Posts

Falmouth > Bristol > Palma

Very conveniently a departing crew member was also leaving on Friday the 13th. He was going to an Airport that has flights to Palma. He had also bought a Porsche a couple of weeks earlier. Having not been in a Porsche before and having enjoyed working with Tim I was quite excited about the drive.

His Porsche is beautiful and seemed perfectly peppy. People who do not own Porsches are quite quick to label this model, the hairdresser Porsche as it does not have a turbo. Truthfully I think you would lose your hair if you did have a turbo fitted. We had a chance to drive with the top down. I might have taken a couple of photos.

Said Porsche. The mach speeds we travelled meant other vehicles started to disintegrate around us. Look by the passenger door and you can see a seat belt.

We drove past Glastonbury. This was a wistful part of the journey.

We eventually made it to Bristol. We said farewell and I busied myself with a mammoth lay over. Some eight hours lay between me and lift off. What did Bristol Airport have to offer? Well the first interesting thing was a prehistoric man. He had come out of the hills for his first visit to an Airport and the pay and display parking machines had him quite confused. With some helpful advice he faded from sight never to be seen again.

In the sliding scale of New Zealand Airports, Bristol Airport lies somewhere between the Auckland National Airport and Christchurch International. Sadly I was not allowed into the better part of the Airport for a few hours so I sat down in the bar, logged into the internet and proceeded to drink quite a lot of cider. I think my efforts in the airport were akin to an economic recovery package. I ate varyingly tasteful plates of food and bought three magazines to read.

Five hours later I was allowed to check and enter the slightly more exciting part of the Airport. Being a Friday night there were a lot of people escaping England for the weekend. Some of them were wearing themed team t-shirts which did not make any sense to me(possibly due to the cider) I did eat some very good fish and chips. I even tipped, by this time I would like to think I did not look English.

I had a horrible retail experience buying a pair of sunglasses. Whilst I am stoked with my sunglasses I do not think waiting 30 minutes to buy a pair of sunglasses in a nearly empty store is acceptable. I was not even in Spain yet.

Said sunglasses.
Queuing for my flight to Palma my brain(now sobering) started to work out why there were so many people with themed t-shirts. They were going away for Stag and Hen parties. This is a common occurrence for the English. Here for your delight are some of the t-shirt slogans I read
Actually I can not do it. Just imagine the most vile things you could write after someones name and you are halfway there. If you really need to know some, just email me and I will send some through.
Our departure was smooth unlike the t-shirts. I was on my way to Palma and the strangely familiar unknown.

/0 Comments/by

What I learned today and other earthshaking possibilities

During quiet times on board I sometimes moonlight in the galley. Not being much of a Chef my moonlighting consists of doing what I know best, grating cheese. You might not think there is is much to grating cheese but to the semi professional grater there is a part that you probably dread when you reach the end of what you are grating and it becomes dangerous. Up until today I have either eaten the excess cheese/carrot whatever before I maimed myself or I have chopped it up and hoped the Chef did not notice…….

Today I learned a very useful skill.

-Simply take the small block of cheese/carrot/truffle what ever and place it under the heel of your hand.
-Then, massage it backwards and forwards against the grater until it disappears.
-Viola, it will disappear and you will not even add human to your dish.

In the interest of learning more than how to make Super Yachts look really clean and culinary dark arts I am going to a Satellite communications course in Palma tomorrow. I had wanted to attend a yacht systems course in Amsterdam but Amsterdam being Amsterdam I am still waiting after a year for them to organise a course that I can attend. Note to course organisers in Amsterdam, stop drinking so much coffee.

There has been an earthquake in Spain. It is also Friday the 13th. Tomorrow. Flying is considerably cheaper on Friday the 13th. I am practically throwing caution into the wind along with myself.

Grate.

