Ola! We are alive!
Completely snowed in, who would have thought it, French Riviera covered in show. Our camera kicked the bucket, so you’ll have to believe me on this one. Loads of snow, and still falling!
All is well, we’ve done a couple of regattas, Yulia did a Day Skipper course, I did my RYA Shorebased Instructor Course, and VHF Assessor Course. Off to Falmouth for the RYA Cruising Instructor Course. That’s what winters are for, you know.
We are in Beaulieu-sur-mer, near Cap Ferrat, debating what to do next!
Tags: Beaulieu-sur-mer, Regatta, Snow, UK
As mentioned below, we meet some pretty amazing boats along the way! Here’s one that Erik owns, ‘Awaken’, based near Cassis in France, I am sure he will be winning a lot of races soon. But at the moment, we got a chance to play, here’s Yulia in action
Tags: Video
So, here we are, in Nice. It’s been a while since our last post, apologies, but it has been completely manic! Sorry to worry you, we haven’t sunk yet! I just had a look at the last post, and it was pretty much around Alicante that we last had proper time to post and upload pics, so have some filling in to do.
We left Alicante in the same ‘Go Go Go’ fashion, and belted it all the way to Barcelona, where we chilled for a week, waiting to cross the evil and generally rubbish Gulf de Lion. The gulf is just a pain in the behind, it really is. Permanent strong winds, weather that seems to be very unstable and rolls in fast. So, we waited for a good 48 hour window, explored Barcelona and surroundings, and fixed things, of course. And then we went to cross the bay. All was well for the first 20 hours or so, although the wind was from a completely unexpected directions, as usual, but then the FOG came. I hate fog. My first English Channel crossing was in fog. Since then, I absolutely hate it. You hear the rumble of the ferries, the fog horns of some oil monster, but you can’t see them. It’s the worse thing ever. So this was no different. The commercial traffic outside Marselle is horrid, on par with the channel, I’d say, and to approach it in the middle of the night, in complete fog (our massive torch could penetrate 2 metres, I kid you not), is no fun. Yulia kept her calm though, as I was running around, having heart attacks, so all was well in the end. Finally, about 100 metres from the land, we could see some lights and dropped anchor outside Cassis, well and truly in Provence. Whehey, we are almost on the Riviera.
Cassis is amazing, although a bit touristy. Next to it, are the Calanques, where we spend a few days. It’s the best harbour in the world, really chilled out, very pretty, and has a working marine rubbish dump next to it, i.e. you can find anything there, from a mast to a pretty good boat. So we went rummaging, but unfortunately I wasn’t allowed a surfing board on the boat, there were a few for the taking. We also met Erik there, he was on a berth next to us, with a pretty incredible racing boat, Archambault A40, called ‘Awaken’. We went racing the next day, and did some serious wine drinking. Oh, and I made a table for the cockpit, it accomodated 6, which is a result. Could have fitted another 6, but we ran out of wine.
And from then on it was plain sailing, as they say. We hit the Porquerolles islands, and then on to St. Tropez bay, and into the Les Issambres marina. Where we had our first hurricane go over us. It was unbelievable, I have never seen wind like this, even in UK. I now firmly believe in the power of Mistral, and the fact that it can blow an absolute stink even in the Med. The dinghy (26 kilos) was flying on a painter (it’s the rope you attach the dinghy to the mother ship with), for about 10 hours. Literally, flying. I was having a heart attack, as usual, for 2 days, thinking that the cleats will go, the wind was so strong. If the cleats went, good bye boat, no joking. But they didn’t, which was great, I did double everything up and spread the pull among both stern cleats, so we were ok. I went to the marina office in the morning, and the wind reading was 60 knots on their anemometer. That is a lot of wind, you can’t walk straight, basically. Mad.
When it was all over, we went for a swim, only to discover that the water is freezing. 12 degrees. Colder than in England, basically. It’s because the northerly Mistral blows the top few metres of the water away from the south coast, and deeper water fills in. And it’s very cold. It took a good week for it to warm up again.
At the moment all is well here, anchorages are good, exceptionally pretty, the marinas ok, much cheaper than was expected, although we do struggle to find places sometimes, they turned us out of St. Tropez, so we went next door and walked into town. It’s high season, so a bit mad, you can’t really guess there is a crisis about.
It was at this stage that we decided to rethink the plan for this year, and stay in France for the winter. The original plan was to go to Italy, but here is good enough, so we are chilling. We will most likely stay in Villefranche for the winter.
Here are some photos, hope all is well with you all, Tingara out.
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- Tingara hiding under all our washing, in Nice
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- Looking good, baby, looking good!
