The white tents in the field before the city ramparts look like the encampment of a sieging army preparing to seize the walls. Echoes of 1628, as the Calvinists stood Richelieu's massive attack for fourteen months from these very defenses.
But the tents were there as part of La Rochelle's Francofolies music festival, and the attack was merely auditory.
14 July 2015, the last day of the Francofolies. The flag of the Centre des Monuments Nationaux flies above the Tour de la Chaîne. Leica Typ 114.
Peregrinus had four heaters: two electric; built into the forward cabin and the salon's air conditioning units; one reverse-heating, in the aft cabin; and a portable ceramic 2000-watt. These four are enormously inefficient, because the generator must be run to power these units, unless the boat is at dock. So we just got a real fifth heater installed: an Eberspächer Airtronic D5, burning diesel as heating fuel, and sipping low voltage from the boat's batteries to power its spark, fan, and electronics. This should keep all of Peregrinus toasty even on the coldest days, using surprisingly little fuel, and no generator.
Frédéric Quintard had to make a hole in the hull, about a meter above the waterline, for the heater's combustion exhaust, and he gave us the cutout.
1¢ U.S. dollar and 1¢ Euro and the hull cutout. The hull is thicker at the waterline and below, and fibreglass is a hardy material, but it is still unnerving to contemplate what separates one from the great blue out there. Leica Typ 114, 10 July 2015.
The green Pixie coffee maker pours its daily lungo shots on Peregrinus each morning. Tired of Nespresso's absurd U.S. markup on capsules that we've been paying for years, we had been looking forward to the European copycats, which are commonplace. In Ireland we got a few nice local roasts, but it is in France that the experience has bloomed. Carrefour's house brand by itself has no less than 12 varieties, and it carries three or four other brands as well.
It was a surprise to find these single-farm capsules, from Finca La Nueva (a property with which we were unacquainted), from the «Cordillère d'Apaneca», located «a l'ouest du Salvador». The value-added chain remains, as usual, completely foreign: «Torrefié et conditionné en France».
The coffee maker and the milk frother sit on an ingenious platform built by Michael in Fort Lauderdale. No glue, no screws, it holds the devices in place no matter what the seas, yet each half of it can be lifted, leaving no trace in the furniture of Peregrinus. Leica Typ 114, 16 July 2015
So far, we have watched Feuillade's Vendémiaire (1918), and four of his shorts, from 1908 to 1918. One of the shorts featured actress Musidora as a character reading the book Vampires that the short itself launched into the best seller list and shortly afterwards resulted in Musidora playing femme fatale Irma Vep in seven of the ten blockbuster movies Les Vampires. Goes to show movie-book cross-promos and long series of sequels are old, old business. Another short, Bout de Zan vole un éléphant (1913), featured the endearing, irrepressible child character Bout de Zan's zany town adventures with an actual elephant. All of these silent films were presented in La Rochelle as they would have been a century ago: with live music performances, suited to each film.
We also watched Mackendrick's Sweet Smell of Success (1957), with Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, and Susan Harrison.
The La Rochelle waterfront from inside the walls. A La Plancha is a full restaurant ingeniously built on a small fishing boat. iPhone 4S, 9:20 pm, 29 June 2015.
When we went to raise anchor to depart Penfret, in the Glénan Islands, it was terminally stuck. On 10 metres of water, there was little to do but call a diver for help.
So we inflated our new Achilles dinghy and went ashore. Penfret Island is owned by Les Glénans, the largest sailing school in Europe, founded 1947, with 450,000 alumni. The place was packed with teenagers, but asking around, we found the boss, a young woman in a rustic building. She called the diving school in Île Saint-Nicolas, but got voicemail, so she called her friend who's friends with the diving instructors, and who told her they'd be stopping by Peregrinus after their morning class.
Sure enough, an hour later a 35-foot motorboat full of diving students came by. A young man dove with a parachute, an inflatable bag he used to lift our anchor chain which was tightly wrapped around a rock.
We tipped the young diver, because no one in the islands would take any payment. We are grateful for their generosity.
The owners of this gorgeous RM 1260 kindly offered to help with the stuck anchor by lowering a line along our anchor chain and then pulling with their engine in the opposite direction of our rode; but since we knew the divers were coming, we declined. Given the wrap the diver found, it probably would not have worked anyway. The RM 1260, 2013 European Yacht of the Year, is made of wood covered with epoxy, a radically innovative and unique technology for a new sailboat. Leica Typ 114, 24 June 2015.