/0 Comments/by

Saint Ives, Train Spotters and other mammals

Last Sunday we ventured out of Falmouth along to the Cornish coast to Saint Ives. Saint Ives has a special meaning to me, it is where my Granny hailed from. This short journey was a way to pay respects and squeeze in some mild mannered English adventuring.

Saint Ives is pretty much due west of Falmouth. We elected to take a train. After long periods driving on the wrong side of the road (right) driving on the left seems foreign. On the plus side we would get to observe the coast, countryside from a rolling relaxed  vantage point.

The first surprise of our trip ? Remember my magnetic powers of the odd? Sharing our journey for the day; a large pod of trainspotters. Being my first real experience of trainspotters I was interested in how they interact and the very real obsession that trainspotting entails. Trainspotters possess seemingly freakish knowledge of trains. Some of our trainspotters may have been less serious than others. One was spotted making a choo choo noise leaving a café. Another seemed to take a mischievous delight in testing the mettle of one of the younger members by asking question after question on the name/specification and atomic structure of railway components.

Trainspotters aside the bank holiday weekend meant we had some other interesting personalities aboard our carriage. For one leg we had some pre teen dubstep enthusiasts behind us whose loud appreciation of dubstep and cuss words beggared my ears to distraction.

Another traveller loudly announced a hatred of university students and desire to bomb the local university. I wish I was kidding.

Thankfully a train change at Saint Erth allowed for a cessation of dark thoughts.  The coastal train ride to Saint Ives is a famously beautiful trip well worth 12 minutes of ones life.
DSCN0459

DSCN0456

Arriving in Saint Ives it became apparent that the balmy weather we had been enjoying was changing. Saint Ives is the quintessential small English fishing village. Its narrow roads and careful development mean it is quite unique. That is not to say it has not been tampered with to encourage consumerism.

saintives

The vast array of surf shops, pirate and witchcraft stores drove me to impassioned drink. After a couple of medicinal ciders we were ready to walk the streets again.

IMG_0714

I could live quite happily on this road.

DSCN0450
A very Celtic memorial to fallen soldiers.

With the day slipping away there was one more startling revelation to be made. By now the day was overcast, there was a bracing breeze and I surmise the temperature was 12 degrees. The beach looked nice enough but you would have to be crazy to sit on it.

Witness the ancient English holiday art of making a wind and sand proof fortification for sitting on.

DSCN0454

This beach hibernation made me feel chilled to the bones. It was time to return home. As often is the case with these travel excursions the behaviour of humankind sometimes upstages the scenery.

/0 Comments/by

Falmouth the Sequel “Suspicion and other things”

It is worth noting at this juncture that the character written about in the previous passage was not a local of Falmouth. He visited on the weekends to see his estranged and quite possibly strange family. For the most part the people of Falmouth are suspiciously friendly. Suspicion fades with time, the people here are just really nice. Helpfulness, chattiness and smiling faces are not something I associate with England but the rub lies in that wonderfully large and vibrant city London. London is not England. What is England then?

It is certainly not the perpetually balmy weather that has bathed us since we made landfall. Towards then end of Atlantic passage I started enquiring about foul weather gear and if we had ice picks for climbing the mast. What greeted us in Falmouth has been for the most part quite nice. Crisp mornings and sunshine well into the daylight saving hours. Day after day of sun drenched spring. Where are we again? Even the English I work with do not believe the weather. "It won’t last" "this is our Summer it will be snowing next week" "where is my handkerchief to put upon my head?"

Speaking of which we had quite an awesome Sunday past.

We had a great walk to a local hotel and health spa. There were people swimming in the 10 degree water at Gily Beach. The softer ones were wearing wet suits.

The Spa surrounds were an immaculate garden modeled in a sub tropical style (not my words)

My picture though, and it it looks pretty sub tropical.

The Hotel is called Saint Michaels Hotel & Spa and I am pleased to report we felt very healthy and relaxed when we left. I am less than happy to report the 10 hour drinking session that followed was not healthy and I felt quite poorly the next day. Suspicious? No, just stupid.

