Wendy’s Diary February 2012 – A month of extremes!

Without John working we have been able to get lots of things done on the boat which has been brilliant for getting her ready for a long summer of cruising ahead. I always know when John is getting near the end of the list when he is happy to do the aesthetic jobs rather than mechanical/electrical. As the boat is our home I like her to look nice, and obviously she needs to work as a boat, but it is important to me that she looks nice too.

In between working on the boat we have taken a couple of excursions. The first was a trip up the Loire by car, partly to see the places again that we had seen by boat (not the power stations) and partly to see Nantes itself. It was at the end of a very cold spell, and for the first time since 1986 there was a significant build up of ice on the river.

Our first photo stop was to check out something John had thought he had seen on the sail, but couldn’t quite make it out. What he had seen was a very clever piece of artwork, a sailing boat curved over the side of a quay. We nicknamed it “sailors droop” and the photo is below:

You can see the ice in the picture, this was an inlet on the south bank of the river and there were a handful of boats buoyed just in front of this artwork. To see and hear ice like this was a first for me. The sound of it crunching and grating as it slowly moved down stream was ...I am running out of adjectives for amazing/fascinating etc etc. There were circles of ice, these formed as sheets bumped into each other on the way down stream and kept chipping off any bits that stuck out until they became discs, some are in the next photo below:

One night on our sail we picked up a buoy close to where one of the ferries crosses the Loire between St Nazaire and Nantes, so we decided to have a look at the town alongside the river there. We arrived to find that the ferry was not running. A huge amount of ice had built up on the slip-ways and it was impossible for cars to cross this wall of ice to get onto ferry. It had drifted down the river in sheets and the slope of the slip-way had become the perfect collection point for them to settle. The pictures below show how the sheets built up one on top of another. It was a fascinating sight.

Jumping back in the car to get warm again we drove through the next town and came to a signpost which showed something that I lost a while ago and I couldn’t resist getting a photo:

We carried on to Nantes our last port of call of the day and found the island in the middle of the river. Another place where someone has been creating artwork, this time a row of circles placed alongside the river – that were asking to be photographed:

Our second outing (day off from working on the boat) took us south along the coast as a research trip for when we leave Pornichet at the beginning of April. We wanted to see some of the possible ports of call and places to hide should the weather not be good. We have paid to stay in the Marina until 1^st April and don’t want to pay for any further nights as the price goes up and more importantly we want to head for warmer climes and John’s yearning for sailing to Spain is getting stronger every day.

We called at about 10 different harbours/anchorages including Pornic, St Jean de Monts, Les Sables d’Olonne and furthest south L’Aiguillon where we had a friendly chat with the local sailing club president who said we would be welcome for a day or two on their visitors’ pontoon. We plan as last year to anchor as much as possible and it is frustrating to see so many harbours packed so tightly with buoys that the room for anchorage is minimal or non-existent.

That trip over and back to work on the boat. We took advantage of some very settled weather to go round to a tiny beach where the Gavy sailing club is situated; this is the club Annie and Philippe belong to. Not only was the weather calm i9t was also warm and sunny. It was perfect weather for scrubbing the bottom and painting the hulls. John stripped off his shirt as he was so hot and later I applied sun screen as he was feeling in need of it. This was still February – only two weeks after we had been fascinated by the ice on the same river. I took a couple of snaps, in the first there are two things to look out for, the first being the reflection in the new paintwork, it really did come up looking good. The second is proof of the weather, the sun lotion is perched on the deck just in front of John.

The second photo shows just how tiny the beach was that we spent the day on. We had a stream of curious visitors all day, stopping for a chat, asking about the boat and where we were from etc. One chap who stopped by twice, each time he took his dog for a walk and on his second visit we plied him with coffee and my homemade cake (thanks Pauline for the recipe). He then invited us back to his house to see where he lived and gave us a dozen eggs, freshly laid by his chickens. Another example of the excellent hospitality we have received from the people of Brittany.

