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Departure day!

Andreas and Wolfgang were escorting me in the taxi to the TGV train station, so I said goodbye to Andi and Nora.

On the way to the train station, Andreas had the taxi take a circuituitous route that passed a few landmarks, including the Catholic cathedral we saw from the water. But this was literally a 5 minute tour of the city, and I was just firing the camera out the window as we sped by.

Once at the train station, I said my goodbyes to Andreas and Wolfgang, and thanked Andreas once again for his generosity. I’d been talking about doing this for so many years!

At 9am, I boarded the TGV train and headed for Paris.

The train took me straight from Marseilles to the Charles De Gaulle airport on the outskirts of Paris. I would arrive three hours before my flight, so with plenty of time to spare, which was good because I got off the train at the wrong stop. Of all places, I got off at the stop for Disneyland Paris, which is just before the airport stop — nooo, I definitely don’t want to go there! As we pulled into the station, I think they probably announced that CDG was coming up at the next stop after that, but with their impenetrable English and bad P.A. sound system, I probably just recognized “Charles de Gaulle” and bolted off the train.

Finally, the flight from Paris to Atlanta.

Whew!

Thank you Uncle Andreas!

Last day of sailing! For me at least. We’d be sailing for Marseilles, and the following morning I’d be catching a train out to Paris and then a flight back to Atlanta.

We departed Porquerolles, and promptly got a chance at some more diagonal sailing. Here’s an action shot, screenshotted from Wolfgang’s video for the day. We’re about to execute a turn, from having the wind coming at us from the right / starboard, to having the wind coming at us from the left / port. Nora is at far left, ready to crank the winch that will tighten up the main sail, and I’m collecting the thick rope (“sheet”) coming off that winch and keeping it taughtly wound on the winch so that the winch will grab it. Andreas’s striped shirt is barely visible at lower right, as he is going to pull over the mainsail anchor, along a rail out of view below the video frame. Finally, Andi is at the helm, having just called the turn (“Wende”, the German word for “change”). At this instant, I’m watching the bow waiting for when it starts veering right across the horizon, into the wind and then through the turn to put the wind on the other side of the boat.

These “tack” turns happen very quickly, in about 10-15 seconds, and everybody has a job to do. Most of the time, if a mistake was made, it was me making it! On this one, I had my foot on a rope and was thus preventing Andreas from being able to do his job. I was focused on my own job 🙂 Well, next time will be another chance to do it right!

I don’t remember if we did any “jibe” turns. Those are turns where you are still moving from having the wind on one side, to having the wind on the other side, but done when the wind goes behind the boat during the turn. This causes the mainsail to violently whip across the boat, and is super dangerous to be around — as in, get whacked on the head, unconscious or worse, and possibly go overboard.

We sailed by a freaky … military base? Billionarie’s lair? CIA hideout? Who knows.

Andreas napping in his favorite spot.

We sailed into a little cove. People were hiking in the hills, jumping from outcrops into the water, generally enjoying the day. A small ferry passed by with tourists gawking at us eating lunch. It was probably a lot easier to get to the tiny town at the end of the cove by sea than by land.

We passed the bare white cliffs of the Massif des Calanque (“inlet”) mountains.

Just mile after mile of incredible coastline.

As we approached the port of Marseilles, we dropped our sails and proceeded under engine power, to preserve full maneuverability. There were huge ships passing nearby and you don’t mess with them or you get flattened. In fact, in this shot you see a harbor pilot boat heading straight for us to make sure we know damn well which way to go.

Another ferry colossus. No sudden movements …

Overlooking the harbor is the Palais du Pharo, built in the 1800s for Napoleon, and in front of that is the Monument to the Heroes and Victims of the Sea.

On the other side of the water looms the Cathedrale de la Major. I need to see that up close someday.

Right at the marina entrance, the Fort Saint-Jean. What an amazing, historic city.

Just as we approached the marina entrance, we encountered some young men (perhaps the Euro equivalent of frat boys) whose sailboat was stranded with a dead engine. Andreas quickly threw a rope over to them and towed them in, literally dropping them off at a pier as we motored by it.

Finally, we had one last dinner together at the restaurant in the “Capitanerie” at the marina.