The insanity that surrounds the Royal family and weddings has not escaped me here in Falmouth. The costume shops of which there are two have had an alarming array of Royal wedding themed outfits in every shape and size. Things reached a fever pitch on Friday. I briefed myself quite well in front of breakfast television and started to get nervous about the whole thing. The closest we got to anything royal was one of the local swans going out for a paddle. Swans are large beasts and if the Royal Family ever wants to branch out, KFS or Kentucky Fried Swan would be a fantastic franchise. Imagine a royal wedding carriage with a KFS logo artfully placed upon the gilded gold.

 
IMG_0700

I am not serious. Or am I?

 
 
 
 
 
 
/0 Comments/by

Falmouth and Foulmouths

The Dawn Treader had been lurching through pendulous seas for weeks. Bacon and home made ice cream were reaching dangerously low levels. Morale was slipping and visibility with it. Where was Britannia and salvation?

Salvation it turns out was not far away. The English channel is a lumpy horrible place at the best of times. The ragged coastline of Cornwall was a welcome sight. The deep waters of Falmouth Harbour were as good a place to make home without taking the boat to New Zealand.

First impressions of Cornwall were made long before we tied up the boat. A delightful mess up had left us without a berth. Our Captain sounded positively tyrannous as he barked down the phone at numerous slack jawed oafs(my words but he probably would have said them if he was not swearing so much) Duty and customs officers were just as amiss. They were not interested we were coming to town. They finally turned up today a week later. This was long after I have shipped off my imaginary exotic spices, sugar and special tobacco from the Spanish main to the black market. My opinion of Falmouth was reinforced with my first trip into Hogwarts (Falmouth town) The shops are not interested in being open after 5:14pm and they close on a Wednesday afternoon for high tea or something equally English.  

England remains a wonderfully strangely familiar place. Everything seems so lush after the Caribbean. Even the abundance of paved roads seems decadent. We had a great walk around Falmouth on our very first morning.

Ah green and blue bliss and a bit of pink (unsure what lies behinds those gates)

On Friday night we ate out for our chef. The restaurant was superb as was its name Hunky Dory. We went to a cocktail bar afterward to drink some espresso Martinis. Our Chef’s name is Martini.

I am truly sorry if this next paragraph is overly acerbic but it is not all Cornish pasties and clotted cream in Falmouth.

Being a magnet for the Supernatural, odd and mentally disenfranchised somehow a very odd person attached himself to our party and therefore me. His name was Roy and he (in his on words) was a failed husband, father and exotic spice salesman amongst other things. For some reason he saw fit to share large unhealthy tracts of his life with us all. Especially me for some reason. I guess the aftershocks of this chance meeting gave me impetus to write something so thank you Universe. I think?

With that purged from my system I can turn my efforts to writing about much more healthier parts of Falmouth and Cornwall.

Tune in tomorrow Cornwall time for more.

/0 Comments/by

The Atlantic crossing (West to East)

We have finally made landfall in Falmouth, England. Our voyage from Saint Martin took 11 days. We covered 3000 odd nautical miles and made one stop. The trip was not uneventful so let me get crazy with bullet points and we shall begin.

  • Weather; Compared with the sublime weather we had on the way to the Caribbean this journey was a bit more bracing. There were some calculated risks taken with regards to the weather and I am happy to say arrived in Falmouth safely and ahead of schedule. The gradual change in the temperature was quite noticeable when you have spent 6 months in a tropical climate. As was the change in the water colour. The Atlantic gets grayer further north you go. This is probably something to do with plankton density or other scientific malarkey. 
Proof(Photos are from South to North top to bottom)(<–Deliberately confusing sentence)

