L'Ametlla. The afternoon.

The breezed had stiffen to a point where it actually cooled rather than just shifting heat around as it had during the morning. Much revived by coffee and on a wave of post prandial optimism I raised the sails thinking that I could sail off the quay and down the narrow avenue between moored craft without being backwinded or becoming fouled on stern lines. Due to a judicious and rapid raising of the centre board OB just weathered the final Beneteau, avoiding submerged lines—a favourable presence was looking out for me.

Again the flock of white sails drifted out of port as onlookers, surprised by the spectacle, waved. The breeze was still coming from the east and the return would be all upwind. Many boats fired up their engines and tighten their sheets to motor-sail home. I refused a tow—Onawind Blue behaves badly on a lead—and set off close hauled for the lighthouse on El Fangar. I remembered that OB makes better progress upwind if I take short tacks. On long boards the inevitable lapses of concentration combine to produce a loss of ground to windward.

With 12 knots of breeze OB sailed smartly at 4 knots. I tacked up to Cape Roig, from there I could cover the remaining 4 miles on one easy board. It was a beautiful sail. White caps rushed by and spray flew over OB's bow keeping me deliciously cool. Terns dived sharply into the water raising white plumes, miraclously taking flight almost from underwater with small fry glinting silver in their beaks. Everything felt right with the world, OB flowing over the sea and the sea, in its way, flowing through me.

L'Ametlla appeared as a cement wart on a rusty rock and pine green coast against a backdrop of misty mountains, underlined with broad brush strokes of Mediterranean blues. When enough sea has flowed in you start to see the world as if it were a watercolour.

The wind failed quite abrubtly, suddenly choked by the intense afternoon heat. I took up the oars and rowed the final half mile, tieing up alongside the other boats with my palms nicely burning. I stepped onto the quay and a round of applause went up from the other sailors as they honoured Onawind Blue and her fine abilities, she was, after all, the only boat to arrive without engine power.  

L'Ametlla. Photos

My good friend Joan Sol has sent me some fantastic photos of Onawind Blue as she sailed south to l'Ampolla on a light breeze with her mizzen staysail set and drawing. 

The centreboard is half raised as she's sailing broad. Many thanks to Joan for documenting the event so beautifully, you can see more of his photos here. 

L'Ametlla de Mar. The morning.

I've been invited to the lateen sailing day at L'Ametlla de Mar every year for the past five and have always regarded my failure to attend as evidence of the insipid nature of my sailing credentials. What sailor with salt in their veins would let such an opportunity go by, five consecutive times.

But even so I still didn't get there in time for Friday evening's cooking contest in which boat crews were given half a kilo of fresh tuna, a gas ring and an iron pot. They were allowed to bring any other ingredients or tools they required and apparently the results were spectacular. However, after my recent experience on the stressful side of preparing food for a wedding I was glad not to be cooking. The weekend would be about enjoying food without having to make it. But as the early morn found me in a service station examining the wheels of the boat trailer I wondered if I'd even get breakfast.

Events were due to kick off with a skippers meeting at 10:30 but before that I had to get the boat to the harbour and on the water. But I was letting my English sense of urgency and punctuality get the better of me, causing unnecessary stress and worry. I chilled, established the trailer wasn't about to dissemble despite its juddering, arrived, readied the boat, had breakfast then got OB craned on to the water and rowed over to the town with plenty of time to spare before everybody else was gathered and collected. After a 'Hello' the meeting went like this: 'Right we've got to sail down to l'Ampolla before lunch or we won't get anything to eat. Then we've got to sail back in time to attend a conference with Anna Corbella before dinner. So, down to the boats, hoist sails and we'll regroup at the entrance to l'Ampolla harbour.'

