24 Hours to Hyeres -- Falling into a Routine

Passages are (hopefully) all about routine. We typically try to leave at first light, set the course a 200-300 miles away, check the weather one last time, put in some waypoints and head off.

This morning we were a little later than we hoped, actually leaving at 6:40am instead of 6:00, but we had some boat cleanup to do (tying the dinghy down, putting the generator away, putting last night's dishes away) and getting the boat ready to brave the big waves like yesterday. Both Jessica and Emma had some stomach problems yesterday so we woke them up before 6am for a preventive dose of Gravol. While I haven't ever been seasick, I can imagine it sucks. It was amazing yesterday how instant the recovery was, the moment we got into the sheltered harbour, all symptoms ceased.

Our routine is about safety and speed. The safety things we do is keep an hourly log of where we are, the GPS coordinates, how long we have to go, and some safety checks if we are motoring (checking the bilge for water, doing a visual inspection of the motor and the exhaust to make sure nothing is leaking) and scanning the horizon for traffic. So far there has been very little wind and we gave up on motorsailing and are just pounding along at 2800 RPM at 8.0 knots, the good news is when there is no wind we go fast.

Ross installing the new radar deflector...the last one exploded. 

For the first 12 hours we powered making over 8 knots, then the wind hit. We we worried about the Gulf de Lyon, a particularly nasty stretch of water where the Mistral blows 40-50 knots with alarming regularity. Now we will see whether the weather forecast is accurate or not.

We chose this departure day because of the weather forecast. There is a disturbance coming out of the Gulf de Lyon for the next several days and this is the best chance for us to make it across until the 28th... and that is a day later than we had hoped to be in Port Napoleon.

So when the wind arrived we started to motorsail, first at 2500 revs, then 2000, then 1500. By midnight we were in 20 knots of breeze and that's when we do our first jib reef. It only costs us about 2/10ths of a knot in boat speed but it provides a more stable platform and if the wind gets stronger we always want to be ahead of it.

Our normal shifts are to have Marina manage the boat until midnight (with Jessie), then I take over with Ross for the midnight to four am shift, then we're relieved until 6 or 7 when the girls go to bed and I generally take the next couple of hours on my own. I did head up when I heard they saw lights but couldn't find the ship on Radar or AIS, but it turned out to be the moonrise. Quite often during the night we see stars on the horizon and mistake them for the lights of ships. It sounds crazy but it happens all the time.

When I went topsides at midnight we were in 20-22 knots of wind on the beam, in about 1.5 to 2 meter seas. We were steering a course of about 30 degrees on the compass. Marina had been hand steering for the past hour because the autopilot when taken off course 20-30 degrees by a wave, cannot correct fast enough so we end up in some trouble. I watched Marina steer for a couple of minutes before I took over, with her keeping the boat in a fairly narrow groove between 20 and 40 degrees. I took over and promptly started steering between 0 and 60 degrees ... with some pretty wild oscillations of course. 

After about 10 minutes we decided to reef the jib about a foot or so, and that made steering easier. Around 12:15 am Marina went to bed leaving me and Ross to manage the boat. We got into a groove and carried on this way until about 2am when Marina popped her head up with a couple of harnesses and had us strap in. In the intervening two hours the wind had gone from 20-22 to 25-28 knots. We shortened sail a little bit more and kept going.

At 3:00am I was getting tired; more accurately my right leg was beginning to cramp up from supporting all my weight because the boat was on a 20 degree heel. Marina offered to take over for a half hour or so and started steering when a puff and a particularly nasty set of waves came through. The boat pitched right then left, and she asked me to take over again. Normally Marina can take most any situation coming at her, but I could tell by the tone in her voice she wasn't confident, so I went back to steering. Instead of a break I had two crackers with cheese filling, a couple handfuls of peanuts, 2 Ibuprofen, and a few swallows of Coke Zero -- my evening caffeine. Rejuvenated I continued to steer while Marina did our every 10 minute Radar and AIS sweeps and hourly safety and position reports. Ross hung in like a champ until 4:30am and then went to bed, leaving Marina and I to enjoy each others company and endure the wind and waves.  We decided not to wake the girls because they wouldn't have been much help (the jib is a hankerchief, the driver steers and their companion does the safety stuff and makes sure we all stay awake. One nice thing is that the moon was getting high in the sky by 4:30 so we could see some of the nastier wave sets. Earlier in the evening it was better to take the waves more 'downwind' but later it was better to head up into the waves. Like most situations it pays to be adaptable and to change strategies when the old ones stop working. At 05:00 the first bits of light appeared on the NE horizon, by 5:30 we could see fairly well and at 6:15 the sun broke over the horizon. We could see the coast of France now, it's just another 20 miles, we're doing 7.8-8.2 knots on the reach and it should moderate -- right?