  • Beard growing; Loveyjoy and I grew beards on the way over. Being only 21 and English James took a weeks head start on me. I did enjoy having a beard to keep my face warm but after a 10 year beard sabbatical, sadly I am still not much of a beard grower. I think it is my demigod heritage, real immortals are hairless. The final straw were orange hairs starting to sprout from my upper lip. The beard died this morning. RIP. More proof I am in fact descended from gods. The hairs on my chin were almost indestructible. I had to remove several layers of skin to purge my face of the transatlantic beard scourge.
  • A real scare; I remain convinced that walking around a boat in the dead of night in the middle of an ocean is one of the scariest things a person can do. 
scary deck at night
  • That is unless your crew mates conspired to give you a terrible fright. The first mate and I devised a devious plan to scare Lovejoy. After our watch change over at 4am we turned off a deck light and went and hid by the light switch. We did scare James sufficiently but I hid myself so well it took me a good 30 seconds to extricate myself from the hiding spot. My contribution to the scare was more of a congratulatory handshake as I stretched my legs. 
  • Whale spotting; High speed whale watching remains a fringe sport. By the time a dedicated lookout sees and announces a whale over radio the whale is almost out of sight. That didn’t stop me from sighting a whale and taking some very murky photos of the said whale expelling air in a friendly fashion.
  • Ocean sanding;When I was not whale watching, scaring, beard growing or sleeping I spent a few hours a day sanding. I sanded every day bar two. Sanding at sea is an aquired taste, as is the chairs I was sanding. I am not sure what else to say about this but if sanding chairs over a few thousand miles is on your bucket list replace it with beard growing or something else more exciting. 
  • Horta and the Azores; We did take one pitstop on our trip. The Azores are one of those far fetched places that sailors only ever visit. A Portuguese archipelago they have the distinction of being in the middle of the Atlantic where there not much else. Being there for only 6 hours or so I did not have much time to explore other than the inside of a cafe which had very tasty red wine. It also had some Danish sailors singing very poor renditions of sea shanties.
That is it for now. Obviously we are in undiscovered territory at the moment and once I find my star trek translator I will be beaming down onto the Cornish coast for some bold discovery or something like that.

/0 Comments/by

The next chapter

With the curtain falling on our Caribbean sojourn it is time both to reflect on the past week and crystal ball gaze forwards to what might be.

The second week of our boss trip went smoothly enough I adjusted to daylight hours and our boss took the unprecedented step of actually cruising instead of hanging off Saint Barths like some very well appointed loiterer.We cruised Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda before returning to Saint Barths.

With out my phone it was hard to sneak photographs. So with some googe-fu I shall show you what I saw kind of.

My phone remains dead boo.

Nevis was clearly a dormant volcanoe, what made it intriguing is that the cone seemed to be perpetually surrounded in cloud. If it suddenly became active what would the cloud do? Would Nevis go red with embarrassment? The funniest thing I witnessed in Nevis was an interaction between our boss and a couple of the resort security guys. We were the only motor yacht for miles to see. This was the conversation.

Local “We be going to that yacht later on yo”
Boss “Sure cocktails start in an hour we have everything”
Local “Yeah it looks like my Uncles”
Boss” You remind me of my Brother…. he has the same teeth”

Antigua was nice and familiar. We actually tied the boat up which is unheard of for our boss. Eric Clapton’s boat turned up along side and I tried not to be star struck, much. Bring tied up allowed us to have a few drinks after work and reacquaint ourselves with the nearest watering hole.

Devon the barman was in fine spirits and somehow our conversation meandered towards the relative safety of Antigua as opposed to Saint Martin. It is here I must digress and let you know a part of the Carribean that I have glossed over as not to alarm you. It is quite dangerous here. We had a chef murdered about four boats down from us about a month ago. To put things in perspective,

“By some statistics, yachting is a dangerous occupation. Occupational dangerousness is generally measured in deaths per 100,000. Firefighting, for example, – an occupation just outside the top ten most dangerous jobs – is said to have an average of seven deaths per 100,000” However, with only about 40,000 yachties, and coupled with the fact that we have had more than four reported deaths in the last few months, yachting statistically is a “dangerous job.” In fact, yachting, following these statistics, is slightly more dangerous than firefighting. Dockwalk 