Before we left Saint-Maxime, we ooh’d and aah’d over a neighbor. It was another, much larger sailing vessel (I hesitate to call it a boat) made by the same company (Amel) that made Andreas’ sailboat. It was a marvel of wood and fiberglass.

We departed Sainte-Maxime, got out into the open water, and picked up a pretty good wind which had us leaned over pretty hard.

The impossibly gorgeous and surely violently dangerous rocks of the Cap des Medes, and the ancient fortress (Batterie basse des Medes) perched atop the hills nearby.

We like Porquerolles so much on the way out that we decided to spend the night there again on the way back.

Steak tartare!

A great picture of our group, on our second to last night together.

We left the Bay of Agay and headed for the famed resort city of Saint-Tropez. Here’s a typical view along the way out of Agay.

At some point early in the day, we stopped near the shore and got another swim in, another ersatz shower. Andi and Nora jumped into the water from the roof of the boat’s cabin. I was too chickenshit to do that and just refereed the whole enterprise.

I don’t recall what I was doing here, but clearly I was messing with Nora.

Here’s a view of my accommodations for the week, the “room” in the bow. This photo is taken from the doorway looking in, and the very tip of the boat is behind my head. I had all my stuff on the left (including in the two small cabinets) and slept on the right. The big bag at center was my sleeping companion: the huge spinnaker (actually gennaker) sail that was shown in an earlier update here, packed up and ready for deployment next time. Andreas and Wolfgang had the main cabin (the main room inside the boat, holding the kitchen and radio and main table), and Andi and Nora had the rear cabin, only slightly larger than mine.

Andreas radio’d into the Saint-Tropez marina as we approached and they reported that they were full, so Andreas punted over to Saint-Maxime and we found a berth there. Sainte-Maxime is on the north side of the Gulf of Tropez, across from Saint-Tropez.

Later in the day, after we had settled in, the three “young” ones took the ferry from St. Maxime over to Saint-Tropez, while Andreas and Wolfgang stayed back. Wolfgang video’d us boarding the ferry, which was RIGHT next to our little boat, and we enjoyed watching Andreas slaving away scrubbing the deck.

In Saint-Tropez, men playing bocce ball (actually boule) in the town square.

Hiked up to a hilltop to get a good view of Saint-Tropez

Beauty shot of Andi and Nora during the golden hour.

We took the ferry back to Sainte-Maxime and turned in for the night.

In the morning,we went back into town, within the old city walls, to do some more exploring and shopping. We found a Provencal street market where I was able to buy a big bag of the Camargue salt that Sharon loves to use for cooking. Actually, I bought a big bag and a small bag, so I could give her the small one and then surprise her with even more (ha ha, I’m a comedy genius).

You can barely make out our party, having a late breakfast, dead center in this photo.

We climbed up and down all over the old town. Note here the swimmers in the water near the rocks.

Just a random street scene from a residential neighborhood.

Mandatory addition to the collection of cats spotted on vacation trips.

Finally we made our way back out through the old city walls and to the marina.

Gerhard showed us his smaller sailboat, recently outfitted with a new interior. Cozy!

From there, I went out on my own and visited the old fortress that looked over the harbor.

A tour guide led us around and gave us the history, and we were treated to the gorgeous views of the harbor and old city beyond.

Finally after lunchtime we set sail again, passing the oil baron yachts again on the way out. Antibes was as far east as we would sail along the French coast. The next stop would have been Nice, which is a practically a metropolis (and which I’d visited briefly as a teenager). Monaco was beyond that. They are all fabulously glamorous destinations, I’m sure, but probably a bit of a pain to deal with in a little sailboat, and a stretch for us if we wanted to get back to Marseilles in time for my train out, and so we were now going to head back to the west.

We put up the sails and made good time, which was a good thing because we had a pretty long way to go to make it to Andreas’ desired stop for the evening.

Along the way, a French destroyer passed us.

Here’s a view of the instrumentation at the captain’s position. The map display at right shows (with a small red X) our intended destination for the day. The black lever at bottom is the engine control, shown here set to neutral / off.

As we approached our destination, we passed the rusty cliffs and outcrops of the Estérel mountain range, illuminated by the setting sun.