Well the next couple of hours were a handful. The wind increased to 35-40 knots so we rolled up the jib to be a postage stamp .. at most 1/4 of the normal jib area, and the main was still furled inside the mast. Despite the lack of sail area, we were still bucketing along at 8 knots, so it really didn't slow us down much. The next couple of hours just required good concentration and figuring out where the gap between Isle Parquerolles and Hyeres was. Our trusty GPS waypoint and the IPad helped us out and we pointed the nose of Tara into the gap. In the half hour before we turned the corner we encountered the biggest wave to date. It was probably as high as the boom so some 4 or 5 meters high and roll left, roll right and the bookcase full of books came down onto the floor for the first time since our big wind/wave experience between Gocek and Marmaris. Maybe a third strap of bungee cord is needed to keep the darn things in their place. At 8:30 we turned into the gap between Parquerolles and the mainland, the waves dropped to less than a meter, and we continued sailing until the corner where we rolled up the jib and turned the motor on. I hit the 'auto' switch on the Raytheon autopilot and sat down behind the spray hood having driven the boat 60+miles through the night in a full gale without even a pee break. You gotta do what you gotta do.

We made it...let's have a beer!

We dropped anchor at 9:15, Marina snuggled in with Jessie. I made a quick breakfast for myself then lay down for a minute and woke up at 2:30 in the afternoon when Jessie came in and opened all the windows and hatches and said it was time for lunch.


After the kids went off to explore onshore, Marina and I reflected that we have come a long way in the year, and that we really don't like the overnight passages very much. We are also proud to have been sailing for the last 13 months and have (assuming we can make it the last 40 miles to Port Napoleon) have delivered ourselves, our boat and our crew safely.

Ross and Emma made an awesome bocconcini salad!

After a big grocery buy we headed back to the boat in the dinghy and made dinner, watched part of a movie, and climbed into bed and fell asleep, happy to be at anchor and safe. One week of holidays to go and then the boat is coming out of the water at Port Napoleon and we start our journey home.

Big Weather Coming

We are always on weather watch, monitoring the weather, wind and sea patterns. I guess that started in Croatia where the Bora can be quite dangerous and severe -- it is not uncommon to have 50 knot puffs in a Bora, and big seas pile up quickly in that scenario. Then with all the passages we've made, we try to err on the side of less wind than more. Diesel fuel is expensive, but we're more into safety than anything else.  As Easy Swissa says (North Sails owner from Herzliya Israel) it's not the wind you worry about, it's the waves.

Anyway, Marina saw we had 2 days of 25-35 knots coming and we wanted to have a place to hide, so we chose Alcudia, one of the major tourist cities on the north side of Mallorca. When we left Cala Molto the wind was on the stern at 20+ knots, so we were looking forward to a fast beam reach once we turned the corner at the top of the island. Unfortunately, like most islands, each corner seems to have its own weather pattern, so we went from a fast downwind to a no-wind scenario pretty quickly. We sailed, motored, motorsailed and finally sailed into Alcudia. We pulled into the fuel dock and took 30 liters of fuel -- less than we've ever taken before ... I guess we did a lot of sailing this week, certainly the wind was up that's for sure. Anyway, they assigned us a slip between a couple of 50 foot powerboats with about 1 foot to spare on either side. I think David and Elizabeth were surprised that we were trying to put our big wide boat into such a narrow spot, but it's the normal course of business here in the Med, put yourself into a narrow slip, using bumpers if you need to (we seldom do!) and tie the boat in. 

The satisfying thing was that within an hour the wind started to howl. A magnificent vintage sailing yacht from Malta arrived shortly after and we watched them put a 120-150 foot sailing yacht into the laid moorings quite easily, amazing considering how big that boat was and how windy it was getting.

