Lutine is a French lady fairy with the rather reassuring attribute of ‘you penetrate the abysses of the sea without drowning’
It was also the name of the boat that we jumped ship to – it is a 60 foot wooden restored boat which used to be owned by Lloyds of London and had won the Fastnet race twice. It is a Camper & Nicholson built boat (1954) with lovely wide wooden decks and more sails than crew. Skippered by a man born for the sea (noting an Onedin Line lookalike with Captain Baines) our first meeting was turning up on his deck with all of our luggage and some french sticks and cheese for lunch. Gob smacked wasn’t the correct phrase as he shouts ‘What the hell are all these bags? Are you in transit?’ and ‘this is a big ship but I don’t know if we have enough room for these!’. We did offer to stow them in the marina offices but his son had already kindly cleared a bunk for us to temporarily bunk them in.
Hanging from the mizzen boom I was chatting to one of the professional looking crew who admitted he had been press ganged for the day too and had only come on board 5 minutes before our dressing down, that was before he had admitted to drinking urine by mistake on another voyage. A spoon playing Irishman, a young cabin boy, another irish lad who was a Cornish graphic designer and a chap who used to live in the same street in Edinburgh as myself made up the crew complement for the race around Île-de-Bréhat, off Paimpol.
We were locked out of the dock and followed the boats to the start line, then we wooshed around and almost crossed the start line to find out that in France that is the 10 minute warning poop on the horn so quickly came about and circled in readiness. There was no stopping this boat or crew – once the race was off we were well in the front of everyone with James navigating off charts below and everyone pulling sheets and changing sails – I managed to put away the Ensign (not flown during a race) and returned it at the end and was responsible for the Mizzen Sail. We even saw a dolphin off the bow.
‘I thought you said you were sailors’, gnarled the skipper to his new crew as he barked questions at his navigator. You go 240 degrees Dad he shouted back. It was great to see a professional crew all come together and everything happen (not seamlessly, but effectively and problems routed around quickly). With the large downwind sail out we flew and it was great seeing every other boat in the race so far behind. Sadly it was only once around the island as we were all getting into the feel of the boat – the race had finished we were first (handicapping meant we were third in the race – if we had gone around again we would have been first due to increasing distance all the time with the competitors) and we anchored off a lighthouse for rest and recreation as we couldnt lock in again at Pampoil until 7 in the evening.
The anchor didn’t feel right as we were moving so it was brought up and the anchor hook appeared with a tyre attached. Paddy hung over precariously and it was unceremoniously dumped into the water. We moved a bit further on and dropped anchor again. This time when we brought it up we had a lobster pot complete with lobster and spider crabs hanging off the hook. We also had the lobster fishing boat on our port side and had to swiftly get rid of this before they attacked us. We didn’t think anyone saw us but in the bar in the evening it appeared the entire race did and our anchoring was commented on. We were anchored outside a pub but couldn’t get there – this was some circle of hell. The weather was gorgeous so we all lay around sunbathing and chatting and dozing as sea kayakers paddled past, as the huge ferry boats offloaded tourists to the pub, as a dredging boat went past and the lobster fishermen returned laying out traps.
We had to take the passage back slowly as the tidal range is huge (9 metres) so moves fast and rises rapidly but Lutine’s draught was 9 feet so the depth gauge was nervously beeping. Locking in was with some Breton boat who almost decapitated a photographer in a rib in front of him, and we were all photographed by a lock side full of tourists as Breton dancing went on and pipes played. We disembarked with all of our luggage but with an invite to the race to Guernsey the next day which we gratefully accepted.
We all booked into a hotel at the marina side which in retrospect was a mistake thanks to the Breton festival that was on and the Europop band that played non stop until after 1am. But it was nice to get showered down and head out for some beer, snails and steak tartare, before retiring for some well earned sleep. An early start meant trips around the bakers and Marche for water, bread, cheese and batteries for my GPS.
Locked out and at the start we were raring to go only to find that the forecast force 4 to 5 winds decided to go on holiday elsewhere. There wasn’t a breath of wind so Clive the skipper said bugger this and started his engine and headed off. 5 minutes later the race was abandonded and everyone else followed Lutine on the long motor to Guernsey. We went the pretty route – near the rocks and lighthouses, and saw floating weed in abundance. My phone was more informative than the GOS – Welcome to Jersey it said and then Welcome to Guernsey. I was nodding off and retired downstairs onto a free bunk with my arm out as if demanding tariff for the heads. I awoke and we had reached Guernsey harbour, I strode on deck just to hear the boat come to a complete halt and a bit of a scrape on its bottom – we had scraped rocks in a buoyed channel into the harbour – the harbour rib came out and said that the tide was rising quickly so we would be off soonish – just to have the rest of the regatta fleet sail in wondering why we were stuck there.
