Back to Bilbao

We had booked flights with Easyjet, an airline we had not flown with before and were quite concerned as we had three large suitcases full of equipment for Dark Tarn. This amounted to nearly 60 kilos of hold luggage. Not something we had ever bothered with before, we normally travel very light indeed! However it all went swimmingly and we got taxis to and from both airports luckily Bilbao airport is only about 5 miles from Getxo.

Dark Tarn was in excellent shape, apart from one halliard that had frayed through on the upper crosstrees. My fault entirely, I had pulled it away from the mast but left it up against the spreaders and the high winds that had been experienced had done the rest. luckily it is just the spare genoa halliard and should be an easy fix.

After an initial overcast day the weather cheered up and we decided to have a walk to the old fishing village.

We discovered it had been so cold that they had had to knit wooly pullys for the railings!

Of course it quickly became evident we were back in the land of pinxos. I was quite taken by the almost a full English breakfast one on the left, in actual fact its a quails egg.

On the way home we discovered a new bar to us, Silvers which had a rather nice piratical theme.

We determined to return later as a band was due to perform. Turned out to be quite good.

It was lovely being back aboard our home again and both of us were looking forward to further travels. however there would be some unexpected news which would put a temporary halt to that.
But in the meantime we were enjoying our return to Bilbao and it seemed a good idea to get a bit of culture so there is only one place for us the Musee de belle arts.

Lynnes favourite piece in the modern arts section is this, it makes her smile every time!
I have no idea why the centaur has a wooden leg.

Of course being in a Royal yacht club and temporary members of same we got an invitation from Alvero to attend a function at the weekend. An evening of chamber music in the yacht club.

Very enjoyable, although amateur the musicians ( 12 or 13 I think) split into quartets and quintets to perform some very challenging pieces, and the situation was superb.

The yacht club is a building of three floors and is quite posh with lovely views out over the harbour and marina.

Later we went out to the Commercial bar which is rather nice itself in a different kind of way, I like the fact it has this notice above the door.

It felt good to be back.

Never friendless

"Thorns may hurt you, men desert you, sunlight turn to fog.

But your never friendless ever, if you have a dog"

Douglas Mallock

 It was lovely to be welcomed by our friends but the most enthusiastic welcome was probably from my sisters dog Bonnie, we went around to collect her for a walk on the moors accompanied by our friend Brian and his new dog "Reggie"

Two collies, a sunny ( if chilly ) day, what`s not to like?

The Pike in the distance, Brian making snowballs.

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The moors above Rivington on Winter Hill look splendid with a light covering of snow hiding in the tussocks. Bonnie is particularly fond of rolling over in snow and we introduced Reggie to catching snowballs in mid air, he seemed to enjoy it!

There is now a seat on the summit of the Pike, all we need now is a working toilet and it will be perfect! Reggie finds a bike tyre to sniff.......

We walked down through Lord Leverhulmes Bungalow grounds towards the Barns and tea and cake.

One of the many views of Rivington Brian has pictured, he is a very talented artist.

Brian's new dog Reggie.

The lower Barn.

Lynne with Bonnie

We continued our walk down by the resevoir, where collies being collies they dived in the water after bits of wood, Reggie was particularly enthusiastic!

We also took advantage of the brief spell of nice weather to go walking about with Bonnie, we visited the pike again just to see if it got any easier to climb, ( sea legs not used to many hills! )

There were a few days when it almost seemed that summer was on its way.

We had a great English breakfast in the wee cafe at Rivington village, this is in an old chapel. I can thoroughly recommend it.

Of which Rivington has two and a church, of course we had to have a look around the chapel, my home is, or was a hotbed of religious non-conformity. I think this is a Unitarian chapel.

The local church which is just across the green from the chapel had a vicar in the 19th century whose name was rev. Jackson, he was a keen climber and did some early routes in the Lake District. Having objected one day to the price quoted to replace the lead on the steeple he decided to do it himself and climbed up said steeple to finish the work.Henceforth he was known as "steeple Jackson" and thus the word steeplejack came into popular use.

the future is junk!

