Seasteading and Survivalists

A little over a decade ago I lived in Leadville, Colorado.  It’s a small high-mountain town in the Rockies, originally making its fortune from silver mining at the end of the 19^th century, surrounded by 14,000 ft peaks.   Once the snow had melted, a treat on Sunday mornings was to get into my Jeep and drive for a couple of hours over Mosquito Pass, a fairly challenging four-wheel-drive road, to the small town of Alma in the next valley.  Alma has two bars, one of which, curiously named Alma’s Only Bar, served great breakfasts on Sundays.  The clientele was interesting, as one would expect from a town in the real-world South Park county, the basis for the cartoon series.  Alma’s few hundred residents included a fair number of survivalists living in isolated cabins in the surrounding hills, and conversations over Huevos Rancheros at the bar often included conspiracy theories, praise for certain of the founding fathers (The Federalist Papers seemed to be the survivalists’ political bible), and discussions about their preparations for “when the government attacked”.  I didn’t find those kind of conversations in the conference rooms of New York and San Francisco where I wiled away my weekdays.  They were interesting Sunday mornings, jollied along by a couple of Bloody Marys, and followed by a gentle drive back home along regular roads through Breckenridge and Frisco.

I recently came across the idea of seasteading reading a blog.  The core of the concept is that, like homesteading, you are living at a kind of frontier, a place beyond, essentially unpopulated, and you are making your own world, your own reality.  Well, yes, there are elements of this that I imagine hit home to every cruising sailor, perhaps the idea of self-reliance when sailing on long passages, the self-sufficiency required for anchoring in remote parts for a week or two, or the high degree of autonomy that voyaging on your own boat has always offered.  But let’s not get carried away : we modern sea gypsies are nothing like the pioneers on land or the cruising pioneers of a century ago – with a few notable exceptions, most of us are doing something closer to dude-ranching.  Nothing wrong with that.

In looking for more information about seasteading I came across several books on Amazon, and an issue of Survivalist magazine dedicated to seasteading.  Now, from my earlier experience with survivalists in Alma, while they are generally a little “special”, the truth is that they are out there living a life that is a whole lot simpler and more self reliant than the life most of us live.  I thought there should be something to learn from their experiences relevant to living on a sailboat.

So ahead I went and bought the magazine issue for Kindle.  I expected some perspectives that were different to the usual yachtie writings.  Did that turn out to be true!

From the start, one has to admire the ambition of the survivalist writers.  Not limiting themselves to sailboats or power boats, one chapter addresses those who are “financially fortunate enough to consider purchasing a decommissioned nuclear-powered submarine”.

If that proves beyond your means another chapter helpfully details methods for “borrowing a boat, even without the intent of returning it”. 

Somewhere between these two extremes, the three page chapter entitled “Building your own boat 101”, after thoughtfully providing would-be seasteaders with definitions for key terms like deck, hull and keel, concludes that “building a boat as a DIY project can be a fun and exciting experience.  Individuals should have some working knowledge of wood and how to safely and effectively handle tools and equipment.”  Sound advice, that.

There’s an implicit assumption that while the government might attack them in a multitude of insidious ways, it would always leave their diesel supplies intact, so there's not much support for sailing.  “Sailing a boat is by far the hardest method of traveling over water. The techniques and procedures are much more complex than using boats powered by inboard or outboard motors.”   This is caused in part, one assumes, by “the color of a sail having no bearing on its performance, name or position on the vessel.”  Furthermore, “sailing is slowly becoming a lost art, with fewer and fewer people appreciating the time and talent it takes to use skills combined with nature, to navigate across the water. It is considered by many to be a more hazardous form of boating, and there are certain risks present on sailboats that are not present on others, such as shifting sails and yardarms, as well as riding the vessel while it is listing to one side or the other, which poses a greater risk of someone being swept overboard.”

Abandon ship options are explored. Along with lifeboats which “someone should be in charge of deploying”, “non-traditional lifeboat options” such as “Personal Diver Propulsion Systems” are explored for those who enjoy hanging out on their boat in full scuba gear, and jet skis for those who conveniently plan to abandon ship near shore in calm conditions.



Seasteading improperly in Sal, Cape Verdes, without the essential
torpedoes and explosive harpoons

Security gets plenty of coverage, focusing on attacks against the seastead.  Defence against pirates includes the recommendation to have torpedoes and explosive harpoons, along with underwater mines which the author regretfully notes “cannot be purchased by the average seasteading citizen”.  Plenty of semi-automatic and automatic weapons are needed, of course.

I would have expected foraging and water purification to be strong points of the survivalists, and there is plenty about harvesting seaweed, as well as advice on not getting eaten by a shark or stung by a jellyfish while spearing fish.  As for producing drinking water from sea water, the survivalists eschew the modern namby-pamby reverse osmosis stuff and instead work with more robust techniques:

“In the summer, you can make a solar still that will produce drinking water from salt water by linking two bottles together with rubber or plastic tubing. Used plastic soda bottles work well. Use your knife to make a hole in the center of each bottle’s cap, and then force the tubing through each hole. The tubing may be sealed into the holes with duct tape, chewing gum, or tree sap. If you’ve made the holes skillfully enough, you may not need to seal the tubing to the caps. To distill drinking water, fill one bottle three-quarters full with salt water and screw the bottle cap onto the bottle. Leave the other bottle empty and screw its cap on as well. Heat the bottle with salt water by putting it in direct sunlight, and cool the empty bottle by leaving it in shade or weighing it down in a tidal pool. As the salt water in the bottle heats up it will begin to evaporate, and the salt and ocean minerals will be left in the bottle. The steam or evaporated water from the salt water bottle will travel through the tubing to the other bottle where it will cool and condense. This condensation will be pure, fresh drinking water. Fill your canteen with this water as it is collected.”

