All Quiet

Finally all is quiet, dry and in order. Anna M is berthed once again in a very peaceful Pobra do Caramiñal, resting in warm autumn sunshine, in a different mood to the place we visited in September last year.* It is a small port, not unlike Sada where we made our landfall, all with an amazing variety of marine activity.

How’s this for a variety of craft:-

Sada

Sada was very good to us; the jib halyard was sorted and the rigging tuned thanks to Paco and Carlos of Nauticayons, the radar made to work again, and above all the leaks more or less fixed, all at reasonable expense.

Here is José Manuel Gómez Porto of the Carpintería Lorbé doing the caulking.

Just the neat little wooden chest with his caulking hammer and collection of irons would give you confidence in the man, before you watch him go unerringly to the right spot and the hammer bouncing in his hands!

It was very peaceful as we motored out of the Ría de Betanzos, covered with its fleet of tiny fishing boats with old boys jigging, I think, for squid. Ay, those delicious chipirones! I went out with one of them once. We didn't catch a thing, but my friend was happy. 'Aquí hay paciencia y tranquilidad!'

Ría de Betanzos,

Cabo Villano

Once out past the Torre de Hercules we found a breeze; it became such a fine fresh north-easterly that we were glad to find the shelter of Cabo Villano and a good anchorage at Camariñas. First attempt however at the head of the bay was in vain; the anchor dragged, choked in weed. Off the harbour there was less shelter from the wind, but the anchor bit into mud and didn't stir an inch.

Out passed Mugia's church of the Virgen de la Barca, dramatic in the morning sunlight, and on with a fair north-easterly, and the shelter getting better all the time. So we came at last south of Cape Finisterre, finding warm sunshine indeed, but hardly any wind.

We motor-sailed across to Cabo Corrubedo, and through the rocks into the Ría de Arosa in the company of trawlers sorting their catch to the wild excitement of many gulls. That passage passed the Piedras del Sargo looks a bit hairy on the chart, but has a good new port-hand mark on the north side and is straight-forward enough.

Isla Sagres

Piedras del Sargo

In A Pobra we are tied up beside a Spanish lady called Maribel. She and her husband have sailed twice round the world, taking thirty years; now they are feeling like settling, and are going to get a wee country place to live. They will keep the boat though. I say that sailing the Gannetsway is pretty good.  Yes, but rather too hardy, she reckons. She believes in 'butter sailing'; the butter must be soft enough to use, but not too hard! And who can argue with that?

* http://gannetswaysailing.blogspot.ie/2015/09/o-nazareno_21.html

A Biscay Waltz

It was as difficult as ever to get organised for departure from Horseshoe Cottage. However, in the run-up I managed to get the tough-book computer from Anto in Killruddery, who had very kindly offered it to me since he was not using it any more, complete with the Open CPN chart and navigator set-up installed on Ubuntu (Linux). My Guardian Angel also prompted me to get John O’Mahony from Belco Marine Electronics to instal the passive receiver for the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which he kindly did on the morning before we left. Here is a photo of the set-up, showing the Anna M moored once more here in the harbour at Sada, on the Ría de Betanzos behind La Coruña. The little arrow-icons can also be seen, which represent ships anchored in the Ría.

‘We’ were myself and Anna Legge, a sister-in-law of Anto’s, who had done some sailing on the Asgard, but was not that experienced and very brave to set out with this old geezer across Biscay. We had been getting very good forecasts, but as I had a last look at Predictwind.com before departure, I noticed that their own model (which they display along with the GFS from NOAA which most weather sites use and they themselves start from) was suddenly throwing up a gale on our third day out. Well, at least NOAA were not giving it and they were not giving a major storm, and anyway it was predominantly easterly and was only going to last 24 hours or so…. The first couple of days were perfect; just couldn’t bear to cancel, with all preparations made and Anna come!

It does mean a lot to get a good start, and we had a perfect beam reach down to about the latitude of Belle Isle. However, right enough on the second evening out the wind was freshening and the glass falling. As I changed jib down to the working one, some pilot whales came to check us out; the photo shows one of them spyhopping - sticking its head up to get a better look at us.

The Anna M and I have a little understanding, which I think my crew-mate Anna approves of, that if I take it easy on her, she will look after me; so in the morning with the wind still rising, the working jib was replaced with the storm jib, and we were down to the third reef. The wind had also veered SE, and then SSE. I was not going to thrash to windward; the old bilge pump had more and more work to do as it was. Neither did I fancy running back to Ireland, and Brittany was about a hundred miles to the east, close on the wind anyway. The time had come at last to try that sea anchor, a fancy Para Tech  American job that I had splashed out on back in my fishing days.

Drying the sea-anchor.

