Return to Port St Louis

Finally we are here on the boat. Our luggage has now been stowed away (albeit some only temporarily until further reorganisation tomorrow) and we are fed, watered, showered and safely locked into the saloon away from the hungry swarms of mosquitos outside that seem to find us so irresistible.

Shane is very tired and has resorted to solo scrabble until we can legitimately call it a night and go to bed. Time seems to have stood still today and we’ve lost all orientation of days, hours and minutes since we got into the car and started our journey back to the world of boats and sailing….

We left Caroline waving us off in Scunthorpe on Sunday morning 0845hrs and headed (detouring through Newark) for the south coast of England where we had a ferry booked at 1600hrs to take us from Dover to Dunkerque on the Norfolk Line. Our red Toyota Estate was loaded with various goodies - Solar Panels with newly wielded steel fittings, a new boat battery, new starter motor, new head (brand sparkling new!), new laptop and charts, all the food left in our cupboards from the Bulwell house, swapped books, summer clothes and my new wide-brimmed beige summer hat (with a brown satin ribbon and white polka dots).

The sun and blue skies stayed with us all the way treating us to luscious views of beautiful English countryside. Rolling green fields decorated sparsely with grazing horses, sheep and cows and lined fore, side and rear with trees and bushes of every hue of green imagineable. Interspersed periodically were fields of incredible vibrant yellow rapeseed, and then again a return to rich green carpet that seemed so perfectly laid out across the land. Perfect green hedges sectioning off different shades, forests of broccoli-like trees in the far distance, sprinkles of colour on bushes and trees closer to us heavy with pink and white blossoms. To top it off, we could see bunny rabbits hopping on the grass banks, their long ears flopping as they bounced in and out of sight…

I knew it was happening again already…I’ve been here before….

Last time it took longer. Last time, there was so much more going on that it was several months into the adventure before I’d awakened to this daily beauty. Last time was the first time we’d sold up and left Nottingham, supposedly for good...

Yes, last time there was so much more going on - so much more to worry about. We’d given up house and home, belongings, friends, family - and headed to Plymouth to live temporarily on a sailing school boat and still had to learn how to sail for a start!

Familiarity is truly a source of comfort. Having done this give-up-house-and-home thing once before, I was more at ease this time round. I’ve learnt that the tighter we try to hold on to things, people, places, events, the more we stifle our own lives and sense of freedom. The more likely we are to lose what we love and desire the most. To live, is to let go. And vice versa. To love, is to let go. And vice versa.

So I let go of all my worries. My fears. My insecurities. I let them all fall away behind me as we sped along in the car towards sunnier climes…I let myself enjoy the beauty of this incredible planet that is our home. (How lucky we are that Earth is such a beautiful place!) And I let myself enjoy the knowledge that soon this vision would be transformed into stretches of golden beaches to stroll along and warm aqua-marine waters to swim in….. and hours upon hours upon hours for me to spend freely on study and meditation whilst Shane slept in adoration of the Mediterranean sun! (And maybe some yoga and kicking drills too if the beaches turned out to be as isolated as we’d hoped they’d be!!!)

It wasn’t easy, mind. Keeping this state of ease , I mean. My mind kept flicking back. Not to spreadsheets and exception reports and impossible deadlines as usual! This time to the people that I was leaving behind. The love, generosity and kindness that we’d been showered with so liberally in every way. I wanted to take them all with me! So that tomorrow I could wake up and call and see them again, and share the happiness with them. Share more smiles and laughter. Share my sorrows and thoughts. Share my life with them…

But there I caught myself again! Living in the past and the future! And missing this amazing scenery that was unfolding in miraculous glory right before my eyes as we sped along in the car. Who says that miracles don’t happen? They do. Every day. And they did for me on Sunday. I managed to keep switching my focus every time I lost it, from melancholy memory and worry, to the Here and Now. After all, if all those that I love and cherish could somehow be in the car with the both of us too (it would have to be a gigantic car!), they would be telling me also to enjoy the beauty, enjoy the freedom, enjoy the moment!

So I did. Although Shane probably won’t tell you it was like that.

He’s fallen asleep now, bless him. Yes, the reason it was probably less glorious for him was that he had all the driving to do. My superhero husband is the one that does all the organising and arranging. Whilst the last month had been a roller-coaster ride for me in terms of all the endings, tying up and goodbyes I had with work and various family, friends, colleagues, training pals and spiritual sangha, Shane was diligently busy in a frantic world of his own making this whole adventure happen.