On the basis that I’d like to drink more than a thimbleful of water a day I’m sticking with Otra Vida’s small watermaker for now.  Perhaps the process with the bottles works better on a nuclear submarine.

Another guilty pleasure on Sunday mornings long ago in the US was watching TV evangelists and laughing crazily.  The first Sunday after I moved to Houston in 1991 included seeing Robert Tilton, a Dallas based preacher, place his open hand in front of the camera and tell his flock to put their hand on their TV screens and “feel the power”.  This was around the time that Genesis had released “Jesus He Knows Me”, and I assumed the TV show was a parody - until it became clear that it wasn’t.  (Presumably in recent years Tilton’s income has been dented by the spread of flat screen TVs without anything like as much static electricity).

In the same vein, I really want to believe this Survivalist guide to seasteading  is a parody. 

But it isn’t.

Oh dear.  Oh dear.

Hungary

It’s 4.15am, Otra Vida is at anchor off the small town of Tarrafal, Sao Nicolau, Cape Verde Islands, and I can’t sleep.  The cabin temperature is a warm 23C, there’s no appreciable wind as the town is on the leeward side of this mountainous island, we’re rocking gently with the swell, and there is one mosquito in our cabin, buzzing around menacingly, which I have so far been unable to find.   I can already feel a few bites on my body, presumably delivered while I was sleeping earlier.

Aside from the mosquito, the other thing that stops me from sleeping Is the news from Hungary – the results of the general election held yesterday.  Once again the right-wing populist Fidesz party won by a significant margin, and looks like retaining it’s 2/3^rds majority in parliament and with it the ability to abuse the Hungarian constitution with impunity for another 4 years.  As if that wasn’t bad enough the second largest party in Hungary now, with a little over 20% of the vote, is the ultra-right Jobbik party, its image carefully softened by one of its candidates posing with kittens (really).  The left was a disaster, unable to find a single credible leader to coalesce around, beset by internal squabbles, and offering a melange of generally unimpressive politicians that one struggles to imagine running a small town, let alone a country.

There will be whining from the left about gerrymandering and maybe some electoral irregularities, all quite possibly true in the psuedo-democracy that Hungary has become, but nowhere near enough to change the outcome of the election.  The far right and the right combined polled about 65% of the vote. The Hungarian people have spoken, and what they have said is not pleasant.  They have voted for four more years of Hungarian exceptionalism, a short-term feel good nationalist tonic that papers over a plethora of issues with operating in the modern world.  Four more years of looking inwards first, then outwards towards the strongmen of the east rather than the democracies of the west, blaming improbable foreign enemies for all woes.  Four more years of revelling in a largely imaginary past glory rather than addressing the present and the future.  Four more years of intolerance of minorities – Roma, Jews, gays, foreigners in general.  Four more years of Putinization. 

I feel terribly sad about my semi-adopted country and the good people I have the honour of knowing there.  At the fall of the Wall Hungary was perhaps the newly-liberated country with the greatest potential.  25 years later and it seems to be heading back to what it tried so hard to escape in 1989 and in 1956.

Yes, Hungary is a small country, and some will say it is small enough to not matter in the bigger picture of the west.  There’s an old saying that if you think something is too small to make a difference try spending the night with a mosquito.  I’m doing that right now.

Canary Islands

Otra Vida’s last visit to the Canaries was in October 2010, just before crossing to St Lucia with the ARC.  It was too short a visit: a memorable week in Graciosa, a few days in Lanzarote, and a couple of frantic weeks in Las Palmas preparing for the crossing and surviving the ARC pre-departure parties.  This time we were determined to spend longer and explore the islands more. 



Maret reflected in the Atlantic on New Year's Day

Landfall at Graciosa was at dawn after a windless 100% motoring four day passage from Rabat - our first New Year at sea, when the VHF came alive with New Year greetings in all kinds of languages: Spanish and French of course, also Russian, English, German, Arabic (I think) and several other languages that we couldn’t recognize.  Maret added Estonian to that mixture.  On board we celebrated with slow-roasted lamb and a reduction sauce, cava, and the Spanish tradition of 12 grapes at midnight - a brilliant piece of Ivy Lee-style marketing to resolve a grape glut in the 1930s that stuck, and which has ensured that no-one in Spain takes photos of each other at New Year’s midnight, as everyone has pouched cheeks with 12 grapes stuffed inside.

Lanzarote from the Graciosa anchorage

This time our visit to Graciosa was tranquil.  The anchorage, which last time had about 30 boats, had just 3.  Last time Wendy, Szilvi and I ended up partying with Dani, the local kingpin, and Rufi, his trusty sidekick, seemingly every night, either ashore, on Otra Vida, or on Dani’s farm in the uplands.  This time they and their boat were not in evidence, giving our livers a pass on the serious workout that would have undoubtedly ensued.

La Graciosa

Following a drizzly week in Las Palmas getting our refrigerator fixed we headed south and started to learn about the very localised nature of high island weather.  Being finally in the trade wind belt the big picture was fairly consistent N-NE-E winds of 12-20kts. However the wind behaviour around the islands is more complex: a bit like water around a rock in a stream.  The water on the upstream side bunches up around the rock … this happens with clouds, so the NE sides of these islands are typically cloudy, and therefore somewhat cooler because of the reduced amount of sunlight.  On the downstream side of the rock there is a slack-water eddy, similarly on the SW side of the islands there are rarely clouds or wind, and it is sunnier and warmer.  On the sides of the rock, the water flows more quickly, logically, as the water bunched upstream of the rock has to go somewhere.  This happens with the wind around the islands too, with “acceleration zones” to the sides where the wind can be 10-20kts higher than the prevailing wind.

