The Pilots of the Caribbean

2020: The Year that Wasn’t

We left Alter in Preveza, Greece in October 2019 with the firm belief that we would return six months later. We travelled to Haiti to replenish our coffers flying on contract for the local airline, Sunrise Airways. We have both come to love Haiti but flying for Sunrise was not the ideal farewell. Cap Haïtien was our only destination. It is only 25 minutes flying time from Port-au-Prince, and our schedule of up to eight sectors a day was unrelenting. We spent most of our time off in our apartment staring at the opposite wall, trying to find the energy or inclination to do anything else. When we did find the energy, we visited old friends and explored some of the sights that we had previously missed, including one of Port-au-Prince’s iconic Gingerbread Houses: a post-colonial mansion that was built at the turn of the last century.

Then Covid-19 happened. SARS and MERS had both come and gone with little damage and, at the time, COVID didn’t appear to be much different.

We returned to the UK in February at the start of the global pandemic and a world that was inexorably changing. We had booked a short skiing holiday in Valtournenche, in the Aosta Valley. We hadn’t skied for two years and were keen to get back on the slopes. But before we left, while we were staying with Nicky’s sister in Wales, the pandemic began to swell. It flooded the province of Lombardy in Italy and seeped from there via the surrounding provinces into the rest of the country. We considered cancelling. But decided to go ahead and boarded the flight to Turin as planned. On arrival, we joined a long queue that snaked towards a cluster of medical staff who checked everyone’s temperatures and collected contact forms. The Italians were riding Europe’s first wave and were paddling furiously, trying to stay ahead of its curling tip and prevent their winter holiday season from drowning. Most skiers had chosen to stay home leaving the towns of Valtournenche and Cervinia bereft, with many restaurants closed and a curfew that brought an eerie calm to the evening streets. Residents were in shock, their hopes fading like mountain mist. Some stopped us in the streets to thank us for coming.

When the ski slopes closed we went snowshoeing.

On Sunday 8 March, the ski lifts operated at reduced capacity, with blocked-off seats and social distancing in the queues. Then, when it was clear that the wave was really a tsunami, the Italians finally did what they had been desperately trying to avoid, they closed the slopes.

EasyJet cancelled our return flight to the UK on the morning of our departure and muttered vague promises of evacuation flights from Milan, the epidemic’s epicentre. We declined and took the last flight out of Turin on Ryanair, who continued to honour their published schedule. At Stanstead we were greeted by empty hand sanitiser dispensers. Nobody seemed vaguely interested that we were coming from the heart of the pandemic. It was a strong indication that Britain had rolled up its trousers to its knees, pulled a knotted handkerchief firmly down over its head and was preparing to paddle into the wave without a lifejacket.

I left for South Africa shortly afterwards to start a two-month contract flying in the DRC and Nicky returned to Wales. In a world where plans were fast becoming meaningless, Nicky intended returning to Greece to go hiking in Corfu before we met up at the boat in May.

But Covid had a schedule that didn’t involve us. Countries began to close their borders and lock down their citizens. I reached Kalemie in the DRC the day before the Congo closed its borders and cancelled all internal flights, leaving me without much flying to do. I settled in for an indefinite stay. Nicky’s planned hike became impossible, so she moved into her sister’s Airbnb to wait out the pandemic.

My two-month contract stretched three and then four. It was eventually four and a half months before a new crew could replace me. With no flights between South Africa and the UK, or anywhere else, getting back to Nicky in the UK was a challenge. Fortunately, my boss agreed to drop me off in Lusaka and the Zambians let me remain in transit – without going through the mandatory 14 days quarantine – while I waited for an Ethiopian Airlines flight to London, via Addis Ababa.

Post-apocalyptic empty walkways at Heathrow.

During the four months, Nicky had decided that we needed a more permanent home, somewhere that we could always go to in times of crisis. The boat was supposed to be our home, but neither of us could get there. She wanted something more tangible. South Africa was too remote and neither of us wanted to return there permanently, so we decided to take advantage of the Brexit withdrawal agreement and move to Europe. But where?

Our first instinct was Spain. We flew to Granada to spend some time there and see if we liked it. We landed in Malaga and joined a crush of people choking the passageway to the arrival hall. Most were wearing masks, but I’ve seen more social distancing at a Rod Stewart concert.

The crush of people that greeted us in Malaga.

Grenada greeted us with temperatures in the forties and mandatory mask-wearing indoors and out. It was a bit like walking about in a large sauna with a shopping bag over your head, so we often escaped to the coast or drove up into the mountains, where it was a few degrees cooler.

We both loved Granada, and very nearly made an offer on an apartment in nearby Salobreña. But after a month it didn’t feel like home. More importantly, it felt like it might never be.

So, after making a list of all the places that we might want to live: France, Italy, Greece and just about anywhere in the world apart from Chad or North Korea, we decided to move to France. It was already August and under Article 34, we had to be resident and make an application to stay before the end of the year. There wasn’t a lot of time to spare.

We rented an apartment in Carcassonne, a city on the Canal du Midi that we had visited a couple of times previously. Properties closer to the coast tend to be more expensive and we didn’t want to be too far from the sea. After Nicky had examined every property for sale in a five-hundred-kilometre radius, we found a village house that, for me, was a coup de foudre. It wasn’t perfect for Nicky, with little outside space. But other than that it was exactly what we were looking for: somewhere small that we could lock up and leave whenever we wanted to without the property beginning to deteriorate the moment that we locked the door.

Perhaps the best part of the deal was that we bought it from an English couple who had renovated another property three doors down and would therefore be our neighbours.

Having Paul and Tan there to show us around and introduce us to our other neighbours made our transplant almost painless. We quickly discovered that we had a lot more in common and have become firm friends.

And then, finally, in July 2021, Covid restrictions began to ease. By then France had vaccinated us and we were able to consider returning to Greece and the boat.

The Storm

The crossing from Porquerolles to Corsica drained both of us, in different ways. So, when the boat was secure in the bay at La Revellata, we had a cup of tea and some marmite on toast, before collapsing into bed for a grateful night’s sleep. The following morning brought a low-pressure system racing towards us from the French mainland. There were few places to hide. We seldom go into marinas, mainly because of the cost, but we put our tails between our legs and sought refuge in Calvi’s harbour. We motored across under a glowering sky. The bay was still calm and another Ovni idled at a mooring ball not far from the beach.

The marina RIB directed us to an exposed looking finger that lay open to the harbour entrance. Our request to move a little deeper into the harbour for protection received an indifferent Corsican shrug in response. I wasn’t sure if they hadn’t understood, or just didn’t give a toss.

We secured the laid lines to the bow cleats and pulled the stern as far from the concrete finger as we dared. We had to position Alter far enough away from anything solid to make sure her stern wouldn’t hit the finger. At the same time, we had to be close enough for the ladder to reach the shore, so we could disembark without getting wet. We doubled up the stern lines and took lines from midships to the finger to make Alter as secure as possible.

With the boat secure, we headed off into town to get some supplies and to search for a part for the gas system, which had developed a leak. On the way back from the shops it began to rain and we quickened our pace. The weather had sneaked up on us while we weren’t looking and had already whipped the bay into a seething maelstrom. The mooring buoy field, where the solitary Ovni had whiled the afternoon, was a line of breakers angrily pounding the shore. The Ovni was gone.

We arrived at the marina in driving rain, trying vainly to keep our shopping dry. When we saw Alter, we started to run. The marina was bedlam. Crews raced about trying to secure their boats. Alter, alone at the end of her finger, was bucking like an unbroken pony. She thrashed at her mooring lines, trying to break free. We watched in horror as a huge swell lifted her bow and smashed her stern against the concrete.

We had to get on board, but it was dangerous. The boarding ladder, precarious in the calm, had been flung from its place on the sugar scoop. A bent rung betrayed where it had come in to contact with something immovable.

We waited for a lull, and I leapt onto the sugar scoop. One of the new mooring lines, with a breaking strain of over five tonnes, hung limp in the water, splayed fibre testimony to the force that had snapped it. There was still a vicious surge in the harbour with the danger of the stern being smashed against the jetty again, so I ran forward to pull us even further away from the concrete while Nicky eased the stern lines. When we had done all we could, we retreated to the cabin to unpack our sodden shopping and change into dry clothes.

