The big supermercato is at one end of the harbour while the post office – a nice man explains very apologetically – is ‘at the other end of town, up the hill, turn right, keep going, turn left and keep going, left then right … a long way.’ It is around 11am and getting hot, and with concerns about our dinghy we decide to concentrate on the supermarket.
A small boy outside, hand extended, smiles angelically at us and we give him our 500 lire coin in exchange for his shopping cart rather than wrestle to free one from a nearby chain gang. Clutching the coin he disappears like smoke in a Force 9 and we discover the cart has a dud mechanism and no coin in it. It also has a wobbly wheel, but we don’t have another 500 lire coin to enable us to unchain a better one. We spend a small fortune inside the store and stagger back to the waterfront loaded down with fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables and what turn out to be some very tasty little pizzas.
Changing countries means changing language and currency. Having finally reached a state of basic communication and courtesy in Spain, despite our best efforts otherwise we are now talking Spanish to Italians. And whereas Spain has around 200 pesetas to the £sterling and the shops never have enough small change, here you end up with pockets full of it as there are currently around 2,800 lire to the £sterling and the largest coin is only 500 lire. Whenever the final coin needed for your change is of an infinitesimal value they give you a wrapped sweet instead, although they do not accept these back again as legal tender.
At the quay we are greeted by two women from the American yacht that anchored near Voyager during the night, and we ask if they know where we can leave a dinghy without hassle. They point out a trawler against the quay and say he is a yacht-friendly fisherman who lets you tie your dinghy to his boat. ‘Everyone else wants your cash,’ they say. It is interesting that we all accept that if we drove a car into the town we would have to pay to park it. Yet as no other country charges yachtsmen to leave a dinghy, we all feel affronted; or afraid, perhaps, that the habit might spread.
On our way back down the yacht club marina’s main pontoon to retrieve our dinghy we notice a British yacht, mainly because on its stern, sitting straddle-legged over a bucket, a classic sea dog with grizzled hair and beard is washing his Y-fronts. He looks up at us and our supermarket polybags. We look down at his laundry. ‘Ahhh,’ I breathe, ‘the sheer romance of sailing.’ Laughing makes him cough, but when he stops he introduces himself as Toby. His wife Lyn emerges from the galley to introduce herself. They will be heading for Cagliari shortly and we will encounter them again.
Back on board Voyager we observe Boudicca going ashore. She is a matron from a British yacht called Steadfast or Sedulous, or something of that sort, whom we have seen in several Spanish anchorages. Her male companion sits in the stern of their red rubber dinghy and steers while she stands in its bow, gripping the painter like the ancient British heroine leading the charge against the Roman invaders. It is rather choppy for standing today and takes even more grim determination than usual.
With bad weather predicted for tomorrow there are quite a few new arrivals seeking shelter. Like us, observing empty berths on the pontoons ahead of them, each one sweeps determinedly towards the yacht club marina and is just as determinedly waved away. Among them is a French yacht with two white-haired men aboard who then have an awful time anchoring. They arrive at their chosen spot too fast, drop their anchor too soon, travel over the top of it, let out too little chain, drag, heave the anchor back on board and try somewhere else. Inevitably, as they struggle, the wind rises to its daily peak and they look wretched as each new attempt to get their anchor down fails. The people closest keep shouting to them to let out more chain. Unfortunately, with the language barrier and the strength of the wind, they simply raise their anchor and move on again.
Meanwhile, two little girls in an Optimist sailing dinghy return, sopping wet and whooping with so much excitement from the challenging conditions beyond the harbour wall that they almost collide with the two struggling Frenchmen. Finally the French yacht moves closer to the quay where it is shallow enough for the small amount of chain being let out to allow the anchor to bite.
21
A Quiet Day In
The weather forecast next day is still unsuitable for moving further along the coast, and the sea state within the harbour is too rough for a dinghy ride ashore. So we stay aboard. We have everything we need. And there is never a shortage of things waiting to be done.