Gran Canaria

All this leads to interesting sailing conditions.  Going E or W from the south of an island there are dead calm conditions for the period you are in the wind-shadow of the island, and then suddenly within 500m you are in strong winds, quite often 30+kts.  In anchorages a few hundred meters can make a significant difference in the amount of cloud or the amount of wind you experience, and a 10 or 20 degree change in wind angle can turn an anchorage from comfortable to swelly and untenable.   Anchoring and sailing here is never routine, and I’m grateful we were able to stay long enough to learn about it.  It is knowledge that will be useful in the Cape Verdes and no doubt in island anchorages further afield.

Oops, time to get the sail repair kit out

The biggest effects come from the biggest mountains.  Mount Teide on Tenerife is the highest mountain in the Canaries, and in Spain.  There is a cable car that moves you to 300m below the summit in minutes, and which is, apparently, the #1 tourist attraction in Spain by visitor numbers, a claim I find surprising.  We chose a foot ascent instead, starting a few kilometres away from the cable car, hiking past Montana Blanca … pale yellow rather than white, and impressively stark with eroded hills and almost no vegetation.  After a couple of kilometres of easy walking along pista we started the real ascent up a mountain path.  Nothing difficult but considerably steeper.  3 hours later, passing through patches of snow, we arrived at the refuge, a pleasant enough place as refuges go, bizarrely offering wifi access, electricity and vending machines, but no meals or drinks service.

The following morning we were away by 6.30am, and tramping through frozen snow and ice with crampons we watched the beginnings of sunrise far away over Gran Canaria.  The sky slowly filled in with pink and tangerine as we continued along.  There is only one officially sanctioned path up Teide, from the cable car station, but serendipitously we lost the faint path leading there from the refuge in the half light and decided instead to follow another older path up the steep scree slopes to the summit.  This was nicely challenging, and as we later realised, a much more interesting choice.

On top of Teide, sulphur clouds wafting by

After scrambling the steep, loose last 50m to the summit ridge we were on top.  The summit is wafted in hot sulphury steam from fumaroles in the summit crater and along the ridge – this is a sleeping volcano, not a dead one.   The now fully risen sun cast a perfect shadow of the triangular peak of Teide onto clouds well below us.

Teide's morning shadow

After half an hour on top, and feeling a little nauseous from the sulphur fumes, we descended the official route down to the cable car station, where all other official routes on the massif converge.  The route down is almost like a stairway, built from formidable stones and very well maintained, and designed for people in running shoes or even sandals to go up and down.   Our route up, officially illegal, was far more satisfying.

On arrival at the cable car station we were told that all routes (including the one we had descended from the summit) were closed because of snow!  The rangers would not let us take our chosen onward route to Pico Viejo, or any other route, even with our crampons and faced with the obvious fact that by being there we’d already done some much more challenging walking that morning.  They were apologetic, but said they were under strict instructions from their superiors.  We descended the cable car and walked across the valley bottom through a pretty desert landscape to the Parador, where we had a room booked for the evening.

Teide's caldera

Teide, while still a real mountain and wild in its moonscape ruggedness, has been tamed into a safe, controlled tourist attraction, almost a theme park.  I do understand the desire to avoid accidents in a tourist attraction, but the mountains are a place of freedom, and something has been lost in the process of taming Teide.  I wonder if the core issue here is one of judgement: the rangers could clearly see we were able to handle ourselves in the fairly mild conditions on the mountains, but to let us take a path would have meant a personal judgement, and how to explain that judgement and the potential commercial disruption if one of us had an accident, say a broken ankle?   Ultimately the over-avoidance of risk results in the loss of passion, of pleasure, of adventure.  It’s a balance, of course, and there are plenty of other mountains in the world that are not tourist attractions where we can roam freely.  But still it is a little sad.

After a relaxed day by the pool at the Parador we hiked to the rim of the caldera and did a long, long descent almost to the coast.  The trail took us up into barren high desert, with patches of ice remaining in sheltered places, then through alpine pine forests, a high cloud forest with Spanish moss hanging from the trees, temperate forest, lush tropical shrubs almost like a planned botanical garden, a gorge with German rock climbers on the walls, and finally to a small village where we caught a bus back to the boat.  A lovely day.

Lazy navigation in the wind shadow of La Gomera

La Gomera is one of the smaller, less developed islands of the Canary group.  It’s a day sail from the bottom of Tenerife, and much of the island is uninhabited.  

Valle Gran Rey, on the western side, retains a contingent of aging hippies, mostly German.  Headbands, scarves, baggy pastel-coloured trousers and wire rimmed granny glasses seem de rigueur.  People use skateboards, scooters or highly personalised bikes to get around. On Sundays there is the hippie market near the bus station, selling handicrafts, hand-made jewellery, incense, muesli and hippie clothes.  There’s a gentleness to the place, a feeling of relaxation.  It reminds me of Aspen or Boulder in Colorado.

La Gomera

Sailing into Vueltas, the tiny port near Valle Gran Rey, and looking for a suitable anchorage through binoculars, I saw what appeared to be a person sitting on a stone beach underneath sheer cliffs.  It seemed impossible to get to the beach, so I guessed it was some washed up clothing on a rock.  Several days later Maret was exploring the area and came close to the beach.  She noticed there was a removable ladder, a pair of running shoes with pristine white socks, and … living in a cave … a well-groomed single guy!  So, single ladies, a prospect for you: a waterfront residence with a private beach and an eligible bachelor.  Maret has the details.

