Turtles in Our Wake Read online

  Contents

  The Journey

  The Beaufort Wind Force Scale

  About Voyager

  Prelude

  ENGLAND

  1 Selling Up

  2 Setting Out

  3 Sorting Out

  4 Lovely Mahon

  5 Waiting to Exchange

  6 Flight back to Mahon

  THE BALEARIC ISLANDS

  7 Mahon

  8 Mañana

  9 Lift-Out

  10 Life Ashore

  11 Cala Grao

  12 Addaya

  13 Fornells

  14 Cuitadella

  15 Fornells to Mahon

  SARDINIA

  16 Menorca to Sardinia

  17 The Sinis Peninsula

  18 Torre Grande

  19 Torre Grande to Carloforte

  20 Carloforte

  21 A Quiet Day In

  22 A Jaunt Ashore

  23 Carloforte to Calasetta

  24 Calasetta to Malfatano

  25 Malfatano to Cagliari

  26 Cagliari

  27 A Walk Through History

  28 In Pursuit of Propane

  29 The Courtesy of Strangers

  30 Nora

  31 Sardinia to Menorca

  THE BALEARIC ISLANDS

  32 Menorca: Fornells

  33 Mallorca: Bonaire

  34 Sóller

  35 Andraitx

  36 Palma

  37 Ibiza

  38 Formentera

  MAINLAND SPAIN

  39 Alicante

  40 Tabarca

  41 The Costas

  42 Tranquil Anchorages

  43 Sea Mist

  44 A Secluded Bay

  45 Marbella

  46 Marbella to Gibraltar

  GIBRALTAR

  47 Sheppards Boatyard

  48 National Day

  49 Warranty and Insurance

  THE ATLANTIC OCEAN

  50 Leaving Gibraltar

  51 The Net

  52 Lost Appetites

  53 Sleep Deprivation

  54 Plodding On

  55 Blobs in the Night

  THE MADEIRA ISLANDS

  56 Porto Santo

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary for Non-Sailors

  By the Same Author

  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.

  About Voyager

  Voyager is a heavy cruising catamaran that was built by Solaris Yachts at Southampton. They built strong, comfortable boats but ceased trading after a disastrous fire spread from a neighbouring yard. Voyager is their Sunstream model, 40 ft long by 16 ft wide with twin 27hp diesel engines.

  She is a typical British catamaran in that she has a small mainsail and a large genoa which is her main source of power. She is cutter rigged and therefore has a small staysail.

  Her two hulls are connected by a bridge deck with a cabin on it which provides the main living area, or saloon. It contains a large sofa, a coffee table, a dining table and a chart table. Opposite the chart table, and overlooking the galley, the starboard dining seating quickly converts to a breakfast bar which also makes an ideal dining area for any meal on a bouncy sea as there is less potential for loose objects to move about.

  From the saloon, you enter the starboard or right-hand hull down three steps. Immediately in front of you is the galley. Turn right and there is an additional food preparation area, storage for cutlery and crockery and a large chest freezer. In the stern is a double bunk, a wardrobe, dressing table and clothing cupboards. Underneath the bunk is one of Voyager’s engines. At the bow end of this hull there is a head containing a toilet, wash basin and a bath.

  The port hull contains in its stern an identical suite to the one in the starboard hull plus a shower, toilet and vanity. There is a further cabin in the bow of this hull but for the voyage we converted it into a storage space with a small workbench and vice.

  Out on deck Voyager has a deep, well protected cockpit and all her sails can be handled from within it.

  Prelude

  ‘Life,’ somebody once said, ‘is not a rehearsal.’

  The more this saying was repeated over the years, the more irritating I found it. But I think there must come a point where you reach the same stage in life as the person who originally coined it, because David started buying yachting magazines.

  Those who know about mid-life crises will tell you that, in a long-term relationship, a fundamental indicator that a man has a new love in his life is when he suddenly begins buying himself new underwear. So I entirely failed to recognise the importance of yachting magazines in regard to my own future. I just fancied living somewhere a bit warmer and less stressful. Like Cornwall.

  To cut a long story short, the year prior to the events in this book we had embarked on a new life on a 40-foot catamaran called Voyager – as told in my previous book, Dolphins Under My Bed. As unseasoned sailors, the short-term plan had been to head for the Mediterranean and see how we got on. If all went well, the long-term plan was to cruise the Caribbean. By November we had reached Menorca in the Balearic Islands and settled Voyager into a delightful berth at its capital, Mahon, ready to enjoy our first warm Mediterranean winter.

  The sale of our house back in England was being complicated by the fact that Britain was in economic recession and the housing market had collapsed. It also meant confronting the disposal of a lot of very personal possessions. But when was doing anything important in life ever easy? House or no house we were going to spend the summer sailing around some of the Mediterranean’s most beautiful islands.