Since returning from a month of boatwork in France, he’d continued with the various preparations necessary, even managing to fit in making a set of rope ladders for us to use off the bow of the boat when we’re beached in shallow waters (although these now need further development work following testing on Daniel and Caroline’s willow tree which revealed some entertaining design flaws) (Shane fell off!).

There had been a host of difficulties with the cars (linked to me regrettably), and critically the Estate we were due to drive to France in broke down just days before we were due to leave.

Somehow, he had managed to resolve all of these problems and still remain sane (or as sane as he was previously anyway), and now he had virtually a thousand miles to drive over the next 24 hours to reach Janix. His focus remained on the task at hand (I think), whilst I nodded in and out of happy oblivion as we sped (at 60mph) through the glorious English countryside.

Reaching Dover with two hours to spare was a happy event, moreso because last summer this had been our home for nigh on two months. The White Cliffs evoked a certain anticipation in both of us. There were some happy (and some trying!) memories of this place, and I felt excited and happy to back. Shane sat in the car guarding our sailing treasures, whilst I walked along the pebble beach littered with sunbathers and narrowly avoided being caught by the incoming tide. Once again I was in a distracted state making last minute farewell calls to family before the mobile phone battery died.

I spent some final English currency so we could enjoy ice-cream one last time (there’s no freezer on Janix) whilst we looked out across the calm English Channel with France hiding in the mist behind it. How many hours and days we’d spent here last summer staring out across this same short stretch of water, frustrated that we couldn’t seem to get across it…..

And then the exhilaration when we finally did achieve it! (Or Shane did anyway. My experience consisted mainly of timing drinks, my mini-sandwiches and ginger biscuits alternatively at regular half-hourly intervals and falling asleep when I should have been looking out) (it was the seasickness tablets - they make you drowsy!).

The ferry trip itself took almost two hours and was huge fun for me. The sea was calm, the sun shining hard on us all and the ferry was massive! My only previous ferry experience didn’t compare and I was delighted to see just how luxuriously furnished it was inside too. We sat in the restaurant at the front of the ferry and Shane put his head down for a short while after getting bored of making Star Trek jokes (he spotted both Captain Picard and Toovak on board), whilst I salivated at the aroma of the Indian curry that was on the menu and the sight of all the wealthier passengers around us enjoying various delicious looking meals.

We had already eaten one set of homemade sandwiches in the car, and a £15 meal was not permitted now that we were back in budget mode. I knew it was the right decision, and that soon desires such as these would leave me just as they did last year once we got in the full swing of boat-budgeting. Still, it didn’t help at that particular moment to see that the American family sitting to the right of us had all had Indian meals but had left their onion bhaji’s completely untouched.

What a terrible waste.

Although the sea looked quite calm from high up where we were on the sixth deck of the ferry, we could see that smaller yachts enjoying a day’s sail had keeled right over. One of them had it’s bow diving in and out of the water completely. Shane asked me to remember that when we were out on Janix and the sea appeared to be rough in this fashion, in reality it was relatively calm just as we could see right now.

That’s when I realised I didn’t feel sea-sick on the ferry! This was a good omen!!!


The next 12 hours of our journey however were, as expected, less delightful on the whole purely due to the sheer distance we were covering.

As we left the ferry, I noticed that all the ferry officials were smiling at us and it seemed such a rare sight that I thought this too must be a good omen! (I only ever acknowledge good omens. I’ve decided that bad ones upset me so I regard them as mere superstition and not worth investing any belief in. The good ones make me happy and more likely to experience further good fortune, so I‘m generous in my emotional investment in these!)

The Auto-Route Planner has a slight timing delay which meant we took a wrong turn virtually immediately on leaving the ferry terminal. There was no serious harm done, but it added an additional 10 miles onto our journey, and more importantly to our time on the road.

Shane felt completely at home driving on the right side of the road - hardly surprising as he’s done this trip twice before already.

It was 1900hrs when we started out through the French country side, and I felt even more enthralled at the beauty of our planet. Somehow, the fact that we were in France again, continuing our unfinished adventure from last Summer through the French Canals, made the landscape even more charming and I couldn’t help feeling a growing sense of excitement. Everything looked so delightfully French and my imagination revelled at the sight of the quaint French farm houses I could see in the distance…. undoubtedly filled with both happy and melancholy French families….maybe sitting around a dinner table eating supper ….making talking about this and that…all in beautifully flawlessly fluent French.

