Where the Genoese founded a republic

The Moors were kicked out of this region in 972, after almost a century of occupation.  Nonetheless, this part of the old Roman Province remained generally depopulated because the Saracens continued to pirate and raid for the next half-millennium, and, not coincidentally, because Provence was passed along during that time from the German Holy Roman Empire to the Spanish Kingdom of Aragon, and finally to the French kings. 

But under René, Count of Provence, a deal was struck in 1470 with a citizen of the Republic of Genoa: in exchange for defending the coast and building a fortress in St. Tropez, the Genoese would pay no taxes and largely self-rule.  And so sixty Genoese families migrated to St. Tropez and since then the city had its own navy and army which over the following century fought off pirates, Turks, and Spaniards at various times.  The city's privileges, eroded from time by the kings of France, were finally terminated under Louis XIV, in 1672.  

To this day, many family names in the St Tropez cemetery, if not most, are clearly Italian.

A side wall in St Tropez, 13 May 2016.  Peregrinus has anchored off for a couple of days.  iPhone 6 Plus.

Horse Trading

The Admiral and the Seaman went shopping for horses in Dourdan (Essone) with Jacqui and Adrian.

Jacqui testing a horse.  Frame captured from video taken by the Seaman.  iPhone 6 Plus, 21 March 2016

Exploring La Charité-sur-Loire With Friends

Adrian points out features of the extant features of the Cluniac church of Notre-Dame, consecrated by pope Pascal II in 1107, and the second largest church in Europe until the edification of Saint Peter's in Rome in 1506.  

The 1429 siege of La Charité was Joan of Arc's sole military defeat, other than her final capture during the sortie at Compiègne.

With Jan and Jacquie.  19 March 2016.

Sebastian

The Admiral adopted the Alférez at the turn of the century, as a six month old, the last of his litter, just before we moved to Miami.  He was our first cat, and because we did not want Sebastian to be lonely when we left the house, he opened the door for Philippe and Isabella not too long afterwards.  That was the first favor he did us.

He used up several cat lives.  In 2005 in Miami Beach, he ate the ribbon of a birthday balloon, which had to be surgically removed; the scar ran from neck to lower belly.  In 2009, he underwent a nuclear medicine treatment to combat an overeager thyroid.  In 2013, he was diagnosed with renal failure, and given three months to live.  No matter.  Not much later, he moved aboard, and went on to travel to six countries in two continents for the next two-and-half years.

Sebastian was devoted to the Admiral.  On land, in the air, or at sea, he curled at her side.  During her shifts sailing Peregrinus, for instance, he sat on her left, like a dependable co-pilot, no matter the time of day or night.  He found peace with the Admiral.  He lived his long life in no small part because he trusted her and meekly accepted from his Admiral whatever procedures and medications were needed, without complaint.

Some said he was a lucky cat, but in truth, we are the ones blessed to have had him with us, even if the years with him now seem all too short.  Sebastian went to rest, peacefully, in Cartagena, on January 23rd, 2016. 

The Admiral doing foredeck work, and so of course, Sebastian was there with her.  Águilas, Murcia, January 21, 2016.  Leica Typ 114.

Sunrise in Mar Menor

We are now anchored in front of Club Náutico La Isleta, in La Manga, where we have been cordially welcomed.

As Luis said: this might be a club, but it is still a port. And good manners and respect for the sea call for ports to welcome mariners. So we are being hosted the way one hosts old friends who come to visit. There is courtesy in La Manga, province of Murcia.

This picture taken at sunrise this morning. iPhone 6 Plus.

An Amel Super Maramu in the Mar Menor

Originally, we had no plans to enter this 11 mile by 5 mile hyper saline small sea —the Mediterranean being the big sea.   The charts that we have come to rely the most upon showed Peregrinus couldn’t make it at the first set of Westbound buoys.  Thereafter, we could –in paper– make it, but our Imray pilot book (2014) hints of silting and of irregular, unknown dredging periods.

We were fortunate, however, that along the way we’ve made Spanish friends with local sailing knowledge and who insisted we shouldn’t skip the Mar Menor, and so we decided to give it a shot.  After all, we’ve been known to enter places, from the Bahamas to New Brunswick, with one inch of water below the keel.

We carry three sets of charts of this salty lagoon east of Cartagena, namely

- Navionics (vector, charts fully updated three days prior)
- Instituto Geográfico de la Marina 1:50,000, 1996, (raster, MaxSea on iPad)
- Garmin Bluechart (vector)

It is Navionics that reads that the entrance channel is impassable by anything other than a canoe, and in fact its very chart of the Mar Menor has been presented by others on internet forums as demonstration that Navionics contains imaginary information of the Mediterranean.  However, other than here, Navionics has been good to us.  For all of Spain, Garmin is simply a rasterised version of the official Spanish charts.  And the most updated Spanish charts… are old (1996).  Having said that, the Spanish charts, while showing less detail than we like, show that Peregrinus should enter the Mar Menor without issue.