  England

  1

  Selling Up

  It is only when you come to sell up your home that you truly understand the nature of consumerism. It means that while you pay through the nose for your goods and chattels, when you come to sell them a dealer will offer next to nothing for the entire houseful. We cannot give electrical goods to charity shops because it costs them too much to get them certified safe before they can risk re-selling them to their customers. Nor can they accept upholstered furniture beyond a certain age because of new Health & Safety regulations regarding fire hazard.

  Putting everything into store is not a viable option either, since over a period of time you will pay in storage fees and insurance charges many times their replacement value. And, when you do finally get them back, your sofa will look shabbier than you remembered and nobody will carry spare parts for your electrical goods any more.

  We decide, therefore, to store only those things which really mean something to us. That means certain pieces of furniture and personal items. The furniture isn’t a problem; a desk each, a dining set, a chest of drawers and Grandma’s old dresser. Things like beds, bedroom furniture, lounge suites and bookcases are best replaced when the time comes.

  Some personal effects are equally easy to decide on. The easiest of all are the photo albums. Photographs are your li
fe in pictures: snapshots of moments in time; special places; people and animals you love; and your own face looking back at you, like Rembrandt’s self-portraits with their silent questions about life, happiness, mutability and mortality.

  One couple who came to view our house had put all their possessions in store and the storage facility had burnt down. They were fully reimbursed by the insurance company but said that some things were irreplaceable, particularly photographs of family and friends, their life together and especially the children growing up. With their experience in mind, we decide we will still put our albums into store with our other belongings, but leave the negatives with David’s brother Tony, just in case.

  With the essentials decided on, there remains a huge balance to be disposed of which presents a very great difficulty. Not for David, of course. When we married his belongings barely filled a small suitcase and more than three decades later there is not much more that he wants to keep. But for me it is a task bordering on the Herculean. Where do I start?

  With the genes, I’m afraid, for I am the child of an Olympic-standard hoarder. My Mum filled the family home to capacity. Open a drawer and you skinned your knuckles trying to flatten the contents sufficiently to close it again. Open a cupboard and everything toppled forward to meet you. Even the clothes in her wardrobe had to be shoulder-charged to get the door shut. As a newly-wed I swore I would never let my own home get the same.

  When my mother died aged 85 the house was filled to the rafters. I still have thirty years to go but my own house is already as full, including many of my parents’ things because when the time came I simply could not bring myself to dispose of them. Not always because I liked them, but because they had. And because many of them had been part of my life since my eyes first began to focus. By nature, nurture and natural inclination, then, I am a hoarder.

  My problem now falls into two basic categories. These can most usefully be labelled Me and Significant Others.

  With regard to the former, it feels as if it is me that is being disposed of; as if the house is being emptied because I have died. This is, after all, something other people usually do for you after you’ve gone. And being still alive, in a culture where an individual is defined largely by possessions, there is a sense in which I will cease to exist without them. Our cupboards and wardrobes contain the history of my life in things.

  The ice skates, bronze medal in ballroom dancing, tennis racket – and the ancient, bulky transistor radio on which I listened to Radio Luxemburg every night under the bedclothes so that my parents wouldn’t hear – are from my teenage years.

  The crash helmet, horse riding gear, walking boots, the bicycle and the camping equipment all chart our early marriage, along with remnants of our first dinner service – and our second, for after 34 years we are on our third. Both the earlier sets had come with promises that you would be able to buy additions and replacements in perpetuity; but one disappeared off the market soon after we bought the basics and the other changed colour so dramatically that there was no point anyway.

  There is a book of English madrigals from a summer school; a metronome, all that remains of my attempt at learning classical guitar; a notebook of alphabet music for playing steel pans that immediately brings to mind the sheer joy of making music with other people without worrying about musical theory. There are dressmaking patterns, corn dollies, theatre programmes, old letters and greeting cards, pictures we don’t hang any more but which witnessed such happy times, and two cardboard suitcases we bought in a department store in 1964, as indigent newly-married 20-year-olds, to carry our worldly goods to Australia on our first big adventure together and now, 34 years later, we have embarked on another.

  The second area of difficulty is all those things which, by gift or inheritance, have come from people who have been important in my life. These things I can’t even begin to think about.

  I therefore decide to start with the easiest. The wardrobes.

  2

  Setting Out

  The previous summer David and I had set off from England in our 40-foot catamaran, Voyager. The plan was to sail her to the Mediterranean for the winter and then, depending how we got on, to head for the Caribbean the following year. The hope was that a warmer, drier climate would improve our health and quality of life.

