat gun and we ate on paper plates and paper towels with plastic forks.   So the photos are the sun setting on my birthday! Coming next: a new old bike!!