En route

The kettle's on in Toulon. The sky is clear, the clouds fluffy, and a brisk westnorthwest wind is blowing off the foreshore of this busy harbour. The direction's good, and the wind is predicted to blow all day at Beaufort Force 5, gusting Force 7 (getting all technical on you - gusting 30 plus knots, is what the forecasters mean). We'll sail on today. I say this as if it were something normal instead of something momentous. Enki will shake out her sails, something she's yet to do.

We didn't leave Port Napoleon on Wednesday after all. The weather turned very weird overnight, and we stayed put for another two days. We'd said our goodbyes on Tuesday evening, taking Markus and his family, Ori, Dave and Melinda out to dinner at The Other Boatyard, Navy Services. That was a good last night in Port Napoleon, but when the weather closes in, it's foolish to leave just because you've said your goodbyes.

Yesterday was the day to go. The wind turned from the south-east to north, such wind as there was in the opaque early morning, and we motored out through the channel into the Gulf of Fos. It's a tricky bit of water.We weren't relaxed, not at all. 

The masts of this ketch (below) are an unsettling reminder of what happens when you miss the north cardinal mark which alerts mariners to the shifting sandbank at the entrance to the dredged channel.

 

The wind never came in yesterday. so we gave Enki's big Volvo engine a 60-mile introductory run all the way along the coast to Toulon. It performed faultlessly. Enki plowed through the swell set up by the day before's south-easterly blow at an astonishing 7.5 knots, and even more as we raced to make six o'clock closing time at the Darse Vieille marina. And here we are. On the way, at last. We're pretty happy about that, as you can imagine. 

 

Silver linings

I won't let myself feel nostalgic for the Josephine cafe, but there are some things to remember kindly - the twangy, rat-a-tat chatter of the girls behind the bar, a reliable supply of baguettes baked in-house, my daily dose of espresso, served with a tiny sugary biscuit on the side, and a table at which to sit while my load of washing goes through its paces in the laundromat next door. Tomorrow, the weather gods and other random forces permitting, we'll leave the Josephine and Port Napoleon behind us.

This is how the mistral came in the night before last - with a brilliant sky to the north-west. It's been blowing hard since early yesterday but is predicted to die later this afternoon, allowing us to lift the dinghy. Melinda, marvellous woman, is busy again with needle and thread, constructing padded sleeves to protect the dinghy's topsides from pressure exerted downwards by the sharp steel undersides of the davit arms.

Dave and I are consulting a range of weather sites, and if we're truthful, neither of us have a clue. Paul, the electrician, dropped by this morning and told of being in Monaco yesterday  on a 50 m yacht which was dragging its anchor under the assault of a storm which arrived from the south-west. Monaco, we often hear, doesn't tolerate badly-behaved wind, by royal decree. Someone's getting their instructions muddled up there.

For the past week or so, the cockpit of Enki has been a very sociable place in the evening. Markus and Ori are regulars, and last night Sylvain dropped by for a glass of rose (put an accent on the e, please). Provencal rose is a fine drink, and we'll be sorry to leave that behind. This particular brew comes from the vineyard of an Englishman who owns Elena, a classic 55 m yacht on which Ori crewed for a couple of years. He puts it in square-bottomed bottles for more secure stowage in the floating cellar.

We'll be sorry to leave the lovely Ori behind too. She's still two or three weeks away from being able to leave Port Napoleon on the classy racing machine she's been bringing back to life since last summer, when we first met her here.  Nausicaa is 39 foot Swan, a Ron Holland design built in 1977, owned by a lawyer who lives in Nice and has employed Ori to skipper her. Ori has run the gauntlet of Port Napoleon's frustrations, as we have, but she's done it alone. She's a gutsy girl, Israeli by nationality but of the sea by choice, not afraid to show her vulnerability but also not prepared to walk away from such a prize. In a month, she'll be sailing Nausicaa down the west coast of Corsica. She hangs onto that on dark days, and she never quite forgets how to laugh.

The washing cycle's well and truly finished. The lunch crowd is arriving at the Josephine and I've overstayed my welcome. Time to pay the bill and get out of here.

When you forget how to laugh

I'm not sure how I'll remember these weeks at Port Napoleon, or if I'll want to remember them. I think not. It's a month today since we left Sydney, and last night I told Alex I didn't know if I was cut out for the boating life. I love sailing, I love living on a boat, I said, but everything's coming back to me now. The boating life is more about keeping your boat afloat than it is about enjoying being afloat. It's about waiting around in marinas for weeks that turn into months while your stomach is eaten out with anxiety and frustration, and your spirits curdled by fist-banging impotence. It demands a different kind of temperament from mine. I was fragile last night. I almost lost it.

