Monday 9 September

After a light breakfast we make our way into the town to see if we can buy something suitable for our supper on a fasting day.  We try the fish stalls again. There are still very few open, but one has really nice sea bass, so we buy a fish and will eat it for dinner.  After that it is back to the boat.  We have to wait in for the diver to phone.  So we make use of the time.  The weather is much improved and therefore Richard cleans the outside of the boat quite thoroughly.  It really was dirty.  I do a little inside, but not much.  Finally the diver calls.  He cannot come today.  He is very apologetic.  He is gabbling away in French explaining why he can’t make it.  I misunderstand the tense of the verb he uses (I never did get on with French verbs and conjugation).  I think he is telling me he is going on holiday and my heart sinks.  When ask if that means he can’t help us at all he explains he will come tomorrow morning.  The problem was that he has just returned from holiday and has a backlog of work.

So now we have the whole day and it is nice and sunny.  So finally we go to the beach.  We find a restaurant on the closest beach on this side of the canal which lets out loungers and umbrellas and set ourselves up.  I have nearly run out of reading material.  Without the paper to read each day on my I-Pad, I have read all but one book on my kindle.  Richard reminds me that I have a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses on board.  So I take it to the beach.  This will be my third attempt at getting through it.  Maybe third time lucky.

Dinner of minimum calories on the boat.  The fish does not cook properly in the oven.  I guess it is too big.  I have to finish it off under the grill, but it is still nice.

Sunday 8 September

The rain from yesterday seems to have cleared and it is nice.  We decide to go out early to try to find food for this evening and the next couple of days.  There are fish stalls which say they sell fresh fish from the fishermen seven days a week, so we hope to find something there.  As it turns out, only 3 or 4 stalls are open and the selection is very limited so we give it a miss.  We do find a butcher and buy some meat and the nice greengrocers are open so I buy girolles and veg to make Ratatouille.  I will cook this evening and stock up the fridge.

Back at the boat we have a late breakfast of croissants and bread, our first since being back in France.  Then we just mooch about the boat until we have a late lunch of a bit of bread and cheese.  We are going in to town to see the boat jousting.  They are having a big tournament today in the middle of the town.  They call it Lance Sportive Palavasienne. 

We have seen this sport once before a few years ago in Sete.  We thought then and still think it is the funniest sport we have ever seen with the exception of the Scots sport of throwing the 56lb weight over the bar (another story altogether).  So what they have are special rowing boats which have a sort of staircase up the back ending in a platform not unlike the back of a gondola.  There are about 8 rowers in each boat.  In addition there are two men who sit in the bows.  One plays a drum and the other plays a sort of wooden pipe type instrument.  Then there are the jousters.  They sit on the ladder on the back, with the one who is doing the jousting on the platform.  Everyone is dressed in a special uniform- the rowers have their rowing club shirts, the musicians are all dressed in white with blazers trimmed in blue or red depending on whether they are in the blue or red boat.  The jousters all wear white trousers, blue and white stripped long sleeved teeshirts under a white shirt.  The jousting polls are long wooden affairs, nearly 9 feet long and they have a heavy wooden shield.  The idea is that the two boats row towards each other until they are close enough for the jousters to try to push their opponent in the other boat off his perch into the water!

When we saw this before we had no idea that there were any rules.  But today we get a souvenir booklet which describes the rules.  All I can say is that it is all hilarious, but very serious to those taking part.  We find good seats in a stand constructed for the day.  We are surrounded by locals who are all very keen and seem to know the competitors and are keeping score!  It is a great afternoon, but it does go on a bit.  It starts at 3:00pm and is still going on when we leave at 6:30pm.  We also leave just in time.  The sun has been out all afternoon, but it just starts to cloud over as we leave and the rain starts when we get back to the boat.  My only regret is that I did not bring my camera out this trip.  I have photos of this from last time we saw it, but I could have got some great shots with the 200mm lens!

On the boat we make dinner and I also make the Ratatouille and some taboule for us to eat over the next few days (tho tomorrow is a fasting day).  We fall into bed.  The diver has still not phoned us.

Saturday 7 September

We are up early to be ready for the mechanic when he comes.  He makes it on time and his English is good enough for us to fully explain what has gone wrong.  He too curses our engine and how difficult it is to change the impeller, which is his first step.  The one he takes out is not at all in bad shape, but the engine is still quite hot after nearly 18 hours!  He checks everything out and cannot find anything serious wrong.  He is sure that we haven’t blown the gasket (a relief).  But the water is still not circulating properly.  We had a special fitting put on top of the intake to inspect and see if it is blocked, but that fitting seems to have corroded and he cannot easily loosen it.  We are all afraid of putting too much pressure on it for fear of breaking it and letting the sea in unimpeded!  So with heart in throat, and wooden bungs close at hand he works on it.  It does come free without force eventually and yes it is blocked.  It is full of weed and twigs, no doubt from the canals.  They have a lot to answer for.  When he clears the intake the water starts to flow properly.  We try out the engine, but of course can’t put on too many revs in forward gear or we will break off our cleats with the lines holding us to the pontoon.  All seems well and the engineer is happy.  He too believes we need a diver to look at the propeller.  He recommends the man we have already booked!  Also told he is not expensive.  So phase one of repairs is done.