The wind was light and from the east. Each boat gradually unfurled it's wings until, a little white flock, we glided out of l'Ametlla and on to the gentle heave of a subsiding sea overlaid with a sloppy chop rebounding with irritating unpredictability from the rocky shore. Sailing large, off the wind, I raised the centre board and adjusted OB in such a way that she trickled along at 2.5 to 3 knots. This was about 0.2 knots faster than the rest of the fleet and OB slowly advanced through the boats giving me a chance to receive unintelligible snippets of good will, or impending doom, from other sailors. One phrase that I did manage to catch and pass on to other boats was that we had to get a move on as otherwise the awaiting rice ('Rice' is the generic term for paella, itself a generic term.) would be irredeemably overcooked. This was a call to arms and while others started their engines I set the mizzen staysail athwartships to present more canvas to the breeze and so accelerated by half a knot. There was no conspicuous regrouping at the harbour entrance we all just bundled in, boats crazily zigzagging as they lowered sails, crowding up to the available pontoon space in a thoroughly disorganised yet nonetheless seamanlike manner. We all hurriedly disembarked a) to avoid the rice overcooking and b) to find some shade and hence arrest our own cooking.

Gravina III 

In the lavatories where people were dousing themselves under cold-water taps I overheard one crew say that next time they'd be drinking wine instead of beer as that way they wouldn't have to pee so much. So that was reason c) for the hurry. The rice turned out not to be a generic term for paella but rather a euphemism for food itself. To wit, an utterly predictable pasta salad, which I ate with undisguised disappointment, followed by two pieces of over-marinaded meat. As I examined it I heard someone down the table pronounce that it was chicken. I asked the fisherman who was serving—he didn't know what it was, then a neighbour on my other side declared that it was turkey. I decided to try it. It was obviously pork. For all that I consider myself a creature of the sea I can tell a pig from a turkey even when it's dead and on my plate.    

With Zeewoelf to Ibiza

48 hours wasn't much notice but I was especially keen to make the journey as it coincided exactly with the dates of Onawind Blue's voyage to Ibiza in June 2009. I made some calls and packed a quick kit bag and was ready and waiting, with sun cream and sailor's knife, at the given time.

The boat, Zeewoelf, was forged in the North sea fishery. Tied up in a tidy marina on the Mediterranean shore she looked as conspicuous as an armored car in a prim city car park. Since retiring from fishing she'd been gutted and refitted and her rugged exterior belied the soft furnishing below. At 80ft and of hulking steel this couldn't have been a more different vessel from my small craft.

The boat had been across the Atlantic twice so nobody was in doubt that she could handle the weather on a 24 hour trip from Barcelona to Formentera. There were nine of us, the owner Jean Martial with whom I've sailed many times in Capitaine Ulysse, and a group of his friends. We embarked at midday but the wind, blowing 16 knots straight into the harbour mouth, kept us at the dock until sundown. I familiarised myself with her mooring lines and other gear and when the wind abated Jean Martial reversed her smartly off the quay, cranked the wheel over and engaged forward. There was no rush to tidy lines and gather in fenders as Martial likes to leave everything ready is case there's an immediate problem, necessitating a rapid to return to port. This is an old habit of his which has obviously proved its worth. We cleared the decks in the last of the daylight and those not interested in navigation went below.

Personally I found it almost impossible to leave the bridge. I needed to look at the sea, to watch for fishing buoys and the lights of other boats. And I couldn't deny that my eyes were especially tuned to seek out some madman like myself in a small sailing boat with nothing but a torch to shine on the sails, if the torch hadn't already recevieved a soaking.

Zeewoelf was set to auto pilot as soon as we cleared the port. Out of the traffic of Barcelona and I adjusted course to 194º, not with the wheel but with a little knob that clicked round degree by degree. Shortly I found myself alone. Jean Martial doesn't employ a watch system you simply stay up until you're tired and then go and wake someone else. I like this laissez-faire idea though in practice I find it hard to stop sailing and hard to rouse someone else from slumber. And so I stood staring at a screen, matching boats to their corresponding blobs and getting freaked out by the sheer wealth of stuff that was visible to the radar though out on deck everything was black. I had expected Zeewoelf to plough through anything but she was uncomfortable with the short frequency of the Mediterranean chop and every now and then beat the rise of her bilge on the water with a great clang that rang from stem to stern.

After a nap, in which the sea calmed, I was back in the wheelhouse before dawn, worried that I might miss something, particularly that loony in a small boat. But as dawn cracked open the day so the worries of the night flew back over the horizon. With the appearance of the passengers with jugs of orange juice and coffee the atmosphere returned to that of a chic hotel that just happened to be rolling over the sea.

