There was a light westerly wind this morning, so I decided to commit myself to the new rigging and left Cap D'Agde. For the first couple of hours the wind was ok, if a bit light, and I was making about 3 knots. I attempted for the first time to raise the cruising chute by myself and it was remarkably easy. The main complication was that I didn't have the autohelm working as all attempts to pin Force 4 and Raytheon down had failed. So I had to depend on lashing the helm before I could move around the boat and this didn't always work, so that sometimes I had to go dashing back to the cockpit when the boat veered too much off course so that the sails went awry.
After a couple of hours I was down to less than 2 knots even with the cruising chute, so the engine had to go back on. With a following wind, the mainsail wasn't doing much so I eventually took that down and kept the genoa which did add about half a knot. The forecast had said force 3-4 in the afternoon so I tacked towards the shore a couple of times to find the sea breezes, but to no avail.
I arrived at Port Camargue after a long and very hot day, in which I drank at least 3 litres of water. Port Camargue is equidistant from Nimes and Montpelier where my next crew would be arriving on Wednesday and at the start of the huge Rhone estuary. It has one of the largest marinas on the coast, rather more upmarket than Cap D'Agde and a lot less noisy. I managed to negotiate an alongside mooring so I could do repairs on the side of the boat which I hadn't been able to do before.
Tuesday August 1
A quiet day spent pottering and doing work on the boat including patching up the hull with glassfibre. I cycled to La Grau du Roi, the main town next to Port Camargue, which has much more character, with a narrow boat channel leading up to a largish basin where all the fishing boats tie up. There is a swing bridge across the channel and on the other side I found an internet café in a small information agency. I was trying to find a flight for Donna from England the next day but couldn't find anything but return flights that were reasonable. In the event, her flight was delayed and she finally fixed up a flight to Montpelier. I was also looking up flights for my friend Guy who was going to meet me in Italy but was shocked to find the cheapest flight was £265. Added to the uncertainty about timing I decided to put him off till I arrived in Greece and things were more predictable.
Wednesday August 2
Margaret arrived on the bus from Nimes right on time at 1.15 and Donna on the bus from Montpelier at 2.45. They both came to Rue D'Atelier, about 1/4 mile from the berth and meeting them couldn't have been easier. I had toyed with the idea of setting off the same day, but Margaret in particular was very tired, having slept at Stanstead Airport the night before and it was clearly out of the question. She had said clearly that she liked to be left alone and anyway spent much of the day sleeping, so Donna and I went out for a swim and later a very pleasant but expensive meal in a terrace restaurant with a glorious view of the sunset.
When we got back there was a long and hard to read message about the weather forecast for the following day. As it included the possibility of force 7 winds I decide to leave the decision about leaving till the morning. We would be crossing the Rhone estuary where the Mistral sweeps down and I was keen to get across before it arrived.
Thursday August 3
The forecast looked good: cloudy but 4-5 NW, which was ideal. But it was spattering with rain and Margaret was still asleep, so by the time we got off it was 11. The water was quite choppy and Donna was soon seasick and it became obvious that we couldn't make the 45 miles across the estuary in one go. So we put in to Port Guardian, which is next to the old town of Ste. Maries de la Mer. So we only made 12 miles, but it would make the next day's sailing easier. We moored for the first time bow-to, with several friendly staff on the quay to show us how to pick up a mooring line.
Ste. Maries, where the gypsies hold an annual feast to their patron saint, a black Mary, is a charming little town with a fortress-like cathedral. It used to be a long way from the sea, but the estuary has shifted and it is now a port and the only shelter across the whole Rhone estuary. Donna and I wandered around the small streets and ate crepes and other titbits.
Friday August 4
We set off earlier today as there were forecasts of force 7 winds in the evening. But the NW winds held. Though Donna had taken a couple of Stugeron early they didn't help and she spent much of the day lying on her bunk which kept the nausea at bay. We went across the Bay of Foss, surrounded by oil refineries, and made into the tiny fishing harbour of Carro, which is at the start of the Cote Bleu, with its limestone cliffs and calanques though on a smaller scale than around Toulon. There was no sign of a capitan, so we moored head on in a vacant berth, picking up a spare mooring line. There was no one to help this time, but we managed ok.
