First boat blog...the rest of the story...

When most people heard that I would be sailing around the Mediterranean and Caribbean on a yacht for a year, they got a very romantic view of what that entailed. Most people get a vision of us sipping cocktails, in our best linen dress apparel. I hate to be the one to burst the bubble, but ...uh...that's not reality...you only see that on TV (and the French Riviera, but the boats are much bigger and are owned by people like the Kennedy family and have a staff to meet their every whim). The reality is more like a glorified, soggy camper...and not the nice ones with air conditioning and microwaves which made you drool on family camping vacations..... This is not bad, just different. My bubble certainly burst the first time I went sailing in the Caribbean with Sébastien and his parents (but we won't talk about that right now...most of you who have heard the story probably are still surprised by the fact that I actually decided to live on a boat on purpose for a whole year!). Anyway, so this has been an adjustment to me, who likes things just the way she wants them and who truly appreciates life's little comforts (flush toilets, warm showers, beds that don't have an integrated rocking motion).

I will, however, state for the record that this little adventure was actually my idea. I still remember the conversation...it went something like this...”I simply can't believe I'm going to say this, and I'll probably regret it later, but what do you think of living on the boat for a year???” Sébastien is rarely speechless, but this time he just looked at me in wonder and amazement (probably wondering what alien life form had taken over his wife's body....), and finally replied...”sounds great but perhaps you should think about it for awhile and decide if you really mean it.... we can always pretend you didn't really say that....”. He's a good guy, and I love him a whole lot. His passion is sailing. His father's first question was “Does she sail?” And over the last nine years, I too have learned to like sailing. We don't sail for the same reason. He sails, because he loves the actual sailing part. I sail because I like to go to really cool places, where there is usually sun and new and interesting cocktails. His mother and I decided that we were actually in the boat most of the time for decoration and cocktail hour. This of course makes me sound like a lush. I don't spend my time inebriated, however, and also enjoy fruit juice cocktails, or a nice cold glass of water. I just like cocktail hour (and so do the girls), because it means we are done sailing for the day, and we are usually stopped, watching a beautiful sunset and enjoying each other's company.

So we decided that we were off on our adventure. We finally decided when and where. We chose this year for a number of reasons. The principal ones being that we currently have a boat available and this was a good year for the girls to be “boat schooled”. I figured that I could handle Kindergarten (although sometimes I feel like the little train that could....I think I can, I think I can....and I remember why I did not choose to go into teaching...I have absolutely NO patience!). We informed our employers in February. This was received as well as could be expected, and at least we all had time to get ready for our departure.... We spent the next 7 months getting ready for the next part of our life. It was busy. I went on a Tupperware shopping spree (many thanks to my family members who endured many packages and to Sébastien who endured Tupperware meetings ...), and Sébastien hit every boat store possible and spent hours pouring over marine outfitter catalogs.

We left on October 1st from Paris and were not as ready as I would have liked, but actually had done a pretty good job, considering we were working full time and only spent two and a half weeks with the boat before we left. We can also give a big thanks to Sébastien's father, Denis, for whom we became a full time project. He recently retired and when he wasn't traveling, he helped to make sure that everything would be perfect for our departure.

We spent a week in North Carolina for my little brother's wedding and arrived in Villefranche sur Mer, next to Nice, on the 7th of October. We spent the next week finishing the outstanding things and making sure that all was in working order. We found that we really like the South of France at this time of the year. The people are much more laid back, because there are no tourists and the weather was fabulous. We met some very interesting people who made us realize that our dream isn't as crazy as it might seem. One French couple spent three years sailing around the world. Their first child was born during this trip and spent her 1st year in the boat. Another couple, an Irish woman and French man, backpacked in Ireland for a year, and a third Norwegian couple has lived on their boat for the last 10 years. They spend their summers in Norway, because its too warm in Europe...and they started out like we did, and were supposed to go back to civilization after a year, but just couldn't do it. I don't think that I will have that problem, once the initial shock has worn off, but I guess that I should never say never...

We finally left Villefranche on the 16th of October. Our first destination was a few hours from Villefranche. Because we had done a lot of work on the boat, this was our “test” cruise, and everything went beautifully. We had a sunny day, with a light breeze and found the perfect spot in a little bay outside of Antibes. In addition, the bay had a free wifi hotspot...I was thrilled!

The next day we moved onto Porquerolles, a little Island off the coast of Toulon. Once again, our anchorage was perfect and we spent two day exploring the Island. The main means of transportation on the Island are bicycles and walking, and there are very few cars. It felt like we were on an adventure.