Alter in the marina after the storm had passed

When the sea subsided, we emerged to crisp clouds and snow-draped mountains. I tried to get ashore using the damaged ladder as a passerelle. The dock was too far away and the swell still too big to rest one end on the sugar scoop and the other on the dock, so I rigged a line from the arch to support the ladder at its mid-point. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the mid-point quite right, because when I passed the halfway mark, gravity intervened. I had no intention of falling into the frigid water, so I clung desperately to the ladder, which writhed like an angry snake. My groin broke my fall and Nicky carefully retrieved me back to the boat while I tried not to cry. We shortened the stern lines again and I managed to get ashore without any more injury to pride or body.

The following morning a thin wind from the mountains had us dressed for winter. But it had flattened the sea and had enough strength to fill our sails. We still had over four hundred miles to go to Balestrate in Sicily, where we had to catch our flight to the UK. Seventeen days seemed like plenty of time to cover the distance, but we needed a weather window for the long crossing from Sardinia to Sicily, and wanted to get the autohelm fixed before then. So we departed Calvi for Bonifacio, where we hoped to find some of the spares that we needed.

Bonifacio and the entrance to the harbour

Bonifacio perches on what seems to be an unbroken line of sea cliffs on the southern shore of Corsica. From the sea, it’s hard to imagine that it has a harbour. The chart shows an entrance to the east of the red and white lighthouse. But even through binoculars, the cliffs there seemed impenetrable. We dropped our sails and motored cautiously towards the light house. A small boat carrying tourists materialised from the rock and darted into a deep sea cave at the base of the cliff. The channel finally revealed itself, bounded by sheer rock on either side. We followed the narrow channel and turned sharply right turn towards the town. We slipped into an inlet just before the marina where there were mooring balls and hard points ashore to secure the stern. It was a new manoeuvre for us. The inlet was narrow, leaving little room to pick up the mooring ball.

We secured the bow, but before I could get ashore in the dingy with a stern line, the wind blew us off and left Alter in the middle of the channel, parallel to the shore. I kept rowing, but the mooring line wasn’t long enough. I didn’t have another with me, so I tied the dingy’s painter to the end of the mooring line and kept rowing.

I was still a meter away from the shore when I ran out of line and I was forced to jump overboard and become part of the rope by hanging on to the dingy with one hand and reaching for an anchor point ashore with the other. We finally secured the boat, very happy that there’d been no witnesses.

We took the burst hydraulic line to the only chandler in town, who greeted it with blank incomprehension. Our last chance to get the autohelm repaired before the crossing to Sicily was in Olbia in Sardinia so we left Bonifacio the following morning and continued south, threading our way through the Maddalena archipelago, the islands that speckle Sardinia’s north-east coast. Warm azure water lured us to linger, but another low pressure system threatened and we wanted to be sheltered when it struck.

We tied up alongside a stone quay in Olbia’s old harbour with the help of some local fishermen, and I immediately set out to find a chandler. Six kilometres of walking and two chandlers later, the man behind the counter shook his head ruefully at the sight of the hose and sent me to Gottardi, a tyre specialist, two doors down. I was dubious, but desperate and went there with the burst hose and a bag full of pessimism.

The Gottardi man spoke little English. He gravely inspected the perished hose and its fittings. ‘No inox.’

‘Scusi?’ I asked, in my best Italian.

‘This inox. We no have inox.’

By then I’d learned that inox is a French abbreviation for stainless steel and guessed that it was the same in Italian, but I didn’t have a clue what bog standard steel was called. ‘You have steel?’

He shrugged as if I’d just asked a stupid question, ‘Si!’

‘You can make one?’

I followed him down a short ramp to a basement filled with spare parts and heavy machinery. He rummaged through cardboard boxes of fittings, selected two, tested them, cut a piece of hose to length and took the pieces to a large red crimping machine.

Ten minutes I had a newly manufactured hose, almost identical to the sample that I had brought him, and a bill for thirty-five euros.

I presented the hose to Nicky with a flourish, as if it was a trophy. But getting the hose made was the easy part. The hydraulic ram had to be removed from a confined space under the cockpit that was barely big enough for an octopus. Nicky took over when my cramped hands couldn’t hold the spanner any more. Her skinny fingers had more room to manoeuvre. But once the new hose was fitted, the ram had to be replaced again, a process that drew blood and a litany of profanities from both of us. Then the system had to be bled through a bleed screw that refused to budge. With the help of some heat we managed to loosen it, almost losing the tiny ball bearing that jumped out and fled towards the cockpit drain with purpose. And when the system had been bled and refilled with hydraulic oil, it had to be recalibrated. It refused. We followed the instructions precisely, but every time the process was complete, we got an error message. Night fell and we went to bed exhausted and frustrated. I lay awake half the night, going through the steps in my mind, trying to determine what we were doing wrong until eventually I fell into a restless sleep.

The following morning after breakfast we tried the calibration again and it worked first time. We were ready to press on south, but the low pressure system was still lurking, so we postponed our departure for another day and, with Alter safely tied up in Olbia’s secure harbour, we went shopping for a new mirror for the head.

The Crossing

We woke to an unfamiliar motion. It was a calm morning off La Ciotat, with barely a ripple in the bay, but enough of a swell to remind us that we were no longer landlubbers.

After breakfast, we weighed anchor and set sail for Porquerolles, 30 miles away. The fresh southerly breeze and calm seas allowed us an easy run, with no warning of what was to come. We crossed the traffic separation scheme outside Toulon with a tinge of anxiety, but it was unfounded and the only ships we saw were safely tied up in the port.

A little after three that afternoon, we dropped anchor off Porquerolles. Once the boat was secure, we began planning our twenty-hour crossing to Calvi in Corsica for the following afternoon.

We had never sailed out of sight of land before without a seasoned skipper on board. We had crossed the Drake Passage between Cape Horn and Antarctica the previous year, but I had spent most of the time curled in the foetal position feeling sorry for myself.

My seasickness hadn’t presented itself since leaving Marseille, but conditions had been near perfect, and I had very little confidence that the deferral would continue.

The navigation was simple. After rounding Porquerolles, we would head almost due east with nothing but sea between us and Corsica. But the weather gave us pause. The forecast was for winds of about 25 knots from the south during the night, which would be perfect for the crossing. Knowing that wind strengths are often underestimated, we added 10% to the forecast, for an expected wind speed of about 30 knots. Waves of not more than two meters were expected.

In order to arrive during daylight, we decided to leave at 15:30, which would allow plenty of time to prepare for our first night passage, and also to arrive at our destination in the middle of the following day, giving us plenty of leeway for the unforeseen.

My seasickness hadn’t presented itself since leaving Marseille, but conditions had been near perfect, and I had very little confidence that the deferral would continue. I went to bed with anxiety gnawing at my stomach like a rat.

The following morning we launched Persephone for a trip into town and were reacquainted with our irascible outboard. It would not idle. I adjusted the idle screw until the engine ran without cutting out, but it was idling so fast that I dared not put it in gear.

So, I adjusted it back to a slower setting and had to keep blipping the throttle to stop the engine from dying. It worked in theory. But when we neared the beach, we came very close to being the afternoon’s entertainment. When we slowed to line up with the beach, the motor died and left us drifting. The pull cord resisted heroically and tried to rip my hand from my arm every time the motor caught. And then, when it was running, if I dared slow down, the motor died again.

Fortunately, the beach was sandy at the water’s edge and we could safely approach with a little bit of speed so that I could kill the motor and lift it before we hit the sand.

Porquerolles is a holiday town, but summer was still a month away and the crowd was thin. We wandered around a little and stopped for an ice cream before returning to Alter to prepare for the crossing.

As our departure time neared, I considered the 120 miles between us and Calvi with trepidation. It seemed like an ocean. We’d spent a lot of time going over the weather forecasts, checking the GRIBs for the route and taking every precaution to ensure that we were doing the right thing. We were sheltered from the fresh southerly breeze on the north of the island as we motored out of the bay. Rounding the north side of the island, the breeze began to build. By the time we were clear of the land it had freshened to 20 knots. We tucked a reef into the main and rolled out most of the genoa.