End-on mooring was one of the many things I didn't understand and why I was nervous about sailing single-handed in the Med. But since there aren't any tides, it is remarkably simple and it gets more boats into a small space. You approach the quay head-on (or tail-first) and secure two mooring ropes - in many places these are supplied on the quay. You then pick up, with a boat hook, a rope or chain which is secured to the quay and leads out to a heavy chain anchored some way out at right angles to the quay. This you secure to the stern (or prow) of the boat, usually by passing a warp through a convenient point on the chain so that it remains clear of the boat.
Carro is, as Margaret repeated, "raw" and there was no sign of any "facilities". The capitain was only around for short periods morning and evening. So we went off to find a beach, and found a small one in a calanque, which was overcrowded but had delciously cold water for swimming. Margaret found a rather wider beach further on, which was probably somewhat warmer.
Saturday August 5 We catch a mooring rope
I woke before the others and cycled the several kilometres into La Couranne, where there was a tiny rail station. It had a timetable going east to Marseille but none going west. Donna was due to get to Beziers this evening to meet with her friend Pat. There were only about 4 trains in the entire day, so Donna decided to come with us a few miles along the coast to the rather larger port of Carry le Rouet.
I went to pay for berthing and discovered there were perfectly good facilities - an unmarked door next to the Capitainerie had a clean loo and shower. So after using them we prepared to set sail as the wind and swell didn't appear forbidding in the shelter of the cliffs and the force 7 winds hadn't yet shown themselves. Margaret let go of the warps holding us to the quay while I freed up the anchor chain and Donna held on to the next boat so the wind would swing round to get out. I put the boat into reverse and there was a sickening thud and the engine died. I tried to start it and it died again. There was no doubt - the mooring rope had wrapped itself around the propeller.
I called hastily to Margaret to grab a small fishing boat on our left before the wind caught us. I then attached the longest warp we had to the centre cleat, jumped on to the neighbouring boat to our right and hauled the boat back to the quay. It was then swimming trunks and goggles time - it took 4 dives to unwrap the mooring rope which was wrapped 8-10 times round the propeller. It's surprising how much oxygen physical exertion takes.
Finally we were ready to leave and I remarked "well, I've learned one lesson - when you dump an anchor rope, wait a bit for it to settle before engaging the engine". "Oh, that's standard practice", said Margaret sniffily. My feelings were indescribable! It takes a peculiar mentality to come up with such an insensitive remark. I had had several run-ins with her already by this time, but in a curious way this remark helped: it made me realise it was her problem, not mine. I was scheduled to spend the next four weeks with her and I'd better find some way of making it work. It was good having Donna there so that I could go over some of the life training lessons we had encountered together.
This time the Stugeron (together with a glass of water) worked for Donna and she enjoyed steering the boat the 5 short miles to Carry le Rouet. Carry had better facilities than Carro, though we had to decide where to moor by ourselves as the Capitainerie was on a lunch-break. After lunch the Office du Tourisme opened and we discovered there was no way for Donna to get to Beziers that day without taking a taxi into Marseille. So she decided to take a train at 7am the next morning.
So we relaxed and had a swim and a good meal of moules in the evening, without Margaret, who never eats out, at least in company. That night, the wind howled from the north down the calanque in which Carry le Rouet is sited. I don't know if it reached force 7, but we were glad to be safe in port.
Sunday August 6
I took Donna to the train at 7 and had a lazy day after that. I found an acceptable shingle beach to the east, having discovered the previous day that there were none to the west. The wind continued strongly for most of the day.
Monday August 7
The wind had moderated by this morning, so we set off across the Bay of Marseille early and were rewarded by a lovely sail with south-westerly winds. As we rounded Les Goudes and wended our way through the islands, the wind dropped and even the cruising chute didn't do much. We had one nasty moment when I tried to restart the engine about ten minutes after shutting it off and it refused to start. With no wind or engine we would have to find a mooring, and outside the calanques there was very deep water. Mercifully it started again when it had cooled some more. We had discovered the water pump was leaking the previous day, though the only problem it caused was that we had to keep using the bailer.