Alex at work on Enki's freshwater pump

I could blame the malicious wind for my ill-temper, but in this part of the Mediterranean, called the Golfe de Lion, gales are as commonplace as floods in Queensland and fires in Victoria. Or I could blame the month of May. We were going yet into another long weekend (today is a public holiday, so Friday is "the bridge" and then, of course, the weekend...). Or I could blame the tradies. We hadn't seen anyone all week. No progress on the davits, the engine and generator service, the deck cleats. And still no mast, though the news from Marcus was that the replacement rigging had arrived.

Market morning in Port Saint Louis du Rhone

Or I could blame the boat herself - for being a boat. After the light relief of the market in Port Saint Louis yesterday morning, Alex and Dave went flat out - literally - for the best part of eight hours replacing the pump which supplies us with fresh water.  It had burned out overnight. At the same time, they continued their battle with the watermaker, which as it turns out, needs a part which is unavailable in the boatyard. Those jobs weren't even on the list when the day began.

But really, is there something else at work here?

This morning, we were all up early,  primed to have Enki around at the dock by 10 am. The wind had dropped, and though it was cold enough (I'm wearing three layers today), the sky was blue. We had water coming out of the taps again, and the prospect of a mast. We even allowed ourselves to believe that Matthew would show up to make a start on the engine and the deck cleats. Breakfast in the cockpit was much happier than dinner the night before.

At 9 am, Markus rang to ask Alex to come and look at the mast.  The call felt ominous, and yes, when Alex returned, the news was bad. Enki wouldn't be getting her mast in today. The stays, which last week were too short, were now too long. Embarrassing for the rigger, but for us, mortifying. France is more or less closed until Monday.  Enki has 14 mm stainless steel stays. There is no-one in Port Saint Louis with a machine which is big enough to effect the change needed to shorten them (I write this in a convoluted way because I'm wobbly on the technical term - to swage. Can I use it properly? I'm unsure). There's a chance that someone in a big marina in Cannes may be able to help between now and Monday. If so, we'll drive the offending stays there ourselves.

Matthew and Alex fixing the deck cleats

We will leave Port Napoleon before June arrives. I tell myself this. Alex tells himself this. These trials which are so large in our minds now are insignificant in the scheme of things. We know this. But we are human. Our responses cannot be moderated as easily as we'd like. We lose it, even the coolest of us. Perhaps one day we'll be able to laugh when someone mentions Port Napoleon. Or perhaps will we choose to forget this wasteland at the mouth of the Rhone.

Mistral madness

"It's dusty, all dusty here," my table companion says. I know. This wind, this wicked mistral, is insane.  My computer will hate me, but I need signal. There's none on the boat. There are seven of us sitting at the row of tables outside the shut-up Josephine cafe, staring at our screens, shivering, each willing more wifi to come our way.

Down on the pontoon, it's a crazy house, the lighter boats dancing around in their pens, masts tipped like crooked pencils, halyards angrily knocking against masts. I haven't seen Scurvy today. She's ship's kitten on the Canadian boat alongside us. D.W. Crow is a sturdy little North Atlantic vessel, also de-masted, but in this instance by her owners' choice. Bob, Martha and Scurvy are heading up the canals, bound for the Black Sea.

We are four now on Enki. We picked up David and Melinda Gunn from Avignon on Friday.

They're friends we met in a marina on the Queensland coast towards the end of our first season cruising. They've parked their lovely wooden yacht Sassoon in a marina in Malaysia, and are going to sail with us in the Med for as long as it works. At the moment, it's working just fine, though you'd hardly call this sailing. Today, Dave and Alex fixed the life raft to the deck (as always, Murphy made an appearance), and Dave seems to have fixed the leak in the fresh water system.  Bravo!

Melinda is custom-manufacturing a mosquito net to cover the companionway. Before the mistral came, we wondered if we'd get out of here alive - the invasion of gigantic mosquitoes at dusk has been terrifying since the weather has turned warm. Melinda has made a similar net for Sassoon. She says she likes to sew. I'm not complaining.

My role, as ever, is somewhat undefined, since my practical skills really don't amount to much outside the galley. I tell myself that my on-line RYA yachtmaster course is bound to bear fruit one day, but every problem involving tidal calculations in secondary ports sends me straight back to the agony of sixth form mathematics.

My brain hurts after two or three hours wrangling with charts, almanac and Portland plotter, but then I look up at Melinda in the cockpit with her nifty needle, and hear Dave and Alex hitting a submerged aluminium brace through the teak with the electric drill, and I stay put.

