Hoisting sail again

Saturday 2nd of June, I’m flying back to the Med. I will be sailing from Malaga (Spain) to Kos (Greece). It seems I am moving up in the world of sailing, because this time the boat is a real jewel. A 72 foot 1999 Swan, one of the nicest and fastest production sailing yachts of its class. It’s unbelievable really. Every time I saw a Swan in a port or Marina somewhere I got real excited. I would look at the Swan Yachts for hours, wondering what it would be like to sail one, or what the interior would look like. In less than 4 days I will know al this. And I will be able to enjoy her for 10 days straight… at sea. I’ll be posting my experiences here soon….

In the mean while you could surf to Swan’s website. Or if you are sitting in the office, and want to dream away a bit you might want to click here . If you are looking for a way to spend a quiet vacation with your wife, this little ship would be the thing to charter. If planning on being promiscuous on a big scale, purchasing this baby would get you 99% there.

Mallorca

Let me say something about the Mallorcan hospitality: there is none. As soon as a traded the boat for the bus to Palma, I got confronted with this lovely fact. The bus driver was not shy about expressing the fact that he did not like me paying with a 20 euro bill. With a lot of Goder! this and Puta! that, he pointed to the poster the size of a zigzag, printed out by an empty matrix printer inside of the bus, stating the rule! My excuses and explaining that it was my first time taking a bus on Mallorca left him cold. So I pocketed my 20 and sat down. Similar with the reception lady of the hotel in Palma, she simply shrugged her shoulders after she did not receive my reservation which I had made via http://www.booking.com/ . A reservation nr was worthless…

When I arrived at my lovely 3 star hotel Torre in El Arenal I discovered why the hospitality was lacking. It is the Mc Donald’s Mecca of the tourist industry! Now read carefully for I shall only write this once: if you consider yourself to have so much as half a brain cell, you want to stay well clear of Arenal, or the whole of Mallorca for that matter, just to be safe really. Unless you fancy eating what you eat at home, speaking the language you speak at home, being surrounded by the same neighbouring cultures (and luckily they all proudly show their nation somehow) while getting extremely drunk and while being profited by the tourist industry with the lowest of standards. The hotel was as sturdy as a carton box I think. During the nights I had to snap on the light every ten minutes to convince myself there was no one sleeping next to me, snoring the night away. I must not complain, for I had a window in my bathroom. Not being able to close the window because of the flush build between it, did not bother me as much as the view, the neighbour’s bathroom! Very amusing if you are located next to a hot lesbian couple I suppose, but I am afraid they don’t venture anywhere near dubious places like that.

Then Transavia topped it off by wanting to make me pay 24 euros for 4 kilos too much luggage while checking in for Amsterdam. 24 euros for 4 kilos? You’d have to be lugging around solid gold for it to be profitable to cough up the money. Maybe the extra stars at the hotel where because of balance scales at one’s disposal, and I was withheld that information. I sure wasn’t going to pay 24 euros for some worn down dirty underwear. So I did them one up, I got out a pair of shoes and a sweater. You can imagine this was quite a scene, for my duffel was packed to the max with the heavy apparel at the bottom. Very dirty clothing and chorizo sausages spread over the airport floor. I could see some people slam their forehead, ‘Why had they never thought of this themselves’. . The flight was delayed by the way… 2.5 hours!

Luckily ‘we are still free to question all rules, and apply logic!’

From Sicily to Mallorca - 350 NM

Its 15 May 5:05 AM as I am writing this. There is 2800 meters of sea beneath the boat, who knows what swims there? We are about a 100 Nautical Miles separated from the Mallorcan coast. The last 50 Hours or so have been a wild ride. We were clause hauled in 25 knots of winds, doing about 10 knots in a savage sea. For those that do not know about sailing; picture trying to sleep, eat and drink, get dressed and so on … on a mechanical bull for 50 hours, and you get a pretty good idea what its like. Needless to say, I was only able to acquire a grand total of about 4 hours of sleep. The other reason being, there is only two of us sailing the boat, doing 4 hour shifts night and day. My greatest respect goes out to all those professional solo sailors. I can now vaguely imagine what a mental discipline they must have.

