France, Spain, and Portugal

10/6
Today Nadja and I took a daytrip with a local aficionado I’d made friends with the day before during deck tours. His name is Guillaume, and he was a regular volunteer and ambassador for the Pride of Baltimore II during her seven month refit here in St. Nazaire after her dismasting in 2005.

He took us first to a beautiful medieval town, Guerande, complete with stone walls, an ancient cathedral, a moat, narrow streets, fantastic shops and cafes. It felt like a little fantasy village. Being in such and old and beautiful city, inhabited and functioning for centuries, made me feel a bizarre, specific, pride for the human species. I think I’d like to live there for a while, maybe retirement or extended honeymoon or something. It seems like a great place to get up early and be lazy and sit in cafes and eat late lunches and spend an afternoon with a bottle of wine.

We stopped in another coastal town for a coffee, then bought baguette, cheeses, Serrano ham, tomatoes, cheesecake, and a big bottle of grapefruit juice, and headed out for a picnic on a cliff overlooking the Bay of Biscay.

After lunch we drove around the countryside. We saw lots of salt marshes where they harvest the salt by feeding sea water into a series of shallow paddocks and eventually end with big piles of coarse white salt. The people here have been getting salt this way for generations. We stopped in a fairly large resort town that was all but deserted at this point in autumn, took a stroll down a beach and were passed by horseback riders on the way. Then we went for a beer, talked about life, family, and sailing, and then went back to his house for another coffee, and met his family, and shared pictures of ships and more stories. It was a great day.

10/11
A ripping sail last night, making six knots under full sail. Air is getting warmer. I’m studying and learning the stars, getting a map of the sky in my head. It’s a beautiful morning. Pink puffy clouds to the west, bright yellow sun to the east. Bruce-Bruce is steering. He can really steer the hell out of the ship. A pair of owls joined us along the way. Beautiful faces. We’ve locked Chibley in the port cabin below until they go away.

10/13
Arrived in Spain yesterday. We stopped for an afternoon of beach time in Cariña, a sleepy little coastal town. The water was cold, but the short swim felt good. Then a healthy dose of Frisbee, cold beers, Mike on guitar, and a sunset over the brown Spanish mountains, made us feel … well, we sighed a lot, and giggled, and commented on what the hell did we do in the supernatural realm to justify this kind of treatment.

Today we’ve found a new port, setting the anchor in the town of Ares, a resort town in the summer, though this time of year it’s pleasantly empty. As we came in past the marina, the voice of a toddler echoed from the P.A. system, flooding the small harbor with goo’s and gah’s and tiny Spanish gibberish.

We had originally planned on staying at La Coruña, a big, bustling port-city, though their port authority was a bit brick-like in their dealings with us.
We: “Can we anchor here, in this spot you said we could anchor when we called ahead?”
They: “No. Es impossible.”
We: “There’s a big empty dock over there. Can we tie up to it?”
They: “No. Es impossible.”
We: “Well what about that big empty area over yonder marked on the chart as an anchorage?”
They: “No. Es impossible.”
So we left.

10/15
Today is the first of two days liberty. I slept in, awoken by a distant chant of “hip, hip, hip, hip.” I dozed in an out for a few minutes, the hip-hip growing louder, coming closer. I dozed again. Then it was “HIP! HIP! HIP! HIP!” right outside my porthole. I looked out and saw a rubber raft full of uniformed men with paddles row past. A moment later and a cheer erupted from the well deck outside. I ran out and saw three identical boats, all full of soldiers, waving and rowing and general rowdydow. I suppose they had come out to greet us. Then they all broke off from each other a ways, turned, and, rowing furiously, converged in a great burst of silly violence, ramming, and boarding each other, soldiers flying from boat to boat, sending others from boat to water, water to boat, and then, quick as they came, they hustled away, hip-hipping back to base, or wherever they came from.

I went ashore with Matt, one of the trainees, for a day of nothing and lots of it, besides. The whole town is at siesta. Everything here shuts down and goes to sleep, including the people. The ships is a quarter-mile offshore, and is the loudest thing around by far. The tokk-tokk and clanging of rust-busting on the hull echoes throughout the town.
We found Wild Bill, sitting at a picnic table in the park, writing postcards. He’s something else, one of those special kind of personalities you don’t run into too often. He had six little local kids on bikes running around town for him, helping him with errands. One of the kids spoke English, and proud to show off his skill, asked the big old guy with the Brooklyn accent if he needed any help with anything.
Bill said, “OK guys, I need a Hotel, postcards, a post office, a restaurant, a bus station, and a bus schedule.” And all the kids tore off and found for him what he needed.
Matt and I spent the rest of the day lounging on a sunny beach with a big rock shaped like the head of a giant crocodile looking out to sea. Lounging, book reading, snippets of conversation, and some napping ensued. Tonight some shipmates are coming for a beach bonfire and campout.