After a long afternoon of sailing, we arrived in the Bay of Agay just in time to watch the sun set over the hills across the bay. We dropped anchor out in the water, not docked, rather just anchored out in the water among a lot of other small sailboats.

Since we were in a sheltered area, but not right inside a marina, this gave us a chance to do some swimming, which would stand in for showers at this stop. The water was very clear, and about 10-12 feet deep, and you could dive down and barely touch the seaweed growing on the bottom.

[At this point, the updates will get a more sparse. The daily updates up to now were posted within a couple days. Starting with this one, the update here was written looooong after the trip, and my memory was hazy. I had pictures though …]

In the morning, Andreas’ friend Wolfgang arrived in Frejus by train and joined us on the sailboat. So now we were five.

Wolfgang had a video camera and was videoing a lot, which I found annoying at the time, but for which I am now thankful, because it documented where we went for the rest of the trip. I had kept notes about where we had gone and what we did up to this point, which resulted in the blog posts that preceded this one, but I fell behind starting with this leg of the trip. Wolfgang’s videos (which he provided to us later) were crucial in helping me remember the details, and I thank him for running that annoying camera!

We sailed out of Frejus and headed towards Antibes.

Antibes is a historic destination on the French Mediterranean coast. I suppose that if you approached on land, you’d be driving through the amazing Provencal landscapes. But entering via the harbor, your introduction to the town is the massive yachts of the Middle Eastern oil barons — yachts that are the size of small military ships. They have to get moored at the outer edge of the harbor, since they are far too big to navigate closer in. They are typically fully staffed at all times, kept cleaned and stocked with supplies, and ready at any time to depart if the owner decides he wants to move on. That is, if the owner is even in Antibes …

Even among the regular motorboats, we looked modest. But this sailboat is a serious machine, built for the open ocean.

Andreas has an old friend who had retired to Antibes, and he brought us into the old city and took us out to dinner, a true fine dining experience that was representative of the local cuisine. It really was one of the most beautiful towns I’ve ever seen, and I hope someday to return with Sharon.

Porquerolles was a nice town: good shower facilities (once you figured out the coin-op system), nice restaurants, a grocery store, scenic location, everything. We’d be back later.

First, we had to talk about the long term plan. Andreas did not like the sound of the transmission when it was in reverse, and he suspected that something was wrong in there. Our original plan had us making a 100-mile leap across the Mediterranean from the French coast to the island of Corsica. But typically a good bit of that would be under engine power if the winds weren’t cooperating, and we’d definitely need the engine if we got caught in a storm. We certainly would need it when navigating in close quarters in harbors. All said, Andreas decided (“Du, Andy”) it was too risky to do that leg, and decided it was better for us to stay near the French coastline. Andy and Nora were disappointed, as they had expected to see Corsica on this trip, but it’s a tough life, right? I didn’t care, I hadn’t seen ANY of these places before and it was all great.

After a slow morning we finally pulled in our ropes and set forth out of the Porquerolles harbor. Immediately we spotted a huge three-masted sailing ship heading towards us. It was named the Signora del Vento and flew the Italian flag; all of the sails were furled but it was still an impressive sight.

Before we left the island completely behind, we ducked into a cove, dropped anchor and went swimming! It was a beautiful little sheltered spot on the northeast coast of the island.

As we sailed away, we passed the ruins of a fort. We’d be back in a few days and I’d get some pictures of it then.

Out onto the open water with the gennaker!

Massive rock formations, massive yachts, another day on the Cote d’Azur.

After a particularly long day of sailing, we pulled into Port Frejus (the harbor part of the nearby town of Frejus), got sorely needed showers, got a typical fantastic French dinner (with surly waiter) at a waterfront restaurant, and turned in for the night.

Second day of sailing! I rose at dawn and cleaned up in the marina shower. Going into this trip, one of the unknowns for me was whether we’d be on the water around the clock, never showering, or stoppin at marinas occasionally, or what. I had no idea what I was in for, and was prepared to a slimy, smelly sailor for the full week. As it turned out, every night we’d sail into the marina of the nearest coastal town and dock the ship. All of these marinas have pay showers, so we stayed relatively clean. I say “relatively”, because after only a few hours in the sunshine on the open water, you are pretty nasty. The metamorphosis before and after shower was pretty remarkable, and lord knows I do love a long hot shower (ask my family, I’m notorious for it).