A quick update on my ankle – the physio has signed me off and I can now walk about half a mile, sometimes more. I have been for a couple of cycle rides and have loved being able to do some exercise again. Hopefully this year I will get fit and lose some weight. I have a final check up with the surgeon next week, and fingers crossed the story of my broken ankle comes to an end!

Wendy’s Diary 18 January 2012

It has been a while since I updated the blog, so here goes with a summary of the last few weeks since I did.

In December the week before Christmas we cooked a traditional English Christmas dinner for Annie and Philippe along with one of Annie’s friends who we have got to know and the Norwegian liveaboard from the marina with whom we have also become friends.

In terms of shopping for the event it was quite challenging. The French do not typically eat turkey for Christmas, there were none to be seen on most supermarkets. We found one (just the one) in Grand Casino, that looked like it had been starved rather than well fed, and was smaller than your average chicken. Annie managed to find a market butcher who had turkeys and ordered a decent size one for us, which was just the job.

The other big challenge was Christmas Crackers, I thought, no problem I’ll just go on Amazon and order some to be delivered to France. I then found that they are classed as explosives so cannot be sent via airmail, and shipping was not an option. I eventually tracked some down on a French website that specialised in things from around the world, and they thankfully arrived a couple of days before the meal.

We gave the instructions for dealing with these foreign objects and informed the table it was obligatory to wear a silly hat whilst eating an English Christmas dinner, so we all did. Explaining typical cracker jokes was rather difficult, as most seemed to rely on words with more than one meaning...i.e. which side of a sheep has the most wool...the outside! This relies on left and right sides being the same word as in and outside, which is not the case in French.

It was a lovely meal if I say so myself, with nearly all the trimmings, we had got stuffing and cranberry sauce from our last visit to the UK, but cocktail sausages were not available to make pigs in blankets. The Christmas pudding had been soaking in brandy for about 4 years, seeing it set alight was another new experience for the guests. It was rather tasty and everyone finished the meal in a suitably stuffed state. The suggestion of turkey sandwiches a few hours later was turned down, but we did have a rather nice turkey soup the following day.

For Christmas itself, we went to visit my brother and family in Cyprus, flying from Paris. It is a long journey from St Nazaire to Paris and we were fortunate to stay with a La Route friend Sylvie in Paris the night before the flight which was on Christmas eve. Thankfully the flight was on time and with the exception of waiting for a rather long time for the suitcase and then not being able to find my brother, we arrived at their house around 9.30pm, just in time to see the children before they went to bed wondering what Santa would bring the next day.

Two excited children opened their presents with delight on Christmas morning. With my sister in law being a Yorkshire Lass, we had Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for Christmas dinner, along with crackers, lots of bubbly and laughter. On Boxing Day we had a BBQ on the beach with one of my brother’s colleagues and his family, which was in rather glorious sunshine on a near deserted beach. It was warm enough to go for a paddle in the sea and was thoroughly enjoyed by all. The rest of the week whizzed by far too fast and soon it was new years day and time to fly home.

We returned to the news that the school John had been working for had less hours available and John being the last one in, was, not unreasonably, the first one out. Whilst the money comes in useful, working all hours is not what we had planned for this trip so it was a relief to have some time to ourselves. For me this meant moving back onto the boat full time and it now feels like home again. We have managed to get a lot of jobs done and the place tidied up so got a lot of feel good factor from it.

The weather was settled the second week in January, if somewhat cold, so we took the opportunity to take the boat out for a run to make sure she still worked, or in John’s words, to prove she isn’t just a floating caravan. He wanted to explore the Loire river, it is possible to sail/motor as far inland as Nantes on a masted boat. Any further and the mast has to come down.

I was rather sceptical as I remember holidays in the region in my early twenties and thinking the river not very attractive, whereas John had images similar to the Tamar Valley in his head. The pilot book says “Not many boats venture up the river and it cannot be described as attractive”. However, John was keen to go so we set sail with the tide, and made once past the locks into the first part of the ship yard, most of the passing scenery is then made up of industrial sites and at least 2 power stations.

One of the power stations!