There are worse places to spend an afternoon.


10/16
The bonfire last night was a success, though our feelings about it gained significantly in favor once the ordeal was over. We listened to music, sang, roasted weenies, talked about more or less everything there is to talk about, and then fell asleep under the stars as the fire dwindled. And then I woke up and it was pouring. I exhausted my vocabulary, and moved up the beach to sleep in a pile of weeds growing up out of rocks tucked up under a concrete staircase at the base of a graffitied retaining wall. At least it was dry. When I came out of my daze, as close to sleep as I could manage, I was at eye level with a snail who had slimed up the wall and was resting three inches from my face.

At 0700h the skiff beached and took us back to the ship where I changed clothes and set out immediately for an excursion into Santiago to see the old city there. At the heart of it was the famous Cathedral, a dark and imposing structure. Standing there outside of it, you feel like the thing might crush you at any instant. It’s a marvelous thing, and inside was gilt with all the ornamentation and icons and relics to be expected in a place like that, including a sarcophagus with the remains of St. James.
The place was swarming with pilgrims, who had hiked many lonely miles to come to this cathedral. I met a German woman there who just finished her pilgrimage. I asked her what compelled her to make the journey.
“Before, I have many problems,” she said, “and so I go walking, and now no more problems.” She said the journey afforded her peace inside herself. Several of the other pilgrims stood still out front, some squatting or sitting on the ground, tears streaming.
My time at sea has brought a better understanding of the cathartic power of a journey and the peace brought about through the meditative process of steady onward progress. I am always fascinated by the ways people pursue greater awareness of themselves, and deeper understanding of their place in the universe, whatever that may be to them. As far as I can tell, it’s this earnest pursuit of truth that brings us closer to the honest, peaceful clarity of life so many pilgrims and potential pilgrims seek.

10/17
Cruising along at six knots. Snotty rain. It’s cold. City lights are twinkling to the east of us, glowing from between the round mountains of the Spanish coast. 350 miles to Cascais, Portugal.

10/19
I’d like to talk about taking off pants after night watch. When we’re at sea, generally, the ship has a rhythmic pitch and roll, and one’s adaptation to the motion become second nature so that maintaining balance is more or less effortless. This is all part of “getting your sea legs.” It seems that, after negotiating the pitching and rolling of our barque all day with zero problems, as soon as I’m below decks trying to get my pants off for bed, achieving a momentary stork-like stance, an erratic swell invariably comes and sends me hopping desperately across the focsle before crashing into sea chests and disturbing my sleeping shipmates. This happens every night.

The weather’s been beautiful the past couple days. We deserve it after our damp summer in the North Sea. We expect good warm and sunny work days in Portugal. Should be there by Tuesday.
10/21
Another sweet sail, and now we find ourselves in Cascais, Portugal. We were escorted in to our anchorage by the German training barque, Gorch Fock, who was continuing on to the capital city of Lisbon, just a little further down the coast.


10/22
A gale followed us into the harbor here, and we spent most of the night securing the ship, hoisting boats, setting the port anchor, etc. Took my two days liberty ashore today and headed to Lisbon. It’s a spectacular city, decked in the same kind of fantastic, otherworldly feel and cultural vibrancy that made me fall so much in love with Copenhagen.
Note the large print of the hanging on the building. Pretty cool to be walking in the same square depicted in this famous painting that I had to know for Fine Arts class in college, and don't remember the name of anymore.
I got my first tattoo today. It’s something I’d been mulling over for a while, and this particular design has been on my mind for over a year. It's a black armband of mourning, specifically inspired by the life and death of my friend Spencer last fall, but it’s also a representation of all the hardships and struggles life brings. It's made of three stripes symbolizing faith, hope, and love, love being the greatest of these, and with faith the size of a mustard seed, we can move mountains. This is how Spencer faced his own mortality and lived out his life. By holding fast to these things in spite of the seeming hopelessness of his cancer, he exemplified a powerful, light filled life, and was an inspiration to so many people. This is how I work to live and face my own struggles, and the tattoo is not only a reminder to myself, but also an outward mark of the kind of man I strive to be.
Plus, I think it looks cool.

10/28
It’s blowing like hell here. We just finished a good three day mini-shipyard period, taking the time to open and close some big projects that the snotty weather of northern Europe has denied us. On the boat run to shore today we were pounded with waves, as the winds whipped upwards of 40 knots, gusting even higher, us dressed in our civvies getting soaked.
My circumstances overwhelm me. All the humility and hardships lain against the magnificence greeting me daily lends life a surreal flavor, as if I’m walking through some infinite story-book. Though, another moment’s reflection reminds me that these are the circumstances of all who venture seawards, who pursue watery horizons. I can never remember feeling such constant challenge and satisfaction as I have since taking up life as a sailor.