We decided that our next stop would be the Balearic Islands, off the coast of Spain. Sébastien announced an initial trip of 48 hours, which meant two full night cruises with only the two of us. I am not a big fan of night cruising, mainly because I prefer to sleep than stay up and make sure that we don't hit any other boats, but also, because the girls tend to sleep well all night long and therefore they have much more energy the next day than we do...not easy! We therefore compromised, which is not really something you can do when you are sailing, but I am the eternal optimist. He assured me that if we left at 5 am and we maintained a minimum speed of 5 n, during the entire cruise, that we should arrive between 36-38 hours later. This seemed acceptable, as it would allow us to arrive before the sun set on the second day. However, as Murphy's law seems to be based on sailing, things didn't go quite as planned. We spent the first 24 hours (including the night) at a 15-20° angle. This meant that we were living like slope adjusted cows. Everything from eating to sleeping, etc had to be done at an angle. If you have a high center of gravity, this is very uncomfortable for a such a long period of time. When we finally arrived at our destination, in Menorca, the sun had just set and we found that our guidebook had been a little optimistic. They announced that the harbor could take boats up to 20 meters. As our boat is 12 meters, this seemed reasonable. However, we think that the 20 meter boat they were talking about is the local ferry, as all of the other boats were around 6-8 meters. This is similar to trying to park a hummer in a spot labeled “compact car”. We only found two spots that could have worked. One involved swimming to shore to attach the boat to a rock in the dark, and the other was at the fueling station. We therefore, tried an anchorage just outside our harbor, which didn't seem to be suggested by our guidebook. As we were not impressed with the info from the guidebook, we decided to give it a try. I now understand why it was not suggested, and I can also attest that I know what it feels like to be a human being in a washing machine. At 11:30 pm we decided that we had had enough and headed for the fueling dock. At 3:00 am, Captain Sebby decided that it was not working and we might as well head to Mallorca to a port which was “safe” in the expected bad weather, unlike the one we were in. I was little skeptical and frustrated, as it was 3 am and raining, but he assured me it was ok, and that my input would be ignored. I was therefore awake from 3 to 7 am, waiting for daylight to break, as I really didn't want my husband to fall off the boat (not that I can do much about it if he does...but I prefer to stay up to make sure). Once daylight came, I went to bed, like a Vampire. I awoke around 9 am and saw that everything was under control and headed back to my warm bed...and didn't get up again until around 1:30 pm, when all hell had broken loose. The first thing I saw, through the pouring rain, when I exited the boat, was some very large cliffs too close for comfort and my husband attached to the boat. Apparently we were encountering major gales (force 7 on the Beaufort scale), which weren't expected for another 12 hours, and we were at least half an hour from our destination. He started asking me in a urgent, life and death tone, to do a number of things that I had never done before. It reminded me of when I went to give birth and the lady said that I just needed to do like I had learned in my Lamaze classes....however, I never quite got to that stage of pregnancy. This was like that only a much less pleasant experience.....! Anyway, he told me to call the harbor on the VHF to see if we could enter with the type of conditions we were having. Unfortunately, I had no idea real how to make the internal VHF work (and the external one wasn't working because it had gotten wet....uh...good thing to have on a boat, eh???) and no one seemed to be responding. I finally got fed up and called on my cell phone (yes I am a modern resourceful women!) and made sure that they had space in the harbor for us, even though the lady never quite understood my question about being able to actually enter into the harbor. Once we arrived, we realized that the entrance was easy and we found a wonderful staff on the ground, who spoke English and some French, and who helped these “crazy” (their words!) people. They helped us finally get into a spot (which we subsequently changed twice later, as we ended up breaking one of our ropes due to the high winds and strong waves). The place we were in is called Porto Soller and it was simply enchanting (despite the rotten weather!). The people were really sweet, both in the harbor and in the city. There was a tramway which took us to the neighboring town of Soller and an ancient train which took us over the mountain to Palma, the largest city on the Island. It was exactly what we needed after our grueling cruise!

What we hadn't counted on for this trip is that the weather at this time of the year in the Mediterranean has two speeds - stop and go : either no wind at all, or gales and storm like conditions. The storms are impressive, and scary and it is important to be in a safe harbor when the storms come up (as we learned with our previous experience). The consequences for us are that we need to go really quickly to our next stop and then stop and hide while the storm passes. This means night sailing, which as I mentioned before, I really don't enjoy. We therefore left Porto Soller on Sunday morning at 6 :30, an hour before the sun even considered lazily getting up, to head back to the Spanish coast. We spent a rocky day and a rocky night on our way to the harbor we are currently in, Alicante, arriving around 3:30 this afternoon. We were really happy to arrive, as we are expecting up to 40 winds in the next 24 hours. We will be here visiting Alicante, eating Turron (a Spanish version of Peanut Brittle) and Paella and waiting until it is safe to leave again, probably on Wednesday or Thursday. We will give more news the next time we get good internet access (which is easier said than done....)