Dolphins Under My Bed Read online

  Sandra Clayton

  DOLPHINS

  under

  my bed

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  The Journey

  The Beaufort Wind Force Scale

  Acknowledgements

  Prelude

  ENGLAND

  1 Emsworth

  2 Getting started

  3 Emsworth to the Isle of Wight

  4 Finding a boat

  THE CHANNEL ISLANDS

  5 Isle of Wight to Alderney

  6 Alderney

  7 Alderney to Guernsey

  8 St Peter Port

  9 St Peter Port to Mouillier Bay

  FRANCE

  10 Guernsey to Tréguier

  11 Tréguier

  12 Tréguier to L’Abervrac’h

  13 The Chenal du Four to Douarnenez

  14 Douarnenez and through the Raz de Sein

  15 Crossing Biscay

  NORTH-WEST SPAIN

  16 La Coruña

  17 Booking a flight home

  18 Fiesta and leaving La Coruña

  19 Return to La Coruña

  THE RÍAS OF NORTH-WEST SPAIN

  20 La Coruña to Ares

  21 Ares to Laxe

  22 Laxe to Ría de Camariñas

  23 Camariñas to Muros via Finisterre

  24 Bayona

  PORTUGAL

  25 Bayona to Leixões

  26 Leixões to Cascais

  27 Cascais

  28 Lisbon

  29 Cascais to Lagos

  30 Lagos

  31 Lagos to Culatra

  SOUTH-WEST SPAIN

  32 Culatra to Cadiz

  33 Cadiz to Gibraltar

  GIBRALTAR

  34 Marina Bay Marina

  MEDITERRANEAN SPAIN

  35 Gibraltar to Almería

  36 Almería to Garrucha

  37 Garrucha to Mazarron

  38 Mazarron to Alicante via Torrevieja

  39 Alicante

  40 Alicante to Calpe

  THE BALEARIC ISLANDS

  41 Calpe to Ibiza

  42 Ibiza to Mallorca

  Mallorca

  43 Palma to Porto San Petro

  44 Porto San Petro

  45 Porto San Petro to Porto Colom

  46 Porto Colom to Porto Cristo

  47 Porto Cristo

  48 Porto Cristo to Ratjada

  49 Mallorca to Menorca

  Menorca

  50 Mahon

  51 Winter sun

  Glossary for Non-Sailors

  Imprint

  The Journey

  The Beaufort Wind Force Scale

  In Britain and much of Europe, wind and vessel speeds are described in knots. One knot equals a nautical mile covered in one hour, and is roughly equivalent to 1.15mph.

  Also used is the Beaufort Wind Force Scale. This was created in 1805 by Sir Francis Beaufort, a British naval officer and hydrographer, before instruments were available and has since been adapted for non-naval use. When accurate wind measuring instruments became available it was decided to retain the scale and this accounts for the idiosyncratic speeds, eg Force 5 is 17–21 knots, not 15–20 as one might expect. Under numbered headings representing wind force, this scale also provides the sea conditions typically associated with them, although these can be affected by the direction from which the wind is coming.

  The scale is reproduced on the opposite page.

  Acknowledgements

  All travellers, but especially sailors, owe a huge debt to those who have gone before and have subsequently published accurate charts and guides, as well as organisations which provide continuing support. Among the sources that Voyager’s crew would like to express gratitude for are:

  Admiralty Charts

  BBC Shipping Forecast

  Cruising Association

  Imray Cruising Guides and Charts

  Meteorological Office

  Reed’s Nautical Almanac

  Sail & Power Nautical Almanac

  Royal National Lifeboat Institution

  Royal Yachting Association

  UK Coastguard

  The author also thanks the following for permission to reproduce copyright material:

  British Broadcasting Corporation, Radio 4, London

  Richard Evelyn Byrd, Alone: The Classic Polar Adventure

  (Island Press, Washington, DC)

  Jimmy Cornell, World Cruising Routes (Adlard Coles Nautical, UK;

  McGraw Hill/International Marine, US)

  Cruising Association Handbook

  Prelude

  I came late to sailing. Actually, I didn’t consciously come to it at all. It crept up on me. David and I had a brief fling with a sailing dinghy in the second year of our marriage – a disaster over which it is best to draw a veil. There were some enjoyable boating holidays on British rivers and canals. And then, for our Silver Wedding Anniversary, David asked me if I would like to celebrate with a sailing holiday in the Adriatic. To charter a yacht he needed a Day Skipper certificate. I joined him on the second of his two one-week courses and qualified as Competent Crew. The holiday in the Adriatic was wonderful. Endless sunshine, light winds and no tides to worry about.

  After that, my only connection with sailing for several years was David reading yachting magazines. Then, at the age of forty-eight, I found myself joint owner of a 26ft Bermuda-rigged sloop. We kept her at Holyhead in North Wales. Between full-time employment, elderly parents a 90-mile drive away, and one of the worst summers in living memory we got to sail her only very occasionally. It was not remotely like sailing in the Adriatic. North Wales is noted for cold, wet weather and a current so strong that your destination depends on which way the tide happens to be going at the time.