Anyway Devon was happy to inform us that most of the violence in Antigua is gangsters murdering each other. They are generally good shots and the police take the pragmatic approach of letting them kill each other. Isn’t that nice? I have not felt unsafe here but my spidey sense has been triggered a couple of times and I am happy we are heading to the relative safety of Europe.
We spent a day anchored off Barbuda the next day. Barbuda reminded me a lot of the Maldives. A huge atoll with a massive beach, enough said. 


Please admire how blasé I have become about tropical vistas



After Barbuda it was back to Saint Barths for familiarities sake and we dropped the Boss off in Saint Martin the very day. Back in Saint Martin it is pack, stow and lash before we head across the Atlantic again. Barcelona has been scrubbed from our list of destinations for one far more exotic……. Falmouth on the Cornish coast of England. This will be our home for 4-6 weeks while we have some work done. Cornwall is where my late Granny came from. So in a surprising fashion the universe has provided me with a way to pay my respects and inspect her roots.


From there it is off across the North sea and into the Baltic. We are going to cruise Norway, Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia. Although at the moment all I know about is Copenhagen in Denmark. Uncle Phil has promised he will bring the poodle down to Copenhagen.

We have lost a couple of crew with the end of the season. One of them was a tremendous beard grower on crossings. In the interest of science I will be attempting to grow a beard across the Atlantic. Photos forthcoming.

Not sure how much longer I will have internet. I will try and do some writing on the crossing in between beard growing, navigation and engine room watches. I am a bit disappointed with my writing output but I saw this quote the other day and smiled.

“Being a writer is like having homework every night for the rest of your life.”

– Lawrence Kasdan

I was absolutely terrible at homework so I think I am doing ok.

/0 Comments/by

The Saint Barths Bucket, growing old and how to murder an iPhone in spectacular fashion

For the last week I have been taking in the night draped vistas of Saint Barths reveling in the abundant moonlight and red cyclops glare from the multitude of Sailboats. Sailboats have a red light at the top of the mast when they are at anchor. When there are a lot of them they sway in unison almost hypnotically……….. zzzz

Ooops where was I? ah yes the regatta, being the first regatta that I have attended I was quite interested to see what was going on. Given that I was awake throughout the night I did not get to see much racing other than tenders going to and from bars and boats. We stood out like a sore thumb being one of the few and very noticeable motor yachts. Quite why our boss likes to come here year after year is a bit of a mystery other than the social aspects. Maybe he enjoys knowing he has a jacuzzi and three jet skis on board. Most sail boats struggle to have running water(sorry James).

After the coffee incident I fell into a comfortable routine and after about three nights I was quite convinced I could do this for months, years even. After day five my body started to exhibit strange behavior. Upon rising for my 13 hour shift at nine pm I felt positively creaky. 5 strong espresso were required to elicit any kind of conversation from me. I also noticed my legs did not feel wholly my own. Being scientific I decided to use a pedometer for an evening. I charted 13,000 steps on an average night. This is over four floors and at times carrying large bulky items. This is considerable amount of effort at an odd time of the night when ones body should be asleep. It didn’t feel this bad last year. But I am 34 now, maybe age is more than a number.

Part of our duties included taking the bosses son into town with his two friends so they could court the favour of young ladies(pull). Now you would think having a large multi million dollar yacht, servants and oodles of money would be quite enough to attract attention. It appears not. The problem with attending a prestigious regatta is that everyone has a large multi million dollar yacht, servants and oodles of money.

I enacted revenge upon our chef for the decaf coffee. He likes to go for a swim each morning. He also likes to throw egg shells and limes at us when we are off the boat. Inspired by the cricket world cup I looked in galley and found a cricket ball sized onion. Then, using a stair well for a run up I threw the onion approximately 30 meters across a 1-2 foot swell and hit our chef in the head. It was incredible and I do not think I could replicate it if I tried.