But the wind hadn’t read the forecast and, before the hour was up, we cinched a second reef and rolled the genoa in to the next mark. The sun fell and the darkness swept down on us with more wind and waves.

I was still feeling fine, so I went forward to put the third, and final, reef in for the night. It was apparent that the forecast had underestimated the wind’s resolve. Even the extra 10% that we’d added as a precaution didn’t come close to the gale that began howling and threatened to tear the wind generator from its mountings.

We needed to stop it, but it wasn’t easy. There was a little rope that we had to pull to bring the blades in line with the wind to stop them. But the wind was in front of us and the spinning blades were between us and the rope. It was necessary to climb the pushpit, reach over the solar panels and slip my arm between the solar panel and the spinning blade, through a gap that was barely bigger than the diameter of my arm. The boat was heaving over the swell, which added an unwanted complication. I slid my hand underneath with trepidation and, just when I thought that the string was in reach, I lifted my arm a little too much and a blade hit my watch with a loud crack. I reflexively snatched my arm back and eyed the howling disk warily for a second attempt.

Nicky persuaded me that her arm was thinner than mine and that it would be easier for her. She climbed the pushpit while I held on to her to stop her from going overboard. Her grip was surer than mine and she soon grabbed the rope and swivelled the blades out of the wind, putting an end to the dreadful vibration.

One problem had been solved, but the wind continued to grow and the night ahead seemed to stretch on to infinity.

We prepared ourselves for the worst, with our lifejackets and harnesses on, tucked into our foulies, and the first watch keeper – me – equipped with both the integral AIS and also a small EPIRB.

Nicky made me a flask of tea and then went below at 20:00. While she tried to get some sleep the wind finally settled at a sustained 40 knots. A swell of over four meters pushed us on the starboard quarter, and set up an uncomfortable corkscrew motion. Despite the cocktail of drugs that I had swallowed, my condition began to circle the drain.

My seasickness takes on a peculiar form. I wish it was the more traditional nausea that can be relieved a little by expelling some of the misery in a good vomit. But mine is more like an onset of epilepsy combined with a touch of psychosis.

It begins fairly traditionally with a cold sweat, little gasps for more air and an unsettled feeling in my stomach. But it progresses to vision disturbance, the inability to tolerate anything in my line of sight and muscular tics.

By the time Nicky emerged for her watch at 23:00, I was in full Cuckoo’s Nest, flapping about like a landed fish. Nicky helped me below and had to take my foulies off for me because I had no control over my arms. She got me into the aft cabin, where we had prepared a bunk, and tucked me in. I had enough sense in me to feel despair because I knew that I had become almost useless and that Nicky was going to have to make the rest of the crossing on her own.

Fortunately, Nicky is at her best in adversity and she rose to the challenge. When my shaking eventually stopped, I lapsed into a blissful oblivion. Through my addled sleep I heard the winch grinding now and then as Nicky adjusted the genoa, reeling it in to a rag when the wind threatened to overpower her, then letting it out a little when it eased.

Nicky’s voice penetrated my restless sleep. It was time for my watch but, although I had largely recovered, I knew that if I moved from the horizontal, I wouldn’t last five minutes. I would be able to help her in extremis, but doing a solo watch was out of the question.

‘There’s a ship heading straight for us!’ she yelled over the wind.

‘It should move out of the way when it sees us on AIS.’

‘It’s getting pretty close.’

There wasn’t much scope for turning in the conditions, but right of way means little when a sailing boat and a container vessel collide. ‘If he’s not turning, we’ll have to.’

And the only thing I remember until much later was Nicky’s greeting to the ship as it slid past in the darkness, having kept doggedly to its course. ‘VAFFANCULO, YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE.’ I didn’t know that she could speak Italian.

Nicky sailed on into the night alone while I lay below with my nightmares. But hers were real. Around three in the morning, the boat drifted off its course. Since we’d left Marseille the autohelm had performed flawlessly, giving us the confidence to shelter under the spray dodger in the worst weather and allow the autohelm to keep a constant angle to the wind.

But when it drifted off, Nicky couldn’t do anything to persuade it to return to our course, or even to hold it. She tried heading-hold in case the wind computer had failed, but that wouldn’t work either. It meant that she could no longer shelter from the weather and was forced to spend the rest of the night at the wheel.

She called me when land was in sight the wind had died a little. The sea was still up but the motion was easier. I managed to rouse and dress myself and join her on deck in time to see the mountains of Corsica emerge from the gloom.

I took the wheel and suggested that Nicky go below, but there was still too much adrenaline flowing through her and, although she was exhausted, she wanted to be there to the end. I tried the autohelm again when it was light in the hope that we could identify the problem but, although all the indications were normal, it wouldn’t respond.

Nicky, a little weather-beaten but happy after we dropped anchor at Revellata.

It was midday before we nudged into the Golfe de Revellata, a small bay to the west of Calvi, across the water from the citadel. It was sheltered and calm, a strange contrast to the tempestuous night. We stowed the mainsail, reefed the genoa and motored to a quiet corner of the bay, where we dropped anchor.

While Nicky had a well-deserved shower I made her marmite on toast for breakfast. I put her to bed and told her what an amazing job she had done. Then I put the sail covers on and secured the boat, while feeling abashed at my impotence.

Countdown and Launch

On the afternoon of the 29th April 2019, Alter was finally ready to go back into the water. Diving cylinders had been bought and stowed, the gas barbecue fitted, the life raft secured to its new cradle on the pushpit, and the flag strung from its staff. We’d even had time to celebrate the impending launch with Mark and Margaret, two Kiwi yachties that Nicky had picked up in the laundry in town. We had dealt with myriad things over the previous days and, although we had ticked off everything on our list, doubt still gnawed at us. There was the constant feeling that we’d left something out, something crucial. Alter was ready, but we were not.

For me it was the fear of putting her in the water. She would be the biggest, heaviest boat that Nicky and I had handled on our own. Her manners in the water were unknown. Neither of us had ever maneuvered a yacht with a lifting keel and its idiosyncrasies. There was no bow thruster to get us out of trouble.
But all those thoughts evaporated at 16:30, when the tractor arrived with a cradle to tow Alter from her resting place. Nicky and I watched apprehensively as the trailer slipped into place and the hydraulic rams began to lift Alter. There was a hesitation, a lurch and then a loud bang. Alter slumped like a wounded beast. A deafening hiss sent a spray of hydraulic fluid across the tarmac. One of the hydraulic pipes had burst. Our hearts stopped and we stood rooted, hoping that the lurch had not gone too far and that Alter wouldn’t break out of her cradle and crash onto the boat next to her. The cradle held and we could breathe again.

We finally got he into the slings just after the sun had set.

By the time a new trailer arrived and we’d been lifted safely into the slings, the sun had set. There was still a lot of work to do. For the previous year, Alter had been sitting on her cradle with her centerboard retracted. It was our first opportunity to lower the centerboard, inspect it and give it two coats of anti-foul. We had worked out a schedule to apply the anti-foul during the night, painting on one coat and waiting for it to dry, before getting up again in the middle of the night to paint the second coat. Our delay getting into the slings meant shorter drying times between coats as we were going into the water first thing in the morning.
We took turns painting the centerboard and the patches on the hull where the cradle had obscured the hull. And when the sun rose the following morning, we both trekked to the distant bathrooms, our bicycles safely folded and stored in the equipment room.

At 8 o’clock there was a sudden bustle and it was launch time. A motorboat had pulled into the dock to be lifted and I thought that might delay us. No problem; the crane lifted Alter a little higher and she flew gracefully over the motorboat.

Alter flew gracefully over the motorboat.

They lowered Alter gently into the water and we went below to check all the seacocks and bilges for leaks. I remembered to burp the new stern gland, allowing a small trickle of water into the bellows to lubricate the prop shaft.
There was no time to savour the moment or to draw breath. It was a busy dock and we had to be on our way. The engine started on the first turn and it was soon burbling away happily and pulsing spurts of water from the exhaust. Mark and Margaret helped us cast off from the dock and we steered gingerly to the fuel dock to fill the tanks. There was little wind and our first docking went as smoothly as I could have hoped for. While we waited for the refueler to arrive, we lifted the RIB from its position on the foredeck and lowered it into the water. Despite its diminutive stature, the RIB has a name too. She is called Persephone after the Greek Goddess who ruled the underworld with her husband Hades. Mark helped me fit the outboard motor so that we could take the Persephone for a test drive.
Starting the outboard proved challenging. I don’t remember when last I started one, perhaps never, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Even if I had, I would have been surprised. After checking the fuel was on, the kill switch was in place and the choke was open, I gave the cord a solid pull. It resisted. I pulled again and the motor started, but it ripped the cord from my hands with such force that I thought I’d damaged my wrist.