Tagomago Island

The sun sailed across the sky as Zeewoelf stuck doggedly to her speed and course until in the evening the north east corner of Ibiza appeared through the haze. We skirted the island of Tagomago and headed for the narrow, and very busy, gap between Ibiza and Formentera. As night fell so the instruments failed. Having become used to navigating by screen we were suddenly back to using our more ingrained if rusty senses to guide the boat to a safe anchorage. After two uncertain hours we dropped the hook in what transpired to be the ideal spot.

Square rigger Stad in Ibiza port

I jumped ship in the morning and took the ferry to Ibiza where I became embroiled in the preparations for a wedding party with 120 guests in a luxury villa overlooking the same Tagomago. Such was the intensity of the work at hand that I missed the ferry back to Formentera and the return voyage on Zeewoelf. My only worry was that there was no one to look out for small sailing boats.

Back on the road

 It took a while, a hypersensitivity to dust slowing things down, but at last Onawind Blue was ready for the water. I'd photographed all her deck gear before she was stripped to ensure that I could replace everything just so. However, those photos had disappeared from my mobile phone and I had to rely on memory, the very thing that I had outsourced to the sodding jellybone.

the final coat of varnish

Happily, in this case, memory served, synapses snapped and crackled and connections were made. With plenty of silicone on each screw the deck gear was replaced, the sails then laced to their corresponding spars, the cockpit accoutrements and comforts stashed and the whole transported to the beach, clumsily heaved and shoved over the sand from which Onawind Blue elegantly and silently entered her element.

'It's like riding a bicycle, innit?' I said to myself as I set the sails. Somehow it was necessary to vocalise each action in order to dredge up the knowledge stored in muscles remarkably smaller than the ones in which the information was first stockpiled. But that's the good thing about muscle memory: size has nothing to do with the quantity of data stored.

'Haul on the halyard, that's it, that's it, now cleat it off. All good. Loosen the topping lift. Tighten the downhaul. Good. Now...loose off the mizzen sheet, back the main sail to starboard, rudder blade to starboard too, that's right, now she's reversing and coming on to starboard tack, let the main sail across to port and sheet in, rudder to port, sheet in the mizzen, and she's off...Oh do shut up.' Quite fed up with my banter OB flew away on 8 knots of breeze. I hadn't remembered just how wonderful the sensation of briskness was. After an hour practicing points of sail, laying and weighing the anchor, reefing the sails while lying to sea anchor, lowering and furling sails all to a running commentary I faced the more difficult task of getting the boat back onto the sand and up the beach.

I have my blocks and tackle and the only other thing I need is plenty of time. Time enough to take it slowly. Ground can be covered centimetre by centimetre with no risk of damaging boat or person, just as long as there's no hurry.

Two days later I put the boat on the road trailer, finishing as it got dark, and the next morning drove to a beach just north of Tarragona. Making the most of the breakfast quiet I unloaded OB onto the sand and rolled her, on fenders, to the water. Amazingly I still had time to spare before my friend Ricardo arrived and so I slipped off for a coffee and croissant with a sea view. Motor boats and jetskis whizzed white lines back and forth across the calm blue.

Ricardo arrived and we set up his Dudley Dix 'Argie' Red Wine with a recycled aluminium mast and new tanbark sails. We launched, each to his boat, as the wind arrived and set off towards the tankers waiting off Tarragona. I found that I had to spill wind so as not to get too far ahead. By tacking as slowly as possible I managed to get OB to fall back into step. The 'Argie' is a deep, wide boat. A flat bottom and two chines rising to the stem, with a square transom. Seaworthy, easy to sail and capable of carrying up to four people.

We sailed up and down for an hour admiring each other's rigs and then I set a mizzen staysail. This is the same sail that I once tried as a jib to little effect but as a staysail it becomes OB's secret weapon. She shot off pointing high, a turn of speed that surprised me. I've had the staysail strapped to the base of the mizzen mast for a long time but had never tried it, thinking it probably wouldn't do much more then make OB gripe. However what was already good performance is enhanced with another square metre of sail cloth. Sailing so effortlessly I began yearning for the horizon, for a well-stocked, self-sufficient OB, a vaguely formed plan and no time boundaries.

