A Strange Place for a Nap

It was the middle of winter. John, Nigel and I had successfully crossed the Bay of Biscay and were tied up at the stone dock in La Coruna, Northern Spain.

We were aboard the Toekomst a sixty-five foot shrimp boat we’d bought in Holland and were planning to sail to Haiti where John was living.

We’d been in Brest, France for over a month waiting for the weather to give us the two day window we required for the crossing of the dreaded Bay.

Nigel, me, John

For many years, mariners have rated Biscay as being second to Cape Horn in nastiness. Huge swells roll in from North Atlantic storms and rise to massive heights when they arrive at Biscay’s shelving sea bed.

Whilst waiting for our ‘window’, we were invited aboard a freighter that had arrived at the tail end of a storm. Some of the inch-thick glass of the bridge had been smashed by ferocious seas, and the entire bow of the vessel had been bent a little to one side by the impact of an enormous wave. The captain seemed surprised that his vessel had made it to port.

We were actually featured in a local newspaper when it was discovered we planned to cross the dreaded Bay in the middle of winter. Fishermen shook their heads at the stupidity of the ‘English’.

Anyway, the Bay was docile as a pond for our crossing to La Coruna.

It must have been around three in the morning when Nigel shook me awake. John and I had consumed a few beers at a local bar to celebrate our successful voyage and I was well out to it. “I think someone’s fallen in the water,” he announced.

Apparently he’d been up in the wheelhouse having a smoke when he’d heard a splash, turned around and saw ripples in the water. Rather than deal with the matter himself, he’d come below to rouse John and me.

He was convincing enough to lure the two of us topsides into the freezing night. He then led us aft and pointed to the spot where he thought someone had gone in. I went over the stern into the inky water and headed for the bottom. It was around fifteen feet deep.

I lucked out on the first dive. I was feeling my way along the muddy bottom when I came upon what seemed to be a body.

When I dragged the inert thing to the surface, its head no sooner cleared the water than it started jabbering away in Spanish. Frightened the life out of me.

I used the word jabbering—but slurring would have been more apt, for my new bottom-dwelling friend was as drunk as a lord.

The Toekomst in warmer climes

John threw me a rope from the dock and I managed to get it tied around the guy’s chest. It took all three of us to drag him—still slurring away cheerfully—up the dock wall. He was wearing a heavy coat and didn’t appear to be suffering from cold so we simply pointed him toward town, gave him a shove and watched as he went toddling off.

The whole episode still baffles me. According to Nigel, when he heard the splash he turned around instantly and all he saw were the ripples on the calm water. Our friend must have gone down like a rock. Nigel then ran forward along the deck, descended the companionway and shook John and me awake. So it has to have been three or four minutes before I dove in and found him lying peacefully there on the bottom.

Why wasn’t he thrashing around trying to get to the surface? Why hadn’t he gulped down a lungful of water? I have no idea.

Somehow though, our young friend managed to tuck away, somewhere in the recess of his inebriated mind, an accurate memory of the entire episode. Later that day he and his mother arrived at the boat to thank us. He even remembered me as the one who had pulled him from the bottom.

Mom gave me a tearful bone-crushing hug and a lengthy emotional speech, consisting mostly of, gracias, muchos gracias and mil gracias.

Beer in Tangier leaves us Blotto in Morocco

Rob should have been a spy! Wherever we went, he’d be continually casting surreptitious glances at reflective surfaces to determine whether we were being followed.

One morning I went below decks to find him in semi-darkness, well back from an open porthole, peering through the binoculars. “What on earth are you doing?” I asked him.

“We’re being watched,” he replied ominously.

Willy, Rob and yours truly were aboard Kalinka—our 52 foot ex-British Navy launch—tied up in Tangier Harbour.

The Old Kalinka

Rob passed the glasses to me. Sure enough, from a tower overlooking the harbour someone in a uniform had a pair of binoculars trained on us. Over the next few days we ascertained that this was not simply a casual glance by someone bored with his job—we were being watched.

Not long after this discovery we received a note inviting us to dine the local yacht club. It was signed by a Colonel who, it turned out, was in charge of port security.

Rob, who claimed knowledge of foreign matters, filled us in on certain points of North African etiquette. “Never insult an Arab by refusing his food,” he gravely advised Willy and me.

The Colonel, it turned out, spoke perfect English and we had quite a jolly time of it at the club. Through subtle probing he attempted to determine the purpose of our visit to Tangier while plying us with beer and an enormous plate of little fried fish with crunchy bones and large pleading eyes—the equivalent, I assumed—of our Western chicken wings.

In order to avoid insulting the Colonel I grabbed liberal handfuls of the horrid things and, when he wasn’t looking, stuffed them into my jacket pocket. The unfortunate fish were consigned to the toilet during washroom visits. I later discovered that Willy was doing the same thing.