I am by nature a swot. I will make a place for myself here at the nav station, if it kills me..

PS to my beautiful children, and my own mother - thanks so much for your messages today. Guess who forgot to factor Mother's Day into her calculations? Never too late to catch the celebratory tide....

On the first day of May

There are dismal days, like yesterday, when all that's asked of you is a smallish dollop of stamina and a side serve of faith, and you struggle to come up with much of either. Too many people are telling you non. Too few people recognise your face. Rain cancels Enki's anti-fouling date, and then the man who's got her prop, not to mention an unassembled set of davits, in his workshop phones to say he's just home from hospital.  He and his wife drove into a ditch on their way back from a wedding on Sunday morning. He's not asking for sympathy, simply letting Alex know he's out of action for the minute.

But then comes today and everything again seems possible. The sky is blue. There's a warm wind blowing in from Africa.  From our balcony I see a sail half-hoisted - a beautiful sight on the first day of spring. Even more remarkable than the weather's about-face is the presence of not one but several men working on our boat. On May Day.

Matthew moves his bruised torso cautiously (he blames the airbags) but there he is, up on the ladder at the stern, discussing the placement of the davits with Silvain, the charming but laggardly stainless-steel man.

And there's Paul inside the boat, solving the endless wiring problems put to him by his offsider with the stiff back (oh, did I mention the back before?). Under the boat there's yet another man, in overalls, pushing a roller. Bliss. He finishes the job by 4 pm, and Enki has a new blue coat of anti-foul paint.

While I wasn't looking today, Alex hung a lamp of exceptional elegance above the saloon table (a brave decision - just don't look beneath it). We've found a place above the switchboard for the framed print of Tawharanui,  one of my most favourite New Zealand beaches.

 Souvenirs of home, both of them, though the picture has always belonged on boats. We first hung it on Andiamo, the older model HR42 which Alex sold in 2009; then in the saloon of the lovely Kukka; and now here it is aboard Enki, much the biggest and most complex of our three boats but still recognisably related to her predecessors. May we sail with Enki, and the print, into New Zealand waters in the not too distant future, I say to myself. 

The due date

It came to me this morning. This feels like the last week of pregnancy when a) everything seems to go into slow motion and b) you start to wonder why you haven't been scared before. There's no going back. The birth/launch of Enki is scheduled for next Thursday, May 3, at 10 am, and if there are whitecaps on the Rhone,  as there are today, we'll deal with those too.

The supermarket was selling potted lily-of-the-valley plants today. I missed the clue. Tuesday is May 1 which makes this a four-day weekend (the public holiday came as news to me over the loudspeaker as I cruised the aisles - the supermarket will be closed on Tuesday). That means the batteries won't be here until Wednesday. The French call it "making the bridge" - taking Monday off. Everyone will do it, or try to.

There's a southeasterly wind howling through the yard now, so we've lost the polar chill.  Families have begun arriving in station wagons with northern European number plates, luggage pressed up hard against all rear windows. Flashy Italian and German sports cars are appearing in the car park too, with a different kind of driver.

There are some very big and expensive boats here. I washed down Enki's mast this afternoon with a superyacht from Cowes looming over me. She's been in the shed for 18 months, Marcus tells me, while her three owners squabble over the cost of fixing her up. The quotes have come in at between $800,000 and a million dollars. Or was that euros? Either way, she's a rich man's obsession.

All boats are obsessions, really, even when they're as small as this little blue thing, tucked in between "serious" cruising yachts.  She's something like 22 feet long. Her owner lives aboard her year round, in the yard (there was a light snowfall this year in Port Napoleon). Brian's a little guy, useful for crawling into tight spaces, who works for the shipwrights in the green shed next to the boat. He loves boats, but he doesn't seem too fussed about whether or not they're in the water.

There are quite a few people like that at Port Napoleon. That's why getting the boat launched needs to be our obsession.

Dragging the chain

Who's in a hurry to go sailing? Not me. Too cold for a Sydney softie. A demented icy-fingered wind has been raging through the boatyard since our arrival, making a mockery of sporting intentions. In town this morning for the weekly market, I spotted hands of wisteria falling over a wall, about to burst into flower. At home, the wisteria comes out around the time of Freddy's birthday in mid-September. Season for season, that makes it still early to be out on the water, I figured, conveniently forgetting the plan is to live on the boat year round.

A new Rocna anchor was delivered yesterday - 40 kg of galvanised steel for us to throw onto the ocean floor.  That should hold.  The anchor is a big ticket item. I struggle to think of the small ones. We've  made a decision on the dinghy and life raft. Batteries are next. At the start of the season, it's as much about availability as price. "Life's a game," Alex says, hanging up on Frank in Antibes. In November Frank was competitive on battery price; now he's not. Alex is a born trader, energised by commerce.