There are a couple of prettyish ports on the way up, but when it was time to stop on the first night as the tide had turned, we snuck into a disused canal to keep out of the way of passing ships (yes ships not boats) in the channel. John had looked up this canal on google earth and spotted moorings just inside, so we hoped to pick one of these up. It was pitch black by this stage after a lovely sunset, and for the first time ever, I stayed on the helm whilst John picked up the bouy. The entrance to the canal was narrow, and the chart indicated that there might be a ledge on the boundary with the river, so I was rather scared about hitting the bottom and/or the sides. I am pleased to say that it went like clockwork and it is something else to tick off on my list of abilities, and I did the same again the next evening, this time just before it got completely dark.

 We spent the day sat in the mud entrenched canal, waiting for the tide to turn. Not at all attractive, but at least the sun shone. Mid afternoon we ventured back out into the Loire, hoping to make it to Nantes, but in the end we didn’t make it that far before the tide turned again, so we stopped about 5 miles short of our destination.

We thought this place looked cute, it appeared to be a house  - the light was on!

Bright and early the following morning we picked up the tide to come back down the river and made it all the way back to Pornichet on a single tide.  The tides in the Loire were interesting; it had not rained much for a while so we were not expecting the river to be particularly fast flowing. What seems to happen is that when the tide starts coming in, whilst the water level is rising, the current is actually still going out. For a short time there is then a weak current going upstream and as the tide weakens again the river takes over once more and the current is downstream. This means that for every tide there is around 3 hours of upstream current, and 9 hours of downstream. It is understandable why it took us 2 tides in one direction with only one in the other.

Did I mention it was cold - John used the halogen heater to try and keep warm

As we approached Saint Nazaire on the way down stream we were averaging around 7 knots, which is quite nippy for Freya Frey. We went through a very turbulent patch of water not unlike patches in the Gulf of Morbihan, and on exiting this found the current to be racing and picked up speed to over 9 knots. We maintained this speed until well out of the estuary and round the corner heading towards Pornichet, by this time after low tide so we expected to be beating against a current not whizzing along with it.

Me trying to be artistic, this is the massive road bridge that  crosses the Loire at St Nazaire

The boat is now safely tied up back in the marina, and we have been especially glad of the electricity supply the last few days as the temperature has been below freezing overnight and we have woken up to white pontoons covered in frost and ice on the outside of the windows in the doghouse. And I agree with the pilot book, the trip up the Loire cannot be described as attractive. Possibly interesting if you like power stations, but definitely not attractive.

On a more personal note the physio I am having on my ankle continues to help and I am now walking without crutches, albeit not very far. It is pain free now apart from when I am walking or doing the exercises instructed by the said physio. Yesterday I had to go back to the doctors for a “prescription” for more physio as my last one had run out, and was surprised at the normal procedure when visiting a French doctor. She asked what I had come to see her for and when I said what I wanted she asked me to undress! But it’s only my ankle, have I understood her right?? Yes, take off most of my clothes to be weighed, then have my blood pressure and pulse measured (110/70 and 67 J) and my heart and lungs listened to. She then took a quick look at my ankle, asked me to stretch it one way then the other and was happy to give the prescription. It is normal in France for these basic health checks to be carried out on every visit to a GP.    

Wendy’s Diary 29th November – 5 jars of jam and a wedding!

Another quiet few weeks have passed by for me, still on crutches but I managed to offload the wheelchair a couple of weeks ago. Whilst I can’t walk too far on the crutches, the wheelchair had become a bit of a luxury and with having to pay a weekly rental I was happy to say goodbye to it. I had the “big” screw removed from my ankle yesterday so am hoping that I will be able to start walking before long and I will be getting some physio starting soon.

My French has continued to improve and the need to break a leg to learn a new language has become a frequently used phrase.

In early November we were delighted to attend to wedding of our friends Julie and Chris in Plymouth.  We had a full on 3 days of visiting friends and collecting supplies (John had ordered a new wind generator and anchor chain). It was a mad rush of seeing people, we weren’t anywhere for long enough, but it was lovely to see people for the short time that we did. The wedding was lovely, it was fabulous to see the happy couple looking radiant.  