We disembarked said our thanks and jumped into a rib taxi to the Jersey ferry which was sitting there. We raced up to the ticket office to be told she was dealing with a customer, who turned out to be disabled and so we had to wait as the ferry is sitting there. She came back – and we said jersey ferry and she looked at us as if we were stupid and said ‘We don’t deal with that here you need to go down there’ …. groan. We got to the booking office as the ferry was leaving the dock. Fay the friendly ferrygirl had us down as Mr Condor, which I think I shall use as my non-de-plume from now on, and got us tickets for tomorrows ferry (we would just make our flight) and she recommended a hotel that her boyfriend was sous chef at.
We dragged our bags until Gill found us a taxi and arrived at the hotel exhausted but still ready to negotiate room rates. A sous chef appeared at the desk and I asked if he was Fay’s boyfriend and he was astonished – we should have made out we were psychics. The room was comfortable and I went for a swim in the heated outdoor pool with some guy looking at me strangely – I am guessing it was my impressive array of bruises a consequence of hanging off backstays during propwash and the girls hitting me with a boathook to stop me snoring.
Dinner was as expected, what was unexpected was the food poisoning from the starter that Alison and I had – I must have been hit badly because I spent most of the night peppering the loo with explosive diahorrea and feeling sick (I imagined it was because I took my sea sickness wrist bands off and it was all catching up). I was speaking to the Maderia staff (all the hotel staff were from Madeira) who told me about their conditions – get pregnant get deported, and the way the island licences accommodation based on employment requirements, and there was some birthday party on with Essex girls and boys (’just cos your 16 doesn’t mean you can go off fucking in the bushes’, one ballroom clad lady hollered across the Guernsey night)
The next morning the taxi rushed us (the island has a speed limit of 35mph which makes buying from one of the islands Porsche and Asron Martin dealers a bit of a joke) to the ferry. I asked her if she was from Guernsey – yes I have lived here all my life she said proudly. There were accepting murmurs from the girls in the back. I then asked if she remembered the war – sharp intake of breath from the back, but she said she remembered it well. I then asked ‘which side were you on’ and a choking sound emerged from the back as in ‘why do we have to travel with this idiot?’ but the driver smiled and said ‘can’t you tell from my litle moustache’. She didn’t tell though, which was telling.
It was all plain sailing now or so we thought. The ferry would appear to have lost an engine, how careless of it. So it was going to be an hour late. That meant we had about 3 minutes to catch the plane at the other end if all went well…. being FlyBE we had to inform them 2 hours before hand of any changes. The only thing we could do was to change form Aberdeen to Edinburgh which was a later flight that day. Kim handled all the ticket rearrangements in her role of getting me home again.
The ferry people were very good in that they signed a thing saying the ferry was over an hour late and made sure we were at the front of the queue for getting off – we ran down the gangway picked up our bags and got into a taxi and straight into a traffic jam. We arrived to waht I assumed was Bombay Intgernational Airport – it certainly had the population to warrant it. God I hate the great unwashed British travelling public – flying used to be about style and elegance – now it is reminiscent of a bus station. Long queues which we strode to the front of to see if we could blag a seat on the aberdeen flight – the woman looked like we were insane, and we hadlt eve told her about our channel crossing, saying I was a pilot didn’t help either (I had forgotten that baggage handlers earn more than pilots in low cost airlines). We were on the Edinburgh flight so checked our bags into left luggage and took the pretty FlyBE customer care girls advice and walked across the staff car park and int the mermaid tavern for the rest of the day. It is often very difficult to stifle pub converstiaon but you could have cut the silence with a nife onc ehte girls got into their conversation about autoerotic asphyxiation and its prevalance in suicide cases.
There was almost a flight between an old glaswegian couple and someone who had the temerity to prebook and so could walk tothe front using his prebooked queue. Alison said – it is just as well the knives are in the hold baggage. The British abroad and we are not even properly abroad. The flight was uneventful, the porridge was yummy and I drained remaining euros on wine and gin. Stuart picked us off and we dropped the girls off at Inverkeithing where it appeared the line was closed and they had to get a bus with my waterproof jacket still in one of their bags….
I got back to find out that in my absence our gardner/fencer/chainsawer had been killed by a sheep (not one of mine) and had been resurrected in the ambulance by a paramedic and defibrillator; the neighbouring farmer had rolled his tractor and had concussion and sadly a father and daughter had died in a dinghy accident on Keilder which put our own sailing adventures into a much dimmer light altogether.