Trying to get Persephone’s outboard started without breaking a wrist.

If I’d had more experience, I might have known that the outboard motor was telling me something. But it was less than a year old, so I didn’t investigate further and put it’s aggression down to it being new and not yet properly run in. It was a mistake that cost us time and money later. Once it had started, the motor purred innocently, so Mark and I went for a little tour of the marina.
With our tanks full and no more excuse to stay, we said goodbye to Mark and Margaret and motored slowly out of the harbour. I had wanted to spend the first night nearby, tucked up in one of the small bays on Ile Ratonneau, only a few miles from the marina. From there, I hoped that we could visit the infamous Chateau d’If from Dumas’ Count of Monte Christo. But there was a westerly coming and Patrice, Alter’s previous owner, who had called to wish us well, warned us that the rocky bay would dangerous in those conditions.
Time was pressing, so we set course for La Ciotat, thirty miles away. I pushed the throttle forward once we were clear of the harbour entrance and the engine’s contented purr turned into an anguished roar. I throttled back and the noise went away. Nicky and I began to troubleshoot, checked the engine parameters, went below and pulled all the covers off to see if anything was loose. I dismantled the aft cabin so that I could see the propeller shaft, in case it was loose or misaligned. We couldn’t find anything wrong, but whenever we increased power the noise returned.
We turned around and returned to port. On the way back we phoned the engineer who had helped us with the installation of the propeller and also contacted the agent for the Maxprop in Fréjus to try to find out what might be wrong.
There was a bit of a kerfuffle docking as we had not expected to come back and there was no readily available berth for us. After a couple of aborted attempts to come alongside, we finally nudged up against the quay and waited for help to arrive. I imagined that we would have to get back into the slings to examine the propeller, because that seemed to be the only thing that could be causing the noise. But it was a little after 12:00, and that can mean only one thing in France. Everyone was on lunch. Nicky suggested that I jump in to inspect to see if there were any obvious problems while we were waiting.

The sea in Marseille at the end of April isn’t exactly balmy; it’s freezing. I reluctantly pulled on my wetsuit and kitted up for the unwanted dip. I wasn’t wearing a weight belt, so I had to pull myself under using the rudder to keep me down. The buoyant wetsuit pushed me up against the hull and wedged me in place. I examined the propeller, twisted the blades – they moved freely – tugged the propeller from side to side – it didn’t budge – and checked for any play – there wasn’t any. By that time I needed air so I surfaced, took a quick breath, and went down again to repeat the process and got the same result. The propeller and shaft were exactly how I would expect a properly functioning drive train to be.
I clambered back onto the boat, put some warm clothes on and started making calls. After a long discussion with the Maxprop agent and another with the engineer, we decided that the noise must be normal. Neither of us had ever been on an Ovni before and the only other aluminium boat that we had sailed on was so different that a comparison was pointless. None of the GRP boats we’d been on had ever made a noise like that.
We decided that it was probably a combination of the shape of the aluminium hull and the four-blade propeller. There are also two cockpit drains below the sugar scoop, above the propeller, which might have contributed to some kind of resonance. Since then, we have traveled over a thousand miles and the engine and propeller have performed flawlessly. But the noise persists.
We cast off for the second time and set course for La Ciotat. Once we were clear of the harbour, we raised the mainsail and unfurled the genoa. In twelve knots of wind Alter gathered herself and surged across the bay. We turned off the motor and revelled in the silence. We were both wearing silly grins, both utterly happy. After years of searching for our boat, months of working on her under difficult conditions, and then missing our launch date, we were finally on our way and free.

We were just gathering our thoughts, thinking about getting the camera out for a picture of the Chateau d’If as we sailed past, when something large appeared from behind the sail on our port side. The enormous yellow marker buoy had been hidden behind the sail and we had been too busy celebrating to see it.
Nicky and I watched wide-eyed as the buoy disappear behind us. We should have been mortified that on our first day out we had nearly hit an enormous yellow buoy in the middle of the bay. But we both burst out laughing.
The adrenaline was still buzzing in our ears when we dropped anchor off La Ciotat at eight o’clock that evening. We popped the cork on a bottle of Laurent Perrier that we had been saving for the occasion and sipped champagne as we watched the sun dip beyond the horizon.

Anchored off La Ciotat with a bottle of Laurent Perrier to celebrate our first night at sea.

Winter Refit

Buying the boat was a bit like getting married and then being separated before the consummation. We’d spent years searching for her before becoming acquainted, making a commitment and spending a chunk of our savings on her. And the day after we met her for the first time, we abandoned her in Marseilles with a promise to return two months later. There was no honeymoon. There wasn’t even a wedding night.

She is an Ovni 435 and her name is Alter. We’d considered changing her name, but the two options that we wanted, Nomad or Nomade (French) were already taken, so we decided to keep her as Alter. Patrice, the previous owner had chosen the name because of its Latin roots, which mean “the other (of the two).” He meant it to invoke the idea of an alternate or different lifestyle, something that we, and many sailors, also hanker after.

We used the months before our return to make lists of exactly what it was that we wanted in the way of repairs and renovations. Theoretically there wasn’t anything to do. She had recently returned from a twelve-year circumnavigation, Patrice had spent months sprucing her up for the sale, touching up the paint, cleaning, and doing many of the little jobs that are often overlooked at sea.

But there is always something to do on a boat. She was twelve years old and, with age comes wrinkles. All the taps and water fittings had succumbed to verdigris and needed replacing. The anti-fouling had to be redone, anodes needed changing, the countertop around the sink was damaged; we wanted to fit fans, a gas alarm, an isolation transformer, replace the stern gland and we had our eyes set on a feathering propeller, to give us an extra knot underway and help with maneuvering in close quarters. The list grew longer by the hour.

The stove was original, and still worked, but we coveted another. In our endless trolling of sailing magazine articles and drooling over the latest equipment, we’d read countless reviews. Yachting Monthly had done a comparison of some of the popular marine stoves and one stood head-and-shoulders above the rest. They could all boil a kettle, or heat up a pressure cooker, but few had acceptable ovens. All but one were awful at making toast, either burning the edges while leaving the middle unscathed or not managing to burn anything at all. We’d set our sights, and a chunk of our budget, on the GN Espace Levante (a British product, despite the name). In the test it was the only one that produced perfect toast, but also demonstrated its consistent heating by baking a batch of shortbread. It was twice the price of any of the others, but we thought it a price worth paying. It joined the growing list.

When December arrived, instead of packing the skiing gear and heading for St. Anton, we filled our suitcases with working clothes and our sailing gear that had been in storage since the sale of Amajuba, our previous boat, and headed for Marseilles.

We’d chosen an airbnb in the town of L’Estaque for our base. It was only about two kilometers from Port Corbières, where Alter had been waiting patiently for our return.

Before we could start work, we had to go shopping for tools and other essentials for the boat. The list seemed infinite. Although Patrice had left us his full spares inventory, there was still a lot we needed, and wanted to make the boat our own. We began our quest at the massive Leroy Merlin up the road, where we started to amass a collection of tools. We also needed taps, shower fittings, hoses, clamps, stainless steel screw, nuts and bolts, straps, glue, paint brushes, overalls, gloves, masks and a plethora of other items.

Our first task was to complete an inventory of everything on board The lazarette lockers yielded an Aladdin’s cave of treasures. They are so voluminous that it took three months to discover a third gas bottle at the bottom of a locker. And once the inventory was done, we measured everything to make sure that the new taps would fit, the pots and pans we wanted were not too big for the cupboards and other details like the exact size of the work surface to ensure that the chopping board would fit.