In any event, Peregrinus, which at the very worst has a draught of 2.2 meters fully loaded, and which has its sensors calibrated to show water below the keel, entered the Mar Menor without issue in January 2016, under the following conditions:

Wind during transit 6 knots
True wind direction 45 degrees
Barometer 1032 mb and increasing slowly

True wind day prior 6 knots
True wind day prior 30 degrees
True wind in Cartagena harbour prior week: 10 knots or less

Least depth seen: 3 feet below keel at the second set of physical buoys
(second set of physical buoys are the first set of buoys shown on all charts, entering from Med)
Second least depth seen: 4 feet below keel, 200 feet west of bridge

Tide: 3.5 hours before high tide
Tide coefficient: 56 (two hours before transit)
Tide range: -0.1 metre (low tide), +0.1 metre (high tide)

Current: 0.5 knots, estimated, Eastbound

Peregrinus, under sail, comes across another sailboat in the Mar Menor.  Note: no waves!  January 29, 2016.  Leica Typ 114.

Kicked out of Almería —as nicely as can be!

It was a windless day, so after motoring less than two hours from Las Roquetas, we anchored by late morning in the port of Almería exactly where Rob and Karen of Dreamtime anchored a couple of years ago. We showered, took a leisurely lunch, inflated the small tender, and rowed to the beach at around 3:30pm –but decided the homeless population was too numerous in the park for an evening return in the dark, so we rowed to the Club de Mar where they were absolutely welcoming for us to leave the dinghy “anywhere it won’t bother”.

To our surprise, as we walked towards the historic center, we saw a 50ft Guardia Civil boat going around Peregrinus and blowing its horn. We approached the waterfront park to hail them from shore but then saw the Guardias leaving. Since we did not get towed immediately and, so far, the Spanish cops have been incredibly relaxed, we decided to take it easy and leisurely visited the Alcazaba, which is the large fortress-palace complex begun in 955 by the first Caliph. The Christians finally took fortress and city in 1489. We then walked back to the Cathedral, whose beautiful main portal evoques the one of the Málaga Cathedral, but in 3/4ths scale, did some window shopping, quickly raided a large supermarket, and walked back to the Club.

We rowed to Peregrinus in the twilight, but just as we were disembarking the dinghy, we got a huge spotlight aimed at us… the Guardias had sneaked from behind! Two were at the front of their vessel, turned off the spotlight, and so we held a conversation from the back steps of Peregrinus: where is our flag from, surprise that we speak Spanish, what’s our citizenship, and where did we come from and are going to. Next we were informed we couldn’t anchor there, to which we reacted most surprised. They went on to explain that in ports “of State interest” one must contact the port authorities for permission to anchor, which will be summarily denied, they said. How’s that for a tip? And so we chatted for a while: these were two very nice fellows. They finally confessed, almost apologetically, that the Guardia itself has no problem with the likes of us but that some port directors just have “mala leche” (i.e., they’re just mean). Evidently, bureaucrats will be bureaucrats of their petty kingdoms, everywhere.

So we took it in stride and re-anchored a couple of miles down the beach. Tomorrow we plan on crossing the cape of La Gata.

The tiny white mast in the very center of the picture is Peregrinus at anchor, as seen from the Alcazaba. iPhone 6 Plus.

The monkeys of Gibraltar

The barbary macaques of Gibraltar are the sole free-ranging population of monkeys in Europe.  

We ascended the top of the rock and came across many of these monkeys including this fellow, sitting on the Charles V wall, built under Charles I of Spain during 1540-1552.

On the Guadalquivir

The river was known to the Romans as Baetis, a name that may have a celtic or phoenician origin.  When the Arabs invaded in 711, they called it "the river of Cordoba," after one of the cities on its shores.  But when other Moors of North Africa known as the Almoravids invaded in 1090, they renamed it "the big river," or Wad al-Kabir; when the Spanish took the river back, in the years 1236 to 1248, they kept this name of Berber origin, latinised as Guadalquibir.

Seville is 60 nautical miles away from the sea, but the river is navigable and the city features a very active cargo and cruiseship harbour.  Peregrinus has been docked at Odyssey Marina for the last three weeks.

We have often used the Guadalquivir as transport, commuting to the city center by Zodiac.  The Sevillanos use the river to practice sailing, rowing and paddling; and in fact a number of them have made it to the Olympic games.

Paddlers and rowers on the Guadalquivir from the Puente de Triana on a Saturday morning.  10:21 AM, 12 December 2015.  Leica Typ 114.

We, the dissidents

We found a chart of "all the civilian and navy flags of the world"  in the Maritime Museum of Seville.  It includes a section on treacherous American insurrectionists: América Disidente.

The subversives: Alto Perú, Bajo Perú, Colombia, Buenos-Ayres, Chile, Mejico, and Estado Central de America.

The rebel Estado Central de America, founded 1821, eventually dissolved into Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica in 1840.  Recusant Colombia, founded 1819, later split into Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia (including Panama) in 1831.  Insurgent Alto Perú is of course Bolivia, founded 1825.

A chart like this had a more-than-academic interest for a European power.  Out at sea, it was critical to be able to identify friends and foes, yay!, even those disloyal American rebels.  In the Museum of the Navy in Lisbon, for example, we saw a painting of a Portuguese frigate sunk, with substantial loss of hands, by a Buenos-Ayres naval vessel during the time the newly-minted Argentineans and the Kingdom of Portugal were in conflict for possession of what would later become Uruguay.  

The chart is undated, but it must be from after 1825, because the Alto Perú flag did not previously exist.   Conceivably the chart could be from before 1831, and it evidently cannot be from after 1840.

View fullsize

Click image to enlarge.  Prospecto General De todas las Banderas que se izan a bordo de los Buques de guerra y mercantes de todas las naciones.  Museo Marítimo de Sevilla, Torre del Oro.  12 December 2015.  Leica Typ 114.