It seemed a good idea, but in fact it never came out of its bag since. In the fishing boat, it was easier just to dodge to windward at night on the autopilot, when one had a chance for some kip, which was the main thing I had in mind at the time, emergencies apart. Anyway, out it came, and deployed beautifully, stopping the old girl in her tracks, head on to the waves. The problem was obviously going to be the rode, for this sea anchor was a bit too strong for the Anna M. Rope was not going to last the proverbial pissing time at the bow; it would not stay snug in the roller at all, let alone allow a bit of plastic hose to stay in place. I shackled the loop on the end of the stout nylon rope into the regular anchor chain.

It’s not easy to describe the motion in a small boat in a gale. The normal businesses of living become hugely difficult. The water that one might try to put in a bowl to do a bit of washing-up, for instance, promptly leaps out. One is constantly being thrown around, liable at any moment to be hurled violently across the cabin. One soon gets bruised and it is lucky if one can avoid sustaining injury. So it was a comparative relief to lie at the sea anchor.  I was reckoning there would not be any traffic out there in the middle of the Bay of Biscay. The AIS however was working away, though the mouse was very difficult to use.

After a while, a boat shows up, and sure enough she seems to be heading straight for us. I even get her name, Le Ressac, a fine French fishing boat evidently heading for Spain. I call her up, several times, in French, in Spanish, in English. Pas de réponse.  I start the engine and think, would I cut the sea anchor adrift or try to retrieve it? She appears through the murk, less than a mile away. Suddenly the VHF comes to life and she veers away, within a couple of cables. ‘Je ne vous voyais pas, ni sur le radar ni sur le AIS’. ‘Mais je vous voyais bien sur le AIS, moi, et je vous ai rappelé plusieurs fois….’ That stopped his gallop, but I must replace that useless radar reflector and try to get the active AIS….

Phew! But now two more boats have shown up, on the same route. I managed to get through to them, but they all seem pretty aghast at the idea of a sailing boat suddenly appearing, lying in their path. Next thing, a whole fleet of little arrows are coming at us, about thirty of them altogether! It must be the tuna fleet on its way from the Irish fishing grounds. This is a fine kind of video game….. Well, the wind is at least backing somewhat. I was just making up my mind to retrieve the anchor when, bang, the rope parted where it was shackled into the chain. However, we retrieved it without difficulty. A great job, but I will have to figure out something better for that rode!

We were able to set out SW now, under storm jib and trysail, with the engine ticking over as well. I wanted it anyway to keep the volts up through the long, pitch dark night, with the bilge pump now on pretty continuously. A great little Jabsco job, that I originally bought for the shower, but which has been faithfully pumping away at my poor old raft for nearly two years now; it was lucky that it could keep ahead of the leaks.

The only other trouble was that the strop at the top of the foremast that holds the pulley for the fore halyard parted, and the jib came down about three feet, where it stuck. I shortened the luff with a life-line and it worked away. We were now doing around 4 knots, gradually coming more to the south as the wind veered east and very slowly moderated. It finished up in the north-east and we were able to swing in towards La Coruña; indeed this was better than trying to run on before the wind for Cape Finisterre. Oh and there was the bit of a knob on the Hydrovane that broke off, so that it couldn't stay engaged, but I cobbled it fairly well with a couple of bolts - and the handle that lost its bucket.

We had to keep on under that rig because the storm jib would not come down. This got to be annoying as we ended up with a head wind coming into the Ria; good job it was no longer strong. I wound the jib round the fore-stay and wrapped it up with the spinnaker halyard as best I could. If that strop had broken at the beginning of the storm with a big jib up, the consequences do not bear thinking about; it goes to show the value of changing sails in good time! We found a quiet anchorage early in the morning just above the big quays at the mouth of El Ferrol, outside a couple of fishing boats in the Ensenada de Cariño. Later on, in bright sunshine, we steamed up to Sada, and Paco and his mate came and sorted out the jib.

The offending strop (with the handle that lost its bucket).

Anna landing, (and the storm jib still up).

It’s great to be back in Spain. Now all’s in order, and actually the damage was very slight, though we’ve a bit more work to do on the rig on Monday morning. I’ve had loads of sleep and a shower; the wind is SW and quite strong, it’s good writing weather! After Tuesday, the wind is supposed to be NE again, but with high pressure and sunshine. Let’s hope it is! But though the leaks have slowed down, we’ll have to take it handy going south, and it looks as though the Anna M will have to end up on the land rather than that mooring, and I’ll have to see if  I can manage a proper job on the hull.