Nicky had hunted for bicycles online and found exactly what we needed. We both enjoy mountain biking but there was not enough room for full-size mountain bikes on Alter. Most sailors who have bikes settle for the foldable ones with small wheels. Although they are adequate for getting to the shops, they are not suitable for long rides off-road. So, Nicky found a folding mountain bike, made by Montague, with 26-inch wheels that was designed for paratroopers. We located a dealer in France who had two of the correct size in stock. They were the first of our orders to arrive.

They were relatively expensive, and we were concerned that they might not be all that we hoped for, or that they might not fit in our equipment room, but they turned out to be perfect. They gave us mobility around the boatyard, particularly for trips to the nearest loo, which was about a kilometer away.

We tackled one of the most challenging tasks first. The soundproofing in the engine compartment was looking tatty. Its black covering was peeling off making a mess of the engine. We had ordered a lead-lined commercially spec’d material to replace it. When soundproofing is fitted to a boat, it is done before the engine is installed and there is consequently room to do the job. Removing the engine was not an option, so we were left with a crowded space that had very little clearance between the engine and the sides. Behind the engine, access was through a small hatch in the aft cabins. It was a job for a non-claustrophobic contortionist.

We pulled out all the old soundproofing and then set about ticking off all the other tasks while we waited for the new material to arrive. I had decided, perhaps a little optimistically, that we would be able to do all the work ourselves, but as some of the more challenging jobs approached, I began to have my doubts.

The first task that exceeded our confidence was the isolation transformer. For a start, it was twice as big and four times heavier than I imagined. I designed and made the mount, which is probably so over-engineered that it will be there long after the boat has ceased to exist. But when it came to the wiring, I chickened out. I realised that the consequences of making a mistake could be catastrophic.

The washing machine proved tricky too. I imagined botching the mounts only to have the entire thing ripping itself off the bulkhead in a heavy sea. I put my tail firmly between my legs again and we arranged to have it done by the local boatyard. It didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped.

Our new skew washing machine waiting for its new façade.

The mounting was very strong, but the machine was not straight. Nicky has an eye for detail, but even my forgiving eye could see the slant. And then when the cupboard door went back on, the opening was too small to open the washing machine door. Unfortunately, we were not there when they rectified that problem. Let’s just say that when Nicky and I saw their solution for the first time, we were horrified.

So, the cupboard had to be removed and we found a carpenter to fit a new façade.

While this was going on, it was winter in Marseilles. Most of the boatyard was closed and we lived our little world, layered against the biting wind. Our hands split from the cold and stung from the turpentine and spirits that found its way into the cracks. Our backs ached from wedging ourselves into lockers to fit anti-slip mats, from lying flat on the cabin sole to clean out the water tanks and from wedging ourselves upside down into cupboards to fit conduits or to reach water fittings.

Fitting the new taps and the water filter.

We worked ten hours a day every day, returning to our little apartment shattered and fulfilled. Each day meant a little more done and a little less to do. By the end of January, the bulk of the work had been done, but the list still stretched to the horizon.

We went back on contract for two months to help pay the bills, and returned to the boat at the beginning of April. We intended to launch in the middle of the month. The stove and propeller had yet to be delivered and there was a mountain of work still to do. Nothing went smoothly. The propeller was not going to arrive before our launch, so we drove to Fréjus to collect it. DHL managed to get the stove as far as their depot near the airport, but all their promises to deliver to the boatyard were false and we had to collect that too. And a week before we were due to launch, we found that the radar wasn’t working.

Our online shopping was waiting for us when we returned to France.

It transpired that it had been hit by lightning at some stage and the PC board had to be replaced. All of this was made more complicated by the fact that Nicky’s and my French, is normally limited to ordering meals and exchanging pleasantries. Our learning curve soared when we began discussing the intricacies of radar, installations of AC systems and debating the problems of running a business under the weight of the French tax system with people whose English was no better than our French.

The launch date slipped while we waited for parts for the radar and sought help to get the propeller installed. Our efforts had been thwarted when the old one refused to budge. (We subsequently added our own blowtorch to remove reticent screws.)

On the day before the original launch date, we went shopping, because the rental car was due back. As with many other things, it was a last-minute adventure. We were still filling our trollies when the store security began herding us to the exit. Nicky piloted two overladen trollies while I ran back and forth, scooping stuff off the shelves, avoiding the security guards, trying to get the last few things on the list.

The following morning we returned the rental car and moved out of our apartment and into the boat. It was almost a relief because it meant that there would be no more quick trips to Leroy Merlin or lightning expeditions to Ikea.

Living in a boat on the hard stand is a little like living in the second story of a caravan. We couldn’t use the water system, nowhere for it to drain to, or the toilet. Dish washing was done under a nearby tap and the toilet and showers were still a bike ride away, making it just a little inconvenient when the call came in the middle of the night: head torch, ladder, unlock the bike, pedal, loo, pedal, lock, ladder and back to bed.

Getting to work was easier though. After we had cleaned the hull with a borrowed pressure washer, Nicky got the short straw and started painting the first of four coats of black anti-foul while I changed all the anodes and epoxied the rudder.

We set a new launch date for the 30^th April and, despite it being two weeks later than planned, the deadline came at us like a runaway freight train. The isolation transformer was hooked up, the propeller and stern gland fitted and the radar repaired all within days of launch.

The new four-blade Maxprop feathering propeller.

And then, with one day to go, everything was done. We arranged to have the boat lifted into the slings the following night so that we could paint the last patches of anti foul where the pads that had held the boat in place had covered the hull.

We spent the time in a bit of a daze, tidying, securing, and not daring to believe that we would soon be in the water and on our way. But we were two weeks behind schedule and that meant that our leisurely cruise down the coast towards Antibes was merely a dream. We had to cross to Corsica as soon as possible in order to get to Marina Balistrate in Sicily. Our flight to Wales for our nephew’s christening was only three weeks away.

The Boat

When we met Coyote we were living in Johannesburg, flying 737s for Comair, a South African domestic airline. We had fallen into it, the way one falls into things, bought a home, added two dogs, grown roots. We acquired stuff, decorated, renovated, re-decorated and perfected until the house was exactly what we wanted.

Work had its privileges, like rebate tickets on British Airways, and early morning descents into Cape Town with clouds spilling off Table Mountain and tendrils of fog tracing the streams that wet the Winelands.

But life wasn’t without drudgery: the commute, the traffic, the taxis. And limited destinations became increasingly familiar as the years slipped by. The exhilaration of flight was slowly replaced by the creeping fatigue of a relentless schedule. And living in Johannesburg meant accepting the persistent possibility of violence.

Coyote was French and working as a diving instructor at Ponta do Ouro in Mozambique, where Nicky did her Advanced Diver course. He had spent the previous twenty years roaming the earth, staying only as long as his visa was valid. He’d crewed on crabbers in Alaska, shucked oysters in Canada, guided kayaks in the Gulf of California and taught scuba diving in more places than he could remember. His dream was to buy a catamaran, crew it with his wife, and charter it on diving trips in the Coral Triangle, where the warm Pacific waters flow between the Philippines and Indonesia, feeding a bountiful marine biome.

Meeting Coyote was a defining moment, the start of a slow realisation that there was another way, a better way. We began to dream of selling up and sailing the world. But it was too soon: we still had two beautiful dogs. We could not contemplate parting with them while they were still alive.

There were worries too. I get seasick. Very seasick. So, before we sunk our savings into a boat, I signed up for a deckhand course to see if I could be a sailor. The week went well; we bought a small yacht. I returned to complete my Day Skipper license. And then the learning process really began. It was a bit like buying a pair of climbing boots and then tackling Everest. After our third outing, we suspected that the Port Elizabeth NSRI were placed on standby whenever we arrived at the yacht club. (We never called on them, but there were a few occasions…)

When Bella, our Great Dane, died, we knew that our time was approaching. Max was still healthy, but he was thirteen and showing his age. Then he was gone, and we were left bereft. And free.

Within a few months we’d sold our house and the boat, resigned from the airline and accepted a flying job in Haiti. The new job meant four months off a year, and the opportunity to travel. But we hadn’t lost sight of our goal.

We debated a wish-list for our next boat and spent countless hours surfing “boat porn.” There was no perfect boat. A boat that is good for the tropics can be dangerous at high latitudes; a boat that goes fast is often uncomfortable and a challenge to sail; a boat that has room for all the toys can be a handful for two people – and stretch the budget to breaking point. Every boat is a compromise.

