Slave to the Rhythm

Jan here, and its a while since I posted on the blog.

My over-riding sense of what has happened since I last posted is that quite a lot has changed in terms of our behaviour and routines alongside the more obvious places we visit and ever changing landscape.

Most significantly we have had a reality check and realised we are not on holiday!  As we came to the end of the second week and arrived in Belle Isle, the weather perked up no end and we suddenly felt in holiday mode and went for it. 

Yachts queuing to enter Belle Isle

After a few days some tension crept in (code for a few rows) and we realised that we needed to do a budget.  Yes, I hear you saying.........didn't you do a budget before you set off? Well yes we did at a very high level and in broad terms but we were working on mirroring our normal living behaviour not as though we were on holiday 24/7/365. It's tricky because when you are visiting new and exciting places, eating out and drinking in sociable surroundings is part of the experience. Unfortunately that comes at a cost and not on pension income.

I think we have been surprised at the cost of mooring in the marinas in France and it has definitely helped to make sense of what others have told us about heading to the Eastern Mediterranean where the charges and living costs are much more benign. Average cost per night of just parking is about 40 euro here for our boat.

Well thankfully we are now over that hump and are contentedly now eating and drinking on board more frequently as we would be doing at home.

I've chosen the title for this blog because now in week three we are getting used to actually living on the boat; which is very different to taking her for a spin to the Isle of Wight or a long weekend to Honfleur!  Now we are doing it for real, day in day out.

I think the most important lesson we have learned is that we have swapped a pretty large house for a small space. Viridian has lots of good storage and nooks and crannies we are still discovering but there is no way you can leave stuff lying around. Everything needs to go back in its place and everyone needs to know what 'the place' is.  So we have spent a lot of time working out what needs to go where, what needs to be handy and what we can probably dump!

We have also realised that keeping on top of the cleaning is pretty critical. To my shame I have not actually cleaned my own home since 1991.  I don't mean it was filthy.......just that I worked full time and chose to spend some of my hard earned cash on getting some help with the house. Now I wash up immediately after every meal and Greg has become so house proud you wouldn't recognise him.  Here is a picture of Greg vacuuming up crumbs after breakfast with the Dyson power turbo chargeable vac which I can thoroughly recommend...(and I would also really recommend the vac).

So apart from the domestic stuff we have seen some pretty great places and interesting things.

In Quiberon we encountered what we thought was a bit of racism and were turned away from a restaurant on a spurious reason...apparently a big party coming in for lunch...so we went elsewhere and when we cycled back past the restaurant there was no sign of any big party!

We then went on to Trinite sur Mer where things were really happening; there was a sailing competition for amazing trimarans and a regatta for old boats.  They were truly awesome. Here are a few pictures.

Spindrift 2

On the way out of the marina we spotted a guy being blasted up in the air on a high pressure water spout.  

Here are some of the old ships which we sailed amongst on our way to La Turballe.  

We arrived in L'Herbaudier and nearly crashed into Adrian on his yacht Ambience in very poor weather  conditions; it had been a terrible day with no visibility and pouring with rain.  There were moments when we felt we were starring in Waterworld so we were  a bit tense. 

Some terse comments were exchanged but all was smoothed over later once everyone had docked safely.  In fact we have bumped into Adrian and his crew again on our next stop in Port Joinville on the Ile de Yeu (couldn't find what it means in the dictionary so I'm thinking of it as the one eyed island!). 

Port Joinville got both of our votes... ..so we stayed a couple of days.  Firstly the marina charges were cheap, secondly the showers were new and clean and the toilets flushed very strongly and then behold  the supermarket was walking distance and we could use our bikes really easily.  We cycled 18 miles round the island which was absolutely beautiful and caused me to feel very self righteous if a bit saddle sore.  The Bromptons have proved to be a real asset.

Speaking of saddle sore, I don't think I have owned up to my non UDIs.  UDIs are known to us on our previous sailing holidays as Unidentified Drunken Injuries...bruises and cuts that just seem to appear! Well a few days ago I was going down the steps into the saloon after dinner on board and a few glasses of wine....with several things in my hands and I managed to fall, forward roll and then down the next set of steps ( we have a raised saloon) onto my back!  I am pretty sure that I have cracked a couple of ribs and I am bruised all over.  Here is a picture of one bruise..not saying exactly where it is.

Anyway hobbling about but being a bit more careful now as befitting a retiree not a young 'un! 

On our way to our port for this evening St Giles de Croix, we encountered a swarm? of jellyfish. they were so beautiful.  i tried to photograph them but they are strangely elusive.  Here is a feeble picture of one that I managed to capture. It isn't even one of the ones with long trailing legs which I was trying for!