  Unfortunately, the deterioration in sailing conditions was matched by a similar falling off in my own performance. Even into our second season I seemed incapable of anticipating what needed to be done. I couldn’t judge distances and, short of a gale, never knew where the wind was coming from. I hated heeling and a night on board turned my latent claustrophobia into full, horrific flower. The claustrophobic’s ultimate nightmare is being buried alive, and the cabin of a small boat is horribly like a coffin.

  I also hated putting up and taking down sails on a small rolling deck, and I didn’t get on with a tiller. I always pushed when I should have pulled, so I was terrified of gybing accidentally and hurling David overboard, brained by a flying boom. Even if I managed to find him again, would my puny strength be sufficient to lift the dead weight of an unconscious man out of the water? In short, from the moment I stepped aboard our boat I was miserable. David loved her.

  After my parents died we began going to the boat every weekend. I would listen to Friday evening’s shipping forecast hoping for unfavourable conditions so that we wouldn’t go next day. French aristocrats during The Terror probably mounted a tumbrel with only slightly less enthusiasm than I climbed into our car on a Saturday morning. I prayed the sailing phase would pass. At least it didn’t cast a pall over my entire year; the British weather put an end to the season by early autumn until late the following spring.

  Then, one cold, damp, winter evening as we sat before the fire – David wheezing and me aching – my worst nightmare happened. He said, ‘Why don’t we get a bigger boat, retire early and sail away to a warm climate? It would mean a reduced pension. But living on a boat is cheaper than a house and the benefit to our health would be enormous.’ As he talked about it he changed before my eyes. The years seemed to fall away.

  At 3 o’clock next morning I woke to the sound of screaming. It was me, of course. David was very understanding. Our boat went up for sale but there were no plans to buy a
larger one. David went into a slow decline and I sank into self-induced guilt.

  It was sad. There was so much that I liked about the idea of life afloat: the simplicity; living in the open air; travelling from place to place by water instead of congested roads; anchoring in beautiful, deserted coves; and I longed for a warmer, drier climate. In fact, I didn’t mind anything about boats per se, not even the winter maintenance and antifouling. It was just the actual sailing I couldn’t stand.

  We kept our sloop on a mooring buoy at Holyhead. It was in the days before local entreaties prevailed, and the Irish ferries – especially the high-speed Sea Cat – roared in and out like the Starship Enterprise. An incoming ferry would send a veritable tidal wave down through the moorings. After it hit the harbour wall at the bottom it would hurtle back up through the moorings again. Then the water still travelling down would meet the water travelling back up and everything crashed about for quite some time.

  The effect on a small, light boat such as ours was to send it thrashing from side to side, leaving you with no option but to drop everything and hold on to one of the boat’s fixtures. If you were below, you hung onto the companionway handrails until the worst subsided. If you were in the cockpit, you crouched down low and clung to a winch.

  On a rare weekend visit to our boat, to check that it was still all right, the Sea Cat roared in and the tidal wave hit. Dropping a half-prepared lunch into the sink I lunged for the handrails, followed by the breadboard and various bits of flying cutlery. With nothing else to do for the next few minutes I stared moodily out through the companionway, past David hunched over a winch, at all the other boats thrashing from side to side like ours. All except one. At the end of the moorings a catamaran rode the swell like a plank. In a swaying aluminium forest, its mast alone serenely rose and fell above the heaving water.

  Eventually the wash subsided enough for David to let go of the winch and turn in the direction of my quivering finger. ‘I’ll do it,’ I said, ‘if we can have one of those.’

  ENGLAND

  I

  Emsworth

  Major voyages are supposed to begin with a dramatic send-off. Ours doesn’t. There has not even been enough water for our catamaran, Voyager, to leave the pontoon for a week, and she only needs a metre of water to get her afloat. Emsworth, in the upper reaches of Chichester Harbour on the south coast of England, has arranged to have a period of very low tides from July 31, which is also the day which Fate has decreed that David and I can finally set off. As a result, Voyager’s two hulls are sunk deep in mud.

  Our port hull is giving us concern. We have converted its forward cabin into a storage and workshop area, with the emphasis on storage. It has absorbed a massive amount but the weight is horrendous. We wonder if the boat will list to one side when we do finally get afloat again.

  On August 9, with a sufficiently high tide imminent, we anxiously watch our port bow as the water begins to trickle across the mud flats towards our pontoon. It is above our waterline before the starboard hull drags itself free and rises from the mud with a thhhhlock. We sit, chin on hand, wondering if the port hull will follow. Time passes.

  2

  Getting Started

  We had known before we left home that Chichester was due to have unusually low tides just now but had decided that a week on board would give us time to get shipshape and then have a rest before setting off. The first day of August was also our 34th wedding anniversary. We were unwaged now and would not be eating out as we had done when we were both in full-time employment. We therefore decided to start as we meant to go on, but still celebrated in three course style thanks to a Chichester supermarket’s gourmet counter. Dinner began with shellfish followed by stuffed bream and oriental sauce and finished off with apple and cinnamon in filo pastry with goat’s cream. With a jug of carnations on the chart table and a decent bottle of wine we hadn’t felt at all deprived.