In the process of regaining some sort of control over our workshop and storage area David finds our Cruising Association and Royal National Lifeboat Institution pennants. They were laundered some time ago but had been missing ever since. He now hoists them aloft on the portside lanyard. Then, with a selection of charts and cruising guides, he settles on the sofa in the bow to prepare ahead.
Meanwhile I set about washing and preparing the wealth of vegetables bought yesterday to make ratatouille. I use whatever vegetables are available that we like: onions, peppers, carrots, garlic, tomatoes, beans, courgettes, squash, aubergine, mushrooms, celery, beans, broccoli. It makes a very tasty accompaniment to meat or fish. It is also very convenient, when you are at sea or anchoring late, to have a vegetable course that simply needs reheating, or an instant base for a casserole or pasta sauce. And you can always cut up the vegetables with kitchen scissors, add more stock and have instant home-made soup.
On a boat people tend to do the things they like doing and the things that come easily to them. Whatever is left over has to be negotiated. David services the engines, but we share the routine maintenance. I do all the varnishing but David does all the sanding down beforehand. David enjoys navigation and planning. If I had to do it, we should still be living in a house. But I do enjoy cooking, especially when I can do the preparatory work sitting at the cockpit table in the sunshine with the radio tuned to BBC World Service and a glass of wine handy.
David does more than his share of the washing up – he says it appeals to his sense of order – and breakfast, and quite often our third meal of the day as well; apart from any accompanying salad which he finds finicky, but which I don’t mind doing. At the same time he will happily produce an equally finicky fresh fruit salad, the preparation of which bores me to distraction. The truth is, I like salad with a meal and he likes fruit afterwards. Neither of us would bother with the other if it wasn’t put in front of us, but we enjoy it when it is, and it means we get the recommended amount of healthful fruit and vegetables most days of the week.
David will happily spend hours at the helm. My concentration drifts after a while. He takes us onto pontoons in bad weather because he’s good at it and I’m faster at tying up. If Voyager is plugged into the mains, he will vacuum the carpets to save my back and hands. If it’s a dustpan and brush job I do it to save his sinuses.
As it turns out, not much navigation and planning gets done today. There is too much going on outside the bow windows. For instance, tension mounts over on the sea wall when a black-hulled 26-footer unfurls a German ensign that is at least 10 feet square. A white-hulled 28-footer, three boats along from it, puts out an enormous French ensign. There is also some shouting.
Surprisingly, given the weather, the Irish motor yacht leaves the harbour and the dancing Dane moves into its space. When the Irish boat returns soon after, its skipper has to find a new space in which to lower its anchor. The young couple who do the work, in their neat white polo shirts and navy shorts, we decide are professional crew while the two sulky adolescents they ferry back and forth into town in a RIB, and wait on, and who take no interest whatever in the yacht or their surroundings, look like owner’s children in need of parental attention. The skipper has trouble getting his anchor to bite, and spends ages fretting over it. We wonder if, like Colin, he and his wife spend their time in a tiny windowless cabin in between their boat duties and waiting on the two brats. When the boat is finally settled to their satisfaction they begin washing it.
Just when everybody seems
settled, the skipper of the dancing Danish yacht lifts his anchor again and attempts to lay it in the ferry lane. He is visited by three official-looking men in a RIB who tell him he can’t, and he finally settles across the harbour near the children’s swimming pool where the boat dances into the night.
When a red-hulled schooner enters the harbour and heads for the marina, at speed and with all its fenders flying, everybody it passes waves and shouts that it won’t be allowed in. To everyone’s surprise, it is. Either its skipper is a member of the yacht club or else the marina attendant has no choice when the schooner lands on the pontoon’s windward side with 27 knots of wind behind it. By now the sulky siblings on the Irish motor yacht have been fed and the boat is being polished.
All this and more keeps David from his charts and his nose against the bow window, with the odd bit of commentary to me. It never fails to surprise me how long it actually takes to produce simple dishes. The ratatouille has taken an hour and a half today from first slice of the onions to finally putting the lid on the pan. Unfortunately, having just produced a substantial quantity, which will need to be stored in the refrigerator, we now suspect we are getting low on propane.