We would have liked to go to the beach for the rest of the day, but the weather has let us down.  It is dark, cool and showery all day.  So we just stay on the boat.  I am resting my leg for the longish walk to the restaurant this evening.  I am a bit bored however.  We have no internet.  The dongle thingy is not working.  We think that Richard managed to leave it on and thus ran it out of 25 euros credit within two days.  The annoying part is that there is no Orange shop in town and we cannot find any other way of topping up the credit.  So we sit in listening to French radio- Nostalgie.  Not terrible, but a bit dull playing the same bad French pop music from years ago over and over.  I also decide to start a new tapestry I got as a Christmas present- a Queen’s diamond Jubilee themed cushion cover.  I work on it for a few hours only then to realize that I have done the stitches backwards!  I don’t think it matters, but I can’t decide whether to carry on this way or rip what I have done out and start again.

Dinner time is approaching and we get dressed to go.  The idea was to take the cable car over the canal (to limit the amount of walking) just before it closes at 7:00pm and then go for a drink first.  But now it is raining and with the rain this afternoon I am sure the seats will be wet.  I do not want to go to dinner with a wet bum!  So we walk.  We make it to the left bank and start to look for a place to have our drink.  All of a sudden it is starting to rain quite hard.  So we jump into a place we are passing which calls itself a cocktail bar.  I would not ordinarily go into this place.  It is weird.  The décor is out of some pseudo-Louis XIV film.  All over stuffed sofas with tufting and velvet.  The cocktails seem very expensive- 11euros.  I think I might just have a kir, when R persuades me to have a cocktail with him.  Just as we order the heavens open.  I haven’t seen such heavy rain since the day we got soaked to the skin in the canals.  It seems we got in to this place just in time.  And we are not the only ones.  The place is suddenly completely full!  So it takes rather a long time to get our drinks.  When the drinks come you could knock us both down with a feather.  They are enormous!  They must be at least a litre each.  They look like jugs of drink, not individual cocktails.  I have no idea how we are going to get through them.  Other people who like us have taken refuge are equally amused at the size of the drinks.  No wonder they cost twice as much as usual.

Well we do manage to finish the drinks more or less and make it to the restaurant.  We have a delightful meal.  One of the best since we hit this coast.  The manager even recommends a very nice light local white wine for us to drink.  Richard thinks it is like Vino Verde, but that is being very unkind to it.

So home to bed.  The rain has let up, but it is still wet.

Friday 6 September

Up fairly early and make our way out of port.  Again the wind, or what little of it there is, is on the nose.  We will just have to motor.  But again the motor is not pulling and we are going so slowly we won’t make it in a reasonable time, even having started fairly early on.  So Richard decides to just push it and puts the engine up to 3000 revs so we are making just under 5 knots.  We go along like this for about 2 hours when I spot white smoke coming out of the exhaust!  Oh Shit (I think that is the proper technical expression in the circumstances)!  So now we turn the engine off and are basically drifting. The wind has fallen to  under 2 knots.  We have to find a closer port of safety.  So Richard goes down to the chart table and takes out the books.  He finds a suitable place.  It is called Palavas-Les-Flots.  Richard rings them up and they can do us a berth and we warn them that we might need assistance in berthing because of engine troubles.  I am still very worried.  The port is only 4.5 miles away, but there is no wind.  I am all for calling up for help, but that could cause problems.  If we take a tow, someone could claim salvage which can be between 15-20% of the value of the boat.  Therefore, we can’t do that without speaking to our insurers first.  At least we have mobile phone coverage where we are.

Richard is convinced that the wind will pick up.   Also as we have turned to go to port, the wind is following, so a least it is no longer on the nose and there is some chance of making headway.  We just have some lunch, and hope for the best.  In the meantime Richard has the thought that maybe the engine problems are caused by weed.  So he goes below to check on the sea water filter.  We both saw that there was a discharge of water when the engine was running, but maybe that could be the trouble.  When he goes to the engine it is so hot that even after it has been off for some time he can barely take the water filter out and put it back again.  It doesn’t seem to be full. 

So, having secured our berth for the night we just plug along on sail at a snail’s pace.  We start at doing less than half a knot, but the wind picks up a little and with 5 knots of wind we are managing a speed of about 2 knots, not bad in the circumstances. 

