Showing posts with label skippered charter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label skippered charter. Show all posts

A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters - Part Four: Charterers

Charterers who are still friends.
A yacht, however roomy, demands a certain amount of tolerance from people who are flung together in such a small space. It says a lot for the essential good nature of sailors that most of the people who chartered Simba were pleasant and interesting. The quartet of people on the left (that's me in the very middle with the gigantic sunglasses) became - and remained - friends, especially the couple on the right, Frank and Anne Mapes of Millport. If you've ever had the good fortune to visit the lovely little isle of Cumbrae, off the west coast of Scotland, and cycle round it, there's a fair chance that you'll have hired your bike from 'Mapes of Millport' - a wonderful cycle hire and old fashioned toy shop in the middle of the town. The couple on the left (with Barbara's head obscured by the boom) are their friends, potter Barbara Davidson and her husband Brian, of Larbert pottery fame.

They spent a fortnight aboard Simba and we divided the time between sightseeing on Tenerife, and sailing to La Palma and La Gomera. Sometimes they would eat out - often inviting us to join them - sometimes we would cater for them aboard the boat - with quite a lot of the cooking done by yours truly, a fact which still amazes me in retrospect. Of late, I've tended to subscribe to the Deborah Meaden school of catering. She once said on the television programme, Dragons Den, and much to the amazed disbelief of the other dragons, that she 'didn't cook.' And I thought, yes, I could live with that. But back then, I was young and energetic and didn't much mind catering. Or not in the Canaries with its abundance of fresh fruit and vegetables and wonderful seafood, anyway!

San Sebastian, La Gomera. The governor's tower, where Beatriz de Bobadilla lived, on the right. 
Two incidents helped to cement our friendship. The two couples had paid for a skippered, catered charter which meant that we were to sail wherever they wanted to go within reason and on the advice of the skipper who always has the last word, for reasons of safety. But a day or two before they arrived, we realized to our horror that the boat's account, which was meant to be topped up by the company in Scotland, hadn't received any money for a long time. Frantic phone calls ensued and money was promised. It didn't come. The reasons why were too complicated to go into here but it's always a hazard for yacht skippers working a long way from the parent company. The fact remained that we had four people arriving for a two week holiday, and we had nothing but the boat and - given that Alan wasn't exactly handsomely paid and I wasn't paid at all - a tiny amount of our own cash in the bank.

Panic.

Alan did the only thing possible, took Frank to one side, and explained the situation. To his eternal credit, Frank reassured us that it wasn't our fault, financed the whole thing, and said, 'Don't worry about it. I'll make sure I get my money when I get back to Scotland. And believe me, I'll make sure this kind of thing doesn't happen to you again.' He was as good as his word.

The second incident involved our first proper visit to the beautiful island of La Gomera, although Alan had sailed there before to top up with their excellent water. High on the hill above San Sebastian, the port and main town of La Gomera, you can just make out that there is a large statue standing on a hill. Alan's boss back in Scotland, who had spent a little time in the Canaries, assured us that this was a statue of Christopher Columbus, pointing west. Now Columbus did visit La Gomera, and is even reputed to have had an affair with the wife of the governor, the Princess Beatriz de Bobadilla, of savage repute, before heading off to the Americas. So it seemed perfectly feasible that a statue would have been erected to him.

Alarming cactuses and starry tabaiba bushes.

Feeling energetic one day, we and our four charterers decided that we would hike up the hill to pay our respects to Columbus. It was a longish climb up a steep hill. We managed to find our way out of town and passed by small houses, asking various people who were sitting outside in the sun, watching the world - and the visitors - go by, if this was the right way to the statue of Cristobal Colon. This is, of course, the Spanish name for Columbus and we were quite pleased with ourselves for knowing it.

Now the inhabitants of La Gomera are deeply, instinctively polite and kindly. So they all smiled at us, and nodded vigorously. Although we were aware of a certain puzzlement, nevertheless. You know what it's like when you think somebody's a bit odd, but don't really want them to know you think so, because it would seem rude? Well, that. We soon left the houses behind and hauled ourselves up the hill, past prickly pears and monumental cactuses and starry tabaiba bushes, closer and closer to the big statue, looking west.