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- Everybody home
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- Kevlar sails on 'Awaken'
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- And that's how we anchor. Paul Allen to the left - Yacht 'Octopus'
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- Villefranche bay
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- And that's how we anchor. Abramovitch to the right - Yacht 'Pelorus'
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- Suncream is important :-) As our friend Pavel demonstrates
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- Barcelona
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- I really can't remember where this is!
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- Cap Ferrat anchorage, Cote d'Azur
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- Off St. Raphael, Cote d'Azur
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- Erik and Yulia
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- Whehey!
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- No money in selling International paint no more
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- Cap Ferrat anchorage
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- I guess this guy didn't pay his bills
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- Ok, got the table, now for some masts! Ideal place to make a new table, see it in action further on
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- Drying out in Nice
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- Sailing rubbish, it's amazing what you can find!
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- Anchorage just off Villefranche
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- Yulia in charge of Archambault A40 - 'Awaken'
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- Yulia in charge of Archambault A40 - 'Awaken'
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- New cockpit table in action
Tags: DIY, Gulf de Lion, Hurricane, Marina, Photos, Plan of action, Prices, Southern France
Here are some totally random photos, haven’t sorted them out much, just took a few from the top.
We are in Alicante, fantastic place, they had a fiesta here yesterday, which involved burning huge statues of various materials. 12 all in all, in the middle of the night, accompanied by fireworks and lots of drink! We arrived just in time for the Las hogueras de San Juan!
Anyway, here are the photos, hope all is well with you all!
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- Now that's what I call tools!
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- House somewhere in Portugal
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- Shopping
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- Beach in Sines, Portugal
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- El Torre!
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- No idea where we are, it's foggy!
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- Near Caleta de Velez
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- Near Caleta de Velez
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- Near Caleta de Velez
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- On the watch
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- Light house
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- Sunset, Spain
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- Rediculous building, Spain
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- Sunset
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- Bubbles
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- Torremolinos, what can I say
What can I say! We finally did it. After 2 failed attempts, we are through and berthed (very snugly, mediterranean style, i.e. no pontoon), in the port of Estepona! The Strait is an absolute bitch, but a very interesting exercise. There are 2 things, one is wind, the other - general and, more to the point, specific movements of the water. Not just tides, hence ‘movements’!
The ‘levanter’, which is the easterly wind blowing through the strait, is generally very strong and kicks up quite a sea. And it blows forever, weeks on end, apparently. The ‘poniente’ is a westerly wind, which produces even rougher water. I’ve never seen this wind, I don’t think it exists. It was forecast a number of times, only it was not to be, for whatever reason it always blew the levanter. And we needed poniente, or anything other than levanter, as we were going into the med. Twice the forecast was the exact opposite of what we experienced, and even when we actually did go through on the 15th of June, it also was nothing like what was expected! On the failed attempts, we confirmed to ourselves that it’s pretty much impossible to punch your way through 30 knots of wind and a steep sea on a heavy boat. Generally the Spanish and Algerian forecasts are very good, it’s just that the Gibraltar strait is very difficult to forecast for, according to a sailor friend of mine. I gree. That’s the trouble with the strait, particularly around Tarifa, it doesn’t really blow in a predictable fashion. For example, when we went for the 3rd time, the forecast was westerly force 4. Which is quite a lot of westerly wind. Perfect! And it was easterly F3 all the way. Go figure. But it kicked off just after we rounded Tarifa and were well into the strait, so we were OK.
Tarifa, btw, is one enormous surfing place. Every shop is a surfing shop, pretty much. One of the best places in the world for surfing, they say. Guess why 
When all the areas around, like Cadiz bay, for example, or Gibraltar, are experiencing nice light winds, it’s blowing 25 knots around Tarifa. And so on. 300 days of the year, it says so on their promotional literature, which I reckon is true.
So then, in addition to the wind, you also have the currents. The usual tidal stuff, goes back and forth, sort of, but that’s not all of it. Because you also have a constant surface current going east, and a deep sea current going west. The result, in strong winds, is a nightmare. While the center of the strait is flowing east, the coastal areas, i.e. to the north and south, can (and obviously do twice a day), flow in the exact opposite direction. So you can have 2 knots flowing east in the middle, and 3 knots flowing west by the shore. It’s insane! We were trying to keep to the middle, as the tide was not all that good for our ‘wind window’ (which didn’t materialise anyway), which brings me onto the last exciting component of the equation…
Add about a million massive ships passing through every day (well, 200, on average) and lots of ferries. Have a look at the photo of our AIS radar, each dot is a ship. And they are all trying to run you over, of course, with Tarifa Traffic (they are the chaps that coordinate the strait) telling them every 2 seconds to get back in the shipping lane and stop harassing the small inshore boats. Well, they don’t actually, but I think they should. What’s the point of a shipping lane, if ships treat it as more of a guideline! Most stick to it, but a couple were just whale watching or something. Which brings me onto the bit that made is all worth while!