Finally we can see the harbour entrance and it isn’t very late.  We must now take down the sails, and I am not sure what we should do about the engine.  I suggest that we phone up the marina and ask for help, but Richard feels sure that using the engine for the 10-15 mins it will take to get to our berth will be fine.  After all, the engine has been off for over 3 hours now, so it should have cooled down.

So we set the fenders, and lines and turn the engine on.  Right away there is a problem.  There is no water coming out of the engine.  So the cooling system is not working.  At this stage I call the marina on the radio.  Of course, because there is a problem, no one speaks English.  So I try to explain the situation in French.  We are limping in on 1000 revs, hoping for the best, when the worst happens.  The overheating alarm goes off.  We now have to turn the engine off.  We are in the middle of a marina going down the approach to the berth and we have no way of starting or stopping the boat.  We are drifting gently straight for a concrete wall!  I am getting more and more hysterical on the radio, but they don’t seem to understand the urgency.  I see no sign of any rib, which was I expected them to send to push us into a berth.

The berthing here is by way of metal poles which you tie to on your way in.  So Richard has a good idea and steers to the poles with the intention that we just tie ourselves alongside a couple of them to stop the boat and wait for help.  As I lasso two poles and we are safe at long last I see the men from the marina who are coming to help.  They are just on foot.  I am not sure how that was meant to help us with no engine, but it doesn’t matter because now we just happen to be tied up next to our berth!  So with the help of two men from the marina and a nice French couple we are roped into the berth and we are safe and sound!  What a relief.  Of course we now have to find marine engineer and a diver to go down and find out what is going on with the propeller. 

For the first thing the nice French couple give us the name of an engineer which they recommend.  They even direct me to one of his vans in the yard.  It turns out that the person there only does outboards, but he gives me the business card for his colleague who does the inboard engines.  We phone and arrange for him to come tomorrow.  We are pleased with that because it will be Saturday and we didn’t really want to have to wait until Monday or later.  Best of all he speaks English!

Then we go to the office to check in.  They give us the details of a diver who is resident in the Marina.  So we try to phone him and get an answer phone.  We leave a message and then get a number or messages back.  He will try to get to us on Monday afternoon and will phone either on Sunday evening or Monday morning to confirm.  Again, he doesn’t seem to speak English!  This is getting interesting. 

So we are here in Palavas (not quite a palaver, but close!), for some time.  We decide to find out about the town.  It is the seaside town for Montpellier.  It is a typical French seaside town.  It has a canal running through it.  The town has a left and right bank.  The marina is on the right bank, which is not really the centre of the town.  The main shopping is on the other side.  To get there you either walk up to a bridge (which is a little way) or there is a little cable car much nearer that you can take.  However the cable car does not run at lunchtime or at night!  There are beaches on both sides of the town, not far from the boat, so that could be nice, if we can get the time when repairers are not coming to the boat!

We have a little walk around.  We find where the main shops are and we try to suss out restaurants.  Richard wants to go out to dinner to relax after the traumas of today.  We can’t find any place very inspiring.  The only possibility is a revolving restaurant on top of a tower they have.  It is run by their Masterchef winner, but we can’t get a copy of the menu to check it out.  Back at the boat I find that there is a Michelin recommended restaurant.  So we phone for a reservation.  However, they are full.  We book for tomorrow and go to plan B.  That is to eat our tinned Cassoulet bought in Castelnaudry.  We have a bottle of Fronton, the wind local to Castelnaudry and recommended to go with Cassoulet.  So that is what we do.  We finally relax and fall into bed.

Thursday 5 September

My leg is improving with each day so we decide to leave.  Our planned destination is Port Carmargue.  It is a huge marina on the edge of the National Park.  The books all recommend it especially as they provide free bikes so that you can visit the Carmargue.  I wonder if I can ride a bike with this knee?

We set off and all seems well.  The weather is lovely, but the wind is on the nose at about 11 knots.  We need to go out to sea to dump our holding tank, so we will tack a bit and see how we get on.  Well, right away we know things are not right.  Firstly the log doesn’t work.  Richard did not take it out when we left.  When he goes to try to get it to work he finds that it is completely encrusted with barnacles and the like.  It takes him a long time to clean it, but even when the wheel is clear and spinning free, it won’t work and we get no reading.  Richard thinks the barnacles, etc are fouling the outside and not letting the water past it!