Rob on the other hand, was dutifully stuffing them down his gullet.

When the plate was empty and the Colonel asked if we’d like more I replied enthusiastically in the affirmative. Rob gave me a withering look.

After a couple of hours the Colonel suggested we go to his favourite bar—an invitation to which I readily agreed. The beers had loosened us all up and we were having a fine time.

Prior to leaving the yacht club, I was handed a rather substantial bill. So much for the Colonel’s hospitality.

We went in our rental car through a maze of narrow cobblestone streets until these became lanes and we could drive no further.

Prior to leaving the club, the Colonel had mysteriously placed a travel bag in the trunk of our car. Now its contents were revealed—civilian clothes. Right there in the street he removed his gold-braided uniform, folded it carefully and changed into his civvies.

We walked the remaining few blocks up to the hill to the Colonel’s bar—which turned out to provide not only alcoholic beverages, but young damsels for rent.

Rob had always had a strange fascination for ‘Ladies of the Night’. I say strange because his interest was of a platonic nature. He viewed them as Fallen Angels and cast himself in the role of saviour—one who might restore them to their former state of grace.

On this particular evening, he chose a waif-like girl who appeared to be rather lost and shy.

Sir Rob darted from the bar, located a street vendor and returned to present his chosen ‘damsel’ with a bunch of wilting flowers. She appeared to be baffled by the gesture. He attempted to clarify the situation by giving her money—enough for an entire night of her favours—while laboriously explaining that he wanted nothing other than her friendship.

Rob and Willy

This appeared to puzzle her more than the flowers. Not so much the gesture I suspect, but his attempt at an explanation. Rob considered himself a bit of a linguist. He knew a couple of words from a number of languages and, when traveling in foreign lands, would throw them all together to create a kind of international stew.

The girl gave him a somewhat disdainful look and went off in search of a ‘normal’ customer.

I suspect this little episode rather soured Rob’s evening. For while Willy and I happily gulped down the glasses of Scotch the Colonel was ordering and clowned around with a couple of the girls, he became a trifle morose. “This is not a good idea,” he whispered darkly to me. “I think we should head back to the boat.”

There was no reasoning with me at this point though, so Rob left the bar with an ominous shake of his head while the Colonel, Willy and yours truly carried on sloshing drinks down our throats.

Later in the evening, Willy and I happened to meet up in the washroom. “Who ja think’s payin’ fr’all thish?” Willy slurred. Recalling the Colonel’s ‘generosity’ at the yacht club, I opened the washroom window and the two of us slipped out into the night.

Strange how an excess of grog has a tendency to make the most stupid things you do seem hilarious. As the two of us went bouncing down the cobbled lane-way to the car, we were looking at each other and absolutely roaring with laughter.

I somehow managed to navigate the vehicle through the labyrinth of alleyways and get us back to the boat. Must have been three in the morning.

Around ten the same morning, ‘Rob the Righteous’ shook us both awake. “Well, you’ve done it now lads,” he announced despairingly, ushering us both to a porthole.

On the dock were four uniformed men carrying sub-machine guns. And the Colonel. He was still in his civvies as his uniform was nestled neatly in the trunk of our car.

He was not unpleasant when I went down the gangway to greet him. I suspect he was still drunk. I gave him his uniform and he made no mention of the bar bill.

A year or so later, following another visit to Tangier which resulted in ‘an incident’, Rob and I were escorted to our vessel by military personnel and advised not to return.

I’ve often wondered if our friend the Colonel played a part in that ignominious departure. Or was it simply our own doing?

Wild Times on the old Sargasso Sea

Whenever I hear the term undulating hills, I think of the Sagasso Sea. With the surface of the water covered in weed it has the appearance of a vast grassy field—a field that moves. Although there is scarcely a breath of wind there most of the time, it undulates and heaves like a huge beast from the effect of distant storms.

Judy and Me*

It must have been around 1982 when Judy (my first wife) and I sailed through this fascinating no-man’s-land of the North Atlantic.

I purchased my second Westerly Centaur in Old Bosham, England, and the two of us were sailing her back to Canada.

For a twenty-six footer the Westerly was a lot of sailboat—heavily constructed with a good interior layout and fitted with a two cylinder Volvo diesel. 

We’d sailed into the Med. to spend a few weeks cruising the coast of Spain beforehand then headed south to the Canary Islands.

This was Judy’s first long distance sailing trip and, apart from our little Spanish sojourn, the voyage had not been a particularly happy one. She kept a diary which I was later allowed to read.

‘Captain Bligh’ was one of the milder terms she used to describe me. One of the entries in which she used this epithet involved my placing a limit on the number of gallons of our drinking water she could use for her daily showers. Another, I believe, involved the state of the sea caused by a headwind which I should have predicted and thereby avoided.