La Gomera

Vueltas anchorage, La Gomera

The island rises steeply up 1000m from sea level, then rounds out into a rather gentle and hilly interior plateau.  There have been several major wildfires on the island, wiping out huge areas of shrubs, and leaving charred but mostly living palm trees.  New shrubs have filled in the gaps from older fires, and the most recent, in 2012, has left blackened shrub skeletons against a carpet of pale green moss.  In the steep valleys there are old agricultural terraces in the most unlikely places, often with impossibly green grass.

Charred forest, Garajonay, La Gomera

Hiking in La Gomera was a real highlight.  The trails near the coast are spectacular, scaling seemingly impassable cliff bands through cleverly meandering paths.  From our anchorage it was a short walk to the meditation hotel on the naturist Playa de Argayal, and the path next to it leads up a ravine, entering into a lost world of terraces, cliffs, easy scrambling, finally arriving at a tiny isolated church-ette perched high up on the side of a valley.  Over two days we hiked to the summit of the island, Garajonay, where we had views across to Teide, piercing through the cloud layer and still showing traces of snow near its summit, and to the islands of El Hierro and La Palma, some 40+ miles distant and finely detailed in the ultra-clear air.  Our hike back to Valle Gran Rey was via yet another clever, precipitous, fairly straightforward path down apparently impassable cliff bands.   This is hiking of a very high quality indeed – “dream mountains of our Eden” to borrow a line from Jethro Tull.

Hiking in La Gomera

The Canary Islands are easy for us to spend time in.  It’s 2 ½ months since we arrived, and it would be easy to spend longer here.  We’ve visited just four of the eight islands, and there is still much to explore.  Another six months would be straightforward.  But it is time to get moving.

Liz Clark is a surfer who decided to become a cruiser.  Her wonderful blog, The Voyage of Swell, tells the story and contains much good writing describing her boat challenges, life thoughts and her particular cruising approach (surfing, sunsets and salads).  Unlike most yachties, Captain Lizzy actively seeks out places with great surfing … the rest of us try to avoid them, preferring calm anchorages.  For the New Year she wrote a piece outlining her philosophy of life.  It’s a good read, full of joie de vivre, perhaps edging on naïve at times, but so full of optimism and spirit that it is hard not to be inspired by it.  A sentiment she includes in it: “I say that comfortable is caustic”. 

Tenerife from Garajonay, La Gomera

Our trip since leaving Estonia has been entirely in our civilizational comfort zone.  Iberia is easy to enjoy; Morocco, while certainly different from Europe, is a place of great civilisation; and the Canaries are a variant of Iberia.  There is much to like in all these places, and I’m grateful we have been able to enjoy them, learn from them, and hopefully give something back to the great people we’ve met.

But the time has come to move on.  Perhaps the curse of the Flying Dutchman?  Or perhaps the wanderlust of the rootless cosmopolitan?  Whatever it is, we have spent too long in our comfort zone, and we’re ready to point the boat south.  The first stop is the Cape Verdes, islands which are most definitely not Europe anymore.

Morocco



Arriving in Rabat in calm conditions

I’ve noticed that sometimes borders between cultures can induce a concentration of cultural characteristics, making differences more stark.  This is certainly the case in the area south of Maastricht, where the Dutch and French areas of Belgium come together.  The Flemish villages on the border are more stridently Dutch than in the Netherlands, and the French villages are almost like film sets in their Frenchness.



Bouregreg river between Rabat and Sale

In Rabat one sees this in the relatively few bars in this predominantly Muslim city.   The bars are markedly different to life outside - you walk through the door and enter into another world … rather like the magic realism bar in the Transglobal Underground song Stoyane/Male-Le.    Each bar is different, and each in their respective way has turned the dial up to 11, whether it be a shabby drinking hole that feels like it could get violent or a get-lost-in-here-and-never-leave softly lit womb of warmth.   El Trianon manages to pack three different bars into its two rooms, each with a different atmosphere.  The lighting is low, the TV plays movies silently, the music is great – really great – and the bar staff friendly and mostly female.  The clientele is male and Moroccan.  At the times I’ve visited in 2010 and this year we’ve been the only foreigners there, and the only women not working there have been those in our party.  It’s a bar that would be memorable in any city of the world.

The Medersa in Sale

Arriving there one night in November we sat at one of the bars and asked a few questions about drinks in my schoolboy French.  The bar server didn’t understand my shabby pronunciation, and the Moroccan gentleman sitting next to us tried to help.  After our drinks were served he continued the conversation:

“Vous etes Francais?”  (rather obviously not!)

“No, je suis anglais”

“Ah, then you speak English”



Searching for the spirit of William
Burroughs at Cafe Hafa, Tangier

 

His English was excellent - very proper, well enunciated, not English learned from a book.  We talked about our respective lives, travel, Morocco, sailing.  Aziz was a Moroccan diplomat who was in Budapest for several years, 2005 being the year he left and the year I arrived.  Reminiscences about Hungarian life, restaurants, places, people, politics.  We knew people in common.  He went on to India, then to Dublin, and is now back in Rabat sipping whisky at Le Trianon.

