Crosshaven: the final chapter

The weather really wasn’t very sporting during the last 2 weeks we were in Ireland and basically pi**ed down most of the time. The brief sunny spells that we had lasted just long enough for me to get the mountain of wet gear pegged out on the guard rails and get far enough away from the boat so that everything was sodden by the time I had rushed back to take it in again. I lie – we had one glorious day that coincided with the Crosshaven Traditional Boat Show, when we were treated to a gathering of wooden boats (crewed by pirates of course), a little steamer, launching of the Crosshaven lifeboat, and a spin around the bay in the Crosshaven Coast Guard RIB.

The boat bums chatting up Miss Betty – they never could resist a firm pair of sponsons.

Brian (David’s Dad) was there with his display of the only remaining working horse-drawn Breeches Buoy – which was still in service until 10 years ago.

Bryn being rescued by Breeches Buoy.

Grandad, Bethany and Bryn.

On another soggy day we boarded the bus for the bright lights of Cork and Pirates of the Caribbean III. We could have waited to see it in Spain, but thought that only having half a dozen words of Spanish between us might have lessened our enjoyment slightly and would have probably increased the volume of popcorn that the children consumed. On the movie front, we think that the Irish are involved in secret filming of a new series of The Prisoner for the Irish yachting fraternity…

The O’Prisoner: Scene 1, take 2.

The saga of the SSB radio continued. We could receive excellent static (with a very realistic helicopter effect in the background) and could actually talk to coast guard stations 80 miles away, but the DSC function (digital selective calling – the bit that automatically reports your position so that the rescue services can find you if you make a MAYDAY call) still wasn’t working. After having the set checked out by an Irish radio engineer and numerous lengthy telephone calls to the manufacturer, we had to rip out the equipment and send it back to the UK by courier for testing.

Having finished my work and taken delivery of the new mainsail, the main thing that was now stopping us from heading for Spain was the weather. As a suitable weather window opened up, we decided that Sunday 24 June would be a good day to leave and we went into overdrive to get all the jobs finished and CAPE ready for sea.

Bethany, Bryn and I went to stay with Brian/Grandad and Angela to do our Personal Survival at Sea course – setting off distress flares, learning just how dangerous it is to abandon your boat and get into a liferaft, plus air-sea rescue procedures. On the Friday evening we joined in with the local St John’s Eve celebrations – a midsummer festival with a bonfire, outdoor games and activities for the children, and copious quantities of candy floss, ice cream, sugar dummies and chips, all washed down with the obligatory Coke of course! On the Saturday we had a brilliant session in the local swimming pool playing with the liferaft and making synchronized swimming patterns with fellow shipwrecked crewmembers. Seriously, we learned how to get into the water safely (no, you don’t just jump in), how to move about in the water in a lifejacket, how to conserve energy while in the water, and how to right the liferaft if it inflates upside down. We also got to practise getting into the liferaft – not an easy task while wearing an inflated lifejacket. To give you some idea of the enormity of this manoeuvre, imagine you are bobbing in the water with the equivalent of a pair of very buoyant size 48 DD boobs. The task is to get the boobs high enough out of the water (0.5 m) to flop them over the tubes of the liferaft while balancing on a rope ladder that is disappearing under the liferaft ‘cos you’ve got your weight on it. You claw your way, hand over hand, up a bit of rope until you get the boobs over the tubes, and then land face first on the floor of the liferaft. I hope that I never have to repeat this bit for real!

In my absence, David and Lawrence repacked all the loose gear into random lockers (we are still looking for some of this stuff a week later), delivered and collected the Everest of laundry that we had generated during the grotty weather, got the SSB radio refitted and tested, had a crash course in how to set up the Aries wind vane (self-steering gear), victualled the boat for a worst case scenario of 2 weeks at sea, and attempted to get our gas bottles refilled – you know, all the little jobs that we should have done a little earlier than 2 days before we wanted to leave. Did you know that gas bottles in Ireland have a different fitting to the ones used in the UK, that the bottles can’t be refilled or exchanged, and that you can’t take a gas bottle on the bus? We didn’t either until the day before we wanted to leave… Despite all of this multi-tasking, the boys still managed to find time to get Royally pi**ed in the RCYC – I don’t know how as they only had €40.00 between them! I think the friendly bar staff may have something to do with it……Yvette, Peter, Rory and James ‘the boy’ O’Shea. The boys say thanks for the hangover!! Saturday night saw us all in the bar for a farewell drink and I apparently scarred the new barman for life by asking him for a screaming orgasm (the cocktail version of course!) while the rest of the staff (as well as David and Lawrence) hid around the corner giggling like kids.