We started the weekend staying with some French friends in Le Bono, and they had invited some other friends from La Route de L’Amitie to dinner so we had a lovely evening before driving up to Roscoff for the ferry. We stayed with the soon to be weds on the first night and boaty friends Richard and Chris the second night in the UK.

As part of my meticulous planning I booked the car in for an MOT, 10 -11am on the Friday morning. Then came the phone call to say it had failed and the spare part would arrive on Monday – when we were sailing back to France on the Saturday. After an anxious phone call, the garage confirmed that they would be able to get the part and have the car fixed for the end of the day. One problem solved, another created. How to get to the wedding in the afternoon?? My dear friend Jane ran us around doing everything else we had planned to do, fed us a Full English brunch and delivered us to the wedding.

Another very kind friend Richard took us from the church to the reception, then back to Saltash after the wedding, waited whilst John collected our car key which had been delivered back to Jane, then took him to the garage to collect the repaired car before travelling back over the bridge to his own home, much closer to the wedding venue than Saltash! We really do have some very kind friends and it was a blessing that when we needed help there was no problem in getting it.

We had a heavily laden car and were rather tired by the time we got on the ferry on the Saturday evening. I had booked the ferry a few weeks earlier, before I knew whether my leg would be out of plaster, so as a precaution booked a wheelchair accessible cabin. On the way over, this meant we were the first car to board the ferry and the first car off again. We weren’t first on the way back, but there were so few cars anyway it hardly mattered. The cabin was a lovely size, with plenty of room for the wheelchair and a shower with a seat – bliss. I did use the wheelchair on the ferry, mainly because I was afraid of falling over if I was on crutches.

A week later we were off to Audierne for the weekend for a dinner laid on for the volunteers who make La Route happen. It is the biggest sailing event in Europe that is run by volunteers, anything bigger and several smaller have professionally paid staff, caterers etc and the whole thing becomes much more expensive. So to thank the volunteers and evening of food, drink and entertainment is put on, and we had a very enjoyable evening meeting up with old friends.

Back in October, when One of Annie and Philippe’s friends came to stay, she noticed the tree in the garden and pointed out that “Les Anglaise” make jam with the little apples that grow on it. Then when Hannah visited, she confirmed it was a crab apple tree and she had the recipe for the jam, which was duly emailed. So Annie and I decided we would give it a go. Annie had made jam before, but never with crab apples, I have just never made jam before.

We spent an enjoyable couple of hours in the garden picking the apples, there were so many of them that you couldn’t tell any were missing by the time we had filled two colanders. Bibiche (means something like fluffy) the cat joined us in the garden and I took great amusement in throwing the fallen apples around the garden for him to chase. When we had picked enough, we sat and drank a cup of tea in the garden, enjoying the November sunshine. It has been a remarkably warm autumn here, with the weather being ok for tee shirts in the sunshine right through to last week.  

Two bowls of crab apples ready for the kitchen

Bibiche keeping an eye on me!

We sat in the kitchen preparing hundreds of the little apples for cooking, cutting out the blossom heads and checking for bruises before putting them in the pan. One bit of information missing from the recipe was the quantity of water to add to the apples and I put in plenty to be on the safe side. This was where it got entertaining. The instructions said that once cooked, put the apples in a jelly bag and leave overnight to drain. We did as instructed and within 5 minutes, the liquid had drained through – neither of us knew what to do, neither of us had the language skills to express “I haven’t a clue” in each other’s language never mind suggest what may be wrong or what to do now! So we laughed and laughed until our ribs hurt, it seemed the best thing to do under the circumstances. In the end we left it overnight anyway, just in case a bit more liquid should choose to dribble out.

Two days later, Annie added sugar to the liquid and produced 5 jars of jam. After a very apprehensive first tasting, we all agreed it was lovely and well worth all the hard work and laughter that went into making it. Even better, having recently returned from the UK with a fridge full of goodies, we were able to have a clotted cream tea, home-made scones (one of my specialities) with crab apple jelly instead of strawberry jam – if you have never had it I thoroughly recommend it. In the last couple of weeks we have nearly finished the second jar, and so impressed with ourselves, gave one to a friend as a thank you for inviting us round for dinner.