We reached Port Mion, which I remembered with fondness from a previous (land-based) holidy. It's a sheer-sided calanque which wends its way back for half a mile into the rock. One side there is the remains of a quary where they extracted the beautiful white limestone, but the 200' high walls only add to the atmosphere. I had dreamed of entering this calanque from the sea in my own boat, and here I was doing it.
The sides of the calanque are lined with wooden walkways where boats moor in the normal end-on fashion. They are owned by yacht clubs and we eventually found the ramshackle old "Acceuil" hut from which the "Guardian" appeared and showed us to a mooring, which cost about a third of the normal mooring rates.
An abiding memory of that night is that as the darkness fell and we were starting suppoer on deck, a flautist on a boat opposite played a sequence of variations on classics such as "Summertime", his beautiful playing complementing the dying sun on the calanque.
Tuesday August 8
We left Port Mion at lunch-time. In the morning I walked out to the headland through the pine forest, over the slippery limestone, and went into Cassis and sat in a portside café sheltered by vines and soaked up the atmosphere while writing postcards. But Margaret, with her frenetic schedule of washing, had only managed a short walk.
The wind was SE and we had to tack around the cape before we could head, tighthauled across the bay to Bandol and it was 5.30 before we reached the marina. By this time we have graduated to stern-first moorings. The lack of control in reversing Second Wind doesn't matter too much. If you miss slightly it is easy to fend off the surrounding boats and at worst you can always go forward and try again.
We were due to meet my "likely lads" from Poole this evening to help with the sail across to Corsica and Italy. I had met Marc and Matt, who were in their twenties, through an advert they put up at Cobb's Quay in Poole looking for crewing experience. I had to teach them starting from how to tie a bowline but they were determined to buy a boat and sail the Atlantic that I couldn't but admire their pluck. So when Marc called me as I arrived at the Med, I told them to meet me at Bandol, where there were several Yanmar dealers listed. A couple of hours after arriving I was roused by a member of the capitainerie and bounded out of the cabin to be met by the lads chuckling at my bad French.
I took them out for a pizza and we found ourselves next to a loud song and dance show for which we had excellent seats. They enjoyed the scantily clad girls. They are so young and innocent! I left them at around 11 on the quay thinking they'd get on better without me. They got back to the boat at between 4 and 5 in the morning during which time Matt had acquired a tattoo to match Matt's. I was relieved to find it was of the temporary variety; it was not that I wished to take any responsibility for them, but I didn't fancy a fever in the middle of the Med a couple of days later if the needles were infected. At least Margaret seems to be charmed by them. She had been very apprehensive of any crew so young.
Wednesday August 9
I was up at the one genuine Yanmar agent at 5 to 8 with the pump that was leaking. He didn't have a replacement, but reckoned that he could replace the bush and promised to do this by 3. I had a number of other things to do: the Windex had fallen off and the navigation lights had to be replaced. By the time the lads had woken up I was ready for Matt (the lightest of the three men) to go up the mast. He made the best of a difficult job, devising a way of fitting the new Windex and eventually getting the light working (though it stopped working shortly afterwards). I also went out and bought a new autohelm at great expense as repeated phonecalls to England had failed to bring the repaired instrument back. As Sod's law would have it, I had a phonecall today to say that it was ready, but in England!
I was just about to pick up the pump when the owners of the berth that we had moored in arrived. When we had moored yesterday I couldn't make out the numbering on the quay and had parked the wrong side. I hoped we would be out today but the repairs took longer than expected and now I was without an engine! There was an argument in which I simply said that I had no way of moving and it was eventually solved by the arrival of a boat from the capitainerie which powered us round to a berth on the opposite side of the marina.
By the time I got to the Yanmar agent and refitted the pump it was too late to set sail for Porquerolles. So I gave the boys the evening off with the stipulation that I was getting them up at 8am whatever time they arrived in at!