Later on in the trip however, she began to adjust to the rigors of ocean sailing and actually started to enjoy the voyage. And when we finally reached the shores of Nova Scotia—some thirty days later—she turned to me and said, “Let’s turn around and go back.”

Anyway, back to the Sargasso Sea. Old time sailors spoke of ships being drawn into the area and trapped in the weed. With no wind to fill their sails and the crew dying of thirst, they became ghost ships, doomed to drift amongst the weed until it crawled up the sides and claimed the vessel.

We didn’t encounter any ghost ships but there were all kinds of crabs and other creatures scuttling around on the weed.

It was a lazy time and we did a lot of reading and sleeping while the boat drifted along with the sails filling half-heartedly from time to time. Judy had settled in to life at sea and was now taking salt water showers so drinking water was no longer a bone of contention.

One night, when there was not a breath of wind, I ran the engine. From my experience of running it during the day, I knew that after a couple of hours, the prop would pick up a bunch of weed and I would have to go over the side to clear it.

Normally we slept in the double forward berth, but with the engine going, I slept in the quarter berth so I could hear if it started to struggle. Judy made me promise to wake her if I had to go over the side to clear the prop.

Sure enough, around three in the morning, a change in the sound of the engine wakened me. I went forward to rouse Judy, but she was sleeping so peacefully I decided to break my promise and leave her asleep.

Westerly Centaur

I hate swimming in black water. I always imagine there’s a shark down there that somehow knows I’m about to plunge in and is waiting for me with expectant teeth.

On deck, I positioned myself to dive in, slice under the boat, whip the weed off the prop and be back aboard before anything could grab me. I’d calculated where the propeller was situated so I wouldn’t be groping around in the dark trying to find it. But what I’d forgotten to take into account was the keels.

The Westerly was twin-keeled to enable it to sit upright on the bottom of a tidal harbour. The trailing edge went quite a way back—far enough for me to slam into it when I dove in.

How I failed to knock myself out completely is a mystery. I saw stars and became disoriented, not knowing up from down. I eventually found the prop, managed to pull off the weed and struggle back on board.

A look in the mirror showed a bloody gash in my forehead and a fast blackening eye. I was still kind of woozy so didn’t bother to dress the wound, but just flopped into my bunk.

The next morning I was vigorously awakened by Judy, who had obviously noticed the state of my face. Her exact words were, “Where the hell were you last night?!”

*As with many of my sailing photo's, the pictures of the actual voyage have been lost.

My Father's Teeth

When I was a young lad in Australia, my father and I were constantly playing tricks on each other. It became a kind of one-upmanship thing that I would normally win simply because I seemed to have the more devious mind.

Me and Dad

Usually, when I got the better of him he’d refer to me as, “You little bastard!”

There was no irony in this—‘bastard’ being a common, often endearing, form of address in Australia. I never heard it used in the context of illegitimacy.

Dad was not a bad-looking man, but as he aged, his teeth began to let him down. They became kind of yellowish and were none too even. And they seemed to require constant filling.

I must have been around sixteen when he made the decision to have the lot pulled out and replaced by dentures.

Although not normally vain, after he’d been fitted with his gleaming new teeth, I’d occasionally catch him flashing himself a Hollywood smile as he passed a mirror.

Having used a toothbrush to clean his dentures for the first few weeks, he arrived home one evening with a bottle of Steradent. When he’d finished reading the label, a concerned frown creased his brow. “Hope it doesn’t bugger them up,” he foolishly announced.

A cartoon light-bulb turned on in my head.

Later that night, with my father slumbering peacefully and his teeth grinning from a fizzing glass of Steradent by his bed, I slipped into the bedroom and replaced his glass with one of my own. It contained water, some white powder and a few bits of silver wire twisted into odd shapes.

I arose just before his alarm was due to go off and waited, snickering, outside his bedroom door.

The alarm shrilled. There was a pause. Then, “Shit, me bloody fangs!”

I guess he heard me trying to choke back the laughter. “You little bastard,” he yelled. But there was genuine relief in his voice.

Mum and Dad-1940. Before my time

Some ten years later, Dad’s ‘fangs’ went on an unexpected sea voyage without him.

I was long gone and living in Canada when my parents fell on hard times. They didn’t mention this to me in their letters, but poor old Dad was forced to work on the night shift at a powdered milk factory. His job was to do something—I can’t recall what—to the sacks of milk as they went whipping by on a conveyor belt.

One fateful night the milk dust got up his nose and he sneezed, sending his prized teeth flying into one of the bags. It was whisked away, stitched closed and Dad’s fangs were shipped off to Japan.