Desert music in the evening

The desire to enjoy, the pursuit of pleasure in these bars, brings to mind the words of the teenage protagonist in Vernon God Little, who, having participated in an evening of extraordinary debauchery in a Mexican roadside bar involving iguana impersonations, muses on how something in America seems to stop people really partying.  I think the same is often true of Europe too.  The falling-down-drunk tedium of Magaluf in the summer or Cancun at spring break doesn’t come close to the real thing.  The crazy bars of Rabat are a little closer.

Sand dunes near the Algerian border

We went exploring the desert close to the Algerian border during a visit from Annamaria.  We hiked sand dunes for sunset and sunrise, tried snowboarding down them (Annamaria, an excellent snowboarder, fared better than Maret and I), and saw amazing landscapes … reminiscent of the US desert southwest, but with different architecture, and very different clothing.  Most of the houses were build from adobe, and when these are not scrupulously maintained they slowly melt away.  In one town we saw a whole neighbourhood that looked biblical in age.  Our guide told us it was the old Jewish quarter, and that the residents had moved away “to build their country” in 1950s and 60s … just 50 years without maintenance and the houses already looked like ancient monuments.   I loved the gentle way he talked about the Jewish residents leaving “to build their country”, and commented on it, which led him to explain the Berber approach to religiosity – how the berber flag symbolises Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and how Berber villages had historically been viewed as safe places for people of all religions.  Would that it was this way everywhere.

The old Jewish quarter, abandoned in the 1950s



Annamaria snowboarding down to our camels

On the train to take Easyjet to the UK for my mother’s 80^th birthday celebrations, we’re sitting in a compartment with a middle aged Moroccan businessman, shoes off, quietly chanting religious devotions that he is reading from his tablet PC propped up on the table.  Although dressed in western clothes, the dark thumb-print mark on his forehead tells that he is a devout Muslim.   His gentle sing-song verses are interrupted from time to time by the aggressive chirping of his mobile phone, which he answers immediately, seamlessly switching from Allah to Mammon for as long as it takes, and then back.

Morocco is modernizing everywhere.  That is its right, of course, and it’s not a bad thing.  My impression is that the government is trying to pull off what Japan has achieved: to become a completely modern place, while not losing their own culture, as all too often modernising equates to westernising.  The results in Morocco are generally good, but there are exceptions.

 

Baggage transport from the taxi to our hotel

After the desert we went to the film studios of Ouarzazate, and then to the real life disaster movie called Marrakech.  Really, what has happened to this place?  Is this even Morocco?  I’ve been here a half dozen times and remain unimpressed.  It seems to me that the way to enjoy Marrakech is to stay in a lovely riad and to rarely leave it, something I did on one occasion.  The city itself has little to offer in architecture and ambience outside of the riads, and Djemma el Fna, the main square that I used to consider the reason for staying one night in town, has become such an unpleasant experience that I can’t say I want to return here again.  Even compared to 2010, the last time I was here, this has deteriorated into more of a circus.  Constant aggression from touts means you are simply unable to walk on the square now … and if you don’t respond to their aggressive interventions you get a stream of insults.  Maret was called racist more than once, I was called German (something I have no problem with, but their tone indicated it was meant as an insult).  Just so unpleasant.

High Atlas morning

Contrast this with our welcome after hiking in the Atlas mountains, arriving late at our small hotel where the owner, a mountain guide, had prepared a room for us with a wood fire to warm it up, and mint tea moments after arrival to fortify us.  We had a similar reception arriving in the high refuge on Toubkal.  Friendly smiles, caring people, almost overwhelming hospitality.

Toubkal summit - a bit chilly up there

In the Atlas mountains we had an interesting time pondering limits.  I am not much of a fan of limits, especially my own, and try to ignore them.  Goethe expressed this with an elegance of language that I lack:  “To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state”.   Our main hike was Jebel Toubkal, the highest peak in the Atlas and in north Africa.  I’ve been up twice before, the first time on skis, the second in late summer, and was relaxed about the territory.  The snow levels were still fairly low, so no avalanche risk, and the forecast was for bluebird skies.  After hiking to the aforementioned refuge at 3200m we set off the following day for the summit, fairly quickly getting into cloud, wind and occasional snow.  By the time we reached the peak, 4167m, it was no longer picnic weather … an estimated 50kts of wind, stinging blowing snow, instant rime on our jackets, an air temperature of perhaps -5C and wind chill very much below that.  Not a place to hang around.

Half an hour off the summit - eyebrows still frozen

The limits question came up during our ascent.  Now, I might dislike limits, but in winter mountaineering you need to stay well within them … things can go from OK to serious to life threatening too quickly in the high mountains in winter, and you need reserves of energy to get out of difficult situations.  (Not wanting to overdramatize, though – after all this was a day hike up a 4000m peak, not a Himalayan expedition).   Whatever that percentage of reserve is (and in my mind it’s 25%) I certainly strayed a little into that territory … worrying for such a modest hike, and evidence of not enough running in the last year or two.  Maret went very much closer to 100% … concerning to me, and we disagreed about whether that was OK.  Ultimately everything was fine, we summited, started down, and although the inflatable santa remained packed and uninflated, 90 minutes later and 800m lower we were sitting in sunshine eating our picnic lunch.