After shower, while Andreas et al were getting ready for departure, I hoofed down the marina to get a picture of this exotic old sailboat that was undergoing a restoration. All along the marina were these boats being worked on by contractors, and this one was obvious historic and a labor of love for someone. I’m sure the comically long boom off the front identifies the type of sailboat, but I don’t know what it is.

After preparing the boat for departure, Andreas once again ceded the captain’s chair to Andy and enjoyed the view with me up front as we slowly eased out of the Marseille harbor. The castle on the right is Fort Saint-Jean, a 17th-century fort built by Louis XIV to protect the governor from the local people — the cannons were aimed not out towards the sea, but in towards town!

As we headed into the open water, we started to encounter more serious traffic. Marseille is the main ferry transit point for this part of the Mediterranean, and there is constant activity with both small pleasure boats going in and out of the old city harbor and huge commercial crafts accessing the big industrial harbor. Many of these big ships are ferry boats heading to Sardinia and Algiers, carrying both tourist traffic and regular commercial traffic. You do not want to be surprised to see one of these bearing down on your tiny little sailboat.

Once we cleared the harbor traffic, we put the boat onto autopilot (still on gas engines) and settled down for a nice late breakfast. German breakfasts are serious undertakings, with breads, meats, cheeses, juices, all sort of wonderful things. I devoured it all.

Finally, some sailing! Andreas, Andy and Nora got to unfurling the sails — I’d be helpful whereever I could, and whenever so ordered, but otherwise I stayed out of the way and watched them work. This type of sailboat (a ketch) has three sails, the big one in the middle of the boat called the mainsail, one at the front (bow) called a jib, and one at the back (stern) called a mizzen. So when setting sail, you’ve got three different sails and booms to deal with, and so enough to keep three people very busy for a couple minutes. But the ropes (“sheets”) that raise and control those sails all come back to the cockpit, so in theory at least ONE person could do the whole thing. Not likely though.

We had great wind, at our backs actually, and in that case you can bust out the king of the sails, the spinnaker. Instead of the smaller, triangular jib sail that is designed to work with crosswinds, the spinnaker simply blows up to huge size and grabs all of the wind to pull you straight ahead. In the photo at right you can see how the sail is kept furled inside a tube, and unfurled by pulling the tube up (via ropes and pullies, naturally) to release the sail inside. At left you see it fully unfurled for the first time — note the sailboat in the distance that is also running its spinnaker. Actually, our sail was a modified form of spinnaker called a gennaker, sort of a hybrid between a genoa sail and a spinnaker sail. Instead of both bottom corners flying free, held back only by ropes, in the gennaker one corner is held to the bow of the ship and the other corner is flying free. This way it’s off to one side of the boat, and actually catching slightly more wind than a spinnaker would, because you then sail with the wind slightly off your rear — the mainsail (in the middle of the boat) doesn’t “shadow” the gennaker and you get more total wind power driving the boat.

But wait, there’s more! One gennaker wasn’t enough, Andreas had to bring out two! Heck, we had them on board, might as well use them. In the photo to the right, you can see the mainsail (in the middle of the boat) brought down and bagged on top of the main boom, the fore/jib gennaker flying at the front of the boatd upper right of picture) and finally the second gennaker being let out by Andreas (in the extreme lower right corner of the picture, behind Nora).

All of these different sails and sail configurations are designed to extract as much power out of the wind and get you moving as fast as you can in the direction that you want to go. In this case, with all these sails running, we were pushing 12 knots, which I will tell you now is SERIOUSLY HAULING ASS. We were really flying, pounding through the waves at what seemed like breakneck speed.

After about an hour of fast running with the sails set like this, suddenly we had to spring into action. One of the cleats had popped off the main mast and a sail went flying. Andreas said that it was not one of the original cleats, rather one that a local worker had added for him. Poor quality work, but we also had too much rope tied off on that one little cleat — there are bigger cleats designed to handle bigger loads. Anyway, that’s actually really dangerous, and certainly things got real exciting for a minute there.

