09.05.06

The Return Of The Lice, A Year Afloat And Two Months In Mainland Europe

The lice returned. Unnoticed at first, they did a quiet job at wrecking havoc in our lives once again. More shampoos, more laundry etc. Their return was almost symbolic of our experience in Europe to date and how far we have come in a year.

At about the same time last year we were one of the few boats at anchor in one of our favorite islands. As the sailing season for New England came to an end Cuttyhunk was quiet,. Sopranos, the small home made pizza place with only outside sitting, run by a Maryland school headmaster, was closed. The small unpretentious yacht club that teaches kids for a token fee was boarded. The whole place was obviously slipping into winter mode. Although we struggled through home schooling we still enjoyed the settled cooler air in the bright blue New England sky. We wanted to just stay there another week but had to move on and get the boat ready.

A year later, we are eager to leave the Spanish marina of Almerimar . We are not home schooling because the 560 USD shipping cost for the schooling material simply seemed outrageous. The wind has been strong and square against us for days and there seems to be no end in sight to how much money we are spending here nor when the wind will shift to it's seasonal pattern of westerlies.

Perhaps more poignant for us is the feeling that we traveled thousand of miles, have lived an amazing and beautiful experience to end up in the garbage can of Europe. Cénou's hulls have been smeared with oil, thousands of pieces of styrofoam and strange brown slicks decorated with all kinds of colorful garbage. Our props have been fouled by plastic bags, all in less than three hundred miles of Mediterranean "sailing".

Close to Malaga the shores are lined with enormous concrete constructions that start on the beaches and keep moving back until the barren slopes of the Sierra Nevada make it impossible to build. Inside of that concrete jungle are millions of tourists doing simply more of what they already do at home: drink and eat. At about 11 AM the tourists come out of their stupor from their previous day of drinking. They make it to the nearest of the hundreds of bars or fry on the beach. Towering above them are dozens and dozens of cranes piling on more concrete slabs for more buildings as far as the eye can see.

For us there is no getting away from this because there is no safe anchorage and the wind has been either non-existent or against us at the tune of 20 knots or more. We have to enter these tourist areas, pay the prices and wonder what we are doing there. People had warned us but my imagination could not even come close to what we are seeing.

Nor is it all that easy to do land visiting in more interesting areas. We have been moving a fair amount and there are only a few places in the Med that can handle a Catamaran for the winter, so we have to get to southern France before mid October.

Our land excursions are guided by marine weather. To give you an example. We have been stuck for seven days in a harbor that is located one hour form the closest town of any interest. We did take a bus there. As of last night we were going to rent a car because it looked like the weather would not turn in our favor until Tuesday. Now it turns out that the weather will be always against us, but that today is the time to leave because by Tuesday the wind here will be back at 20 to 30 knots against us and probably more at the cape that we need to round. So much for planning, we are leaving in two hours.

We are a long way from New England and a long ways from everything we have seen so far. Cruisers who are headed back out of the Med are telling us the prices do not get cheaper, but the anchorages more numerous and the areas more beautiful. Still, the crowds abound everywhere and therefore the local population is very often cool if not unfriendly. Putting together all this info with a sea that is simply not very easy to sail is making the Mediterranean less and less attractive to our eyes.

Amidst all this we all miss our friends back home.

All the best to everyone

Claude, Rike, Anouck and Celine