Christmas in Rabat marina

Rabat is a lovely city, and the marina – in a new development of modernity and tradition cleverly combined – is a delight to be in.  The only real downside to the marina is getting in and out – there is a bar across the entrance to the Bouregreg river that is unpassable in more than 2m of swell for anyone not on a surfboard.  Because of the high latitude north Atlantic storms thousands of miles away, 2m or less swell is rather rare in winter months.  We therefore ended up in Rabat longer than expected (as was also the case in 2010).  The main problem with this was that we had agreed to meet some of Maret’s friends in Tenerife for New Year’s Eve – something we were unable to do.  Christmas in Rabat was quiet, as one would expect, although the Catholic cathedral in the center was well lit up, and there were a few shops selling Christmas decorations.  We had a traditional Christmas day : a pre-lunch pub visit, in this case the very swanky Club Nautique overlooking the river, then lunch on board of turkey, roast potatoes, gravy, etc, followed by a Christmas pudding brought back from the UK earlier in December with brandy sauce.   We were finally able to cross the river bar on 30^th December for the 4 day passage to the Canaries, once again in almost zero wind, motoring.  Once in the Canaries we should, theoretically, be in the trade wind belt … let’s see.

The river bar on Christmas day - not a place for yachts

 

Spain to Morocco

It’s a short 160nm passage from Puerto de Santa Maria, Andalucía to Rabat, Morocco.  About 30 hours.  But it is something more, too : a transition from one great civilization to another, each of which has colonized the other for a period in the past.  

The sailing has been varied.  We started the day with light winds and our gennaker, just enough wind to move Otra Vida at about 4kts in bright sunshine.   The combination of bright sunshine and the gennaker is always a special feeling.

Approaching the Straits of Gibraltar, the wind strengthened as forecast, quickly reaching about 20kts.  The gennaker was down well before this, of course, and up went a triple reefed main and a single reefed genoa.   We were flying along.

The wind continued to build to rather more than forecast.  As darkness fell we were consistently seeing apparent winds of 25+kts from the aft port quarter, meaning true winds of 32+kts, with gusts to about 40kts.  Triple reefed foresail and main at this point. Not quite a gale, but getting close. 

Otra Vida handled it perfectly and (relatively) comfortably, with only half a dozen or so waves getting in the cockpit.  Our D400 wind generator was pumping out the amps, keeping the batteries close to fully changed.  Motion was acceptable, even kindly given the conditions.  Last year during our refit I moved most of our navigation instrumentation into the cockpit.  This has again proven a good move – far less running up and down the companionway steps while on watch.  A minor inconvenience: the waterproof LED strip that I used for cockpit lighting still has several LEDs glowing after their seawater shower from the waves.  Waterproof while dry is perhaps a better description.  Something to add to the To Do list.

Mid way through the night the wind started to drop, as forecast, and now we’re gently gliding along with 10kts of wind on a broad reach, about 35nm to go.  We’ll make it nicely for the lunchtime high tide to get across the Bouregreg river bar and into Rabat.

I’m putting some effort into studying weather at present. The wind we’ve had has been due to a squeezed high pressure system, so the skies have been clear and full of stars, and temperatures pleasant.  It is just after full moon, and the waves … galloping white horses earlier, gentle waves now … have been easy to see.  The moon has just set, orange as it got close to the horizon.  I’m sure that hazy colour has some meteorological significance, but don’t know what it is.

To our port side there’s a glow from a town distant on the coast, probably Kenitra, perhaps Rabat.   To our starboard side dozens of small fishing boats are working a mile or two further offshore than us, their lights forming a necklace to the horizon. The stars in the sky, the glow from an exotic land and the promise of interesting experiences to come, the gentle rocking of Otra Vida … all is good in this few square meters of the world tonight.

Portugal

Algarve sailing

My love affair with Iberia has always been rooted in one region: Catalunya.  It was there I first learned to love Spain, then slowly realised that most people in Catalunya do not feel they are in Spain at all.  I progressed to love other areas of Spain : Aragon in particular, but also Andalucia (hard not to love it), Navarra, Valencia, Islas Baleares.  But even in the throes of delightful infidelities with other areas of Spain, my heart wandered back to Catalunya.  To Barcelona, that most magical of cities, and to the north of Catalunya: Emporda, Garrotxa, Cerdanya, Val D’Aran.  What places, what times, what memories.  Places with a vitality to them, a sheer joy of living, which I’d never come across before.  Barcelona, a metropolis that was exceptionally cosmopolitan and exceptionally local at the same time, respecting its past absolutely, and simultaneously turning that past on its head in ways that were exciting and radical.  And Cerdanya, having nothing really outstanding to recommend it : a flat plain surrounded by (objectively) modest mountains, a few towns that were (objectively) rather similar to many other Spanish towns.  And yet Cerdanya spun its magic, and I couldn’t wait to get back there.  I’m still not sure intellectually what the magic of Cerdanya is, but I know it experientially.

And now, 24 years after first visiting Catalunya and falling head over heels in love with north east Iberia, I am wondering if I missed a complementary jewel of the Iberian peninsula: the Atlantic coast.

To equate Spain and Portugal as variants of Iberia is both true and incorrect.  Yes, there is an Iberian aspect to both : life lived outside in cafes and bars and restaurants, a gregarious sociability, a deep belief in family, a conservatism, a joie de vivre.  And there is that grand contradiction: the conservatism (confirmed by the dominant presence of the Catholic church) that is offset by a tangible radicalism – remember that Spain elected anarchist and communist local governments in many places in the mid 1930s, which so upset the conservatives that they launched a coup to replace democratically elected officials and drove the country into the fractious and bloody Spanish Civil War.  Puigcerda, the rather non descript but intensely alive town in Cerdanya, was one of the many flash points, having elected an anarchist government (surely an oxymoron…).    Spanish anarchist thinking has spawned many hair-splitting “isms”, including the dada-esque anarcho-naturism (a political philosophy confined to warm days, and certain to be opposed by cloth manufacturers).  The richness of this radical tradition continues into the present day, sits strangely for me with the conservatism of Spain, and is an essential part of the magic of the Catalunya : the spirit of Durutti lives on.  (Digressing, a Manchester band from the Factory Records stable took inspiration from his exploits by naming themselves The Durutti Column.  I idly wonder if Vini Reilly, lead singer of the band and a collaborator of Morrissey, is thinking of the classic Smiths lyrics <In the days when you were hopelessly poor I just liked you more> seeing the overblown hype surrounding Morrissey’s autobiography).

