Alzavola

And then we left Europe in Alzavola. She is what you can call a "Cozy Classic": 77 feet of 4 cm thick Burmese teak, well kept by her meticulous owner, the highly respected Enrico Zaccagni, a Florentine architect, and meteorology freak - or just Chicco, simple as that. And simple he is. A real pirate at soul.
Note: a pirate, and yet, a ham radio. This pirate wasn't into letting his hair fly in the wind. He disseminated words - in Italian - through the seven seas.

It is well worth knowing this Philip & Son ketch was originally built in 1924 for Sir Walter Ramsey Kay in Dartmouth, and Zaccagni embraced her 36 years ago as Gracie III.

I have not much left to say. It is sailing with people like Chicco, a real poet of the sea, and Nicole, a great Italian cook, aboard boats like Alzavola, which is a dream come true and well kept, that make sailing worth it for anything in the world.
Better remind ourselves, though, that we're also worth something.  

Cheers and Thanks Life, for what you give.

Chicco and his crew aboard the Alzavola

Less is More

In Antibes we worked aboard Speedy Go for a while. She was this beautiful Maxi racer transformed into a luxury yacht, with interior all built in pear wood, lined with a white carpet. Fancy stuff. Owned by some Italian politician we never met. Needless to say I worked my ass off. A couple - Italians - came aboard - Cinzia and Piero. She used to make the most delicious sandwiches in the whole wide world. At the end we were offered to join them taking the boat to the Pacific, but we kindly refused, which proved to be good. Later we heard Cinzia left Piero behind and ran away with the Australian bloke they hired instead.

As if that wasn't enough I also worked aboard other sailboats. Aboard Arayan I improved my cooking skills and learned to enjoy the admirable cave full of Chablis...

Arayan also took us to a race in St. Tropez where I had the joy of sailing alongside Eric Tabarly in his Pen Duick. He was such a beautiful man - smiling, simple, positive, just a privilege to be around. A bit later (1998) he disappeared in the middle of the sea.

It's difficult to accept endings mentally, but it's something we have to learn. It helps thinking less is more.

Tabarly aboard his Pen Duick

Freedom

Saved by the gong. And there we go embarked aboard the Maxi Speedy Go, with very playful people, and Phillipe Barbé, the sweet smart French captain. All we had to do was never say the word lapin - since the guy ripped off all rabbit recipes from the book aboard - and also never do anything important on a Friday. Seafarer superstitions taken to an extreme. The route was Faial - Gibraltar - Malaga (excellent sherry) and finally Antibes. And what a yacht! With a nice aft wind we could surf and reach up to 20 knots.

And how awesome Côte D'Azur is! 
At Port Vauban, in Antibes (check it out), you can see snow on top of the Alps when the  Mistral blows. With the castle in the background it looks astonishing. We ended up renting an apartment cause we got a permanent job working in Speedy Go... after delivery.
We had something magical happening to us there. 
One day we went to the beach and out of the blue we started climbing up the remparts - that is, the stone wall that surrounds the city. When we reached the top we saw closely a sea petrel crashed onto the wall, looking very scared. We immediately decided to fetch him and saw he must have lost the ability to fly due to a thick pine resin covering part of his feet and wings - southern France is full of pine trees.  

We then took the bird to the boat and started to try and clean it. He was really stressed. We tried soap and water, alcohol and finally, we managed to remove almost all with  triclor-ethylene, and finished the operation with Brazilian talc powder called polvilho antisséptico Granado. The annoyed animal was biting Paul's hands the whole time but he withstood it with courage. We took the bird to the deck, where there was a parking place, and put the petrel on top of a car. I remember it as if it were yesterday: the squeaking sounded like a tantrum and indeed, it looked pretty pissed off. All of a sudden the bird flew low on the water. At first it looked like it was going to drown. But then it started to rise, and rise, and rise... until it disappeared onto the sky.
It was such a rewarding scene - so good to free such a creature - that this feeling became imprinted on my soul. Good to share it with you.

Towards the Unknown

Note In the previous post I fast-forwarded two years. This post is beginning of 1991, when we left Saint Marteen.