Another rather crazy crewing offer meant that on our return I took the time to visit my old friend Peter Manning down at the Marina at Preston Dock. I had agreed to crew for Peter from Preston to Spain where he would cruise in company with us for the summer and explore Galicia and Portugal. At least that was the plan, However the weather had conspired against peter somewhat and his schedule was a little behind, This turned out to be not too big a problem as yet again a recalcitrant filling necessitated me having yet another tooth crowned. I am beginning to wonder if God uses this as a means of keeping me still or subtly nudging me where he thinks I should be.....

So the above photo shows Malliemac, as you can see she is a little unusual, Peter has spent a huge amount of time and money building this boat. She is a turtle decked junk rigged (fansail) yacht about the same size as Dark Tarn however designed from the get-go as a single handed ocean crosser, she has a lot of innovative ideas incorporated into her design. Dark Tarn looks positively pedestrian in comparison.

However not without her problems, like all prototypes (for after all, that is what she is) a ;ot of systems need to be ironed out. Peter and I began with the rig and spent a happy couple of days tweaking and modifying the top yard and reefing system. theoretically this rig can be controlled without ever leaving the cockpit however its Achilles heel is a product of the rigs inovation which is the ability to have a "fan up". most of the modifications were supposed to alieviate this tendency and everything seemed to be going well until Peter demonstrated another of Malliemacs innovative features, her asymmetric leeboards. Peter had treated these, indeed the whole bottom of the boat to an antifouling system based on epoxy and copper. unfortunately Peter had put the latest treatment over an original formulation of Peters invention and they were not sitting happily together. The whole boat was blistering in some sort of chemical reaction, The first job was to haul the boat out into the yard to discover the extent of the problem.

Of course this needed bits coming off the masthead.

The news wasn't good. the reaction between the two coatings was extensive and in a slightly baffling way uneven. certain parts were very badly effected to the extent that the coating was literally falling of with a powerwash, others seemed firmly attached but blistering.

Peter decided that it all had to come off and so the backbreaking work of sanding off epoxy and copper began. a few days work saw the hull beginning to look something like but it was an awful job and I dread to think what damage we have done to our lungs, However I managed to get quite a bit of copper out of my bath at home! Should probably have weighed it in........

This job really was soul destroying and I'm afraid after a while I was forced to leave Peter to finish up alone. Our schedule for the trip across Biscay was in tatters and I needed to get back to Dark Tarn.

Peter and I had a discussion about the various options in a rare sunny day under Malliemacs hull and agreed to postpone the trip south until the end of May. There was a good possibility of good weather and Peter thought that Malliemac could be got ready by then. I would either fly back to sail from Preston or get the ferry to the south coast if Peter could get that far alone.
So that is now the new plan, fingers crossed ,touch wood.............?

St Albans

Firstly apologies for the tardy posting lately, Lynne and I got rather caught up in our visit home.
We paid a visit to Lynn's aunt Mary in St Albans and spent a lovely time catching up and visiting the cathedral (of which Mary is a trustee)

This is a truly fascinating building, Mary is very proud of the rose window which Lynn's late uncle Ken helped to arrange finance for the restoration. It is very beautiful. Simply stunning, which is what stained glass must have been to our medieval cousins for whom cathedrals would have been the most obvious and powerful expressions of faith and the church.

A particular feature of St Albans (the first British saint) is the multi secular nature of worship here. Particularly resonant in this day and age, As an unreconstructed atheist I find this a fantastic move forward and is to be applauded.

As Lynne loves to visit churches I initially felt obliged to go along as our travels progressed, however I must admit that I now find them incredible both as repositories of history and in a very grand scale, expressions of both faith and belief. My late uncle Trevor (also an avid church visitor and lifelong agnostic) told me once that there is a difference but for the life of me I can no longer remember what it is. However tramping around churches in Dorset planted acorns that have lately begun to germinate. Of course his introduction of Arthur Ransome books has been directing my life for some time.
But back to the cathedral. There is also a very human scale to be discovered, I refer to the practical aspects of a building. In St Albans for example there is an obvious difference between some parts of the construction, evident particularly in some of the arches in the nave. For me these things reach out across the ages, I can see in my minds eye some stonemasons discussing and arguing with patrons about common problems of construction sometimes because of the evolving nature of these things and in one notable instance where part of the building fell down!

What remains is an astonishing construction with a very powerful atmosphere, its also incredibly beautiful.

Alex also accompanied us and we finished a delightful visit by having lunch in St Albans before heading back for home.

