by Denise & Robert Davey (& Blue) on board Barolo
Life ashore in marinas in between sailing is usually placid enough, but the arrival of the summer season brings with it a surge of activity. Well, here are three little situations that we have encountered in the last month that made us pause for thought.
The first took place one hot Sunday afternoon of calm torpor. By teatime we stirred ourselves to take a shower in the sanitaires about 5 minutes from the boat. The skipper was ready first and I took my time to saunter back to the boat, contemplating what to cook for dinner. When I got back, I found a racing boat (an X-yacht 412) had moored alongside us, the crew all looking sheepish and determinedly avoiding eye-contact. When I got on board, I found the skipper incandescent. In the time between leaving our boat and returning, a large dent had appeared in the rail joining the deck to the hull on the side next to the racing yacht. He had tackled the skipper, who denied vehemently all knowledge. His boat was part of a group of 5 boats who had all arrived together and whose skippers were quick to support his claim. In fact he gathered together 4 people and enlisted the testimony of a passing harbour boatman to witness that his boat had not touched ours. Odd that so many people should have been aware of nothing happening. Anyway, how did we know that the damage hadn’t already been done, he demanded, with a winsome, intentionally charming, gallic shrug. His girlfriend came on deck clutching a pennant which she slowly and deliberately ran up their forestay. It read in huge letters, “LUTTE CONTRA CANCER” “HOSPITALS DE PARIS”. She was followed on deck by 5 children aged between 7 and 12. Two of them clearly showed signs of the results of chemotherapy and all looked distinctly frail. How could we continue such an argument? They were part of a charitable group taking desperately sick children sailing, yet they had lied to save their reputation. We let it drop, but should we have done? Judicious use of a hammer ironed out the problem that could have been solved by a simple apology.
The second involved a Welsh couple who had a really bad stroke of luck. This was their first trip south and although they had sailed together near Swansea for fifteen years they were both rather nervous and somewhat intimidated by the differences between the cultures. They wanted to head off northwards to Brest but the wife had laundry to get done first. The marina provided a washing machine and dryer for the use of the visiting yachtsmen, but not soap powder. We took them to the local supermarket and left them to buy 'lessive', thinking no more of them until we bumped into them later that night. Instead of using the powder that they had bought, the English man on the boat moored next to them had convinced them that they should take their laundry to the laundrette in town which would dry and fold their washing for them. Bearing in mind that we had encountered them at 9 o’clock in the evening, waiting outside the laundrette in question. The assistant in the laundrette had apparently told them to come back either in ten hours or at ten o’clock, they weren’t sure which. The sign on the door gave the opening times and stated that the shop would be closed on Sunday and Monday. The likelihood of anyone coming back to work at 10 o’clock on a Saturday night seemed rather remote, so we offered them some bed linen to tide them over. To make matters worse, they could see their laundry neatly bagged up and waiting for them inside the door. Glumly the man said that they’d just have to wait until Tuesday to pick up their washing – pretty expensive at €35 per night! We would have jettisoned the washing, but when we left the next morning they were still well and truly staying in port.
The third took place this morning, just as we were preparing to leave Port Haliguen marina in the Baie de Quiberon. This area is one of the most popular seaside resorts in Brittany, which is saying something. The traffic on land is gridlocked, so, as you might imagine, the movement in the marinas is pretty hectic. Moreover, because tides play an important part in most people’s schedules, everyone tends to arrive, moor up and leave port together. So, this morning there were continuously three or four large yachts of between 8 and 15 tons on the move at any time in quite a restricted space. The skippers came in all degrees of competence from weathered Douarnenez yachtsmen to families spending their first time on board on huge catamarans. Amongst this chaos, a boat near us had a crew of a middle-aged couple and their two grandchildren. They spent some time dressing the boy and girl in large, vividly coloured lifejackets and set two plastic canoes in the water into which they excitedly climbed and started enthusiastically paddling. We were on the move and shouted to the children to get out of the way of ourselves and a wooden boat manoeuvring backwards out of its berth. Added to which, the water was showing signs of … how should I put this delicately? … well, I wouldn’t let our spaniel swim in it. Who would the loving grandparents, who had bought the toys so thoughtfully, have blamed, I wonder, had a child been knocked into the water by the wash of a passing boat. Had they not drowned, a nasty dose of ecoli poisoning would almost certainly be the outcome, despite wearing life-jackets. I thought of suggesting they got their charges back on board, and fast, but by the time I’d worked out what to say in French, we were outside the port.
So, were we guilty of doing nothing when we should have interfered or taken things further? I’m not sure, but what would you have done?