The bridge led us to the unknown, towards the Island of Faial, in the Azores. 
Aboard Malaika - and I rightfully and obviously forgot the skipper's name - we went through the Bermuda Triangle, and through the Sargassum Sea, which is an immensity of water covered by brown algae, suicidal flying fish, and a bizarre magnetism that drives instruments crazy. So our German skipper wasn't very happy facing that place's fame, and the slow improvement caused by the seaweed. 
After this part there's another one where you see thousands of jellyfish - highly toxic  creatures with an external sail-like bright pink to purple colored part. They're called Portuguese Men of War - and they're indeed aggressive to touch. 
So eventually the Captain received a weatherfax that flashed the approach of a strong depression, with 980 millibars in the core, and we all saw the barometer dropping fast, so he decided to change course towards the east. The move proved to be useless at that point and the storm caught us fully.
The sea had middle size breaking waves; the horizon was swallowed by some grey-brown color that tinged both the sea and the sky. We tied the tiller, went under cover and found some stability placing the storm sail and a very reduced main. 
Since there was nothing to do in that weather, I thought: let's make some biscuits.
The crew loved it and devoured many. The skipper thought it quite inappropriate and threw the remaining bikies in the trash bin. 
People change at sea. Defects have nowhere else to go: they're there and they're obvious. Those who are afraid of nature shouldn't go sailing. At sea you see how small and fragile we are. And yet, we crew could see the positive in it,  and felt we deserved to be alive.
You need a humble character to live at sea.
Bad weather ended after three biscuitless days. We arrived at the Island of Faial astonished at those awesome islands standing in the middle of the North Atlantic and also at the bad moods of that furiously uncontrolled man. Poor him - he didn't know Portuguese-speaking people are strongly bound. 
Customs was readily advised of the situation. International law establishes that at sea, the captain is responsible for his crew. That means he can't dump them anywhere he wishes, unless he pays for repatriation costs. So, that man found himself a pub where he drowned while we stayed there.
The Archipelago of the Azores is a 9 island composition located at the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The islands have varied landscapes, but the majority is covered with green fields that resemble Scotland in summer, covered in hills and mountains where sheep and cattle graze, and a very gentle people live peacefully, in small but picturesque villages. People also tell many sea tales and history is abundant. I wouldn't be able to handle it all in a blog.

It is a great, pure and familiar Nature worth getting acquainted to, which I will certainly do before I leave this place for good.

Physalia physalis

Bad Weather at Sea

Sargassus Sea Map

East Coast of  the Island of  Saint George, in the Azores

Indulgence

After the hurricane went by we jumped aboard another maxi called Donnybrook, skippered by Bert Collins, who also had a Harley Davidson (not aboard!) and off we went to Tortola, in the Virgin Islands. It was April 1993.

Paul found himself a nice job at a boat owned by a major whisky producer and I went into the film industry. The owner of my boat - Danubio - had a movie seat business and she was about to receive five guests on board who were great movie house owners.

So there comes this family - who I have to pamper, as a hostess. The father is this BIG generous guy with a smooth appetite for everything that's good in the world. He comes along with his girlfriend who is a major cloth pattern designer, so all she does is to get inspired by the coral and the fish to produce beautiful prints - without ever diving, of course.

And the concerned grown up children came along, too. Both told me I was forbidden to serve their father the slightest fat in the world, which is quite understandable. The problem is, the guy didn't agree at all with that, so he bribed me with compliments when I cooked lobster for them, and left a fat tip when he left.

So I sneaked a bread and butter pudding made with full cream just for the guy.

What the hell. I wasn't a nurse - I was a hostess. The old man was an entertainment businessman, we were in Tortolla, and life is too short not to enjoy yourself.

Don't know if I'm right of wrong. I just love people to enjoy life. It's my nature. 

Abridging

Saint Marteen is quite crazy. An island of 87 square kilometers comprised of two countries in one, divided only by a opening bridge - here is France, there is Netherlands, language and all. Lovely.
Besides, Saint Marteen is one of those rare places where you find a hurricane hole, and therefore, around August every year hundreds of sailboats cruise towards that place to hide from the hard winds that strike the Caribbean every year.
Isn't it good to know you've got somewhere to hide from evil weather?
So. It's got all I love most: the whole world in a shell, plus the sea, the wind and peace, and friends. It is a really abundant nature...