The next couple of days were a bit of a blur. David and Elizabeth were flying back to the UK on the 19th, we decided the weather looked better for the 20th for our hop to Mallorca.

The girls were staying with us for another 10 days or so and then would fly to the UK from Marseilles, so our kids would have company for a couple of weeks. So all we needed was a weather window right for the trip back to France. We had two options: 1 to go back via Spain, 100 miles or so to Barcelona, 100 miles or so to the southern tip of France, and 100 miles or so across the Gulf de Lyon; or 2) bite off an overnighter 200 miles from Menorca to Hyeres. We chose the overnight route because it would give us more time to do the 'fun' type of sailing in the French islands, plus the weather looked like it was more favourable for a passage than for a number of day hops. The Gulf de Lyon had been spitting out these 30-40 knot systems for the past week, and we had a 2 day respite, then it was forecast to push out even more wind on the weekend. Our best bet was a sprint day across the northern Med to somewhere on the southern French coast and then hide from the wind there. So....

One Day off, then our Next Guests Arrive

After the Taylors left, Marina decided she wanted to be closer to the action so we asked to be moved beside the clubhouse. It was far from the supermarket and the showers, but right at the clubhouse and steps to the pool. We had done a quick whirlwind clean upon arrival in Palma, kicking everyone off the boat and sending them to the pool.

Marina and I likened it to having a big party and the house was in post-party condition. We felt a need to clean Tara up and spent an hour or two making it a yacht again. Anyway, we continued the next day fixing and tweaking things and getting ready for the next crew.

David, Elizabeth, Jessica and Emma are friends from Parker Island that live in Vancouver and had come to England the previous week. The arrived in Palma and came down to the boat around 9:30pm. We had a quick dinner out, thank you David, and then hit the hay. In the afternoon we checked weather and decided to stay another day in Palma because it was blowing 25-30 knots (plus I had a long and important conference call to do and needed to have reliable Internet service). So we spent the day touring Palma and trying to find a grocery store ... Surprisingly difficult to do near the marina which is somewhat surprising because there must be 3,000 to 4,000 boats in the basin of Palma. 

The hilight of our day was cycling about 10 kms to try to get a permit for Cabrera, a national park that's a nature reserve located in a series of small islands 10 miles off the South East tip of Mallorca. We cycled around Palma, taking a wrong turn and ending up back within a few hundred meters of the boat. Once we got on track we had to ride quite a long ways, stopping at a Ministry of Education building and asking for directions, then passing a prison, and finally finding the right place. We got there only to find out that they had just implemented a new web-based booking system so we had to do it online. Marina asked the very friendly guy to help us but they were all booked up .... my guess is they'll change that system in a little bit .... on-line booking for no cost and no downside if you don't show up.... there will be people that book every day of the year just to make sure they can have a place in case they decide to go. Oh well, live and learn.

What we did get for all our efforts is a navigation permit so we could at least visit the islands. We took off out of our lumpy anchorage and headed to Cabrera, it was a fast reach and we made excellent time. Jessie and I stayed on the boat while the rest of the crew made a bee-line for the castle on the point in the dinghy. We were poaching a mooring ball so every time a boat came into the harbour, Jess and I got ready to push off the mooring and leave -- kind of stressful.

We decided not to risk having someone come in at dark and kick us off the mooring... you cannot anchor there at all, so we headed back to Mallorca and the marina called Cala D'Or. The previous night at S'Estanyol the rollers came in during the night when the wind died and the boat was side-to-the-waves the entire night. It made me think maybe a Catamaran would be a good choice. So far Mallorca has been OK but the poor anchorages in terms of protection from the prevailing sea state make them sub-optimal. The marinas are nice, and while Marina and I like them, Ross hates staying in marinas and the Toones prefer to anchor as well ,,,, plus each night in a Marina is about $150. 

When we compare the cruising options to Greece and Croatia, it is much different. In both Greece and Croatia, you could always find a place that was out of the prevailing wind and wave combinations; the harbours were more protected and generally we didn't need to spend as many nights in marinas as we have had to in Spain and Italy. France is somewhere in the middle, with some good anchorages, but the bloody Gulf of Lyon blows like stink 6 days out of 10. It's a treacherous stretch of water that you need to be mindful of as it often blows 40+ knots across the entrance.

