Port-Saint-Louis

Sunday 15 May

We’ve worked so hard this week.  I finished cleaning up the edges of the blue stripe around the cockpit and then polished all the white gel coat round the cockpit and the coach roof.  With Mike’s help I have finished sanding the toe rail, then washed it and the whole deck.  The top of the boat now looks lovely.

The antifouling on the bottom continues to be a battle.  The electric sander is still not available and hand sanding is just not doing the trick so we attacked it with paint scrapers.  It is dead tiring but we’ve made good headway.  We’ve agreed to do another couple of days and then stop, no matter what.  I can’t get on with the last blue stripe or polishing the topsides until the bottom is finished.

Our darling Patrice continues to look after us

Mike’s friend Jean Loup (not Jean Luc) has gone off sailing with his wife, who finally turned up.  Our old friends Ralph and Elaine on their catamaran Le Chatelaine, who we met on our first stay here three years ago, have turned up and they came for dinner last week.  Their plan this year is to cruise the Canal du Midi.  We’ve met a few other people but they are never around for long – people are coming and going at an amazing rate.

Wednesday 18 May

The road from Port Saint Louis, approaching the entrance to Navy Service marina with our new restaurant ‘Le Yacht Club’ in the centre.  It is well patronised at lunch time, as evidenced by all the cars out front.

Unbelievably, finally, the sanding on the bottom of Forever is finished.  Yaay.  Mike painted the grey primer coat (which looked so beautiful) and then the first coat of navy blue antifouling, which looks tres elegant.  I got going with the white topsides, but it was too exhausting to polish it all by hand so I have simply lightly sanded with 1500 grit paper and then polished with some oily stuff called Lustre which has deepened and shined up the overly white and powdery look of the gelcoat.  It looks lovely.  But it is slow work and I do a bit every day.

 

We salvaged some carpet off cuts in a deep blue, removed our shabby old carpets and cut up the new carpet to fit.  We even bought a tin of glue.  However, we’ve decided the quality is not quite good enough so we will wait till we find something better.  There are no carpet shops anywhere near here.  As one lady in town said to me “Nous sommes vraiment perdus ici,” which I think translates to something like: “We’re really out in the boon docks here” - and she’s right.   

Our friend in Bucks, Allan, posted documents from home proving our residence in UK and last week we rushed into town and saw the bank manager (the new chap who’s now in his second week in this job), who has changed his mind and says we also need to prove that we pay tax in the UK.  Well, we don’t any more so that’s going to be tricky.  Grrr.  Annoying and disappointing.  I suppose it makes sense that they need to know where you pay tax – after all that is THE most IMPORTANT thing in life, isn’t it?  Anyway, it is too late now to get more documents so we will have to wait till later.   We are determined to leave here at the beginning of June.

Since we bust our wind instrument on a tree in Florida in 2003, we have continued to sail quite happily without any idea of wind speed.  Who cares how hard it is blowing?  In fact, the actual speed is irrelevant – you adjust your sails to what is tolerable.  So, for six years we just made it up which was so much more fun.  As we know, all sailors overestimate the wind and Mike has been able to exaggerate to his heart’s content without his wife being able to contradict him.  The direction of the wind is the important bit and that part of the instrument has always worked.  However, this is the kind of thing the other people (potential buyers and surveyors) get upset about so we have ordered a new one from eBay – it should arrive any moment.  It is a good brand (Autohelm) and monitors both wind speed and direction and was rather expensive.  Another job ticked off on my list, though we will only install it when we re-step the mast in Rouen.

And speaking of the list – I’ve had admin things like insurance and our river licence to worry about.  We haven’t insured Forever since we left Panama in 2004, which has given me some sleepless nights along the way but we have been lucky and nothing bad has happened.  However, I have now renewed the insurance, paid the premium and we can forget about that for another year.  Also on the internet (a wonderful thing, you have to admit) I found the river licence on the VNF (Voies Nationals de France) website and paid for a Freedom Pass (the whole year) which is only €10 more than the four month Summer licence.  So, we can take as long as we like to get to Normandy - till 31 December if we want.  Another tick.  There is gratifyingly little left on my list.

Port Saint Louis is an odd sort of place, lacking the usual charming structure and architecture of most small French towns.  It used to be a large fishing port at one stage – back in the fifties, I think, and a lot of the buildings are therefore quite recent and not very interesting.  There’s even a derelict old railway line running alongside the canal to the old fishing port near our Navy Service marina.  The well rusted tracks are supported on lovely old wooden sleepers which look suspiciously like teak.  Some clever clogs in Zimbabwe made a very good furniture business out of highly varnished teak sleepers, acquired for free (or very cheaply) when the government (at the time) decided to replace all the old wooden sleepers with concrete.  Though slightly cleaned up they still boasted every bolt hole and crack that proved them to be genuine old sleepers.  It became the trendy furniture to have at one stage (deservedly so as it is truly beautiful) but it didn’t take long before they had used up all the obsolete railway sleepers in the country and had to move on to Zambia and other neighbours.

Anyway, back to Port Saint Louis’s fishing heritage.  On the other side of the road to the old railway line and the currently marked ‘Port de Pêche du Saint Louis du Rhône’ is this gloriously dilapidated and abandoned old building.  Look at that shark – straight out of Shark’s Tale!