Swallows & Amazons for the Over Sixties – Chapter 1
It’s now Wednesday 25th June, we are in Honfleur at the mouth of the River Seine. A beautiful fishing village with good facilites, but a difficult lock for only two up on a 40 ft yacht. Trouble is you don’t know that until you get into the lock, and by the time you have missed the mooring points, broadsided the boat in the lock with a whole load of foreign trippers on their way home from a day trip up the River looking on with much amusement – it’s far too late. Anyway they took us alongside and I recovered my cool in time to have a few words with some of the Americans on board the tripper ship. We apparently provided much needed entertainment! Nothing too different there then.
We had an uneventful channel crossing, motoring all the way except for about 2 hours out of the 19 hours it took us to do the trip from Southampton to Le Havre. We arrived at 0130 on Tuesday morning, got drunk and went to bed. Apart from me on board, there was also Tony (hidden weapon with fluent French that keeps me out of trouble with the locals) and Miles (whose French is better than mine). Neither Miles or I need to speak it though because it’s very hard to practise when you have a fluent French speaker on board – so we just left it to him…..
In the middle of the channel, the self-steering gear decided to go off on one. I struggled with the controls to reboot (seems to work some of the time with my pc, so thought it might help with the steering gear). After about 15 minutes messing about trying to get it to work, the ever practical Miles asked me where the fluxgate compass was located. I made a couple of suggestions, but despite that, Miles eventually found what we think was the control box under a seat in the main cabin. He then removed the harness lines from that locker and the steering gear worked fine! Stainless steel fittings to the harnesses don’t help the compass! I had moved them from one locker to another to make room for something else before we left! So amid much ‘taking the piss’ I had to take responsibility for the first blunder on board! Talk about being blonde – and of course the two blokes on board made a meal out of that one for several hours.
After we recovered from our long trip, we started to ready the boat for the mast lift. Again Miles was absolutely indispensible and a great confidence builder for what lay ahead. I had never been on board when the mast had been removed before and could not believe the amount of wiring and ropes that had to be detached or wound up and separated from the boat. Miles just got on with it 3 hours later we were ready for the lift the next morning. I think we were all knackered, but I was delighted that everything had been done with so little hassle. Thank you Miles – both Tony and I enjoyed your company enormously and were very glad you came along. After we had some dinner in a restaurant near the port, Miles got on the night ferry back to Portsmouth and sanity (but not that much sanity as he comes from Hayling Island where nobody is completely sane).
Next day was spent getting the mast lifted – a fairly short experience but a stressful one for me. I found it all a bit disconcerting with the mast swinging around above my head (45ft of heavy metal). Not sure which I was more worried about – my head or the mast. Anyway it was a strange feeling somewhere between ‘oh god there’s no going back now’ and ‘hope the mast turns up in Port Napoleon on 1st September’. I am sure it is safe hands with Nigel Klitz from Boatmoves Southampton who turned up to collect it on a big trailer about two hours after it had been lifted.
The only mildly amusing incident during that day was when I got stuck in the cockpit locker. I had hooked my shorts over one of the hooks and got jammed. Might have been something to do with my size…..Anyway the crisis was soon over when Miles threatened to winch me out on the topping lift – once I had stopped weeping with laughter I managed to extract my shorts from the hook and climb out.
After topping up with fuel, Tony and I motored round to Honfleur to entertain the trippers. Once inside, we were quickly joined by Delia, Alan and Paul. Paul being a major player in convincing me I should do this trip and Alan and Delia who were so influenced by Paul that they agreed to join in the bit from Honfleur to Paris (about 4 days). Off we went for Moules et Frites and a bit of Fish Soup. Today we will do a few things on the boat, wander about Honfleur and then leave tomorrow 0630 to go up the River to Rouen which will take about nine hours.
So that’s all for the moment folks. We – the current crew – wish you well and I say a special thanks to the effort and time spent by Tony and Miles to get me this far.
Love Val
Swallows & Amazons Captain’s Log - 25 June 2009