Bobbing in Biscay

The Bay of Biscay has a reputation for beating up yachts, and I was absolutely petrified (plus a little hung-over) as we cast off at 13:00 on Sunday 24 June (we couldn’t leave any earlier ‘cos I was on the loo all morning…). Having sat on a pontoon for a month and only turned on the engine to move pontoons and get fuel, it was pretty scary letting go of the ‘comfort’ ropes. The weather was fine for the first couple of hours, but then we got a gale force 8 from behind. We were expecting a good blow (a Northerly force 6–7) but the 8 that turned up wasn’t expected, and certainly not for so long (36 hours!!). I have to say that a gale force 8 on the blunt end is not quite as bad as a gale force 8 on the pointy end, but it is still pretty scary at times and the motion is yucky. As we hadn’t really got to grips with the Aries, we were hand steering with two adults on watch at all times (6 hours on, 3 hours off, overlapping watches). The children just disappeared into their cabin during the bad weather, emerging only to chuck, to ask for more drink or ginger biscuits, or to enquire whether it would be possible to be winched off by helicopter, and to report that they had changed their minds about going around the world and please could we go back and live in North Wales again. Lawrence spent quite a lot of the first 2 days studying the sea closely over the toe rail on the port side… his bright yellow Guy Cotton vomit suit living up to its reputation! David was only a tincy wincy bit sick and remained annoyingly chirpy (he reckons it was only a bad cough and a bit of phlegm, but we know different)!

By the end of day 2 the weather had started to abate and I had stopped being sick. For the next couple of days the wind settled into a steady N 4–5, occasionally 6 and we relaxed into a pleasant 3 hours on, 6 hours off watch system, put the world to rights, watched the sea, the stars and the phosphorescence in our wake, and played Traveller’s Trivia to brush up on our general knowledge and collection of interesting – if useless – facts. Do you know how long it takes a hen to lay 19 dozen eggs? Well we do now (see end for answer). We eventually got the Aries working in stronger winds and let Helmut the Autopilot take over in lighter winds (he is designed to work when the engine is running, but on this trip he was quite happy under sail). It seems that our Aries likes the strong winds but is very temperamental in light winds (must be female according to David and Lawrence) and is now christened Hairy Mary. The new mainsail was great, but we did bust a couple of mast cars (bits that hold the sail against the mast) – luckily we managed to replace them with some that I'd secreted in the depths of a locker. The wind fluctuated a bit more over the last day or so and we were totally becalmed for half a day. Overall, our speed varied from a dizzying 12 knots surfing down waves while running with the wind with 2 reefs in the main and no genoa, to a frustrating 0 knots as we wallowed and bobbed in Biscay. Our motion was brilliant as long as we were doing more than about 1.5 knots and we had a steady heel to port the whole way. Overall we averaged 4.5 knots (nautical miles per hour) on the crossing, this included being becalmed for about 10 hours and having a day of light winds. Going nowhere in a yacht is not pleasant, it is noisy and nauseating as the sails flog and snatch, crash and bang at the deck fittings.

However, being becalmed had its advantages – we had whales around the boat for an hour or so (well we saw a non-dolphin fin, a metre of arching back and lots of blow). We are still not quite sure what flavour whale we saw as the crucial pages (pp 36–40) are missing from our Guide to the Identification of Whales and Dolphins (we've never had to use that bit of the book before and I suspect they were missing when we bought it…). We also saw Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) and had a mega-pod (roughly a 100) of Common Dolphin (Delphinus delphis) who played chicken by the dozen with our bows for hours.

Bad photo of a dolphin…but we have lots of video footage.

So what about the leaks I hear you cry? The boat was DRY!!! Admittedly the sea was from behind not on the nose, but the only water we had in the bilges was the melt-water from the ice in the coolbox. We did have a bit of a dodgy moment when we had motor out of the path of a stonking great container ship (who either hadn't or didn’t want to see us and was doing 25–30 knots) in the dark and the engine mysteriously starting making water. After that we didn’t dare use the engine except in emergencies – we will have to get it checked out before we go any further. Anybody know where we can get cheap, reliable Perkins (do they have an outlet shop Stu’)?

La Coruña, Northern Spain

Anyway, we survived Biscay and after 116 hours at sea, we made landfall (yachty term for getting there) in La Coruña, escorted into the harbour by dolphins.

Approaches to La Coruña.

Since arriving, the weather has been warm but overcast and the adults have been catching up on sleep and alcohol while Beth and Bryn have been catching up with other kids (two next door on a Dutch boat). Having been on a port tack for 5 days, I was still on a port tack for a good few hours when I first stepped on dry land too (it is particularly disconcerting to sit on the loo on dry land at a 10º angle of heel!). Lawrence caught the first Spanish pescado (sorry, our Inglés–Español doesn’t have mullet) with a landing net but as it was only a baby and he put it back to catch again another day.

David and I had our 10th wedding anniversary while we were on passage and we arrived in Spain on David’s birthday, so we have had lots of excuses for celebrating since arriving. The 30th June was also a blue moon (two new moons in the same month) – how many more excuses does one need for another beer? There remains a little room for improvement in our Spanish – in one restaurant Lawrence asked for a couple more minutes to study the menu and the waiter promptly returned with two beers. David also managed to leave his credit card in the restaurant, and had to go back the next night to retrieve it. I am a bit suspicious because this provided an excuse for him and Lawrence to escape into La Coruña on a Saturday night, and the chance to explore David’s old haunts and various bars on the way there and back! (David lived and fished out of La Coruña for a couple of years in the 1980s.)

Well, I think that is about it from us for this blog entry. We are intending to stay here for as long as it takes to explore the city a bit more, visit the aquarium and Museum of Mankind, get the engine checked out and get the laundry done, so probably about a week.

Answer: 12 months!