As I sit typing this, watching the wind and rain lash down for a change, there are still quite a lot of apples clinging to the tree, and I reckon that later this week we will be making another batch of jelly with them. 

John finding a bit of time to fix the car headlights

John continues to work long hours, often more than 30 hours contact time in a week, so by the time he has done his lesson planning the weeks fly by with little time for anything else. However it is the work that has enabled us to buy the new wind generator, and pay for my medical bills (hoping to get a refund soon), so the salary is welcome. After Christmas his hours should reduce significantly and we are looking forward to spending more time together.

Oh, and the boat - she is sitting quite happily in Pornichet Marina, proudly sporting her new wind generator. If you want to know what it is, how it works or how much power it produces, Wendy's diary is not the place to be looking!

Wendy’s Diary Wednesday 2nd November - Dinner Party Dialogue

I have had a quiet few weeks recovering from surgery, hobbling around on crutches or being wheeled around. The plaster came off on Monday and it is nice to have the freedom of having a shower and being able to move more easily. I am booked in for surgery at the end of the month to have one of the screws removed from my ankle, it is a large screw that goes through both the fibula and tibia, and I will not be able to walk properly with this in.  In the meantime I am now allowed to start putting some weight on my foot, which makes walking with crutches somewhat easier. Hopefully by the time the screw comes out I will be able to walk small distances without crutches.

So, what else have we been up to? Firstly John is working long hours, much more than either of us anticipated. He is teaching for around 30 – 35 hours a week (contact time) so by the time you add class prep time to that he is a busy man. The school doesn’t have any admin support so the boss asks the teachers to do a fair bit themselves, and I have started helping John with this, much of which is in excel which is one of my skills. He is enjoying the teaching though and it pays well, so it is not all bad. We are treating ourselves to a new wind generator out of his wages, so there will so long term gains out of his hard labouring.

We are living with Annie and Philippe still, with John sleeping on the boat 2 nights a week when he starts work at 7am the next morning. They are a lovely couple and we share a lot of laughter with them. They have two sons; the younger has been staying with us recently, between working on the Ille de Groix in the summer and travelling to Turkey, firstly by air and in a couple of weeks time is driving over there with a friend, in his very old Renault Quatrelle!

At weekends we cook a special meal for them, a Sunday roast, or John’s specialities in Chinese and Indian cuisine. This is something we both enjoy doing and it is nice to be able to give something back to a couple who have and still are doing so much for us. Annie adores my pastry and with a crate full of apples in the garage, apple pie appears on the table at least once a week. I have also introduced them to my homemade cheesecake which they are both very fond of. When I first decided to make this in France, I of course needed the ingredients. I make it with Philadelphia cheese, now when I came to describe what this is so we could buy it, I struggled. What is Philadelphia, I know it by no other name, France has many types of cheese, including the soft varieties, but I was at a complete loss. With Annie’s help we guessed at Fromage Blanc, and whilst not the same, it did work, and with the help of a drop of Baileys, I made my first French cheesecake.

On my next visit to a supermarket, there it was hiding between the Goats Cheese and the Raclette Cheese – Philadelphia. We bought some and I produced a fantastic Blueberry cheesecake. A friend from Groix was staying at the time and a couple of days later when back at home, she rang and asked for the recipe, and made the same for some friends of hers. A big compliment for me that she liked it so much she wanted to make it for her friends. I think I have made 3 more since.....

Round the dinner table we tend to have discussions on correct grammar, either in French or English, and also to laugh a lot! One particularly amusing evening with friends for dinner we somehow got on to the topic of bad language. Merde is a French word that I think everyone learned at school, but what we didn’t learn is that it is less vulgar in French than the English translation, so it is in very common use. Annie says she wouldn’t have used it in front of her parents, but her boys use it in front of her...a sign of changing times perhaps. Zut is rather like saying “oh bother” and I haven’t heard it used except for in jest.