In December 2017 we sailed to Antarctica aboard the expedition yacht Pelagic Australis. She spoiled us with her size, her comfort, her capability and above all her cosy pilothouse where we could shelter from the worst that the weather could throw at us. We dreamed of a pilothouse.

By the middle of last year, we had looked at almost every yacht that was on the market, and still not found what we were looking for. Well, we had found two. But no matter how much we wanted a Good Hope 56 or a Boréal 44, neither was in the budget.

Both of the boats are made of aluminium, which is strong and doesn’t corrode – much. The more time we spent poring over the details of boats on the Internet, the more we found ourselves going back to one particular design.

The French boatyard Alubat has been making aluminium boats for some time and the most popular of their brands is the Ovni. It has a lifting centreboard, which allows it to navigate waters less than a metre deep, and a reputation for being the Land Rover of the sea. (Meaning that it can go almost anywhere – not that it breaks down all the time.)

I had placed email alerts on a number of brokerage sites that warned me when an Ovni became available. There were some false alarms. A boat in Florida that looked promising turned out to be a fix-it-up. We made an offer for another in Poland, but the owner turned us down. Then, one Sunday morning I checked my mail while the coffee was brewing. There was an Ovni 435 for sale in Marseille. I clicked the link. I rushed through to the bedroom where Nicky was waiting for her coffee, ‘I think I’ve found our boat.’

She sat up and reached for my iPad. As she flicked through the pictures, the growing smile on her face told me that she agreed. It ticked almost all the boxes: a large forward sail locker, an equipment room, a stand-up shower. And it had just returned from a ten-year circumnavigation and was fully equipped to keep going. It had a water maker, diesel heater, solar panels, wind generator…

‘Call him.’

‘What?’

‘Call him!’

I looked at Nicky uncomfortably. We were in the Congo, the seller was in France. He spoke French, might not speak English. My French was appalling.I didn’t want to cold-call some stranger in France. I wanted to compose a carefully thought out email, translate it, send it off, wait.

The phone rang only twice, ‘Oui?’

‘Bonjour. Je m’appelle Brady. Je vous téléphoner à cause de votre bateau.’

‘Do you speak English?’ the man asked.

‘Yes. Do you?’

‘A little. But I think it is better than your French.’

‘Is the Ovni still available?’

‘Yes. I advertised it only yesterday.’ He seemed bemused.

I nodded to Nicky and she began frantically signalling me and mouthing that I should make an offer, while I tried to concentrate on what the man was saying.

We made an offer subject to a survey.

We arranged and paid for a survey.

But we were in Goma, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and couldn’t be in France until the following week. We spent the time putting the money together, organising the unexpected visit to Marseille, liaising with the surveyor, and reassuring the seller that we were serious and that he shouldn’t sell the boat to anyone else until we got there.

And when we arrived in Marseille ten days later, we found that the yacht was everything we’d hoped for. Patrice, the seller, had bought it new in 2006, looked after it with care. We shook hands on the sale and Patrice spent the rest of the day guiding us through our new home, demonstrating all the systems. It was a reluctant parting for him, but we reassured him that his Alter would be loved and cared for.

We returned to our nearby Airbnb that evening a little dazed. We were boat owners again. We already had commitments for the next few months. There wasn’t time to put the boat in the water before the end of summer. So, the following day we left Alter in France and continued on to the UK and our planned holiday.

Our lives continued as normal but had inextricably changed. We started making wish-lists, planning renovations, surfing the internet for all the things that we wanted to have aboard when we set off on our journey.

We planned to return to the boat in December. But she would only return to the water the following April. It seemed like a lifetime away.

Lake Kivu

When the UN contract in Haiti came to an end a little over a year ago, we headed to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo to fly for Monusco, the UN Peacekeeping Mission that has been trying to separate Congo’s warring factions for the last twenty years.

Our job is the same; the destinations are different. Instead of Port-au-Prince, Cap Hatïen and Santo Domingo, we shuttle to Kalemi, Kisangani, and Entebbe in Uganda. Occasionally we fly to Beni, about two hundred kilometres north of here, where sporadic attacks by an Islamic militia hamper international efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Coming into land with Mount Nyiragongo in the background.

Goma huddles up against Gisenyi in Rwanda, on the shore of Lake Kivu. To the north, Mount Nyiragongo, an active volcano, smokes ominously, a constant reminder of the 2002 eruption that drove a swathe of molten lava through Goma and into the lake.

The city is five-thousand feet above sea level. Daily downpours in the rainy season wash away the film of sulfurous ash and keep the air cool. When the sun dips toward the horizon, it dapples the clouds crimson and the mountains guarding the edges of the lake fade to purple.

One of the best places to watch the sunset is from the bar of Hotel Linda. Fishing boats venture out for the evening catch: three boats tied together side-by-side with long poles protruding from their flanks, like the antennae of an enormous insect. It’s a tranquil scene, but danger lurks under the still surface of the lake.

You’d think that a volcano, armed rebels and the threat of Ebola would be enough for one region. But the three of them are dwarfed by the biggest danger of all, the lake itself.
Lake Kivu is part of the Rift Valley that tries to cleave the eastern third of Africa from the rest of the continent. The lake has an average depth of eight hundred feet, and a surface area of one thousand square miles.

Brackish springs deep within the lake release water rich in carbon dioxide. Because the water is saline, it’s heavier than the fresh water above, so it stays at the bottom. Pressures of over forty atmospheres ensure that the carbon dioxide remains dissolved in the water. In some places the bacteria that live at the bottom of the lake feed on the carbon dioxide, turning it into methane.
To the south-east, near the Rwandan shore, there’s a white structure that looks a bit like an oil rig. Rwanda is extracting methane from the water for power production. But the volume of methane is increasing faster than it is being used, and the water can only hold so much methane. When the pressure of the gas equals the pressure of the water, the dissolved gas will bubble and surge to the surface, forming a toxic blanket, displacing all the oxygen.
In 1986 something similar happened to Lake Nyos in Cameroon. The lake released a large cloud of carbon dioxide from its depths, suffocating almost two thousand people, and more than three-thousand cattle. Lake Nyos is a fraction of the size of Lake Kivu.
There, a solution was found to prevent it from happening again. Vents were installed to allow the gas to bubble out of the lake at a controlled rate. But a similar project for Lake Kivu might run into tens of millions of dollars, money that the Congo and Rwanda don’t have to spare.
A major disturbance, like a volcanic eruption, might trigger an overturn, with all the gas effervescing out at once, possibly causing a tsunami.

As in 2002, the volcanic eruption would send people fleeing to the lake shore. Those that avoid the lava, and don’t drown, will be suffocated in a gigantic gas cloud. Two million people might die.
Fortunately, it only happens every thousand years, or so. But the last overturn was about a thousand years ago. It’s almost due for another one. Scientists predict that the next overturn will only happen towards the end of this century… or when the volcano erupts. And nobody’s quite sure when that’s going to happen.

The Year in Pictures

It’s been almost a year since the last post. A narrative on the happenings would be longer than War and Peace. So, to save you from boredom, we’ve decided to post a smattering of pictures of the year that was:

Île à Vache

When the aircraft was undergoing routine maintenance, we slipped out of Port-au-Prince to explore Île à Vache…

The Island of Cows, lies off Les Cayes, about 200 kilometers west of the capital Port-au-Prince and roughly halfway along the southern coast of the Tiburon peninsula. It is only ten kilometers off the coast, but a continent away from the hustle of Haiti. The island got its name during the seventeenth century when pirates used it as a provisioning stop.

One of the local fishermen showing us his crab pots.

Under the Tuscan Sun

In September 2017, we spent three weeks in Italy, where we travelled to Verona and Venice before touring Tuscany.

In Verona, we experienced Tosca in the two-thousand-year-old arena.

Venice was Venice, with tourist crowds that outnumbered the residents. But it wasn’t difficult to get away from the crowds, even near the Rialto Bridge, where a step to the left found us at All’Arco a small bar serving delicious cicchetti to a local crowd.

We attended the Regata Storico, the annual gondola race down the Grand Canal that has been a fixture since the thirteenth century.