French customs on the other hand are reliably deadening. Four boxes of our personal effects and spare parts are stopped in their tracks in Marseilles.  A familiar story. By rights it should have a happy ending, but there's so often a twist in the tail with les douanes.

In the yard, Alex is snapping at heels, and commitments are being made. The ubiquitous Berry family starts work again tomorrow on Enki's mechanical and other moving parts, and Paul the electrician promises he'll be on the boat this weekend (he's a refugee from Queensland). We've booked Enki in for anti-fouling - yes, someone else is going to paint her bottom. Alex's decision. Call it spinal maintenance.

Markus the rigger is ready to go too. Tomorrow we'll clean up the mast which has been in the shed all winter. We're treating Enki to new standing rigging i.e. all the stuff that holds up her mast. She's been around the world once on the existing rig. It may be good enough to go the distance again, but then again, it may not. We're playing it safe. House policy.

Today, as I mentioned, was market day in Port Saint Louis du Rhone. There's nothing not to like about fresh produce in France, but it does pay to be awake when you are buying. We were at the market early, before many of the stallholders had finished setting up. The fishmonger was not yet ready for customers so I went around to the butcher's van and bought two steaks for dinner, the best he had. The meat looked a little different from what I'm used to, but often food does in France, and usually it tastes better too. Only after he'd cut and wrapped my meat did I glance up at the sign behind him. Even if I couldn't read French, my stomach would have somersaulted. I'd clearly bought meat from a horse butcher. 

I can't eat horse meat. I don't know why. It's irrational. I eat pig, and pigs are intelligent animals. I'm not especially an especially squeamish carnivore. I love calf's liver. I've eaten sheep brains (standard fare in my New Zealand childhood). I like tongue - I ordered it recently at a tapas bar in Sydney, and the taste brought back good memories of my mother's tongue press. But horse...how do they grow horses for slaughter anyway? Like cows and sheep and goats? Or do they kill their working animals, like laying hens which are passed their best? I can't imagine it, but then again, there's a lot I can't imagine, which is why it's a good thing for homebodies like me to travel often and for long periods. I'm not sure I need to eat horsemeat to broaden my mind but buying it got me thinking. I went back to the fishmonger. 

Mind the bumps

My inner housewife breaks out....again

I won't pretend we've had a smooth entry into Port Napoleon. For a couple of days we've been glaring at each other, like cats with their fur blown the wrong way. For me, the diagnosis is simple - like a cat, I hate leaving home, and for a while afterwards I'm tender to the touch, scratchy even. Eventually I adjust. Today is better than yesterday. We've been pottering on Enki, I making small corners of order in places I understand (first, the galley, needless to say), and Alex contemplating the enormity of the chaos both below and above decks (Enki has no mast... and that's the manageable part). He's been printing labels (shower drain, watermaker out) on his nifty label-making machine. I think that helps.

Thinking about which engine spares he needs

He's been pretty disappointed to discover how much work hasn't been done since he left Enki in the hands of the Port Napoleon tradies at the beginning of December. So much for the slow months.  Promises, promises....This place runs on them. The regimental lines of giant wind generators which are such a striking feature of the mouth-of-the-Rhone landscape - the mistral doesn't blow for nothing - suggest that the south of France is a go-ahead, efficient, pacy kind of place. It isn't. 

More mussels than you can eat at the Josephine cafe

Today's Sunday. Nothing happens on a Sunday, which when you've become used to commerce never sleeping brings you up short.  I can get used to Sunday being quiet (in my childhood, nothing happened on Sunday  - nor on Saturday for that matter). The trouble is that not a lot happens on other days of the week either. The English-speaking world's angst over work/life balance simply isn't an issue here. It's all about life. Isn't that why people want to spend a year in Provence? 

We'll come right. We'll stop worrying about how to recharge our iPad on a website which has been down since this morning. We'll stop expecting Paul the electrician to reply to Alex's 8.45 am text message (on a Sunday?). We might consider closing the jobs list and figuring what we can leave port without (there's always Turkey). We'll slow down. We'll start noticing the weather, over and above the fact that the wind never stops howling and another 5 degrees of heat would go down well. We'll start talking about the places we want to go in this boat of ours. I'll order the cruising pilots today. I think we can do better than a 1993 guide to Turkish waters (was that really how long ago Alex began planning this trip?). But then again, I could just read a book. This apartment is really very comfortable, and unlike Enki, it doesn't need a thing doing to it. 

For relaxation, he washes dishes