We have some of the ratatouille with trout and potatoes for dinner, followed by fresh peaches and kiwi fruit, and the last couple of squares of the last-but-one slab of chocolate truffle from Mahon which also needs to be kept in the refrigerator. As we savour it with our coffee we wonder when we shall taste its like again.
When it comes time to turn in for the night we become aware of a strange noise. Usually the culprit is the boom, which under certain conditions can vibrate like a plucked double bass, sending a sonorous thrumming via the mast down through the boat. It only ever seems to occur at night, normally just after you have got into bed, but is so insistent that you’ve no chance of going to sleep until you go outside and stop it. Tonight, however, the boom is innocent. And the sound is not so much the deep notes of a double bass as the high-pitched twanging of a jew’s-harp.
After standing around on deck listening for some time, with a brisk wind taking liberties with our night attire, it becomes apparent that the sound is coming from the mast itself. We stare and listen for ages – at the shrouds and backstays which lead from it, and the sheets from the sails which are joined to it – but can detect not the slightest tremor anywhere. I am becoming cold and irritable.
‘It’s almost … ’ I struggle for the word which most clearly describes the rhythm. ‘It’s almost as if there’s something … flapping.’
David looks suddenly guilty. And when I follow his gaze up the mast, there they dimly are, the small pennants of the Cruising Association and Royal National Lifeboat Institution which he had hoisted aloft this morning; their fluttering so slight as to be barely apparent, and yet noticeably in time with the maddening twanging going on below deck.
22
A Jaunt Ashore
Moving on is still out of the question next day but the water in the harbour is quieter so we go ashore. We go to a different pontoon this time. I ask an elderly, immaculate, world-weary, non-English-speaking man reading a newspaper in a small office full of sailing trophies if we can leave our dinghy against his quay for a few hours. He sighs, nods resignedly and returns to his newspaper. I am not game to ask him where the post office is in case he changes his mind.
Instead we set of for the town and on the way I accost an elderly boatman on a canal with my best ‘Permesso, Signore…’ who frowns at my question and then points in the direction of a very large and impressive blue and white, three-storey building. We narrowly avoid getting run over three times trying to cross a very busy road on a blind corner, only to discover when we get to it that the blue and white building bears a sign saying Instituto Nautico. We thought it had looked a bit big for a post office. So we accost a young man, the only other pedestrian on a busy road filled with frenetic motorists and no pavements, who puts his life at risk to patiently give us directions.
Sometime later, lost in a maze of streets, we approach a middle-aged man who gives us very precise instructions. Dutifully we go right and left and right and left but finally grind to a halt in confusion. He catches up with us in a large piazza and puts us on the right track again. Some time afterwards he pulls alongside us in a car, invites us to get in and drives us there.
It is a small, temporary-looking building hidden among modern apartment blocks and we realise that the elderly man on the canal did not send us to the Instituto Nautico because he knew no better, nor because he didn’t care to help us. He had been pointing up into the hills above the Instituto Nautico but had been overwhelmed by the problem of explaining how to get there. Clearly, by its distance from the town centre, a post office was a late arrival in Carloforte.
It is hot and airless inside, and there are four long queues stretching from the counter almost to the back wall. We stand at the end of one of them. Standing is not something I do well. Nothing seems to move and I have visions of us spending the day there. We are surrounded by young men and I try to get a look at the piece of paper one of them is holding. After a while I catch a glimpse and my fears are confirmed. It is Social Security Cheque Day.
‘Permesso, Signore…’ I begin and wave a postcard at the young man in the line beside us. He backs away, as if propositioned. Another young man behind him understands, smiles and points at an empty bit of unattended counter at the far end of the room. We go and stand at it with relief and someone arrives on the other side of the reinforced glass barrier. The gap between this barrier and the counter is too narrow to get four envelopes and two postcards through it all at once, but sliding them through one at a time you can feel a delicious chill against your fingers from the air-conditioning on the other side.