As for the rest of it, Anna was brilliant, she would put many fellas to shame, and so is the AIS; thanks again to Anto and to John who got me fixed up with! To me, it pointed up a broader lesson. The world is no place for buccaneers any more, a static given back-drop where we can just go on doing our thing and to the Devil with the rest. Like those Brexiteers, we must realise that if we go on being buccaneers, we also go down the road of running over the weak, even bombing cities and aborting babies in order to ‘do our thing’. But there is a clear alternative, in which we are called upon to join the dance of dynamic interplay, difficult and trying as this may sometimes be; actually we may call it civilisation. It involves talking to the other guy, yes, those ghastly things like soft power and communication. It involves risk and giving some things away, the track of a good fishing tow for instance; it involves winning friends and getting the other guy to respond; but that actually is the famous Catholic Civilisation of Love, and the good news is, it’s fun!

Sunset after storm, off the Costa do Muerte.

Phew! Enough of this Building for Now.

 The sun-room is substantially built and closed up. It was a consuming effort, with little time or energy left for anything else, such as writing blogs. Good fun though, and it’s great to cool the mind now and again with physical work, especially if it is fun work, like sailing! It may be hard, but the creativity, the engagement, the involvement with physical reality are therapeutic. Life is good after all, despite our best efforts to make it miserable.

De la cooperation Franco-Irlandaise a Sherkin....

I’m not going into the details of building though, the way I might with sailing; it doesn’t quite go with the intentions of this blog, the way that sailing does. But in writing it, I am also interested in developing a kind of post-national identity: something along the lines of what the Brexiteers hate!

I needed the rest from writing indeed to digest this Brexit thing. Was I unreasonable in my rejection of it? What will it mean anyway? Well after all, we are only a very little nearer to knowing that, with this statement of Mrs May’s at the Tory conference.  However, she has stated that the process will be triggered by the end of March next year, though Parliament will only get a say in the new session, which begins in May next year.

So this appears to have been a successful coup by various media barons and clever manipulators of opinion, who have managed to overthrow the Government which was actually elected and to radically change the course of the ship of state without the elected Parliament getting so much as a chance to give its opinion on the matter! All dressed up in a lot of blarney about ‘democracy’.

The Parliamentarians look like rolling over and doing as they are bid, but I’m afraid this is worse than a sad mistake. Mr Boris Johnson said recently in New York that the connection between free trade and the free movement of people was ‘balderdash’. Now one might think he was just being stupid. One might invite him to consider how it would have been, back when Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, if Irish people were not allowed to travel freely to Britain and work there. One might point out that the free movement of people is essentially bound up with the sharing of wealth, etc. The trouble is, he already knows it, for Mr Johnson is not stupid.

Mr Johnson is blustering because he knows very well that he is trying to sell a lie. Anyway, the very idea of ‘free trade’ is dodgy, as indeed is the liberal notion of freedom. Trade is constricted in all kinds of ways, and in the modern world, all one can do is choose, from among a variety of regulatory frameworks that which will afford us the most freedom. It’s like the much-vaunted ‘independence’.

How independent is this famous modern Britain really going to be, so completely bound up as it is with and dependent upon both people and goods from elsewhere? Anyway, the truth is that Liberalism itself is on the way out, buried in the rubble of the World Trade Centre, of Iraq and Syria and Lehman’s Bank. But it will die hard, for people are very fond of their illusions, and modern media very good at manipulating them.

Meanwhile, those who deliberately peddle lies in the pursuit of their own power have to be confronted, sooner rather than later. This is difficult, when a persuasive illusion is being peddled; but before the likes of Messrs Farrage and Trump come up with a full-blown kind of modern fascism, they will have to be faced down.

Who by? One might have looked to Socialists, but the Socialist Parties in England and in Spain and other countries are in serious disarray, and do not look like providing an alternative anytime soon; anyway, can they be relied upon not to fall back on their own version of the same thing? Such doubts attach to the old-fashioned socialism of Mr Corbyn for instance, though I quite like him, but as for Mrs Clinton.... Is there any sign of an alternative politics?

I think there might be, and if there is a glimmer of hope, politically speaking, I would think it lies with such as S. Matteo Renzi, the young prime minister of Italy. He came up as a politician as Mayor of Florence, where no doubt he had to grapple and cooperate with all kinds of people. I like his pragmatic approach, taking people as they come, and not pretending that he has all the answers. It’s not that he is without principles, but he does not approach politics from the stand-point of an ideology; rejecting a politics of fear, he builds on the common ground of people of hope and good will. You can see an interview with him at <https://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/09/conversation-matteo-renzi/>

It comes back to engagement, which breeds hope. As with building or sailing, that is what makes us happy, while being shut or bombed out does the opposite. So Europe, and all people of good will, have to work a lot harder at getting people engaged. That will be the essence of a successful new politics. Meanwhile, we can work to establish the framework we prefer.

Mine involves sailing to Spain shortly! How I would hate to go back to having to get customs’ clearance when one goes from country to country, and when I am in Spain or Portugal, being merely one of the sad tribe of tourists or ex-pats! Much better to be there as of right, as a member of the same community; and of course the people who come to Britain to work must feel something like this too.  

....results in a tea-room for Fiona.