At some point, not long into this serious sailing, I started to realize that I didn’t feel so good. Uh oh. I settled into a corner and tried to keep my eyes up and on the horizon, but it wasn’t helping. That great big breakfast was coming back. I quietly signaled to Nora that I was about to become a, uh, unuseful crew member, took up a post on the side of the boat away from everyone, and … yeah, I got seasick.

Nora dug up some anti-nausea medication for me. It felt like a sleeping pill (which I hate) but it did the job. Along with generally taking it easy for the rest of the day, I didn’t get sick again. In future days, as long as I went easy on the breakfast (especially not loading up on orange juice, duh), I felt fine. I guess it just takes the body a couple days to adapt. Hey, I’m just like a good percentage of NASA astronauts!

Here’s a good view of the cockpit, the main seating area (I actually forget now what the right term is for it). It’s where the captain mans the controls, and where all the ropes end up. Close to us in this view is the red rope going around the port winch, a one-way ratcheting device that helps to pull the rope in and keep it tight. In this dual-gennaker configuration, Andreas decided to run the other rope (the green one) across the cabin — that’s not normal, but what we improvised that day. Then at the rear of the cabin (to the right in this picture) you see the main mast with quite a few ropes cleated off there.

We made our way along the French coast, east of Marseille, passing starkly beautiful geological formations along the way.

Our destination for the evening would be the town of Porquerolles, on the island of Iles d’Hyeres. We got in pretty late, and as I recall, Andreas had to sweet-talk someone into getting a berth — I think we got the private berth of someone who was out of town (with their boat).

Now finally Andreas would get a look at the transmission. As I wrote earlier, this was a brand new engine, mated to the old transmission. I had already heard about how matching those up had caused some drama in the past year as they were doing the engine upgrade. But while we had been on the water today, in particular while maneuvering in close quarters in the harbors, Andreas became concerned about strange sounds that were coming from the transmission when the thing was put into reverse. So we popped the lid off the engine compartment, Andreas got down in there to take a look, and generally grumbled about the situation.

We washed up and headed to dinner at a little restaurant in the town that was recommended by my cousin (and Andreas’ daughter) Cornelia. But we were all quite exhausted, me especially due to my bout of seasickness, and honestly we just wanted to get through dinner and to sleep. But after dinner we did wander round a bit. This town has a central square surrounded by little shops including groceries, so we were able to load up on perishables and the occasional toiletry. I believe I added once again to my growing collection of suntan lotion bottles. Walked around, watched a bocce game (actually here it’s called boule or petanque), and headed back to the sailboat and finally some rest.

As I wrote in the preview post, my uncle Andreas is a (mostly) retired German businessman who has a condo on the French coast and does quit a bit of sailing. His biggest boat is a 41-foot Euros, built in the 1970s by the French shipwright firm Amel. My uncle has had the boat for years and has gone on many sailing voyages with it.

I have been planning this sailing trip for about two years. Two summers ago, Andreas went on two-month trip around the Mediterranean, and was joined by friends and family at various times during the trip. I heard about this and declared my intent to join him someday, and we quickly made plans to target this summer for the trip.

I didn’t know how to sail. I mean, I understand the physics of it, but that’s not worth much. So last summer I spent a month of Saturdays driving up to Acworth (Atlanta exurb) to take sailing lessons on Lake Allatoona at the Atlanta Yacht Club. They teach you the basics — what are the parts of a typical small sailboat, how does the wind work with the sails, what is the lingo used to communicate between the people operating the boat. They shoved us out on the lake in little “420” sailboats, each manned by two people, and we learned on the go. By the end I was pretty comfortable with it, although most days we had very little wind.

A few weeks ago, I had a refresher session with a friend who has a boat on that lake.

So here I am, on a sailboat at dawn, heading out into the Mediterranean Sea. Besides Andreas and me, also on board are my cousin Andy and his girlfriend Nora. Andy (Andreas’ son) has lots of experience sailing as well, and so between the two of them we’d always have someone at the helm who knew what they were doing. The rest of us were “crew”, meaning it was our job to make sail adjustments per the captain’s orders. Most of the time, we would just be executing a simple turn (usually a “tack” into the wind), which is just about the most basic sailing maneuver there is, so in theory we all knew what we had to do.