Home to the rainy city

The flight home was very pleasant apart from a rather shambolic stopover in Barbados where the passengers in transit were herded around and treated very disrespectfully by customs. To such a degree that one passenger felt forced to formally complain. The point at issue was whether we were actually entering Barbados as we were being confined to the departure lounge, as it was, any duty free booze was temporarily confiscated and even water bought on the plane was forced to be thrown away. I tended to agree with the German in that technically we were not entering the country. It is a real contrast to the friendly welcome we received arriving by yacht.

The landing at Manchester after an eight hour flight proved a real shock to the system, temperature was a rather chilly 4°c and it was grey and drizzly. Waiting on the station with our luggage I was listening to other conversations and my ear was remembering that in the north of England it seemed that people were prone to moaning a lot! The train journey home also proved somewhat depressing due to the inordinate amount of litter everywhere.

Later it even made a half-hearted effort to snow, this is the view from the front door of our house.

However we had arrived home and things did seem familiar but also strangely not. Both Lynne and I felt a little dislocated, which is what I suppose we were after so long away. I was particularly disturbed to be charged £6.60 for 4 pies!

It was lovely meeting up with friends and family, it did seem however that our alcohol intake was increasing particularly when we visited Alex in the Brewery Bar. He gave us a tour.

It is of course a working brewery and Alex is learning the whole process of production, his speciality however is working with customers and he seems to be making a real success of managing the bar. 

We had several meetings with friends and family and the atmosphere was always very pleasant. It was particularly gratifying to hear such praise for Alex from his customers once they discovered who we were ( and sometimes before they did ) we are very proud of him.

Of course it would have been churlish not to sample the many excellent cask ales that the Black Edge brewery produce.

From chocolate flavoured stouts, citrus golden blonde ales, hoppy bitters, we felt quite spoiled after  nine months of fizzy lager!

Of course much as we enjoyed it, the hectic social whirl had to cease briefly as we also had other things to attend to. Namely dental appointments, health checkups and replacing bank cards which were due to expire in the next year. I also replaced my laptop and bought a new mobile phone that would be slightly easier to keep swooping SIM cards with. We had a large shopping list much of which depended on how I was going to get back to Getxo. I had arranged to sail to Spain with a friend Peter who owned the junk yacht Malliemac, however when I phoned him he seemed to be in the midst of an emotional crisis and was a bit non- commital. I arranged to meet up in a few days when he would tell me the whole story.

So what's it like to be back?

It cold......very cold.

It can be quite expensive.

It's very dirty.

It has to be said that it seems customer service has improved ( Lynne assures me ) certainly Nationwide, Santander, Dell, have been excellent. Our Dentists have pulled out all the stops and have been brilliant. The Brewery Bar is superb! However I have still failed to get an appointment to see a doctor despite changing to Lynnes surgery. God forbid I was actually ill.

TV is just as I remember, appallingly bad.

My sisters dog Bonny still remembers me.......I got a delightful welcome.

We continue to visit with our friends and family and without exception that has been wonderful, we need now to go further afield and we are looking forward to that.

We both still feel a little like strangers at times but I suppose that's understandable.

We are both missing Dark Tarn and can't wait to continue our journeys.............

In preparation for which we have a collection of new flags, a new national ensign ( red duster ) courtesey flags for St Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada and Gyana. We are also finally in receipt of our flying fish house flag as we are both now officially full members of the Ocean Cruising Club having completed our qualifying passage.

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We also have a new ssb receiver ( for synoptic charts ) and other bits and bobs to install on Dark Tarn when we return.

Towards Vieux Fort ( and home )

We had paid the Marine Rangers the day before for our stay on their buoys so we were surprised to be visited early again by the Ranger boat. However they had only come to inspect and repair the moorings. We had noticed during our snorkelling expeditions that there was a mooring that ended six feet from the surface as the ball was missing. They had come to replace it.

We left the morning buoys and went around the headland into the bay of Soufriere which had the distinction of being next to the rather wonderful Pitons, grande et petit, although these are relative terms, as they are both extremely imposing. As we crossed the bay the rain clouds that had been a regular occurrence all morning gathered to swaddle the peaks in a grey cloud of rain.