Finally the winds have settled down now allowing me to write this piece. The sky is clear and filled with stars. I am guessing the Dolphins will be with us soon, they usually do come and pay us a visit at sunset. They’ll approach us like little torpedo’s from the side and joyfully play with the bow of the ship. I can’t wait. There is nothing like being greeted by dolphins early in the morning on a little ship on a lonely sea (I have only seen one other vessel for the last 50 hours), while watching the sun rise out of the water. It makes the 50 hour bull ride worth while J

The trip will come to an end on Mallorca. What started April 15th in Le Lavandou, ends after 1700 NM on May 16th 2007 on Palma de Mallorca. It´s been a great adventure and I have learned quite a lot. Not only about sailing, but also about people, the sailing way of life, the emotions that come with sailing, ocean creatures and how not to troll a line to catch Tuna (or have I been unlucky?). I have also met some interesting people, like Stephan that I met in Velletta, a 45 year old Swiss dude that is sailing around in his 8 meter sailing boat (a dheler) with aft cabin and shelters a little cat ‘Gatusso’. He has been sailing around the med, and is now planning on descending the east coast of Africa all on the plastic tip of a shoe string. What a Character… Solo on an 8 meter boat! I have been on the boat, and I can assure you, it feels like little more than the rubber Dinghy we use to get to shore when at anchor. But I do have to agree with him, “The worst day at sea, still beats the best day in the office!”

Or the Englishman I met in a restaurant in Cagliari that I had recognized from the Marina. He looked like someone that had been missing in action for a while and walked straight out of a Vietnam movie. You just don’t see that many people wearing a piece of worn down T-shirt as a headband anymore. But when I asked him about his story… Boy, was I in for a treat. You can read books about sailing, put people have to write them first, and it is a shame this man is just too lazy, or does not see an added value of writing one. But this is his story in a nutshell.. .

Apparently he had moved from the UK to North Carolina US and was working as a roofer and living out of a Van. Living out of a Van, might sound like an easy lifestyle, but you are not considered to belong to Society, well maybe somewhere beneath the lower part of it. Anyway, he was getting a lot of hassle from the police and it was tiring him. A colleague then suggested he needed a boat. A sailboat! If you life in a sailboat, you are a traveller, and an adventurer and you move up the scale of society. Somehow he ended up with a Contessa 32 for 14 thousand yankee dollars. It worked, the hassle was over, and he lived on board for a couple of years before someone approached him, and told him he admired his boat, ‘ nice Contessa 32’. He knew nothing about boats, and was just using it to life on, but curiously he then searched after ‘contessa 32’on the internet, and discovered that his boat was worth three times as much in the UK than the price he had paid for it. A no brainer really, he needed to get the boat to England.

Now, the one liner in this conversation that did it for me was the what he said next, and I quote: “The first time ever I hoisted the sails on my sailboat -or any other sailboat for that matter- was when I set out to cross the Atlantic”. BOINK! Here I am, going of to South Africa to get RYA Certified, sailing 1700Nm in the med to get some experience because one day I want to sail around the world… this guy just sets of across the Atlantic with no experience at all to make a couple of bucks. 28 days it took him to cross it, he was given a handheld GPS with one waypoint and that was it. When I asked him if he stood watch at night he told me that he had an alarm set at 20 minute intervals. It would sound; he’d have a peak around outside and got back to sleep for another 20 minutes. This lasted for three nights. After that, he decided it was well worth trading the remote risk of a collision, for a good night sleep. During his 28 days he saw 5 other vessels ´Spics on the horizon´. He only ate Pasta by the way.

He never did sell his Contessa, he wouldn’t sell it for ‘No money’. He’s been across three times since, and now realizes how lucky he’s been first time round. He didn’t even know the existence of reefing back then.

From people like these, I learned that "it takes a lot of talent to age without getting old".

Beating to Sardenia

Well.. The trip from Sciacca Sicily Back to Sardenia was quite an adventure. Although the winds were comming from were we had to go, we decided to head out anyway, resulting in beating against the waves and the wind for 2 days and 2 nights. It is amazing how a nice spacious boat becomes an place where even the most simple tasks become very difficult in certain weather conditions. Going to the toilet, or having a cup of tea becomes a menace. But, we made it.



Tomorrow we are of to Mallorca. A 325 Mile run, just me and the owner. Vince had to leave to take care of other things. It will be a tough one, but at least the winds are promising so far. I am not expecting to get much sleep, instead I will get a nice tan.




During trips I run a fishing line behind the boat, to try to catch a Tuna. No luck so far, but who knows what the next trip brings. Tuna season has just started anyway....