There are plenty of differences between Spain and Portugal, though.  The language sounds very different, with Portuguese sounding somewhat Russian to my ears.  Portugal seems a bit more fashion conscious, a bit more glamorous.  There are plenty of beautiful women in both countries, but perhaps Portugal has the edge.  The influence of Portugal’s ex-colonies are much more evident than Spain’s.

Lisbon has been a revelation.  A little over four years ago, heading south to the Med, Wendy and I explored Lisbon for just one day – a Sunday lunch and an afternoon of walking around.  The bohemian bits of Lisbon we encountered felt very good indeed, so good that I wondered about coming back, and perhaps even living in Lisbon for a time.   I didn’t, sailing on to Sicily, Morocco and the Caribbean instead.  Wendy went to live on an organic farm in Andalucia and write a novel.

A friend from Budapest, Szilvia, decided 3 years ago that the next step in her wonderfully peripatetic and liberated life should be Lisbon.  Maret and I met up with Szilvia and Carlos, and had a re-introduction to a small sample of the pleasures of bohemian Lisbon.  First stop was a bar in a fishing tackle shop, Sol e Pesca, followed by a converted brothel (Pensao Amor) complete with fur-covered chairs, subdued lights, lots of velvet, low seating, and a double bed.  It was a taster of bohemian Lisbon, and it was lovely.

There’s more to Lisbon than bohemia, though.  Otra Vida was berthed in the Parque das Nacoes marina, part of the Expo 98 area of Lisbon.  The area is what would be called a new town in the UK – entirely planned, entirely postmodern – and it works brilliantly.  Places like Canary Wharf in London or Cuidad Olimpico in Barcelona don’t come close (and I won’t even mention the disaster that is the Forum/Diagonal Mar area of Barcelona).  In Parque de Nacoes every turn provides something new and interesting to look at –a curved sheet of water projected over a walkway, the Vasco de Gama tower in the shape of a spinnaker, a Japanese styled water garden, a promenade for evening paseos - interesting public spaces, places to meet and mingle, often with public sculptures - a white giraffe peering at itself in a mirror, a surfing wave by Anthony Gormley, a fountain made of rusted slabs and blocks that could well be by Serra.  The world-class aquarium, many of the offices, the shopping mall and the railway station are all inspiring examples of contemporary architecture.  The apartments, too, are built with considerable thought for human occupation – huge outdoor terraces, cleverly tiered so that apartments on different floors can still have terraces flooded with sunlight and with sea views, and so that viewed from the street they are architecturally interesting.   It’s a place for living well.

Parque de Nacoes

Paulo and Lino, two Portuguese colleagues from Vodafone, who I had last seen in Istanbul about five years ago, came onboard while we were in Lisbon.  A memorable lunch at a local restaurant followed, including Massada – something like a saffron bouillabaisse with pasta, exceptionally good – and enjoyable conversations about old times, new times, and putting the world to rights.  A lovely day.

During the same overly-rapid trip south to the Mediterranean four years ago we stopped on the Algarve coast for 1 night.  Rounding Cabo San Vicente at night in thick fog, Wendy had a scare when two boats came out of nowhere and passed very close to us.  She had been watching the radar and saw nothing concerning.  Turning the radar onto a higher range, we found the headland slowly circling around us.  Pondering this, I wondered if Dali had made an error when he declared Perpignan railway station the centre of the universe, but quickly realised it improbable that Dali could have been out by more than 1000km, and concluded that Otra Vida needed a new radar unit.

Later that morning, after the fog had lifted and we’d calmed down, we motored along the coast in zero wind, passing many resorts.  Not knowing anything of the coast we randomly anchored off a tourist beach, and after being moved on, ended up inside a river breakwater nearby.  We jumped in the dinghy and went upriver, coming to Ferragudo.  What a delight.  Grilled sardines on the quay, a beautifully quaint little village, pretty houses, a small square, and burned lips for me from trying unsuccessfully to match Wendy’s skills in flaming mouth shots.  Returning to the boat late in the evening we noticed a lot of phosphorescence in the water, with fish darting out of the way of the dinghy appearing as streaks of green light.  Back on Otra Vida we swam in this amazing fluorescent soup, every hand movement creating bursts of green sparkles, reminiscent of the old movie Fantastia.

Ferragudo is apparently the most photographed village in Portugal.  It’s rated as the “best” place on the Algarve to see real Portugal.  Lino and Paulo recommended it as a stop.  It’s rated highly.  And Wendy and I stumbled across it.  We could have stopped almost anywhere else on the Algarve coast and our experience would have been of a large holiday development.  We were lucky.

So this time, on a more leisurely trip, Maret and I anchored near Ferragudo.  It’s a lovely spot with several wide sandy beaches, slowly crumbling honey-gold cliffs, and the dark green shrubs so reminiscent of the Mediterranean.   The river also acts as the stopping point of the tsunami of crass holiday developments from the British/Dutch colonies west of it – the eastern side is the lovely village, somehow still managing to remain relatively unspoilt.