Now we notice that the engine is not pulling as it should.  We are going at 2500 revs but are only managing under 4 knots over the ground, when we should be doing between 5 and 6 knots.  Part of that may be because there is a westbound current around here that can get to 1 knot.  We don’t know the speed of the current because of the faulty log.  Richard also mentions that when he left the mooring he didn’t think the bowthruster was pushing as efficiently as he would expect.  We look at the rudders and see that they are covered in weed and creatures.  We are now pretty sure that the propeller and the bowthruster prop are well fouled by barnacles.  We are finding that we can’t really make much progress tacking and we are going very slowly on engine.  So we will take too long to make to Port Carmargue - which is 30 miles away.  So we head for Sete instead.  We hope to have a look at things there and decide how to proceed.

We get to the port.  The book says call up the Capitainerie on the radio, or just find a spot.  Richard thinks he can do the latter, but we are perplexed at once by the mooring system.  The  books say you must pick up a buoy as you reverse into the space and then attach your stern lines.  The problem is that although the permanent moorings seem to have buoys the visitor pontoon does not.  So I must eventually call up the Harbourmaster and he comes and directs us in.  It turns out that the visitor moorings have lines from the pontoon that you walk up to the bows which are attached to the seabed at the front, where you make it off.  I’m not sure how we were supposed to work that out ourselves!  But with help we are safely moored.

So Richard now inflates the dinghy and takes it to the bows to see what is going on with the bowthruster.  He cannot really get to the thruster from the dinghy, so he gets in the water.  With his hands he can feel that the thruster propeller has stuff growing on it and he tries to clear it with a screwdriver.  He thinks he has helped it.  But now is the fun.  He can’t get back in to the dinghy from the water.  So he has to swim to the back of the boat, but I can’t let the boarding ladder down because we are too close to the pontoon.  So I have to let the forward line loose.  With the help of the neighbouring boat we get the ladder down and get R on board.  However, in the manoeuvering, he has managed to cut his hands on the barnacles and other shells growing on the end of the pontoon.  We patch him up and he tries the thruster, which seems to be working better.

So we are now left with a fouled propeller to deal with.  There are really no facilities here in Sete, so we will go to Port Carmargue tomorrow where there are all sorts of facilities for repairs.

We have a pleasant evening on board.  We seem to be one of only of 2 non-French boats here.  The French are all having drinks on the pontoon.  Richard goes into town for bread.  It is a very long way away and we are trying to save my leg from as much walking as possible.

Wednesday 4 September

The weather is nice, but we can’t just go to the beach or loll about.  We have to provision the boat!  We take a bus to the big hypermarket just out of town.  I can just manage to hobble to the bus stop.  I manage to inch my way around the huge store hanging on to the shopping trolley while Richard finds the Orange shop to top up our internet device and my French Mobile sim card.

We miss the next bus back and rather than hang around for an hour we get the shop to call us a taxi.  That too works out well and we get everything back on the boat, including me.  I think my leg is improving, or at least the pain killers mean that I can use the leg and I am not in pain, but I still can’t really put all my weight on it.

The boat seems fine and we unpack everything ready for tomorrow.    I find that I have left a number of things I want behind.  I haven’t got my none-prescription sun glasses, which I usually wear for sailing or my boat cookbook!  I guess I wasn’t all there when I tried to pack on Monday night!  We still haven’t decided whether to go tomorrow or stay another day, but that depends on my knee really.

Tuesday 3 September 2013

When I last posted I intended the entry to be the end of the log.  We had planned to return and move the boat along the French coast, but it seemed to me to write about that would be just a dull travelogue.  However, things have not turned out to be so hum drum as we expected, so Richard has suggested that I continue the blog and see what happens.

So we had booked Ryanair flights back to Beziers for today before we left the boat in July.  But as the date approached it began to look very much like we would never make it.  Well, to be more exact that I wouldn’t make it.  I managed to strain my right knee about two weeks ago and it never occurred to us that it would not heal before we left.  But not only did it not get better, it got much, much worse.  By Sunday night I could hardly put any pressure on the leg at all and I was in terrible pain.  On Monday I went to the Doctors to get some strong anti-inflamatories/ pain killers to get me walking again.  I even went to the hospital for an x-ray on Monday, but they couldn’t see anything serious wrong with the bones.  I was in such pain I could barely sleep all night on Monday, but finally when it came time to catch the train to the airport the pain killers had kicked in and I decided to go.  Richard said we could just stay in Cap D’Agde until it got better.

I knew that I would not be able to walk around the airport on the knee, so Richard booked us assistance which turned out to be a wheelchair!  I didn’t half feel a fraud.  Really all I needed was one of those motorized trolleys to take me to the gate (which was at the far end of the airport).  But Luton doesn’t seem to do those, so a wheelchair with four other aged decrepit souls it was for me.

The journey went remarkably well and we arrived at the Marina in good time for some supper.  There is no car access to very near where our boat was, so Richard dropped me at a restaurant and took some of the larger luggage pieces to the boat.  After dinner I could hobble to the boat with the hand luggage and I managed to get aboard.  So we made it!