Anyway, after Cala D'or and the good sleep that we got while we were there, we continued to a pretty little Cala and tried to anchor and tie up to the side of the wall. Unfortunately a French boat took the middle of the anchorage, let out a mile of chain and then didn't tie off to the wall .... so basically, we were always getting in their way, and pulling up, letting out, nothing we could do could change it. So we moved, and then moved again, and again, and finally we gave up and went to another anchorage called Porto Cristo. It's a nice little town with a marina and a small anchorage inside the inlet. We anchored out a little further from the breakwater than Marina wanted (up until dark big RIBs would come charging buy at 30 knots) but I was happy. We both prairie-dogged during the night  a couple of times because we were pretty close to a sheer rock wall, but each time that I checked the GPS anchor watch, we we hadn't moved 5 meters all night long.
Porto Cristo is a nice touristy town and we all piled in the dinghy and went ashore that evening for a gelato (apparently Emma had some type of Burger King meal instead) and just enjoyed walking around the town, visited a church and soaked up the ambiance.

Being a tourist town, Porto Cristo has tour operators that start taking people to the local beaches around 8:00am, so we picked up the anchor and headed out early to find a nice beach and anchorage ourselves. Marina had chosen Cala Molto, a pair of anchorages around a point in land, both with beaches. We chose the smaller of the two and snugged up close to the beach out of most of the wind and prevailing waves. What a lovely spot, though we should have read the book more closely as it is a nudist beach, but apparently for people over 60 years of age.

We swam all day, went ashore, walked the beach -- where I broke a cardinal rule .. I had no cash on me, so when we came across the beach bars, all I could do is dream of the icy-cold beers in the coolers. Throughout the day, more boats came and left until after 8:00pm when there were just a handful of us left anchored out. It was a perfect anchorage for the conditions so we had a great sleep and a great time. We even found enough time to do some boat maintenance ... go figure!

The Week Becomes a Blur

When you are having fun time flys by and our time with the Taylors did just that ... Blew by.

The place we arrived at in Mallorca was Cala di Calobra and it was beautiful. A pebble beach on one side, a massive rock with tunnels through it meets up with the bay on the other side to make a really nice tourist spot. The tourists arrive at around 11am and leave at around 6pm. So once the tourists are gone it gets really peaceful. 

For our night at Cala de Calobra we were in a pretty good anchorage but we always check the anchor a few times a night. One time I went up on deck and saw Ross lying in the moonlight on the cockpit cushions, so I brushed his hair from his forehead and kissed him ... Then Jim said "Matt?" and I said "Jim?, you're not Ross" and he replied "no, but that was very nice of you anyway." We had a good laugh about it when we retold the story the next day to the rest of the crew.

The next morning in Cala de Colabra, Marina and I rowed ashore and checked out the beach. In the afternoon dozens of tripper boats arrive and the beach goes from being deserted to being impossibly crowded so we used our time together to check out the cool cave that connects the two beaches and the restaurants on the shoreline.

Later in the day Marina and the kids went ashore and tried their hand at cliff jumping. There is a set of abandoned stairs on the rock wall and accessible from the top of the cave exit, so we positioned the dinghy so we could pick up the cliff jumpers, ferry them to the beach, then they'd run up through the cave and do it again.

After Cala de Colabra we sailed to the city of Soller and anchored out in the Harbour, swam, went ashore and the like. Soller is the big city on Mallorca's west side and has a definite charm. Jim treated us all to dinner out on the boardwalk, he and Sol had a paella while Marina and I each had steaks. We shared a very nice bottle of local wine and at the end of the meal the proprietor came and asked what we would like 'on the house' so we had another bottle of wine .. Not really necessary but, it was good. This was followed by some home-made Grappa or Lemoncello ... kind of foggy on that detail. Anyway, we had Ross drive the dinghy back with us in it back to the boat.

We then left for beautiful Cala Portalio and anchored among a number of boats. Lots of swimming and snorkeling. The girls met up with some other kids and Ross and the boys played off the boats for hours.