The staysail

We had a fairly concrete plan though and in the early afternoon headed back to the beach where we barbecue sardines and tuna steaks. Stealing admiring glances at our boats between mouthfuls we watched the wind peter out. With the calm came a sense of mild relief. Now I could go home content in the knowledge that I hadn't wasted any of the breeze.

swimming from Red Wine

sailing with Red Wine

spilling wind

Festival of the Sea

El Carlos Barral from Calafell

Onawind Blue wasn't quite ready for the traditional sail festival at Cambrils. This was a pity as there was to be a section devoted to home-built boats (there are now five amateur-built, ply and epoxy craft on this coast) but it was also a blessing as a force 6 blew hard and I would almost certainly have found myself in difficulties.

I arrived at nine, in time for the 'sardinada' the traditional maritime breakfast of barbecued sardines piled on toast rubbed with garlic and tomato, the whole drenched in fruity olive oil and washed down with copious amounts of red wine. Nothing sets you up for the day quite like it.

Having met many old friends during this repast and feeling much feted we meandered to various bars to drink all the coffee. The wind was playing havoc with awnings and clawing at the water but our conversation and laughter rang out across the harbour.

A procession formed, led by a giant prawn and followed by a band of pipers and drummers. Aha, thought I, now will we dance the Lobster Quadrille from Alice in Wonderland, it couldn't have been more fitting.

“Will you walk a little faster?” said a whiting to a snail,

“There’s a porpoise close behind us, and he’s treading on my

tail.

See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!

They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the

dance?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the

dance?

Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, won’t you join the

dance?

And so we followed the great crustacean, not down to the shingle but to the ancient watchtower built by fishermen to spot boats in trouble in these vicious winds. Many words were spoken and many more lost to the wind, a song was sung by a man with a chillingly clear voice and a quiet fell over the crowd as we revered those that had once sailed from these shores.

The programmed 'raising of sails' was ditched but we made our way down to the boats to prepare them for a post prandial sail, weather permitting. I spent the time with my friend Bosco who initiated the Ella skiff build having built a Weekender and, even more miraculously, navigated the Catalan bureaucracy and made the boat entirely legal. A feat by any standards. He has now designed and built the Nauus 480 http://www.nauus.cat. A well convieved boat with a Welsfordesque stem, water ballast, a gunter rig and a six horse outboard in a tidy well and an overall appearance of seafriendliness and safety. Designing a boat for home construction is very new to this coast, almost unheard of in fact. But Bosco is dragging Catalonia into the 21^st century with his new yard and bright ideas. The 480 can be bought at various stages of completion though the official design and construction team have to oversee the finished work. There are plans to take the design a step further and build a larger, cabined version. But I was in the way as Bosco and his colleague, Tony, hurried to prepare the boat for its inaugural launch. I wandered off with good intentions only to be roped into sampling a few jars of craft beer.

Nauus 480

Lunch: a massive fideua (short, slim lengths of pasta cooked in a rich fish stock until the broth is fully absorbed) served by a monoglot speaker of the language 'No'. Fork'? 'No', salt? 'No', allioli? 'No', etc. There was plenty of beer however, cooling on ice. We sequestered a two-wheeled fish cart as a table and sat on crates to gorge. Then it was back to the bars to finish any coffee supplies, and, at last, to the boats.

No

Torrevisca sails in front of the town

I embarked on the lateen rigged Farigola (thyme). A genuine 6, or so, metre gem, neglected in the traditional way. 'She's a bit dry.' said the owner as I admired the view through her seams, 'I think the pump still works though.' She began behaving in the manner of a boat intent on having a quiet siesta on the sea bed, water seeping up through the bottom boards and the ship's bucket floating merrily from port to starboard and back. Then the bilge pump suddenly burped enthusiastically to life, belching brown water over the side.