The next night I did something very regrettable, stupid and not at all cool. New Zealand was playing South Africa at cricket in the world cup. If there is one thing Yachting teaches you, it is that South African yachties are a plague and must be vanquished at all costs. If any opportunity arises when you can beat them then take it . Anyway I was sneaking looks at the commentary on cricinfo.com on my iPhone. New Zealand were out for a modest score and there were yaapies crowing the world over. I kept the faith, checking at regular intervals . It was on the swim platform that the catastrophe occurred. I waas casually throwing cushions into our tender and the very last one got caught by a gust, missed the tender and promptly started sinking. Scrambling over the tender I removed my radio and dived in heroically to save the cushion. I must have been quite a sight. My head had broken the surface when I realised my iPhone had come for a swim as well.

It looks like people water damage phones all of the time. Various pages exist on stories of how water damaged phones have been bought back to life. Boats are full of wonderful items for resussiatating water damaged equipment. My method has used denatured alcohol to remove excess water and an exhaust fan from the engine room to dry it. I then had to swallow some pride and ask the chef for some rice with which to leave my phone in for a couple of days. I will let you know how this goes. The upshot to all of this was that New Zealand had a marvelous victory that I was able to dreamily savour as I watched cricinfo from my bed. Sacrificing my phone at such a critical time during the match was surely a noble and just cause.

There are many morals in this story. Take one which best suits your day.

If you don’t see sunlight for 7 days you will start making rash costly decisions
If you throw onions be prepared to swallow one
Don’t go for a swim with your phone unless there is a big game riding on it

I’m on day watch now. Can you tell? Life is better. We are heading back across the Atlantic in a couple of weeks. Probably to sunny England. Fancy that.

      

/0 Comments/by

Night watch annoyance number 1

So I am on night watch for the first week of a two week charter. This time I am prepared. I have enough supplements to keep an elephant in tip top order. I have enough protein and legumes to get across the Atlantic and back. I have sleeping aids, fresh music and am in superb physical condition. Basically I am sorted. Bring it.

The first night goes a bit wonky. What is going on? At the end if my shift I start to discuss a theory of mine that time travels faster when it is warmer in the crew mess. I very stupidly assign the theory of relativity to Isaac Newton. My brain is suffering. Why?

I find out that our chef, bless him has substituted all of our instant coffee for decaf. The timing of this could not be worse. I rage, storm to bed cursing decaf coffee and it’s inventor. Not in Einstein’s league that fellow.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

/0 Comments/by

Paradise Lost?

Amidst all of the cataclysmic turmoil taking place upon the worlds stage a small slice of paradise was found upon Saint Martin for Anna and I. We got an apartment. After a long and arduous courting stage with the French side of Saint Martin we were reminded once again that the French jigsaw is not one that we fit into. I have new grey hairs which are sprouting from the middle of my scalp.

Our new abode is modest, nestled in the gated and big dogged communities that Americans so love. The last tenant was here for six years so most things have been thought of. Walking to work takes about 15 minutes and things have been very peachy. Things have been so peachy, that on Sunday I was crowing very loudly to the immediate area much like a rooster would. The people upstairs thought I must have been watching a football game. Of course I was…. We don’t have a TV.

The only problem?? Well it seems like we are going back to Europe very soon. I guess we all knew this was coming but it seems to have come about very quickly. If things go to plan we will be back in Barcelona in a month or so, hooray! My love affair with Spain can continue. El Fuerte will be on the same continent again. Uncle Phil will be freezing somewhere north of me. Order will be restored.

Still, I can’t help feeling the essence of the Caribbean is still waiting to be distilled. Much like the scent of a rum cocktail the joy has been fleeting and at times dangerous. Maybe that is the essence. 

/0 Comments/by