I had a lot of work to do that week as the deal that took me back to Vancouver was bubbling again. I had written a bunch of stuff that needed to be transmitted back to Vancouver... but there was no internet available. Everybody but Marina and I had swam to the beach ... the time clock keeps ticking, so Marina and I picked up the anchor and tooled around for an hour a mile offshore so I could connect to the Internet and send my  work. I wonder what the others thought as they saw us powering out of the anchorage. We came back and anchored again. Everyone else seemed very happy to see us again as they swam alongside.

Later in the afternoon, Marina and I swam into the beach past a nudist beach full of men sporting the full brazilian hairstyle -- or perhaps more appropriate, no-hair style. We made our way to the restaurant on the other side and then swam back to the boat.

We went in for an adult dinner on the beach and had an expensive but pretty average, and miniature portions, of seafood. Once again Jim hosted the meal, and we motored back to Tara to find the kids watching a movie -- what a surprise. The night was very fitful with rolling waves causing Marina and I to sleep very little. 

We bugged out early and went to hide behind a a breakwater where we could do some food marketing. With Ross and the boys on board, we went through an astonishing amount of food, and we needed to buy food every day. We sent the girls and Jim in to do the marketing and the boys, Ross and I tooled around in the dinghy teaching and examining the boys' ability to drive the dinghy. I had Matthew ... because us Matts need to stick together, and Ross took Andrew. We charted a course through dozens of moored boats and both boys managed the dinghy with flying colours.

Just as we were preparing to leave a 25 foot RIB with a 250hp engine drifted by unable to start. Marina and the girls towed them back to their slip and received 20 euros to buy ice cream and wine as a treat. Nice guys.

After a couple of hours we pulled up the anchor (I had thankfully gotten in a couple hours of sleep to make up for the sleepless night) and headed for another anchorage. We found a beautiful little bay but the wind and waves were up and we had enough of big waves at night, so we rang the marina the next bay up and made a reservation for Port Adriano. This is a burgeoning super-yacht port with spaces for 60 yachts of 25-70 meters. We slipped in beside a couple of 60 foot Sunseekers and made our way to the beach.

One great thing about Porto Adriano is they have a full-service shop that was able to repair our windlass. Somehow in the last month or so the spring inside had broken, and in the process, sheared off the bolt that held it to the worm gear, so I needed to have that drilled out. An hour or two later (plus 60 euros cash) I had my part back with a perfectly extracted screw ... Excellent. Then I put the parts back together ... a little harder do do when the spring is attached, but we now have a fully functional anchor windlass again. After a great night sleep (and another conference call until 1am for me) we left Porto Adriano for Las Illettas where we anchored first on the east side, then inside the harbour as the day trippers left for home. 

We had a great anchorage and we stayed most of the next day. The number of boats anchored in this little bay was nothing short of astonishing ... probably 100 boats came in and anchored. At the height of the mashup, we had 4 or 5 boats within 1 boatlength of ours all anchored. When it was time for us to go, we had to have two boats move because they were both over our anchor chain and anchor. Then we headed to the RCNPalma (Real Club Nautico de Palma) where we filled up with fuel and water and parked for the night. One of the best aspects of RCNP is that the the kids could spend the whole day at the pool, and they certainly took advantage of the opportunity.

We went out for Tapas in Palma to celebrate a fantastic week and Jessie and Michelle's Graduation (both moving on to high school), but got away from the boat very late, like 10:30pm, so we found an Italian restaurant and we had our last dinner together. Again the food was excellent and we had a great time, though Andrew and Matthew were pretty sleepy by the time we made it home.

Our last morning together we got up around 9 and then had the kids spend the day at the pool while we helped Jim and Sol gather up their stuff and prepare to leave for Latvia, where the boys were born. We sat by the pool until 12 and then the two cabs came, boys in one, girls in the other. We had a tearful goodbye, and are looking forward to getting together in Vancouver and having a slide show.