Part of the parade of gondolas on the Grand Canal

We travelled to the islands of Murano and Burano, famous for its colourful houses.

From Venice, we travelled to Tuscany, where we based ourselves in the small town of Gambassi Terme. We could see the medieval towers of San Gimignano from our terrace.

The view of San Gimignano from our terrace.

On the way to the market in the nearby town of Certaldo, we stumbled across a medieval festival.

San Gimignano, with its iconic towers, was a short drive away.

The view from the top of one of the towers in San Gimignano

Not far from San Gimignano we followed Francesco and his dogs Sally, Angie and Nuaoro through the undergrowth in search of truffles. Francesco’s biggest challenge was preventing the dogs from eating the truffles that they found.

Francesco Sally Angie and Nuaoro, all digging for truffles.

In Florence, we stayed on the south bank of the Arno, away from the crowds. We visited the Uffizi Gallery and soaked up the standard Florence experience, but the highlights were watching the movie Dunkirk at the Odeon, discovering a wine bar around the corner from our apartment and experiencing lunch at Ristorante Alla Vecchia Bettola, where the locals eat.

We took the train back to Rome, where the journey had started. There we met up with family and friends. Nicky’s sister Susan joined us with Harley and Noa. We also met up with Giuditta, who introduced us to her uncle Giovanni – a devoted son of Rome.

One evening, we were all having sundowners outside the French Embassy. Giovanni explained to us that the embassy was housed in the Palazzo Farnese, a former home of Pope Paul III. He was telling us about the frescos and other works of art inside when the police began putting up barriers in front of the building. We learned that it was the one night of the year that the palace was open to the public and quickly joined the growing queue.

Perseus Turns Phineus and His Companions to Stone by Showing Them Medusa’s Head. Annibale Carracci c1606

Antarctica

In December we sailed to Antarctica on board the sailing vessel Pelagic Australis. It was an unforgettable experience, but we took some photographs, just in case.

The Argentinian refuge hut in Mikkelsen Harbour.

The male penguin constantly upgrades the nest with more stones – to replace the ones that the other penguins have stolen.

Pelagic Australis waiting for the shore party to return.

Pelagic Australis tied up in Enterprise Harbour next to factory shipwreck with another yacht rafted up alongside.

Approaching an iceberg for some more penguin watching

Disembarking onto the ice at Port Lockroy

… which was every bit as cold as we feared.

Passing Cape Horn on the return journey.

Sunset on our last night in Puerto Williams

Jacmel Carnaval

On 1st January this year, we learned that the contract in Haiti had been cancelled by the UN with only a month’s notice. We returned to Haiti uncertain of the future, expecting to fly the aircraft back to South Africa via the Azores. But our employer signed a contract with a local airline, and our stay in Haiti was extended.

We had a few days off between contracts that coincided with the annual carnival in Jacmel.

One of the Chaloskas, a bogeyman of the carnival based on Charles Oscar Etienne, Haiti’s chief of police in 1915, who infamously supervised the murder of 167 political prisoners.

Haiti is the only nation to have freed itself from slavery, something Haitians are fiercely proud of.

As the sun began to set, the crowd at the rear swelled and pressed the procession forward.

Leaving Haiti

The new contract in Haiti didn’t give us any time to explore. So we cut our losses and said a sad goodbye to a country that we’d grown to love.

Vodou

Haiti would not be Haiti without Vodou. Sanley, our driver, told us that when he was in school, he had to state his religion when completing a form. He wrote ‘Christian’. But the teacher made him change it, ‘You are not Christian, you are Vodou.’

‘But my mum takes me to church,’ Sanley replied.

‘You are Haitian. You are Vodou.’

Vodou is as integral to Haitians as the food they eat and the air that they breathe.

The studios of Hollywood would have us believe that “Voodoo” comes from darkness, sticks pins into dolls, slaughters chickens and turns men, and women, into zombies. In reality, Vodou is a religion like many others. And like them, it has some practices that an outsider might find unusual. Vodou has been portrayed by some as evil and even demonic, but the truth is far more interesting.

The slaves that were wrenched from their homes in Africa and shipped across the Atlantic to Haiti, brought with them their culture and their animist beliefs. And when their masters tried to save them with Christianity, the slaves incorporated what was useful from that religion into theirs. To that mixture they added some religious beliefs of the island’s native Taínos, and Vodou was born.

We’ve been in Haiti for a year now and, until a few days ago, had little exposure to Vodou. Last year, we visited the sprawling downtown cemetery on the Day of the Dead, but we felt like voyeurs, uninvited guests. We wanted to understand a little more of the religion and experience its practices.

So, with the help of Jacqui Labrom of Voyages Lumière in Port au Prince, we arranged to attend a vodou ceremony in a peristil, or vodou temple, just above Pétionville.

We followed our guide, Serge, up Montaigne Noire, the precipitous road that scorns the contours of the mountain above Pétionville. Serge led us off the main road and up a another that looked like the construction site for a funicular. We parked the cars near the top and quickly chocked all four wheels with rocks. A narrow alleyway flanked by ramshackle houses led us to the peristil. Some local children stopped to watch the procession of blancs slipping through their territory

We were late. The congregation were all inside and the houngan, or Vodou priest, had begun proceedings. After a short wait, we were ushered into the peristil and given seats in the front row.

The peristil was about eight metres by eight and punctuated in the middle by a sturdy pillar holding up the roof. Jacqui explained that the pillar is known as the poto mitan and is an important part of the temple, a channel from the spirit world that allows them to join the congregation and perhaps take possession of one or two: for a while.

Despite the burning sun outside, the room was dark and cool. The walls were painted for the Haitian flag: dark blue on top and red at the bottom. On one side of the peristil, an unglazed window ran the length of the room, just under the eaves, The opposite window was blocked by a series of pictures: vodou art, two Catholic saints, a busy montage of Haitian heads of state and a map. And on the walls were larger paintings representing Haiti’s history. Pictures of the Taíno, Haiti’s original inhabitants, interspersed with paintings of shackled slaves and heroes of the revolution.

The room was awash with colour; many of the women wore red dresses with black-trimmed ruffles, others were dressed in purple and blue, and some wore their Saturday best. Most men wore their everyday clothes, but a few wore red shirts and a red moushwa, the vodou headscarf.

The houngan sat at the front on a small dais, under a canopy. A wooden sceptre, topped with a skull, leaned on his chair. To the houngan’s right four drummers waited patiently, their sticks poised. One ran his finger over the skin of his drum. It hummed.

When we were settled, Houngan Sambelle continued. He spoke in Creole and, although we don’t speak the language, it became clear that the service hadn’t begun. Apparently, he had been scheduled to appear on a radio show with a vodou priestess, or mambo, who failed to appear with him. The houngan spent half an hour explaining exactly what had happened, how disrespected he felt and then instructed everyone to delete the mambo from their WhatsApp, Facebook and all other social media profiles and also to block her number. Vodou in the 21^st century.

When the houngan stood, we stood with him. The congregation faced the back of the room, all holding candles and, following the houngan’s lead, began chanting to the rhythm of the drums. They sang to each wall of the room in turn before turning in towards the poto mitan. Those closest to the pillar placed a hand on it. The chanting continued.

There was a shiver, a schism and a woman on the far side of the pillar began to chatter. Her eyes widened and she arched her back creating space in her viscera for an invited guest. The chanting stopped and the congregation drew back a little in anticipation. The spirit withdrew and the woman slumped into the arms of her neighbours. They held her and wiped her glistening brow. A collective sigh seemed to fill the room and the tension evaporated like a spent storm.

While everyone took a break, the houngan addressed us, the visitors. He began in English, but then switched to Creole leaving Jacqui and Serge to translate. He gave us a lesson on the history of Haiti starting with the arrival of Christopher Columbus and subsequent extinction of the Taíno. He told us of the origins of the slaves, their journey from Africa and of the roots of Vodou.

When he was finished with us, he turned his focus to the patient congregation and the ceremony continued. A woman walked to the front with a sacred rattle and a candle in one hand. In the other, she held a bottle filled with chilies and a clear liquid. She splashed a little liquid onto the floor in front of each drummer, passed the candle over each drum and tapped it lightly with the rattle. Then she did the same to the poto mitan and crossed herself.