David says, ‘D’you think they’d let us keep our ratatouille in there?’
A more important question is: would we ever find our way back up here to reclaim it? We’re not even sure we can find our boat again.
Italy’s stamps seem to be on a par with its currency, in that there are three times as many of them as is practical. In fact, you feel that the stamps must have been printed for a much earlier postal rate, before inflation overtook it, and it takes an age to post two birthday cards, two letters and two picture postcards. All six become dappled with multiple stamps, the postcards even losing part of their addresses underneath them, and then each postage stamp gets a rubber stamp crashing down on it, plus another under the address of each envelope for luck. There isn’t room on the postcards for this final flourish, however, without making them undeliverable and they escape the ultimate pummelling.
We emerge hot, sticky and bearing more small change than ever. Our next challenge is to find our way back to the waterfront. We get lost several times, but keep making our way downhill on the principle that we are bound to arrive at sea level sooner or later. Finally we do, of course, and with our shopping and postage now taken care of and our dinghy safe from intimidation, we are free to enjoy Carloforte.
Each building along the quay is different in style from its neighbour, as well as being painted in a different pastel colour. The frontages are stucco and vaguely classical in decoration with their pilasters and pediments painted a lighter shade than the rest of the building. Promenade and piazza alike are shaded by tall palm trees and everywhere there are oleanders, with single and double flowers, in shades from almost red to palest pink, cream and white. What a legacy they leave to us, those people who plant the trees and shrubs that give pleasure to the eye and shade from the heat of the day.
The main street manages to be elegant while at the same time lived-in. Men sit cross-legged in doorways weaving baskets. In between fashionable shop windows, clothes-airers stand tidily against house fronts, the only place to catch the sun for those without gardens or balconies. In this heat, who needs a tumble drier? Why use expensive power, when solar heat is free? There is bougainvillea and cactus, and all is very neat and tidy. Even the canine population, from tiny lapdo
gs to large hounds, have careful, watchful owners.
A steep flight of steps rises to the old town, a maze of narrow streets and tiny whitewashed houses. Up here it is shady and cool. Mature ladies, dressed all in black, stand at front doors opening directly onto the narrow streets, selling tomatoes grown in their tiny back gardens.
The little stone houses and cobbled streets of Carloforte’s old town remind us vividly of the Cornish fishing village of St Ives, on England’s south-west coast, where we spent holidays in the 1960s. And given their past history and present lifestyle the inhabitants of these two distant villages probably have more in common with one another than with their own countrymen in Manchester or Milan. In fact, there is a theory current among some anthropologists that there is no such thing as race, only geography.
On the way back down, one wall of a long, steep, narrow alley is festooned with drying tablecloths and napkins. Turn left at the last napkin and there’s a very swish-looking restaurant; and you are back down on the quay again.
When we left our northern Protestant homeland I was wary of offending southern Catholic sensitivities, by the way one dresses in public places or enters churches, or even in such matters as hanging out washing ‘on the Sabbath’, which was a heated issue in my childhood even among women who never went to church. Wherever we’ve travelled, however, the streets are likely to be festooned with the family’s underpinnings any day of the week, a tourist’s outfit has to be bizarre indeed to attract a second look, many churches are locked even on Sundays and it is not unknown for supermarkets in Catholic countries to sell contraceptives at the checkout.
The island of Isola di San Pietro on which Carloforte stands has a fascinating coastline. Even if the cruising guide had failed to point this out, you would know from the picture postcards outside the local souvenir shops. Racks of cards in the squares and promenades of any town are a quick and useful guide to places you might want to visit. The postcards in Carloforte show a rugged coastline with wind-sculpted monoliths and intriguing caves. So, after leaving the harbour next day we do a circular sight-seeing tour around the island’s cliffs, caves, coves and inlets.
Turtles in Our Wake Page 9