There was a note in the pilot book, that says: To minimise the risk of collision with the whales, (Apr-Aug) speed should be kept <13kn and a good lookout kept
So we kept a good look out and we spotted two whales. And they are fantastic creatures, it’s the first time I’ve seen a whale in the wild, so it was really exciting. And then I started worrying about it potentially deciding to mate with Tingara, and normal state of play was resumed, i.e. a nervous sailor just trying to get from A to B and there is a bloody whale in the way in addition to the wind and the currents. None of this ‘Oooh, look at that, how cute!’ business, chop chop, let’s get the hell out of here, before Tarifa surfers get excited that the crazy wind is back!
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- That's how diesel comes these days!
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- Nice photo Yulia took somewhere in Portugal
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- Cabo de Sao Vicente, this is where we turned left into Algarve
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- This is Tarifa, now we are almost into the strait
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- Other ships rounding Gibraltar!
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- Yulia rounding Gibraltar.
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- Gibraltar
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- That's Gibraltar! Finally!
We attempted to go through the Gibraltar strait this morning! Did all the proper sailing rituals, like waking up in the middle of the night and all that, but it was not to be.
30 knots on the nose, pretty big waves, fog, just about everything. First the oil indicator collapsed, then, while investigating that I had to bleed the engine too, since I turned it on with the fuel shut-off valve closed. Predictably it died after about 20 seconds, as fuel wasn’t exactly on the way :-). It really was not meant to be, we decided, heavy motor-sailing is not fun. So turned back to Barbate, going to stay here for a few days, long overdue repairs and all that. The engine mounts are starting to go, which is the main worry, and both bilge pumps have kicked the bucket, 2 days apart! Can you believe it. So time to relax and fix things!
Meanwhile, it’s 30 degrees, and The Admiral and myself decided that it could be a lot worse, like in Scotland or something, with -10C and freezing cold seas. At least it’s hot! 1300 miles and counting, just not for the next few days.
Hope all is well with you all, Tingara out.
Tags: Plan of action, Spain
We are in sunny Lisbon today, arrived last night! Taking a day off, as the sail has been a bit hard, we’ve covered a lot of miles over the last week. Portugal is very nice, apart from about a million different police forces, each insisting on checking your papers 3 times a day and at night. All the yachties we meet spend half the time bitching about Brigada Fiscal. They are all very curteous and polite and just doing their job and all that, but really, it just doesn’t end! They come on fast boats in the middle of the night, shine some crazy light at you (pretty cool light though, I want one) and then start asking what you doing. Then they bugged off for a few hours, until you are in the marina, and then then whole thing starts again. And apparently they are a lot more relaxed than they were a few years back
Anyway, Atlantic Portugal is very scenic, it’s all sand beaches, little towns and oil refineries, as well as an odd lighthouse. I would have liked to spend a bit more time exploring, but given this is the Atlantic ocean we need to get a move on whilst the going is good. One low is all it takes for the seas to be rubbish for days. Hopefully we should move into the Algarve by the end of the week. Then onto Gibraltar! Very exciting. The whole thing is kinda surreal, here we are, sailing along, and it’s wednesday and what the hell are we doing here I don’t think I have quite realised yet exactly what it is we are doing and that this is pretty much it being done, if that makes sense. I’ve confused myself then. Anyway, so we are off to Lisbon for a day, see the sights, buy some squid. I tell ya, the fish markets are amazing, I think Portugal has the best fish and seafood, the whole country is obsessed with fishing, you can’t enter any marina without passing crowds of people fishing off the quay. Not like polite conventional fishing with some space between fishermen and an obligatory umbrella, these people really are in a crowd, several rows deep, with the people at the back showing the most cunning when casting lines. As they, no doubt, have to, if you can’t even see the water. I am sure there is some sort of hierarchy to your average portuguese quay fishing. Amazing thing to see, I’ll take a photo next time.
Here are some photos of dolphins that came to say hello the other day! A whole shoal of them, swimming with Tingara for half an hour or so. Wicked.
Tags: Lisbon, Plan of action, Portugal
This is a map that Graham King kindly started for us, we’ll try to update whenever we have a chance!
View The adventures of S.Y. Tingara & Co in a larger map
Whehey! We are here! Lots of wind, lots of waves, lots of dead calm and lots of dolphins! Absolutely knackered, but so far so good! Biscay is scary, to be honest, I think we had a good run, would definitely not want to do it in heavier winds and swell. Anyway, going on a search of free internet for a proper post!
Tingara out.