The elegantly dressed women started singing. The dancing that followed was orderly and melodious at first. A couple took the floor. Soon everyone was dancing. There was a rupture and a single figure, bent at the waist, barged through the crowd at speed, circled the poto mitan and disappeared. Another staggered into view, and soon bodies were bouncing off each other like pinballs. People dabbed white powder on each other’s faces to signify death.

Rum flowed, both as spilled offering for the gods and as spirits for the spirits. And then things began to get a little out of hand. The blancs became the centre of attention. A large man grabbed Nicky’s wrist and tried to pull her into the fray. She wasn’t keen. The dancers crowded closer, their bodies writhed and their arms flailed. When they were almost on top of us, the houngan drew them back. It was about then that we decided that we’d probably seen enough.

We paid our respects (and a bottle of rum) to the houngan and retreated to the cars, which were still resting on their chocks in the bright sunshine.

Voyages Lumière: http://voyageslumiere.com/

Jacmel & Bassin Bleu

Distances in Haiti are measured in hours, not kilometers. A five-kilometer trip to the supermarket takes at least half an hour. Jacmel on Haiti’s south coast is only a hundred kilometers from Port-au-Prince, but a three-hour drive.
We planned to depart early for Jacmel to avoid the hour or three when the Port-au-Prince traffic goes from slow to stationary. We should have known better. Carefully planned itineraries in Haiti are naïve fantasies. So, we were unsurprised, but flustered, when a failed clutch stranded us before we had left the house. With accommodation booked and no other means of easily getting to Jacmel, we began frantically calling car hire companies. By the time we’d negotiated a replacement at a sensible price, loaded up, and set off for Jacmel, the roads were as congested as a consumptive’s lungs.

Eglise Paroissiale St. Philippe et St. Jean overlooking the old Iron Market in Jacmel

We pushed through the sprawling Carrefour slum on the outskirts of Port-au-Prince, where ruined roads slowed us to a crawl, and negotiated the torturous traffic, flanking water tankers that leaked from their hindquarters like incontinent elephants, and passing brightly painted buses with I Love You God and Grace Bondieu splashed across their windscreens. We fought our way free from the morning melee into the countryside and followed a pass over the Massif de la Hotte, the mountain range that divides Haiti’s Tiburon Peninsula. The narrow road passed through unkempt villages and wound around blind bends, slowing us to a plod. And when we found ourselves behind an asthmatic truck, there was no passing it until we reached the top.
Then we plunged down towards the sea, making up time on the descent, and turned off towards the renowned Bassin Bleu, a little before Jacmel. Thanks to Google Maps, we knew precisely where we were, exactly where we were going, but had no idea how to get there. Google had us fording the river, but a new bridge kept our tyres dry. We ditched the GPS and, with the help of the occasional local, found our way to Bassin Bleu the old way.
Tourism in Haiti endures somewhere between scarce and non-existent. If you ignore the Canadians bussed to the all-inclusive Decameron Hotel in packages or the sun-seekers delivered to Labadee by the shipload, you could count the foreign tourists on your fingers. Consequently, places like Bassin Bleu, which would be overcrowded on any other Caribbean island, are visited mostly by locals, or foreigners living in Haiti. So, the guides, who sometimes wait fruitlessly all day for a tourist, turn into a lynch mob when a potential client arrives. Well, that’s what it felt like. Before I had set the park brake, a crush of guides surrounded the car, knocking on the windows, clamouring for our attention. We emerged into a cacophony of unintelligible Creole.

When we hesitated, they began shouting and shoving each other and fixing for a fight.
I was ready to abandon the visit. But Nicky found David Guerrier from the Renand Foundation, who was a tranquil island amidst the tempest. We followed David along a forest path that wound upstream, until we came across a top hat resting on a pair of boots. Baron Samedi had beaten us to it. We left our trainers next to the hat and slid down a rock face to the river with the help of a knotted rope.

Bassin Bleu nestles in a narrow gorge at the base of a small waterfall. It comprises a series of pools, the most popular of which is the highest: Bassin Clair. Despite its name, its water is a milky turquoise but it is cool and inviting in the Haitian heat. We stripped to our costumes on the steep stone sides of the pool and swam, with our sandwiches, to the toad-like rock in the middle, where we joined a group who were visiting from Jacmel.
While having our picnic, we met Susan an American artist living in Jacmel. She told us about her art studio and also about The Vatican, where Reggie blends his own ice cream creations.
An hour or two later we were back at the car. We felt that David had looked after us well so, although he hadn’t asked for any money, we gave him a thousand gourdes (about $16 US, which, we believed was way above the going rate). He seemed unhappy, so we offered him more. He declined. So, we left mildly disgruntled David, paid the car guard, and tried to ignore the gathering crowd of hawkers and their trinkets. I turned the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. The car was dead.
With some reluctance, we rejoined the atmosphere of mild discontent. The guides, car guards and hawkers gathered around, all loudly recommending solutions. We traced the problem to a loose battery connection, tightened it, and fled for Jacmel. But the car felt spongy, so we pulled over down the road and found that one tyre was badly underinflated. We pushed on cautiously and soon after we rejoined the main road, we stopped at one of the many roadside tyre repair spots and pumped up the tyre. It didn’t go down again. We couldn’t help wondering if someone at Bassin Bleu had deflated it so that they could ‘assist’ us to inflate it again.
When we reached Jacmel, we headed straight for The Hotel Cyvadier just outside town in time to watch the sunset, both clasping large and welcome rum punches.
The following morning we headed for The Vatican and Reggie’s ice cream. Jacmel isn’t very big, and we had directions, but The Vatican was nowhere to be found. We wandered about looking confused until someone emerged from a doorway and asked what we were looking for.
‘Le Vatican.’
C’est ici. Entrez!’ he gestured for us to enter. We hesitated. There was no sign outside and the interior was dark and uninviting, with a pool table guarding a cluster of dusty chairs and half-built furniture.
‘It’s closed for renovations, but you can come in.’

The Vatican occupies a reclaimed alleyway with a roof and mezzanine added. Attached to the restaurant, beyond a small courtyard, are an ice cream parlour and café: both also closed. We followed the guy upstairs, where a long bar counter faced a few tables with bench seats.
Reggie rose from his mattress on the adjacent balcony like Lazarus and, wearing little more than a loincloth around his ample waist, clambered over the low wall into his restaurant. He shook off his afternoon sleep and greeted us like honoured guests. Reggie is a Haitian who, like many of his countrymen, has spent much of his life in the United States. Unlike most of them, he returned to set up his business in Jacmel. He was tickled that we had come specially for his ice cream and reeled off all the different flavours for us to choose from. I don’t remember all of them, but Nicky settled for Rum & Raisin and I requested a bolder Pineapple & Ginger.
When the cups of ice cream arrived, Reggie hovered over us like an expectant father. He needn’t have worried, they were both delicious. Sometimes food exceeds expectations only because the expectations weren’t very high to begin with. But Reggie’s ice cream alone was worth the journey to Jacmel. While we were savouring our treats, Susan and Stephanie, who we had met at Bassin Bleu, arrived. I think they might have entered from another balcony, but I can’t be sure because we were fixated on our ice creams. We sat chatting for a while before heading off to explore Jacmel.

Jacmel has little of the bustle of its big brother on the other side of the mountain. It is a rough gem badly in need of polishing. The Marché de Fer in Bel Air was once a lively centre of commerce, but its heart has ceased to beat. Some of its steel struts have rusted through, causing part of the roof to lean alarmingly into the street. The remains of bright silver cladding imply a scrapped renovation: a love found and lost.

One of the shops selling papier-mâché masks.

Down towards the sea, artists studios and galleries range along the cobbled streets near the Hotel Florita. And further west, towards the river, we found shops with brightly coloured papier-mâché heads for sale, a side-gig for the artists who make masks for Carnival. Graffiti is often a blight, but the Jacmel artists have talent in any medium.

The walls near the Alliance Française are covered in the kind of graffiti that might once have been frescos. At the seafront, the promenade was deserted except for a group of schoolchildren bussed down for the day. The beach would be idyllic, but for a canal that delivers a stream of garbage and plastic containers onto the sand.
The city is a living metaphor for Haiti: warm, picturesque and laid-back; but its crumbling infrastructure is almost beyond repair.