So back to the dinner table and the Merde conversation, it went something like this:

Groix visitor: what was the correct pronunciation in English,

Philippe: Sheet

Another : Sheet

John: no not sheet, sh#t

Groix Visitor: Sheet

John: No not sheet......

A few more rounds and a bit of practice and all the French people round the table could now pronounce a word that we told them was offensive in English and best not to use it!

Along similar lines, one that appealed to me was how the French pronunciation of Spreadsheets sounds and they think it applicable that excel spreads sheets! Remember the previous conversation??

The boat is in a sheltered place for the winter, so it is always calm there. The tides are big and getting up and down the bridge onto the pontoon has been rather challenging for me at low tide. Everyone we have bumped into down there has been friendly, and a Norwegian chap who is living aboard with his French wife left us a note inviting our acquaintance. Somehow he managed to find this blog and had read it before we met, so already knew what we had been up to (hello Espen)!  He has been a visitor for coffee a few times, and I am waiting for my leg to improve before I visit their boat.  

My French continues to improve, although I think the pace has slowed down. The grammar is getting more complicated and I have hardly started yet. Annie and I sit at opposite ends of the table for dinner, with John and Philippe facing each other between us. There is a fair bit of rivalry goes on between the sexes, which again causes laughter. Whenever I know a word that John doesn’t (perhaps once a week if I am lucky), Annie will tease him and question that surely he knows the word. Yesterday’s word of the day for this was beetroot!

Having finally lost my plaster, I no longer have the pleasure of the daily injections by the nurse to stop my blood from clotting. The injections cost around 7 euros per day, the nurse another 3 to inject it, and another 7 for the nurse once a week for a blood test – which then goes to the lab who charge a further 10 for the result.  I think at present I have incurred around 700 euros in medical costs, a much reduced rate as I have the EHIC card, without this it would be about 3 times the amount PLUS hospital in patient time which is free with the EHIC. In the next week or so I will be paying a visit to the local health social security office to find out how much I can get back, I believe around 70%.

That’s all for now, hopefully I will be updating with stories of me running marathons in the next blog.

Wendy's diary 11 October. Recovering from Surgery and speaking French

Now that we have tied up the boat for the winter, I think that updating the blog will become less frequent, or at least shorter (phew I hear you say)! I cannot report on new places explored or how good or bad the sailing is, but just on our day to day lives now in one spot. With my broken ankle this time arrived a little earlier than expected and we missed out on the last few weeks of the season sailing. Anyway, the news for now:

The surgery on my ankle went well, I now have a plate and 5 screws in my leg, I had 18 staples which were removed last week, and am in plaster until at least 31st October. The attitude to risk is obviously different in France, so there is no explanation of the proceedings, the risks etc, nothing to sign to say you absolve the surgeon of all responsibility, so rather different to when I had the surgery on my neck earlier in the year. Being used to UK proceedings where full explanations are given, I left hospital with virtually no information other than to return 2 weeks later. So I made a list of things to ask, like how much longer in plaster, would the plate be removed at a later date, what is the prognosis on the nerve pain in my big toe...no more than that, and the surgeon thought I was suffering from anxiety as I asked so many questions! Annie tells me that normally surgeons do say more and I just got one who was bad at explaining, although reputedly a very good surgeon which is more important.  Hospital food is possibly slightly worse than the uk, so I came out ravenous!

I am still living at Annie and Philippe's, John is spending his time between here and the boat. He is working long hours 4 days a week, but happy that he likes the work and is well paid. Two days a week he starts at 7am, so sleeps on the boat the night before so that I don't disturb him when he wants an early night and he doesn't disturb me in the morning when he gets up at the crack of dawn (or before - the nights are drawing in). 

I can only stand/use my crutches for very short periods as my toes swell up within about a minute and if I don't sit down again fell like they are going to explode! I have a wheel chair and most days Annie takes me for promenade somewhere when John is at work. On John's day off and weekends he delights in seeing how fast he can push me or how far back he can tip me up to get up a kerb. Getting to the boat can be challenging and at low tide impossible, the slope down to the pontoon is just too steep. Once at the boat I heave myself around and can get to all parts, but it is very difficult and I am glad that Annie welcomes me to stay with her.