Except that it wasn't Christopher Columbus at all. It was Jesus Christ, with a crown of light bulbs for stars, blessing the harbour. Some of his fingers had been damaged, which made it look - from a distance - as though he might well be pointing west. Not only had Alan's boss been just a little remiss in the matter of payments into the boat's account - he had also told a few porky pies about climbing to the top of this hill. We did the only thing possible, laughed a lot, sat in the sun for a while enjoying the stunning views, and then headed back to the boat for a few beers.


Not Columbus after all.















A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters - Part Three: Settling In



Simba lay rocking gently at anchor in Los Cristianos Bay. It was January. The sun was shining, the air was soft and warm and I was unpacking my bag and stowing away my kit in the tiny amount of cupboard space allocated to me.

Simba was by any standards a roomy boat, with a huge saloon and three cabins. Naturally, the two biggest and best cabins, each with a double bunk that was more like a double bed and its own large en suite shower, were reserved for the customers. Sometimes they were paying customers who chartered the boat from the company which owned it. Sometimes they were guests of the director, back in Scotland. A lot of the time we had the catamaran completely to ourselves. The skipper's cabin was smaller, but not uncomfortably so. And there was a toilet and shower next door, for our own use.

It was surprisingly easy to slip into the rhythm of living aboard, even for a fair weather sailor like me. Especially for a fair weather sailor like me. But I have to confess, I was still happiest sitting at anchor in Los Cristianos bay and watching the constant small procession of activities of this busy but essentially laid back port passing me by - as well as reading and writing. I did a lot of writing.

When we had visitors, we had to sail, which made my husband very happy.

It made me very sick.

I made several interesting discoveries on those voyages. One was that seasickness medication doesn't agree with me. The second discovery was that seasickness does eventually go away. It took me two weeks. (I counted every miserable day!) After two weeks spent aboard, sailing between islands, being literally prostrate with sickness, unable to even sit up without feeling dizzy and disorientated, it quite suddenly ceased. After that almost nothing would have made me sick. As anyone who has sailed will know, if you've been on a boat for a few hours, when you get off the boat, you can still feel the land moving - a very curious sensation. After the seasickness disappeared, this effect disappeared too. I was comfortable at sea and on land. But it took two weeks and the effect only lasts while you're living on board. If I were to do it all again, I'd have to go through the same uncomfortable process.

Simba was one of the biggest, flashiest and most beautiful yachts in the harbour so it wasn't surprising that she attracted a lot of attention. My husband was young and fit and - having spent most of the winter so far working aboard in the sunshine - looking particularly bronzed and attractive. I took a sort of perverse pleasure in stationing myself on the seaward side of the deck. Girls would hire pedalos in Los Cristianos and - assuming that Alan was alone on board - pedal out in the hopes of chatting up this 'rich' man with the fancy boat. They would circumnavigate Simba only to find me waving at them from the other side, whereupon they would lose interest and target another yacht and yachtsman.

We went ashore for provisions most days, in the big dinghy, leaving it tied up against the low wall of the slip. Sometimes we used an engine and sometimes we rowed, heading for the supermercado and then ferrying everything back to Simba.

When you're living on board a boat, everything takes time. When you're living on board a boat in the sun, you don't really mind. There are some things to remember though. Most of all, you have to remember not to block the sea toilets, being very careful at all times what you put down them. (Unblocking them is a hideous job for obvious reasons.) And you have to be careful never to waste water, since - even aboard a boat with big tanks - refilling them can be problematic. You become, by default, environmentally friendly.

There can be few things more irritating and alarming, incidentally, than hearing your latest charterers taking a ten or fifteen minute shower, even when they have been tactfully reminded that water is a finite resource. It doesn't happen with experienced sailors - but it sure happens with the other kind.  I got used to taking a pretty good shower using a bucket of clean water. A bucket and a half meant that I could wash my hair and do a bit of washing at the same time. Fortunately, the washing dried within a couple of hours when festooned about the boat like a curious collection of flags.


Water is at a premium in the Canaries, especially in this hot southern part of Tenerife. And it isn't very drinkable so you have to treat it or boil it. Or treat it and boil it. On the other hand, the water on the island of La Gomera is very good: fresh and sweet and clean. So we used to sail to La Gomera quite often. It proved to be one of the most magical places on earth. I knew I was going to have to write about it. And - eventually - that's what I did.