We set the sail. The lateen rig halyard has a 4:1 reduction, so while one crew pulled, the other (me) struggled with miles of unsupple, salt-dry cordage, I felt like Laocoön dealing with sea serpents. This unwieldy mass satisfactorily stowed on deck I was immediately called aft to clap on to what, in a gaff rig would be the throat halyard. Being too windy outside we were to sail within the harbour, necessarily tacking every 200 metres. There are two lines that run to the forward most part of the rig, they have to be loosened so that the front end of the yard can be passed over the prow as the bow crosses the eye of the wind. Then they have to be hauled taught again. Tacking so often the work was constant and I had no chance to adjust the waistband of my jeans. But luckily the gusts came down so hard, (at one point everybody having to throw their weight to windward) that we struck the sail, before I mooned to the onlookers on the dock or had to give excuses for my lack of stamina. We continued, in a more tranquil fashion, under power.

Sant Ramon

I was handed the helm as the skipper wished to take photos. He stood on the bow while I sat in the stern and watched the water slosh around my toes. This was very pleasurable as just before leaving the house that morning I'd removed my socks thinking that I would be taken for a land animal if I turned up in such lubberly attire. Socks, forsooth! As a consequence I had rows of blisters across my toes, but this soreness was soothed by the rhythmic rising and falling of cool salty water.

Sant Pau

We puttered sedately about the port at 2 knots occasionally pulling up to the quay to take on excitable teenagers who were given their first taste of a traditional sailing vessel. 'It's entirely normal.' I replied to anxious glances at the bilge water, jamming the waterborne bucket under the bench and nonchalantly lifting a foot to examine a pruny toe.

Farigola (photo: Nuri Mariné)

All great days on the water come to an end and with the sky paling to peach I said my goodbyes and hobbled over the gravel carrying my shoes, quite the jolly tar.

Boats and the sea, recently

After Onawind Blue's little solo adventure, off on the undertow and down the beach, I've slowly been scraping away at her paintwork. It's more than two years since she had any maintenance and her decks have bubbled and flaked. Structurally she's sound although she spent too long on a trailer supported by a pair of rollers, the pressure points have left cracks on her sole but the wood is unbroken.

It has been a long time since I went out on sea with my friend Macgiver the fisherman. But when I finally got down the harbour for a visit the news on everybody's lips was that the boat had sunk. Fortunately the boat was docked at the time, although it broke its mooring lines and went to the bottom. The refloating and repairs, especially to the engine, have been expensive. Macgiver wonders if he'll have the resources to get back on the water, especially as he's now run up on a tangle of red tape. Official engineers are demanding he complies with new regulations—or some such, quite frankly I haven't understood exactly what they're demanding but the upshot is that time is tramping on and Macgiver's not making any money, although he's chomping through savings.

But the sea is in a sad way. It shows in the industry. Nobody's catching much. Two other fishermen have retired after some 40 years at sea and that leaves just three boats in the port. This in a town that 100 years ago would launch 370 boats from the beach. Meanwhile supermarkets proliferate and their fish counters are groaning, daily. The labeling is unclear and although it's easy to spot farmed fish, (because they're all the same size and weight) the provenance of other species is less clear. Feeding myself on the fruits of the sea has never been thornier.

To another boat I returned a marker buoy, that had been washed up on the beach, and was rewarded with a few fish. The fishermen went home, the truck left for Tarragona with the catch. It was just passed noon.The harbour was lifeless. I scaled and cleaned my fish on the dock, throwing the guts into the water. No hungry small fry swam up to take them and no seagull swooped down to swipe them, the offal simply sank to the bottom.

On a brighter note, work on OB is coming along. Not at the pace I could wish exactly, taunted as I am by one perfect sailing day after another. Now, however, there is less to do than before as I've allowed myself a lowering of standards which means I don't have to strip the paint from all those difficult corners. Or indeed the outside of the hull as that will remain untouched this year. It's a facelift. Just the decks, the interior and the spars will get a clean up. I'll stick with a bright gunwale and masts for the moment as I still have a tin of varnish in the cupboard, but I can see this nod to my nautical vanity going overboard fairly soon. And that'll be a good thing.