The weather has suddenly turned to autumn, on Sunday 2^nd October, the world and his dog was on the beach as it was sunny and 30 degrees. A week later the traditional Sunday afternoon promenade was made up of people wrapped up snugly in their coats. It isn’t really cold, around 17 degrees, but after the previous week it felt cold.

My French continues to improve and it is really nice for me to be able to have conversations with people in a different language. Two years ago when we were last in France I was unable to say much more than hello, I could book a hotel room, and say my name and age, but conversation was not possible. I took up conversational French classes on my return to the UK and struggled through these for the best part of two years. Now, mainly with Annie’s help, with some from John and Phillippe, and with what I had learned in the evening classes I can now achieve what I aspired to do. I am working on my grammar which is still appalling, but I can make myself understood and know enough vocabulary to get by. Yesterday a neighbour called round whilst Annie was out, and we spent half an hour chatting about all sorts of things, the boat, my leg, the weather etc. Two years ago this would have been a nightmare situation for me, full of awkward silences and stuttering. By the time Annie got back, and started pass on the news, she was greeted with the neighbour saying, oh yes, Wendy has already told me about that. J

Wendy's Diary 21 Septembre

Just a quick update for now.

The boat is now in Le Pornichet Marina where we intend to spend the winter, altough John has now joined me in living with friends in their house in St Nazaire as I can't manage the boat. More bad news with my ankle - it was hurting lots so I went back to the equivalnt of A&E and an xray showed the bone had slipped out of place. I am booked in for surgery tomorrow so will be back in hospital for a couple of days. Oh well!!!

John's Diary 1

John’s diary – singlehanded sailing

It was a bit of a shock to find no Wendy on the boat and a message to “Come up to the Hotel behind leClerc and we can have a chat” when I arrived back at Redon after nearly eighteen hours travelling on Sunday night.  I was a bit disgruntled by the mysterious messaging, especially as I was practically asleep on my feet, and all I wanted to do was to get my head down!  That said, all the irritation evaporated when I discovered Wendy’s injuries.

Having got Wendy packed off safely to Annie and Philippe, it then fell to me to get the boat out of Redon on my own – an interesting task, as it had needed the lockkeeper pulling hard on the spinnaker halyard to heel the boat enough to get the cap shrouds clear of the bridge, while Wendy fended off.  We are 4.2m wide, and the lock is only 4.5m, so we have only about six inches clearance on each side, most of which is taken up by fenders!  The young lady eclusiere (lockkeeper) didn’t seem to have any concerns, which might have been something to do with my having helped her out with a large barge a few days earlier when the holidaymakers on board had spent nearly fifteen minutes making a hash of it.  She had been tearing her hair, calling out things like “Now go slow ahead, helm to starboard.  No! No! NOOOOO! STARBOARD, not PORT!!!  AHEAD not ASTERN!!!” and all the time the queues were getting bigger at her bridge and I suppose she was imagining the complaints which were going to flood in to her boss about the delays.  I was as much concerned about the barge hitting our boat as their difficulties getting into the lock, and after several near misses, I offered to help and got them into the lock.  As I came away afterwards the eclusiere gave me a big beaming smile, a thumbs up, and blew me a kiss which made me grin.

Anyway, on the morning of my departure I had everything ready, and I had disconnected the cap shroud, pulling it out of the way with the spinnaker halyard to clear the bridge.

The eclusiere called across to me, and so I set off.  She raised the bridge and I gently nosed in with a crowd watching (that normally guarantees a disaster!) but in we went, gently nudging the fenders on both sides as we did so.  The eclusiere was outside her control tower, camera in hand, snapping away with a big grin.  “Oh god!” I thought.  “Don’t mess this up now!”  However, it all went perfectly, and I got another wave from the control tower and a big smile as I cleared the lock and went into the port de Plaisance.

