Our first proper sailing party!
Caramor - sailing around the world
Franco Ferrero / Kath Mcnulty
Tue 29 Jul 2014 11:15
| A month ago we decided to be proactive about meeting other sailors as we weren't really meeting anyone, I baked a carrot cake and we were going to offer to share it with the crew of 'Yao!', the French boat sailing round the world but they beat us to it and invited us for tea. They also invited the young crew from the German boat 'Ghost' who are sailing around the world as far as Australia. Babel fish as featured in 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' would have been handy! Yao!'s crew includes skipper Jean-Loup, Marianne and Lucas, her 15 year old son. Sailing with them for a few weeks were Mélodie (Marianne's daughter) and Bastien (Lucas' friend). The French are well-known monoglots but all things considered these guys spoke pretty good English. Ghost's crew is Sörn from Kiel in north Germany who speaks German and English and Alessandra from south Brazil who speaks German, Portuguese and Spanish. We spent a happy four hours muddling by in Franglais, Spanglais and Franpañol! Next morning, it was still misty, though not enough to trigger the terrible high-pitched harbour foghorn (which has been slowly driving me CRAZY these past three days) so we set sail for our next port of call Aveiro, 40 nautical miles further south. 40:39.49N 8:43.86W As we got out to sea the fog lifted at last and we sailed in glorious sunshine with light winds. Aveiro would be tricky in big swell but was fine in the current calm weather. There was a strong tide ebbing and the harbour mouth was full of small boats fishing the eddy line. They didn't move for us so we had to zigzag but they promptly got out of the way when the big fishing boats came in. I was rather taken with the retro pyjama striped lighthouse! The landscape has really changed, it is very flat with palm trees everywhere and reminds me of Bangladesh. The flat landscape that reminds me of Bangladesh Aveiro town is a few miles up the river and as it was getting late and the tide was against us we decided to anchor in a lagoon (Baia de São Jacinto) just inside the breakwater. Kath |