I love France! And I love French! The language is such a pleasure to listen to, almost as if the French sing their conversations to one another.

And as we drove on, it seemed that nature seemed to agree with me too. Even the tree trunks bordering the fields seemed to glow a dusky golden under the setting sun in celebration of this huge beautiful country.
Shane pointed out the various stops we had made previously whilst motoring through the canals last year. Bethune, Cambrais, Rheims,….it had taken us days on the canals to cover the distance we were doing in hours now in the car.

We were heading to Lyon as a first stop. If we made it to there by the end of the night, then he would stop and have a sleep so we only had 5 more hours to drive the next day.

As it turned out, it took us into the small hours of the morning getting to Lyon. I drifted in and out of heavy dreams trying to get comfortable in my passenger seat, whilst Shane silently drove on without complaining, sometimes pointing out landmarks that we could just about see in the dark night .

We stopped at petrol stations a couple of times to fill up and I was so grateful to find that they had nice clean toilets just like in the big Services in England. I think the highlight of the journey for Shane was when he found the French provided windscreen wipers (big squeegies on a long handle) at the petrol pumps and he was able to clean all his windows of the car. That seemed to make him really happy!

It was a very long drive though. We were driving from the top of the country right down to the bottom. Even I didn’t feel entertained making my usual (probably stale) joke asking “are we nearly there yet?“ Squirming around in my passenger seat trying to get comfortable seemed an impossible task and I couldn’t bear the thought of being stuck in the car until tomorrow afternoon. I couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Shane who was doing the actual driving and wasn’t at liberty to nod off every hour or so to relieve fatigue.

Towards the end of the journey even Shane started to feel very tired and had to drink Red Bull and slap himself a few times to keep himself alert! We continued to try to stay interested in locations as we passed them, but tiredness sucks the joy out of everything and as the night fell conversation and interest waned to even scarcer levels.

I also discovered that I am now far behind Shane in the French vocabulary, as this time round, he was correcting me on the meanings of all the signs I was trying to translate! (Hmmm. I will have to swat up I think!)

Finally we neared the South Coast as Shane announced that “Morning has broken” and the sky started to lighten. We had only seen dark glistening reflections as we’d driven past the Soane and the great Rhone, but the mountains were unmistakable as they suddenly loomed forth out the skies announcing their presence with silent majesty.

We exited the final toll road with much relief and as we drove into Port-St-Louis I realised just how exhausted Shane was when he suggested we have a sleep on the boat before we unload the car! This might be an all-time first for him.

We got to the boat at 0700hrs. Nearly a full 24 hour trip!

Shane didn’t sleep properly in the end, he only had a couple of hours before he was up and about again. Unloading, tidying and even fitting the new toilet before we had any tea.

Finally we are here though. Months of planning, organising, working, wishing, dreaming and doing, and finally we are here.

As I walked to the shower block past the rows and rows of yachts of every type and size parked up, I felt so at home to be around boats again. Suddenly Nottingham, work and the house in Bulwell seemed a million miles away not just a thousand, and home is here amongst the boats and their owners who enjoy and suffer the same fate as us in this world of sun and sea, of winds and tides, of boats and adventures, of giving up luxuries and creature comforts to live on the water, to stay in a small confined space on a budget and food and water rations. A life of restrictions and freedom. A sailor’s life for me.

Shane has now woken up again after an unplanned 3 hour nap, and wants marmite on toast for a supper snack. One of his usual boating favourites!

Tomorrow, there’s solar panel and starter motor work to help him on apparently. But mainly for me, there is lots more cleaning (yes, call me sad if you like but there is a streak of Monica in me!) and also organising practical locations for my clothes and the spices and flour we’ve brought with us. Emails to family and friends and some studying as a treat if I’m super-efficient with my time. The working out and yoga routine will have to wait until the boat is fully cleaned and organised.

The patter of light rain has stopped but I can hear the wind howling outside. It no longer unsettles me as it did in the beginning. Maybe it will blow harder tomorrow, or maybe the sun will bake us instead. Who knows. We are led completely by the elements once again. But that’s fine. Somehow it all seems to make life more real in a way. More precious.

Yes, we’re well and truly here….My father-in-law once told me that the journey was the destination. I’ve finally realised just how right he is. We’re here. And the adventure is already underway. All that remains now, is to live each moment fully, whatever it brings...