And then – 12 hours out and about due south of The Lizard peninsula- we had a problem. Our batteries should have been charging while the engine was running, but they weren't. Quite the opposite in fact - they were emptying. Bugger. Some poking about in the engine compartment confirmed our fears – the alternator had stopped working. This meant that, in time, we would have no electricity on board. Now, technically, we do also have a generator which could also charge the batteries, but we don’t like to go sailing without a plan B and we had 1350 miles ahead of us. If the generator also stopped working (and it can be a bit temperamental sometimes), we would eventually run out of power completely. This would mean no autopilot, no fridge, no water pump, no bilge pumps, no lights, no radar, no chart plotter, no depth gauge, no radio… Not an option we were prepared to consider. I know what you’re thinking – what, no solar panels? No wind turbine? Nope – and nowhere to put either, unfortunately... We’ve just replaced our old batteries with state of the art lithium but even they need to be charged from time to time.
So – we turned around – again.
For goodness’ sake. We were slightly starting to feel like Blighty didn’t want to let us go. The disappointment on board made everything taste slightly wrong. We were all pretty fed up, to put it mildly, and more than a little stressed that we needed to make it back to a marina to plug in our brand new batteries before they discharged themselves beyond the point of rescue.
This time, we made for the massive naval harbour of Plymouth, and sailed into Mayflower Marina not long after sunrise the following day. What a fantastic marina! We were given a very warm welcome and the staff there couldn't have been more helpful. Dietmar ordered and received a new alternator and other replacement parts, and fitted a new cooling fan to the engine compartment. Time will tell whether he has solved the problem...
While we were waiting for parts and weather, we did a little exploring. The waters around Plymouth are beautiful – the city centre less so, to be honest. The old part on the waterfront – the Barbican all the way to the Hoe and the King William Yard, for example - is full of history and very charming. The inner port is still used by a large number of working fishing boats and the quaysides are full of interesting things going on. The old Admiralty buildings are imposing and there are historical landmarks around every corner. The ghosts of ancient mariners stalk the alleyways. It’s quite magical.
Sadly, this postage stamp of historical beauty is surrounded on all sides by some dreadful Brutalist architecture and some even less attractive 1960s and '70s lumpish concrete monstrosities. It’s hideous and dreadfully uninspiring. The city centre seemed windy, grey, deeply depressed, populated predominantly by people with even less hope than they have teeth, and with an apparently large number of people who appeared to be street homeless. There was clear evidence of much drug and alcohol abuse, almost everywhere you looked. The industries that grew the town have shrunk, died or moved away and I'm sure Covid hasn't helped. I have never seen so many pound shops and discount stores in one place. It was really sad.
Not so keen to spend too much time in the town, we ventured in the other direction. Near to our marina, there is a ferry that took us across to Cremyll – out of Devon and into the Kingdom of Cornwall, to the land of Rosamunde Pilcher films – the most incredibly famous and successful British author that no Brit has ever heard of. Seriously. Rosamunde Pilcher writes period dramas that sound like Fielding/Austen/Brontë pastiches and are unbelievably popular in Germany. She’s ridiculously successful and yet no one in England seems to have ever heard of her, including me until I met Dietmar.
Anyway, from the landing stage at Cremyll, it’s a bracing walk uphill to Mount Edgcumbe, an elegant stately home dating to the reign of Henry VIII, with commanding views back across the city. From here we picked up the coastal path and followed it for a few miles, along paths carpeted with pine needles and smelling of the Côte d’Azur, with glimpses of precipitous cliffs and shimmering turquoise waters below. We followed a trail through the long grass and bracken up to a folly – a half tower built to look like a medieval ruin, one of the few buildings in Plymouth left untouched by German bombs in WWII, despite its appearance. We walked for hoursand returned with tired legs, the sunshine in our eyes and the smell of lush greenery in our nostrils. It was glorious.
As if however in sympathy with the strange melancholy of Plymouth, I fell ill the next day – first with an unshiftable headache which went on for days, then dreadful stomach ache. As I seemed to be recovering, Dietmar set a date for our next departure with the next weather window.
And on the morning of our departure, I was so ill I could barely get out of bed.
FranJo flew home. I called a doctor, went for a Covid test (it was negative) and spent a pretty miserable week on board, slowly getting better. Dietmar and I cooked up a new plan: we decided that actually, maybe, we should just try moving the boat south and wait until we had a better weather window and a shorter journey. Dietmar and I had sailed double-handed across the entire Pacific ocean, so a quick trip to France maybe, then perhaps Spain before crossing to the Azores shouldn’t really be a problem.
And so we left Plymouth one July Sunday morning and made it across to La France in 26 hours, without any problems whatsoever, to Brest in Brittany.
By the way, Brest looks not dissimilar to Plymouth, with the difference that the town was bombed not by the Germans but first, tactically, by the British, and then apparently indiscriminately by the Americans who almost razed it to the ground. 75% of the town was obliterated. The decision was taken to redesign the city completely and, with so much grey granite used in the rebuild, I have a strong suspicion that the architect may have been related - at least in spirit- to whomever redesigned Plymouth...
De toute façon, by the time I had been there for a couple of days, I was feeling more or less back to my usual bouncy self, and there we were, waiting for yet another weather window, ready to head across Biscay. In the meantime, Dietmar was enjoying the amazing bread from the bakery and the great running routes - and I enjoyed chipping the rust off my French. I really wanted to paint but the wind and almost endless rain there put the brakes on any plans to do that. It would have to wait until we were somewhere a little less ... Breton.
Next stop: Northern Spain. Stay tuned… : )
