It is howling. Noisy. The rigging is vibrating. Glad I am not out there…This morning I had to get off my bike and walk bent over against the westerly wind. I went to 11 o’clock mass at the 11^th century St.Paul church. The sermon was about the resurrection and the priest looked like the resurrected Father Marquardt we had as our parish priest at St. Patrick’s church in Tacoma when we lived there from 1972 till 1984. The same shape and Franciscan halo hairline. By now you have become accustomed with my analysis of the congregation. I’d give it an average age of 55, lower than in Holland but higher than my earlier Sundays in France, 65% filled. Since Monday all shops will be closed I shopped for a refill of my supplies for an eventual 3 or 4 day passage at Carrefour. I got a little closer to the pink and not so pink Flamingoes in the salt marshes on the way to town.

I spent most of the afternoon trying to read up on how I might connect the AIS inputs to my digital charts on my laptop and/or tablet. The $10 app I bought for the tablet called “Boat Beacon” is great it shows all traffic around me. But there is one problem: I have to be connected to the internet… Navionics on the tablet does not appear to have any way to read the AIS signal, only GPS. On the laptop I have Nobeltec and OpenCPN. Both have provisions for AIS but neither programs let me connect to my Wireless multiplexer. I will be o.k. to use just the VHF radio tio alert me to approaching traffic but the screen on the radio is tiny and complicated to figure out the collision threat. I gave the SailMail systems a couple more tries but it still hangs up on me. It is something very simple. The ring gets through but just does not quite make the handshake. I have a couple writing projects and I started one of them. No chance to get bored while waiting for the right three days of less than gale force winds to get on the road again.

From now on there will be a total black out on my departure plans. I’ll sneak out there in the middle of the night sometime in November or possibly December. Today looked like a great day to go south but tonight it will be again gale force winds. I can hardly shorthop the Spanish coast because there are some nasty capes to round before and after Barcelona. And there are not many marinas along the Spanish coast, just good anchorages.  So I am just going to have to wait till there are three good days in a row to get to Ibiza. Just to prove again how small the world is: A young man, Julien Pernod, in his late twenties, stopped by with a few of his friends he had been sailing with. He had bought his 38 foot boat in Florida for $2,050…. And he did some maintenance on it in Green Cove Springs on the St. John River; the same funky place where I spent quite a few month in the spring of 2008 and again in 2009. He has also worked in marina’s/sailing schools in Port Townsend, Wa. And he cruised up to Alaska and in the San Juan Islands. His girl friend lives in Minneapolis. You’ll see that the sign in GCS marina on the oporch tells you how hard it is to get away from there.

I tried very hard to find a way to make the AIS connect to the OpenCPN navigation software I have, but the Plug In that the program supposedly has for AIS did not want to get off the internet in Frontignan. And the resoldered control wire for my SailMail system still does not work. So, I can keep myself off the street for a while. I plan to go to 11 a.m. mass in Frontignan to the gorgeous old church you saw on yesterday’s blog. At least there are no mosquitos here and the “Baracuda” next to my boat has free Wi-Fi.

Patrick did get my AIS to work on my VHF radio through the multiplexer. So, now I should be able to set the alarm for any approaching vessels within a certain distance from me. And now both my laptop and the tablet are connected wireless to the WI-FI multiplexer. I am still working on getting the AIS to be displayed on the lap top and the tablet, through OPEN-CPN and Navionics electronic chart programs. This is a big step forward and will make my sleeping habits much safer. He is also resoldering the control cable for the SailMail program to work easier. So, Frontignan turned out to be a lucky destination.

I went into town late this afternoon and Frontignan turned out to be a real pearl of a relatively well preserved medieval town, narrow streets. The Saint Paul church dates to the beginning of the 11 th century and is an unusual combination of Roman and Gothic church and fortification. It was getting too dark to get a decent picture of the exterior of the church.  I plan to be off in the late morning after Patrick brings me the repaired wire back and it still looks good to keep going the 300 plus miles non-stop to Mallorca-Ibiza. That should take me three days.

This is what I wrote last night:

Thursday evening  7 November

I was all set to try and get to Ibiza in the next three days but when I took a last look at the weather bulletin  it showed that tonight the wind will turn from NE to SW and at force 7 to 8 ( 45 knots…) That would be pure masochism if not suicide to try and tack against this kind of wind force. Bu because it was such a perfect summer day I opted for a short sail to Fortignan. About 20 miles to the west. I left at noon and arrived here just at dusk, 6 p.m. I had not sailed since the mast went down last August in St. Louis de Rhone. And this was a good opportunity to check if everything was working o.k. The wind was about 15 knots. I had to make a few long tacks against the wind. With full main and my old 140% Genoa  that I bought used in Annapolis in 2009. The repairs that I had done this summer to the main sail, through Q-Sail,  were done well. Much better than the previous repairs done in Volendam by you know who. This  genoa does not sail well hard to the wind. Off the wind, which will be the routine on crossing the Atlantic in the trade winds it will be o.k. And I still have my 145% and 120% Mylar head sails that I have never used cruising solo because they are very difficult to fold alone. But since I have no more use for them, since my racing days are done, I will just wear them down for how long they will last The Genoa lead blocks did not tear through the new thinner deck.  I had almost forgotten how much I love the movement of my boat under sail. The Monitor windvane worked flawlessly.

Frontignan is close to Sète. I had planned to go here (on the inside passage) to step the mast but ended up in Port Camargue. Thi is a smaller and funkier place. I will check it out tomorrow. I do not think that there is a good weather window tomorrow. But at least I now know that everything seems to work and in the  worst case I’ll short hop the Spanish coast southward.