The Odete river is the seaway for the old Roman settlement that eventually became Quimper, today’s capital city for the départment of Finistère. Founded a few years after Caesar’s conquest of the Gallias, Quimper's original name may have been Vicus Aquilonia.
The Odete has been called the plus belle rivière de France. We anchored early, between Château Kérouzien and Château Keraudren. Kérouzien was described in the 1894 book Sailing Tours as a “comfortable-looking house.” We all should have one such comfortable-looking house, don’t you think?
On shore, jolly trespassers enjoyed the delightful sunset just as much as we enjoyed the serenading birds.
Leica Typ 114, 7:30pm 23 June 2015
The lower portion of the wall on the right hand side of the picture, above the cars, and which goes around about one-half of today's walls, was laid by the Romans around the year 290, to fend off barbarian Saxon or Frank pirate attacks. The Roman castle held 1,000 soldiers under a Praefectus, and they called the settlement Gesocribate. We now call it Brest.
Following the last Praefectus, the castle was occupied by the barbarians, the counts of Léon, the dukes of Brittany, the English (for 55 years), the French, and the Germans.
Today, the Préfet Maritime responsible for Atlantic France sits in a modern palace built on the castle's inner yard. Separately, the staff offices of the French ballistic nuclear submarine command, FOST, sit in bunkers built by the Germans underneath the castle.
The Musée National de la Marine occupies the higher spaces of the east wall, above the Roman opus mixtum, and is well worth visiting.
Brest Castle: Tour Paradis in foreground, Tour César behind it. Background: Marina du Château, home to 700 leisure boats, and to Peregrinus for a couple of days. Leica Typ 114.
For a cat, travel requires significant paperwork. For example, when the Alférez travelled by plane earlier this year, he had to get a certificate of vaccination and rabies bloodwork from his vet, had to get this stamped and taxed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and on arrival at his destination this all was reviewed and further documents were made, stamped, and further taxed. All these documents and taxes were still good for returning to the U.S., but only because the Alférez returned in less than 30 days; otherwise he would have had to start from scratch. And start from scratch he did a few weeks later back in Florida, when he had his paperwork created, stamped and taxed for his trip to Ireland.
The essential problem is that international animal travel has no concept of passport. This results in each trip being a bilateral stack of papers between two countries. Worse yet, the origin country stamps where is the pet going, and the destination country usually requires paperwork from the immediate prior country of origin. Add it up: in case of an unscheduled stopover, the whole stack is rendered non-valid and the poor animal could be in bureaucratic limbo.
The Eurocrats, somewhere in their immense and imponderable officialdom, have recognised this issue, and have created the European Pet Passport for intra-EC travel. This can be issued by any authorised private European veterinarian, and in Kinsale the Alférez got one.
When we arrived in France, and even though we showed the Alferez's European passport, the Douane (customs) people got into a bit of a bother, went onto their computer, and started quoting the several laws, edicts, regulations and extra paperwork they thought applied to the Alférez. We let them discuss among themselves in French for a while, and then we said that le chat non est Americain: le chat est un chat Irlandaise! There was a lot of relief in the room, a lot of smiles, his subcutaneous chip was scanned, and they made a photocopy of his Irish passport and stamped it.
The Irish Alférez was admitted into France at Brest, on 22 June 2015.
We arrived last night into Saint Mary's, in the Scilly Isles. Called the National Yachtline of Her Majesty's government and declared two foreigners and one cat. The cat has an European Pet Passport, issued by Ireland, we clarified. The gentleman on the line said he'd notify Customs.
We asked whether we should remain at the boat. He said he didn't know when a Customs officer would be available, and that we certainly couldn't be confined to the boat, could we? So he said we can do whatever we like. Definitively a gentleman, as we said.
Commented the guy manning the harbourmaster's office this morning: "crazy, uh?"
Fine with us, though. Long live the Queen!
St. Mary's Harbour. Peregrinus at mooring, somewhere in there. iPhone 6 Plus. 19 June 2015.
We sat for a while in a home game of the Cork County Cricket Club. Cricket has been played at the Mardyke since 1850, but the Club has only played there since its formation in 1874.
The crew applauded politely; a lady next to us explained the sport to her daughter, and told tales of her grandfather's prowess. The players were all elegantly decked in white. No slobs there.
This is the planet's second most popular sport, yet it was the first game the Peregrinus crew has watched. Provincials!