  Our bid to achieve this major life-change via a boat took family and friends by surprise since none of them sailed and, until quite recently, neither had we. A number of factors were involved in the decision. In particular, despite our desperate need to escape from northern cold and damp, neither of us has the right kind of skin for prolonged exposure to the sun. At the same time, we wanted to be physically active in the open air, since much of our working life had been spent sitting in offices and cars. Somewhere in the equation had been David’s late-flowering interest in sailing, and a particularly rain-sodden Sunday when he had said bleakly, ‘I want another adventure before I die,’ which was the closest I ever heard him get to a mid-life crisis. And whilst we loved visiting foreign places, there is little pleasure to be had in budget air travel and hotels. A boat enabled us to travel independently, be physically active out of doors and take our home comforts and all necessary shade with us.

  The route we had chosen was down the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain and Portugal. However, given the dangers from autumn gales along this coastline we had been eager to have our boat safely in the Mediterranean by the end of September. Despite our departure having to be delayed until August, after David was hospitalised, we nevertheless achieved our goal.

  By the beginning of November – fitter and more relaxed than we had been in many years – we were happily berthed in the idyllic harbour of Mahon, capital of the beautiful Balearic island of Menorca. The only cloud on our horizon since setting out had been our house back in England. Unwaged and pre-pension, we could not afford to go blue water cruising and keep the house, which had been up for sale since early spring.

  In the past, whenever we had needed to sell a house, the market in our area of the country had invariably gone into a long decline. Now was no exception. But at the end of October we had received an offer. Not a good one, but the fact that it was a cash offer was an incentive to accept it. A man and a woman, both divorced and with two children each, had formed a new family. Both had had homes up for sale, but the man’s had now been sold and contracts were about to be exchanged on the woman’s. They also wanted to move into our house in time for Christmas which was just two months away.

  Combined with a cash offer, the speed of completion persuaded us to accept the rather disappointing purchase price because it meant that in only a few weeks’ time we should be relieved of the burden of household heating and maintenance costs, insurance premiums, utility bills and council taxes, all of which were currently a large drain on our limited resources. And of course the purchase money, once invested, would give us an income to live on.

  In the meantime we had found a safe berth for Voyager for the short time we should be away. It also happened to be on the delightful waterfront of a charming town on a beautiful island. And although the tourists had all gone for the winter and the yachts in the harbour all lay empty, the sun still shone, the sky was bright blue and summer flowers continued to bloom.

  So, there we were, with this little piece of earthly paradise all to ourselves and every expectation of a quick house sale. All we needed now was for our purchasers to get a survey done and sign a contract of sale. Then we should take a short flight back to England, exchange contracts, empty the house, hand over the keys and catch a flight back to Menorca for a warm Christmas and a nice bit of winter sailing.

  If only life was that simple.

  3

  Sorting Out

  There are clothes I simply won’t need in our new life; some I haven’t worn in years anyway. I spread the contents of a wardrobe over the bed. The problem is that they aren’t just clothes. They are tangible memories of a past that can never be repeated: special occasio
ns, family weddings, anniversaries; clothes I have adored, clothes I have put a huge effort into making and woollens my mother knitted with love. And then there are the shoes, of course. I mull over it all for an hour and then put everything back into the wardrobe again, grateful that it is time to go and cook dinner and I can put off any decisions for another day.

  After a second abortive attempt I give up wardrobes and empty a cupboard instead, expecting that this will be easier. I take out the contents and spread them around the floor until there is only room to tiptoe delicately between them with the precision of a performer in a Japanese Noh play.

  I pick up the items one-by-one. This is from my earliest childhood; this was given to me by an incredibly kind neighbour. This was my Dad’s, my Mum’s, my grandparents’; these were gifts from family, friends, a teacher, and David’s lovely, giggly little Grandma. David brought this home when we were first married; this was my coming-of-age present from my parents; here are the 78rpm records my Dad used to play and my drawing exercises from night school. And over there is the brass bowl that resulted from the metalwork option at day-continuation college during my first year at work. Looking at it I can still smell the metal filings, hot from the grinder. Everything I touch conjures up a loved person, a happy moment, a small achievement.

  Another day, another cupboard. Here are all the gadgets you buy in a lifetime, use only briefly, but never throw away because they might come in useful one day and, irrelevantly, because of the length of time you’ve already held on to them and because of what they originally cost. All the things you bought when you were young in the unquestioning name of novelty; or later, tempted by promises that they would make life easier or meals tastier and healthier. And so I unwrap the electric frying pan that never did what they claimed it would, the fondue set that produced monotonous meals and singed fingers in equal proportions, and the juice extractor so cumbersome that it took longer to dismantle and clean after use than it did for somebody to grow the oranges in the first place.