Friday afternoon: The forecast from tomorrow onward for the next week are just fine for going non-stop to Ibiza. Mostly down wind or reaching. So, I plan to take off in the morning. This afternoon I have a technician scheduled to come and see if he can make sense of all the rainbow of wire colors to connect. Who knows this might become my lucky day, again. It never howled from the SW last night and wonder about the forecasts. But it has been raining since this morning and it is a dreary day here. So, this time I might be out of reach for a few days. I tried the SailMail connection on fully charged batteries, last night. No luck.

This is another long weekend here with the November 11 veterans day.

I wrote the below Wednesday evening but was too tired to drag my self to Mosquito Alley: I am back in the water. I took another day to fill in the low spots on the keel with epoxy putty. I touched up the scratches on the hull from the 200 plus locks abuse. I still have no working AIS . I am totally confused and I am just going to give it a rest. The SailMail is not working either yet. Chip Adams from Everett, Wa., who sold me the ICOM SSB radio and the Pactor modem back in 2004 has been of great help and I am real close on getting it to work without the control cable. It all seems to work  but I cannot make the connection yet. I think it is the puny little batteries that were sold to me in Amsterdam to replace the batteries  I bought in 2008 in Beaufort , N.C. I was told that the USB  hockey puck GPS antenna I have been using for my digital charts on the laptop for the last few years cannot be used for the AIS GPS receiver that needs to hook up to the VHF radio with AIS capability. So, I bought a Humminbird GPS receiver here but though I think it can be made to work I have not succeeded with it yet. So, my $400 multiplexer and the new $ 200 GPS receiver  are staring at me and I am ready to throw them overboard and tell them that Columbus and Magellan did just fine without them.  The weather forecast  for tomorrow looks very good NE  force 4/5// Today they were stronger. Right now, Wednesday evening they are Westerly, here. Do, I will plan to take off in the morning and make a stop in Barcelona , Friday evening or if the good conditions hold continue to Ibiza. I will try the SailMail again, underway, but iy might be a few days before I am on the internet again.

Thursday a.m.: A beautiful day to go south. I’ll be on my way after getting my bank account recharged and a few groceries.

It rained most of this morning. I postponed this afternoon’s scheduled re-launch. I expect that I can do the hull and bottom touch up painting on Tuesday morning and go back in at the end of the afternoon.  I still have plenty of chores. While I am writing this, late Monday afternoon, the sky is clearing but a strong wind is coming up from the south. Crossing the Gulf of Lion is not going to be an easy chore at this time of the year.  I may be stuck here for a while longer awaiting the right weather window. I have ten days free in the yard here but I prefer to be in the water, rather than climbing up and down a ladder in the yard.

The below pictures were taken yesterday on the way back from Grau du Roi. Quite a spectacle these kite surfers. I spent a good part of the day on making some corrections and amplifications in the “The Mastmakers’ Daughters”. A new contact, Lucas Bruijn,  has done a lot of research on a related story to the resistance group my mother was working for and answered a few questions and added new details. I do not mind being stuck here except for the fact that the nearest place to sit inside and hook up my laptop charger is in Grau du Roi, a 20 minute bicycle ride. None here in Port Camargue and now I go out to sit on a park bench with any exposed skin smeared with mosquito repellent.

A costly lesson in humility. I motored out, yesterday morning, very little wind, gorgeous weather. I set my course for Barcelona, 198 degrees. But I had not studied my charts well enough to clear the admiral buoy and strayed in an area full of crab pots; one of the pot lines wrapped around the propeller and stopped me dead. I was not but a  mile from the harbor entrance. It cost me $ 500 (€ 345) to have the coast guard bring me back to Port Camargue. So, just forget that all the miles I have sailed qualify me for some sort of glorified status. I decided to unwrap the rope on the hard rather than try to have a diver get it off. Because I had planned to haul out anyway before crossing the Atlantic. I knew that the last epoxy puttying of the keel, back in Amsterdam, had not cured properly, but it would have been very difficult to remove at that stage. I also lost most of the anti fouling on the bottom of the keel in the occasional canal/river groundings. The port here was able to lift me out immediately. But I had no engine, so I decided to sail. But there again I screwed up, led the genoa sheets wrong…. Fortunately the Capitainerie came to my rescue and towed me to the travel lift. I re-epoxied the keel and several other scrapes on the hull and the Gypsy air-gun hole in the cabin side. The epoxy I bought here worked great, perfect cure.

I rode my bicycle to Grau du Roi for mass but it is again in Aigues Mortes at 11 a.m. so, I excused myself. I still have not got the SailMail or the AIS working. Chip Adams is trying to guide me through the SailMail problem, he suspects that the control wire was resoldered incorrectly after all. I plan to be relaunched tomorrow and then hope to get a decent weather slot to get south. It would have been a lot of motoring yesterday and then the wind came up late at night, gusty, from the SW, right against the direction I need to go.

Just another sunset in Paradise

I am in good company today. But I’d trade my sainthood for some help with the SailMail and AIS software.  The wifi multiplexer arrived on time, last Wednesday. It is an incredible versatile tool, it allows you to have a number of your electronic  gadgets connected to each other wirelessly.  I’ll be able Friday to take my new tablet anywhere around the boat without tripping over its wires. But wiring the VHF radio to the multiplexer has been a real challenge and it has not worked so far after all the hours spend on the manuals. Marc left this morning for Les Saintes Marie de la Mer, to the east of here.

SailMail has not worked yet either but I believe that is a minor detail and I hope to get it running this evening. The weather looks good for tomorrow but then turns stormy again. So, I may have to try it again in Barcelona or the Baleares. It has warmed up again and since the schools are on holiday and it is a four day weekend with today’s holiday, there are many more vacationers here.