What is it about the northern European colonies in Iberia that feels so awful?  I sometimes wonder if I am applying a double standard – after all, I relish those parts of London that are unashamedly foreign.  Why do I feel that the Arabic colony around Edgware Road, the Bangladeshi colony around Tower Hamlets, and Chinatown are all positive, and yet the British colonies here are negative?  On reflection I think it’s to do both with what is being displaced, and what it is displaced with.  In London, as in Barcelona, foreign-dominated small areas provide diversity, and crucially are not bland or dumbed down.  And they don’t really change the overall nature of the place - these are large cosmopolitan cities.  Areas like Torremolinos or Benidorm on the other hand have all but eliminated any trace of Spain, and replaced it with a depressing predictability of sports and TV bars, irish pubs, kebab shops, burger outlets, chinese and indian restaurants, generic clothing, fake handbags and so on.  Try speaking Spanish or finding Spanish food in some of these areas … it’s an experience.  And it’s nothing to do with these being lower-end places – the same can be said about upscale generically-international resorts with golf, tennis, brunch, cocktail bars, designer brand shops, shrimp Caesar salad by the pool, minimalist-styled beach clubs, and so on.

But still, am I applying a double standard?  Is some of my dislike of Britain showing through a little too much?  Recalling the places we visited in Scotland earlier in the summer, I think I would feel the same way about a Chinatown or an Arabic area on Islay. Even if the areas were authentic and vibrant it would materially detract from the local culture, and the local culture is something worth celebrating.  I know this could easily be recast as an argument for cultural purity, or even as closet racism, but I’m a million miles from both of those.   And I’m certainly not advocating worshipping of a congealed past.  Somewhere there’s a balance though, and it seems to me that the decent British pubs I’ve known in Barcelona and Houston are positives, while the stuff infesting San Antonio (Ibiza, not Texas), La Duquesa and Praia da Rocha are not.  And that while the wonderful Bangladeshi food markets of Tower Hamlets are a positive, the same on Colonsay would not be.

Ilha da Culatra, an island in the Faro estuary, is lovely, and entirely uncosmopolitan.  More reminiscent of Mexico than Europe, the small village we anchored off has sand as its primary surface.  Small concrete slabs form walkways in the sand, there are no cars, and the houses are low and square roofed, mostly white with brightly coloured detailing.  The village continues to makes most of its living from fishing – the harbour is chock full of small fishing work boats, and each morning boats came near to us pulling up gillnets.  It supplements fishing with catering to visitors in the summer – there are about half a dozen restaurants/bars in the village, far more than would be necessary for the small population.  It is most definitely not developed or spoiled.

Culatra sunset

During the time we were anchored off the island, back in the UK the comedian Russell Brand was guest editor of the New Statesman, a respected political and current affairs magazine.  He wrote an essay promoting non-voting as a protest.  His basic reasoning was: the western model of today produces unacceptable results (environmental, wealth inequality, reduced opportunity); the political system within that model has been bought and twisted, and consequently offers only an illusion of choice; voting implies tacit acceptance of that political system; therefore do not vote.  Brand’s articulation of this is chaotic, but much more entertaining than my rather dry summary.  The right, naturally, had a predictable spasm of outrage, trotting out the old canards of “champagne socialist” and “corrupting our youth” (yeah yeah, whatever).

Anyway, it so happens that the people on this sandy island have some relevant experience of not voting.  Frustrated by the lack of progress on basic infrastructure on the island, they decided to organize themselves into a union.  After trying other tactics and getting nowhere, not one person on the island voted in a particular election.  This worked beautifully, and things got better for the residents of Culatra: reliable electricity, street lighting, harbour protection, and a new ferry terminal followed.  Maybe they are champagne socialists and have corrupted their youth.  We didn’t see any evidence of either, but we did see the streetlights.

A short dinghy ride from Culatra is Olhau, an important fishing town with a large fish market.  Courtesy of a restaurant in Ferragudo we discovered a fish new to us.  Called cantarilho in Portuguese, in English it is the blackbelly rosefish (according to Wikipedia).  Never heard of that one before.  It tastes somewhat of seafood, with a texture like a delicate form of monkfish (but much easier to prepare).  Given its deep-water habitat I doubt we’ll ever catch one (not that we’re great at catching fish in general anyway, although we got one tuna last week) so it’s been a pleasure trying this fish while it was available from a market.

We’ve now moved further south to the Cadiz area : home of sherry, one of the world’s great drinks.  It’s also a foodie area of Spain, bullfighting country, and a place of much sunshine.  I think it will be enjoyable.

 

  Swordfish with rice

• Stock for the rice: garlic, chilli pepper, star anise, coriander stalks, lemongrass, fish stock.  Boil and strain.  The stock should be quite spicy.
• Cook the rice in the stock and vegetable oil, then add chopped coriander leaves.
• Trim swordfish steaks, soak in 4% brine for 30m.  Sweat garlic in olive oil, add chopped coriander leaves, and cook the swordfish gently in this.
• Remove the swordfish and reduce the juices.  Avoid browning the garlic.  Pour over the swordfish.
• Serve with lime segments.

 

 Dorada with vegetables

• Bake a whole Dorada in a salt and egg white crust to a core temperature of 44C.  Remove crust and skin, remove fillets carefully, remove any bones and fat.
• Cauliflower puree: cook the cauliflower, puree with cream, butter, a little mace, and white pepper.  Char a slice of cauliflower with olive oil and white pepper.
• Turnips: boil, glaze.
• Potatoes: make cylinders (apple corer), cook in vegetable oil twice. First time at 130C to cook through, then remove.  Heat oil to 190C and brown/crisp the potatoes.