Ship yards, on the hard, port starboard, this knot and that knot, none of which I could ever tie or ever throw. So here we were in St Tropez in the ship yard on the hard, with a crew bereft of their ship staying in a B and B, luckily for me I still had my room at John and Annie Odell's house in Gassin and I still had my bike there, so I visited the crew daily and helped with the french and translated quite a bit for the Captain.
It was a late September to remember, suddenly here were hundreds of handsome sailors a few women and a lot of fun in the bars and in the night clubs, it seemed to me anything went, we even went dancing in wellies the weather was so bad. I loved this whole new world of bonhommie, everyone seemed to know each other, every one seemd to be friends and the atmosphere full of fun and competition. The week that the boat was in the ship yard was a great week for me, I had the best of both worlds, a home to go to a whole new bunch of friends and a bike to ride away from it all on when it got too much.
The fun time came to an end, the boat was patched with fibre glass and ready to go, the racing had come to an end, St Tropez emptied of boats as most of them would be going to Palma to prepare for the crossing. Soon was to be my first voyage on the boat with the crew. The rugs came up the cushions were stowed anything that was nice or breakable was put away, the portholes and the hatches tightly shut, we were getting ready for bad weather.
I can remember this trip as being very unpleasant, spending a lot of time in wet weather gear, rain pouring down my back and into my wellies, standing at the helm with a lot of wind, rain and generally nasty weather, too nasty for the sails to be out, only a bit of storm sail to steady the boat a bit.
My worsts nightmare happened in the Straits of Gibralter, my watch was 8-12 midnight with the captain. I was on the helm and Arther was inside at the cart table , the rest of the crew were happily dozing in the crews mess. It was a dark dark night and lights were everywere, I was not yet used the port and starboard lights on the passing ships. quite frankly I didn't know which was which especially when it was coming towards me, and I couldn't work out which side of a boat I was meant to pass on port to port or otherwise. I also couldn't work out the differance between a huge tanker on a collision course with us and possible house on land.
What happened.....
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