From France to Spain and Friends Arrive in Barcelona

Unfortunately, we must start to admit ourselves that the travel part of our holiday is over. The good news is that we still have a month of holidays before we get back to Vancouver. Unfortunately the guys at work haven't yet figured that out ... I guess they think a year off work is holiday enough. How North American their attitudes are! ;-)

We had a rough night when we came from France to Spain. We made good time powering and motor-sailing and spent two hours in Palamos where I could get a Spanish Internet stick - our 10th of the trip. We should have stayed. The coastline was totally exposed to a 1 to 2 meter swell and the marinas nearby couldn't accommodate a boat our size anywhere near us. After Italy we were thinking 'what do you mean a 15 meter boat is big? ... It's the "little one" like they say in Monaco'. Regardless, when the bottom is 1.5 meters deep and your keel is 2.3 meters deep you're kind of hooped.

That night we anchored as close to the breakwater as we dared and then spent a night with 45 degree swings of the boat as we were side on to the waves. Geez Louise that sucks. Marina and I were up several times during the night and then got up at 6:30 am and said 'bugger this' and pulled up the anchor and got going. It turned out to be a beautiful morning so we said, let's sail, we only have 30 miles to go. Well, as you might expect the wind was right on the nose and we actually decided to tack our way up the beach.  Anybody from Vancouver knows how to do that ... except it was out on starboard and in on port ... but, Spain is definitely not Vancouver. My iPad has a cool feature that shows the GPS track in Google Earth and it showed...twenty one (21) tacks later we were there.

We got into El Masnou, the port we were to stay in until our friends arrived. It was a little more upscale marina than we had originally planned. We arrived during a race out front of the marina with interesting local catamarans, and made our way in. We went to the gas dock and were pleasantly surprised that diesel was 1.25 euro a liter ... Less than half the price we have paid in Israel and Turkey and 50 cents euro less than Italy and France... Woo hoo, things are looking up. Did I mention that beer is 1 euro a liter and drinkable wine is 3 euros...a bottle!? The sun is hot, the beaches are topless and the booze is cheap. Spain is quickly becoming one of my favourite places in the Med!

Buying Train Tickets to Barcelona

We had a couple of days to wait for our friends so we explored Barcelona by taking the train in and enjoyed a lovely city for a day. We had heard positive things about the city and were not disappointed. A nice combination of historical monuments, park like walking streets and a beautiful waterfront. 

Our friends the Taylors are from West Van and have 3 kids, Michelle, a girl Jessie's age, twin boys that are 10 years old. We met Jim and Sol through soccer. Jessie and Michelle have been on the same team for about 8 years and her dad, Jim has been a co-coach with Marina and Sarah.

Jessie waiting for the Taylors to arrive. 

Jessie and Ross were vibrating with excitement of having other kids on board. We had a bet -- me the experienced Air Canada customer, against Jessie and Marina, experienced travelers -- guessing when the Taylors would arrive at the marina. Their flight was scheduled to touch down at 7:30 am, Jess and Marina said they'd be at the marina by 9:00. I gave them until 9:30 and I said after 11:00. When they arrived at 13:30 I won the bet, though just like Forrest Gump's 'million dollar wound', the army must keep the money because I didn't see any of it.

The Taylors arrived a little worse for wear but happy to see us. After stowing some of their luggage, we had lunch and a couple of quick beers to get them into holiday-mode. We headed next door to the beach that Ross says is as good as Big Beach on Maui. We bobbed in the big waves as a group  leaving one of us to watch over our kit on the beach -- multiply anything by 9 and you end up with a lot of gear to watch over. When it was my turn to sit on the beach I was delighted to learn that there are beach vendors that sell beer and pop for 1.5 euros...seemed expensive for pop but quite reasonable for beer so I exercised my Spanish "Si, tre cerveza por favor" and 4.5 euros later Jim, Sol and I were slaking our thirsts with a cold one, on the beach, looking at the kids bounce in the waves with Marina, and keeping track of our kit. Nice!

That night, the Taylors did a yeoman's job staying up late and after gutting out a very long day that started some 36 hours before in Vancouver. After dinner we stayed up until almost 11 pm and got ready to head to Mallorca -- 100 miles to the east the next day because we had a weather window.

We woke up early and pointed the nose of Tara east to Mallorca -- about 105 miles away. The weather gods were smiling at us as we had a near perfect crossing. We powered for a couple hours, sailed for a couple of hours and motorsailed for a couple of hours, averaging 7.7 knots for the passage .. Which is pretty fast. We came upon this beautiful anchorage and dropped the hook for the night. 

View of Tara through the Cave at Cala di Calobra