  The truth was that we weren’t sure we should really be setting off yet. Ideally we should have waited until we were closer to our pensions. But reviewing the decline in our health over the past three years we had begun to question in what condition we should both be, in another five or six; and whether we should wake up one morning and find that we had left it too late.

  In particular, David’s respiratory problems were getting worse every year. He was allergic to almost everything now and despite specialists and prescribed medication he sneezed all the time, summer and winter. He would return home from work each evening congested and wheezing, from dust, pollen, perfume and traffic fumes. Latterly even newsprint could set him off, while a Sunday colour supplement would produce paroxysms of sneezing.

  The previous winter he’d had fluid on his left lung. I’d wondered if this year it would be pneumonia. Worst of all, he had developed sleep apnoea. He would go to bed so congested that soon after falling asleep he would stop breathing. Just as I’d be about to shake him awake shouting, ‘Breathe!’ his own diaphragm would give an almighty kick, he’d wake with a start and begin breathing again. This would go on all night.

  It is odd, though, once you know what you want to do but are still reluctant to do it, how people unwittingly collude with you and all sorts of peripheral support begins to materialise. A colleague with no knowledge of our long-term plans gave me a card on my birthday that year bearing a quotation from the American explorer Richard Evelyn Byrd. It said: Half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need. I live more simply now and am happier.

  Then one Sunday morning, washing our cars along with the neighbours in our small cul-de-sac, the subject of early retirement came up in conversation. One neighbour said it would be quite impossible for him because he would need to invest – and he mentioned a vast sum – simply to maintain his present living standards let alone improve them. But we didn’t want to maintain our present living standards of a house, two cars to reach two jobs, overwork, a poor climate and declining health.

  My major concern, however, was that we didn’t condemn ourselves to an impoverished old age. I did not want to end up a bag lady. Nor did I want us to spend our final years in separate National Health Service nursing homes, should they even still exist by the time we needed them. On the other hand, a relaxed, physically active lifestyle in a warm dry climate would considerably delay the need for any sort of nursing home for quite some time.

  A simple question posed by an unexpected source finally transformed our dilemma into a decision. I was getting breakfast, with BBC Radio 4 playing as usual, when the seamless gloom and cynicism of national and international affairs was interrupted briefly by Thought for the Day.

  The speaker that morning was an Anglican bishop and he began by saying, in the formal tones of the pulpit, ‘Today, I want to preach to you about the Philosophy of Enough.’ Then, over the next few minutes, he breezily invited his listeners to reflect on how they lived, what was really important, and how much they really needed materially to be happy.

  When he had finished, I went to find David. It had been a particularly long winter. His face looked rather grey and he was wheezing from the damp air in the shower. ‘How much is enough?’ I said. When we both got back home that evening we sat down together and worked out the minimum we needed. The result was that we would go sooner rather than later.

  It had been an unusually cold, wet spring that year. In fact, the only really good week for anti-fouling Voyager had been in February. Like a lot of other people, however, we had decided to ignore those few bright, dry but bitterly cold days and wait until it got a bit warmer. Like a lot of other people we also discovered too late that those few dry, bright days were all there were going to be for quite a while. March and April had brought almost constant rain.

  Things weren’t helped by the fact that our jobs and our home were in the north of England, while our boat was now on the South coast. Putting in an hour or two after work is not an option when it takes half a day to get to the boatyard. So it wasn’t until May that we were anti
fouling Voyager on the hard.

  Our transistor was tuned as usual to BBC Radio 4. The programme was Woman’s Hour but, because the speaker was Mrs Bobby Moore, David had begun listening too. Bobby Moore, national hero and captain of the England football team that won the World Cup in 1966, had died of colon cancer.

  His widow was spearheading a campaign to raise awareness of its symptoms and the need to take responsibility for getting treatment. Because, she explained, if his concerns had been heeded when he first began expressing them, Bobby might not have died when he did. And if someone as famous as Bobby Moore is ignored, how much harder is it for the rest of us to be heard? Caught early, she said, colon cancer can be successfully treated, but Bobby kept being told that his symptoms were normal and nothing to worry about until it was too late.

  I had stopped slapping on antifouling paint and begun staring at David as she began listing nine classic symptoms of colon cancer. ‘Got that one,’ said David. ‘And that. And that.’ By the end of the list he had counted off seven of them on his fingers.

  Some of them, like blood loss, he had had for a long time. Others, like fatigue and minor weight loss were more recent. Listed all together like this they sounded like a death sentence. He had visited our local medical practice only recently for the results of a cholesterol test and had promised to mention his latest symptoms at the same time.

  ‘David!’ I howled. ‘You were supposed to tell the doctor!’

  ‘I did,’ he said in his characteristically quiet way. ‘He said it was normal. Nothing to worry about.’

  In subsequent weeks there were tests, surgery, and then more tests which confirmed that David did not have, nor had he ever had, cancer of the colon. There had been some internal damage, however, which it was hoped the surgery would correct and in fact it had. He might continue to lose blood but happily, after a few weeks, he no longer did. The other symptoms either lessened or disappeared and his general health improved. But by the time the final test results were available it was late July and the European sailing season was already half over.