As I went down I noticed a heron on the bathing bathing platform of one of the yachts, quietly waiting for breakfast.  It was unfazed by my passing quietly past.

At the other end I saw a British Moody (Globil) just having the mast stepped, and I went alongside for half an hour for a chat while I reconnected the rigging.  Bill and Gloria (hence the name of the boat) came aboard and had some coffee and madeleines (little sponge cakes).  Neither of the couple had been on a cat before, and Gloria said to Bill just before they left, “Now if we had a boat like this, I’d be more than happy to live aboard!”  I’m not sure whether I have done him a favour in cementing his relationship, or whether there is now an impending divorce! I hope it’s the former…

I went gently down the Vilaine with one engine just ticking over, replacing what we have used from the batteries over the last few days of immobility. Eventually I came to a lovely little halt in the middle of nowhere, called Rohello, consisting of a car park, a beautifully-maintained aluminium pontoon and a set of rubbish bins.  I offloaded the rubbish and dinner went on, comprising a couple of gallettes au lardons et fromage (pancakes with cheese and bacon bits) with duchesse potatoes on the foredeck washed down with a glass (well, two actually!) of Normandy cider.   I settled down to a lovely night’s sleep and awoke early enough to watch the thick mist drifting in the moonlight before the sun came up.  

Sunrise quickly dispelled the mist, and the day warmed up quickly.  I carried on downstream.  There are dozens of abandoned boats tied up on the banks with large square nets on small cranes off the sterns.  Apparently these were used for a fishery which has now evaporated through overfishing, and the boats have just been left to fill with rainwater and rot.  Some of them are little sailboats with the masts lifted off, others are traditional rowing boats and some are basically mini pontoons.

A bit further downstream I turned off into a tiny insignificant creek behind a boatyard, a creek so small that it appeared to go almost nowhere.   It turned out that it was actually navigable for about half a mile and I was treated to the sight of a large bird of prey flying across, the streak of iridescent electric blue from a kingfisher which went ahead of me along the stream as well as countless beautiful dragonflies, thousands of pond skaters and blooming water lilies. 

 I finally turned round when the creek got really shallow and only just wide enough to swing the boat around.  It was a lovely diversion, and showed rural Brittany at its absolute best.  The creek is a couple of miles above la Roche Bernard on the left bank of the river behind a busy marina.  Any reasonably small boat could anchor up there free of charge in complete peace and tranquillity, yet with the marina facilities a short dinghy ride away.  There is a lot to be said for having a slightly smaller boat like an HT!

After the diversion, I headed downstream again.  The port of La Roche Bernard is busy, but they were happy for me to use the visitors pontoon for a couple of hours (without charge – what a contrast with the UK!) to do a bit of shopping and hunt down a bar with wifi to catch up on emails.  I topped up with water at the same time, before setting off for the lock at Arzal. Up to this point I had been able to sail most of the way down the river, sometimes hitting nearly five knots under just the (reefed) genoa, but after a few hours of perfect calm, the wind changed and I found myself motoring downstream with 18 knots of wind on the nose.  Having become accustomed to making three knots at 1,200 revs on one engine, I was not impressed to be making just under 2 knots at 2,000 revs, but then I spotted a tiny cove on the left bank, about half way between la Roche and the lock.  It looked interesting, so I nosed in very gently and although very shallow (the props were kicking up the mud a lot of the time) it was perfectly sheltered so I spent the day there, out of the wind in warm sun, getting ready for the passage ahead.  When evening came, I raided the fridge and freezer and had smoked peppered mackerel (oh boy, what a glorious meal!) with a handful of chips and garden peas, accompanied by another glass of cider, all on the foredeck in the setting sun.  “Life doesn’t get much better than this,” I thought, and much as I miss Wendy’s company, being able to have smoked mackerel (which she can’t bear) was a real treat which went a little way towards making up for it. 

The following morning, I had a call from Wendy, asking if I might be able to get to La Roche for lunch with her and Annie. You can imagine my delight at the idea, and so I upped anchor and relocated just below La Roche, leaving the wind generator to do its stuff in the breeze.