A Tale of Two Canary Island Winters - Part Two: Simba

So there I was, on a flight to the Canary island of Tenerife, joining my husband aboard a 50 foot catamaran called Simba, moored in Los Cristianos Bay. Packing had been a challenge. Simba was a big boat but as anyone who sails knows, space on board is always limited and I was going to be there for a few months. Fortunately, the weather was predictably good, so shorts, tops and pretty cotton skirts were the order of the day.

My husband Alan is a very experienced professional sailor which is more than can be said for me. He had worked as a trawler skipper for some years and then as a commercial diver off the West Coast of Scotland. Later, he ran a small business with his brother-in-law, David, diving for clams. Then, he did his RYA training and eventually became a yacht charter skipper as well as spending some time teaching sailing for the Scottish National Watersports Centre in Largs.

When we first met, he and David had also built a small sailing boat called Striker II  (The first Striker had been the clam boat) which they kept in Troon and sailed for pleasure. It was aboard this little yacht that I had my first taste of sailing.
I wasn't a natural. And it wasn't very pleasant.

The West of Scotland waters are beautiful, but the weather is uncertain. I was hideously seasick. My husband, on the other hand, has never been seasick in his life, so doesn't know how horrible it can be; not just the sickness but the general malaise, the intense depression, the awful disorientation. You begin by fearing the boat will sink, start to realize that you wouldn't care if it did and finally you really wish it would. And soon. The only way I could cope with it, when it was at its most intense and debilitating, was by lying flat on my back. As soon as we were in quiet waters, I was fine. Alan may not have been seasick, but he was quite used to people being sick on him. You can't work as a yacht charter skipper for any length of time without people being sick on your shoes and they frequently were.

There's an interesting fact about seasickness. It does go away. Eventually. Of which more in a future post.
Striker II was a yacht called a Seawitch and she was tiny. She would sleep four at a pinch, but you had to know each other very, very well. Intimately. We had a few uncomfortable but frankly hilarious trips - usually to the Isle of Arran for the weekend -  four of us together, myself, my husband, his sister Jackie and her husband David. The toilet facilities involved a plastic bucket, situated under the bunk where Alan and I slept. I still remember Jackie, wrestling with it in the middle of a very rough night in Lamlash Bay - victims of the notorious Lamlash Lop - declaring that this would be her 'last sea voyage ever!' Alan had crewed on and sailed much bigger boats, but even he, presented with the opportunity to skipper a 50 foot catamaran, had to pause for thought. Well, he paused for a few minutes anyway. And Simba was a big strong boat, for which he was mightily glad, as they battled through hurricane force winds on the way south. I was just glad I'd elected to fly instead.

I spent my first married Christmas back with my parents, but then I flew south in early January of 1986. I had never been to the Canaries before. I still remember the soft warmth of the air that hit me as I stepped off the plane into the Tenerife evening. The force of contrast with the wintry Scotland I had just left was acute and enticing. Alan, alone on the boat, had suggested that I get a taxi to the Gomera Ferry Terminal where he could pick me up on the dinghy and ferry me over to Simba which lay at anchor in the bay.That was my first problem. The last ferry of the day to the beautiful island of La Gomera had left (which was why Alan had suggested that he could pick me up from there) but the lovely, concerned Spanish taxi driver didn't want to drop a young woman off there all alone. He kept trying to take me to a hotel instead! With the help of a phrase book, and a few words of Spanish, I managed to persuade him that my husband was a sailor and I was joining a yacht. To be perfectly honest, I may have said to him that my husband was a yacht, but it did the trick. And there she was, our  home for the next few months: Simba.
She was nothing like Striker II.

A saloon big enough to hold a party in!
She was huge. Catamarans (unless they are stripped out racing catamarans) have a lot of internal space and this one was no exception. You could, and we sometimes did, hold a party in her saloon. She had two big master cabins, a captain's cabin, three showers and lavatories, a (disappointingly rather small) galley and that big, comfortable saloon. She lay at anchor in Los Cristianos Bay, amid a cluster of other, interesting yachts, big and small. She was one of the most beautiful vessels in the bay. The air was full of that fabulous Canary Isles mixture of sea air and flowers with a little hint of diesel.
I felt as though the birthday of my life had come.