Of course, that’s assuming there’s some wind, and open water. At dawn this particular morning, we had neither. Fortunately, this ship has an engine (which would figure into the story later) and so if we are lacking wind, or open water to sail back and forth in, we just pull in the sails and fire up the engine. It pokes along at about 7 knots (8 miles per hour) which is obviously slow by road standards but honestly feels like a good clip when you are in the open water and sloshing through ocean.

The tentative plan, shown to the right, is to disembark from our home port (Port Camargue) and spend eight days working our way around towards Corsica and back. At the end of the sailing voyage (or at least my part of it) we will arrive in Marseille, where I will catch a train back to Paris, straight to the airport and back to Atlanta.

So, our first day’s leg was to simply get out of the home port and make the hop over to Marseille.

Andy fired up the engine and we slowly navigated out of the small harbor and into the open water. As it turns out, we didn’t have much wind on this first day, and while we did unfurl some sails at some point, they weren’t doing much for us. I could have sworn I took pictures of them, but don’t see them in my picture archive now, so who knows. Not to worry, LOTS of pictures of sails are coming! I do recall that I was quite comfortable on the water, with no hint of seasickness. But for how long …

So we went back to motoring. Which Andreas was happy to do, since this was the first time he got to see his new engine in operation. The sailboat had been in drydock for over a year (maybe two) to get the engine replaced, and it now had a brand new Volvo marine engine in it. The engine was directly below our feet in the main cockpit / wheelhouse area, and provided a solid thrumming soundtrack to complement the gentle waves that we were slowly plowing through.

After a whole day of sailing (driving, really), we approached the busy harbor of Marseille. The old harbor in the city center was utterly jammed with a variety of pleasure boats, both sailboats and motor yachts, and it took us a while to find our berth.

After cleaning ourselves up, Andreas and I hurried into the city streets to find a few critical supplies — suntan lotion and USB chargers, can you imagine anything more important? Then we met up with Andy and Nora, found a place to eat (the memory of which now escapes me), got back to the boat, and turned in for the night.

Packed up and headed to the train station! Well, first to just leave my bags in a locker and do a little more sightseeing, as the train wouldn’t be leaving until the afternoon. After dropping off the load, I wandered around the city center a bit, took a mouette across the lake again (to get from point A to point B, really!), saw an interesting outdoor exhibition about world poverty along the lake, and made my way to the science museum.

Geneva’s science museum is actually a museum of the history of science, which of course is even more fascinating, especially for an adult — that’s me! As with several other attractions in Geneva, it’s housed in a former mansion overlooking the lake. Inside are all manner of crazy awesome displays, from a collection of glass eyeballs to the actual contraption, in the flesh, that Charles Coulomb used to determine the laws of electrostatic attraction and repulsion over 200 years ago. On the second floor balcony, there’s a camera obscura set up (you can make it out in this photo) that is aimed at Mont Blanc 70 miles away, so you can see the mountain dimly projected on the rear surface of the contraption.

Relaxed for a while on the lawn in front of the science museum, and then headed to the train station for my departure. Happily, there was a train that went direct from Geneva to Montpelier (France), which is where my uncle Andreas would be picking me up. I had booked all of the trains on this trip ahead of time, except for this one, because I originally wasn’t sure of when I’d get access to CERN and wanted to be flexible. So once the CERN situation was set up, I booked this train and was relieved that there was a direct connection and that there was space on it!

The TGV trains (French bullet trains) typically run at up to 200 miles per hour, but not this one. Geneva is nestled in the western Alps and we needed to get through those mountains before getting to open land. So the train twisted through narrow mountain valleys. Spotted a hanglider and some generally gorgeous scenery.

After we cleared the mountains, the trained stopped in Lyon, then sped up for the long leg to Montpelier. Montpelier is the TGV city nearest to Port Camargue and is where my uncle picked me up.

A short drive in the little convertible VW Beetle and we were at the dockside apartment and the boat! Met cousin Andy and his girlfriend Nora, enjoyed a nice dinner on the dock, and settled down to my last night of sleep before .. who knows what.

Europe trip, phase 2, coming up!