We also became targeted by the notorious Soufriere boat boys. These are possibly the most persistent in St Lucia and had been regular visitors to us on the mooring bouys, even though these are several miles from Soufriere.  However when they were told we were headed to Vieux Fort they seemed to lose interest! We approached Petit Piton and the rain cleared long enough to get a good close up look at the mountain. One of the odd things about Petit Piton is that it is actually larger than its brother Grande Piton.

You may recognise it from the movie " Pirates of the Caribean". We approached Jallousie bay which sits between the two peaks and as we located a free mooring buoy ( still in the Marine reserve so no anchoring allowed ) we discovered that the valley between the two hills creates a bit of a wind tunnel effect as the wind speed climbed to 28 knots. This made picking up the buoy a bit more difficult than it needed to be. Luckily the rain had ceased and the sun came out long enough for me to take a photo.

We stayed just long enough to have lunch and enjoyed watching a " super yacht" along with obligatory multi millionaire on a satellite phone pick up another buoy, larger than ours of course, for super yachts only.  The yacht then opened its " garage at the back and revealed a fast ski boat and jet ski parked inside, how the other half live eh? We had discovered incidentally that to stay at the Jade Mountain Hotel that owned Anse Marin beach that we had enjoyed swimming and snorkelling from a couple of days ago cost £10,000 per person per week. The cost for Hocus Pocus to stay in the Marine reserve ( which includes the use of mooring buoys ) was $58EC per day, about £12. I think we had the better deal!

After lunch we moved on and soon encountered strong headwinds as we rounded Grande Piton. The strong wind continued all the way to Vieux Fort. We also had about 1.5 knots of current against us. It took a little over 3 hours to cover the 11 mile trip from the Pitons.

As we got nearer to the breakwater of Vieux Fort we spotted what seemed like a good anchorage away from the harbour and headed towards it. We dropped the hook in 7 metres in a small bay and Dave ran Lynne and I ashore to the small fishing harbour so we could find out the quickest way to the airport.

Vieux Fort turned out to be a fascinating place, well off the usual tourist track. The people were poor but very friendly. The town itself as our pilot/guide described it " didn't have a tourist bone in its body ", the architecture was shanty chic, and the number of sleepy dogs and grog shops made us feel once again we were in an Alexander Mcall-Smith novel. I felt slightly disappointed that we wouldn't have enough time to explore as it looked wonderful. I was particularly taken by a shop that advertised itself as " superior broom sellers ", fabulous.........The best way to the airport turned out to be by bus, $1.50 EC, which is about 40p. The driver joked with a pregnant passenger that she would have to pay two fares. The bus we caught took us to the airport even though it didn't actually go there.

The airport was fairly modern but basic, unfortunately the check in desk for Thomas Cooke was closed so we would need an early start tomorrow.....

When we got back to the fish dock we radioed Dave to come and pick us up and he arrived in the harbour towing  a guy in another dinghy he had discovered being blown out to sea as its outboard had failed. Hocus Pocus to the rescue once again!

The undersea world

After our day diving off Anse Marin we thought it may be worth diving from off Hocus Pocus. There were several buoys marking areas of no anchoring etc. We thought these might indicate the presence of a reef. The following morning Dave and I donned snorkelling gear and swum off the stern, at first there was just a flat sandy bottom full of sea grass.As we headed towards the shore soon out of the blue water loomed a small reef. It was if anything better than the one we had explored the previous day. I did a quick orientation recce and I hurried back to get Lynne. Soon we were entering a whole new world.

Because of my prior exploration I had a reasonable idea of the labyrinthine layout and we swam between rocky cliffs and over precipices that fell away to a sand bottom. There was life everywhere.

The water was clear as glass and the dappled sunlight made the colourful corals extremely vivid.

I am afraid my photos don't really do it justice.

There were sunken gardens of fan coral and anemones, the coral had built up amazing formations, some looked like pottery and others resembled giant clams.

There was one particular brain coral that I swear was looking at me.

We swooped and swam through this wonderland for what seemed ages before heading over to the jetty for a rest.

Even the pillars supporting the jetty were full of tiny plants and creatures.

We returned to the  reef in the afternoon, Dave took Carole out in the dinghy so that she could look through our glass bottomed viewer " the all seeing eye", I decide to surprise her which resulted in possibly the only photograph ever taken of Carole smiling at a camera.

It really is a fabulous privilege to dive on these reefs. On our return home Lynne and I will retrieve our diving gear and load Dark Tarn down even further!