Spain 2012

Dear Friends & Family,

Every offshore boat is a civilization onto itself, a civilization which rises and falls over time, though what might have taken the Romans centuries can in fact be undone in a matter of weeks aboard a sailing vessel. And a sailing society's output and general state of well being reflect the complex interplay of the citizens aboard, their respective talents, the internal infrastructure of the vessel and its state of (dis)repair, as well as the natural resources at their disposal, namely wind. At the height of Marlow's civilization, one might have smelled freshly baking bread in the oven, admired pink strands of tuna jerky hanging from life lines in the sun, witnessed smiling faces and Beretta 9mm training operations and Chinese fire drills in the middle of the night, even received a missive or two from local scribes regaling in tales of adventure and wanderlust. Oh how the mighty have fallen.

On the road to Morocco Marlow was damn near condemned a ghetto, and myself relegated to small time slumlord. Brown water in the pipes, if you could get any at all, stinking showerless population, heads that even a roadside gas station attendant would be ashamed to call his throne, morale of the crew suffering from luxuries lost. And that is nothing to speak of the sorry mental state of the lone passenger, Prince James of Beverly Hills, who upon arrival in Africa sprang on deck with his double large Louis Vitton suit case packed full of unused clothes and before the dock lines were even tied down thrust it and himself into the nearest cab with no regard for customs legal or cultural and with explicit directions to be taken to the nearest 5 star hotel, which turned out to be in Paris.

The decline was to be expected I suppose, having lost key veteran crew, having lost the mast for Christ sake, having never sailed before with new crew, having not sailed at all myself in 2 years, having to live under the fear that EU customs would stop us and levy a 6 figure importation tax before we reached Morocco as a result of having spent too long in Spain. Still, we had our moments. There was the Feast of Formentera, after a perfect 12 hours with 15 knots on the beam from Mallorca. We ate fruits of the sea at the same restaurant we visited 5 years ago for our first meal after crossing the Atlantic. And we handled 25 kt winds and 6 ft seas on our first night sail, whilst managing to digest quite an oily eel that James had carried with him from New York and cooked up using every dish on a boat with no running water mind you, so that our galley smelled of ripening eel for the duration. And then it was mostly fair winds from there, little time spent under motor, just enough to remind ourselves what it is like to run a fuel tank dry and wonder if the engine will ever start again.

Sunrise arrival in Marina Smir off the eastern coast of Morocco, friendly enough customs, considering one of us has forgotten his passport, though he is confined to the boat, and then one night in Tangier, James to Paris to join the great Birkin Bag chase, T_________ and me go all night with a current and dolphins and stars reflecting off a milky glass sea to Malaga where we work to rebuild a civilization.

Miss and love you all,

Sniffy Trufflesniffer

A Salty Re-enactment

2:14am, June 14th, 22nm east of Morocco, orange crescent moon rising aft, no light emanating from the African coast, it is very dark. Prince James and Sniffy talking low on deck, anxious about arrival and worn down after 3 nights of the graveyard shift, T_________ asleep in his cabin.

"So, do you think T_________ is a drug dealer?" asks Sniffy. "I mean, what if he is? I hardly know him is all."

"Well, I certainly can't imagine anyone doing this for what you are paying him", says PJ, wondering again what the hell he himself is doing out here.

"You remember that movie Midnight Express, that guy tries to smuggle hash out of Turkey by taping it to his chest, but he gets caught and tossed in prison and no one knows he's there," says STS, who, scarred as a youth watching R rated movies, can think of nothing else when entering a foreign port.

"Yeh, his girlfriend finally finds him and comes and takes her shirt off but he can't touch her through the glass" says PJ, voice laden with pity.

"There's a boat up ahead, keep an eye on it" says Sniffy. "It's probably a fishing boat, the way it's trolling around."

Sniffy checks the radar below and comes back on deck.

"Weird, radar's been working but I don't see any boat. Anyway, it's still pretty far away."

Silence on deck, imaginations running hot, boat in the distance tacks back and forth directly ahead, alternating port and starboard lights visible on deck…..

"T_________ told me they patrol these waters for drug runners. I guess that's a good thing." says PJ.

"He sure seems to know a lot about it", says STS.

"Where did you find this guy, anyway?" says PJ.

Sniffy goes below to study the radar again but sees nothing and returns on deck to see that the vessel in the distance is suddenly 500 yards off Marlow's port beam. Its tower lights turn on, revealing itself to be a coast guard vessel.

"Oh shit, here we go, how do you think they will feel about a Korean in Moroccan prison", says PJ. "Exotic fucking fruit".

"I'd happily pay EU customs now", says STS, longing for civilization.

Minutes go by, Marlow holds course, shadowed by the trawler. No contact, heavy sighing on deck, exhaustion turning to terror, the tower light snaps off. More minutes. The vessel drops back, its navigation lights slowly fade into the night.

"3 hours to Morocco."

"I can hardly wait."

Eric and Chance travel 30 hours to meet Marlow in Malaga and then we depart in 90 minutes and sail for 30 hours with 25-30 kts of wind aft of the beam, running along all night and the following day with steep seas building to 7 feet. Mind you, Chance has never stepped foot on a sailboat before, and if he had any notions that he was going for a pleasure cruise in the Med on uncle's boat, they are quickly dispelled. Fortunately Eric is an old hand, and he's pleased to be getting exactly what he signed up for right out of the gate. It is the summer solstice, and the sun sets at 10:30pm over the mountains to our stern, and reappears after a moonless night full of shooting stars dead ahead a mere 8 hours later. We celebrate the solstice with dolphin during the day and night for 200 nm, they behave like a war party, making torpedo contrails in the phosphorescence and performing canonballs from the height of the swell. At 10pm the wind dies as forecast and we anchor in the small fishing harbor of Aguilas, the only pleasure craft in town, and certainly the only people charcoal bbq'ing Argentinean short rib steaks on the grill at midnight with plenty of Rioja to go around. This is more like it thinks Chance.

The wind is whipping again by the following afternoon, this time forward of the beam, and so we heel and crash along into 5 foot seas before we arrive in a tiny nameless town situated in a large sheltered bay where we have dinner in a fine restaurant overlooking Marlow alone at anchor under a rising crescent moon with cascading mountain ranges in the distance holding the last light of sunset. There is a shack of a night club on the beach with a friendly host and the crowd is still building at 2 or 3am or whatever time it was when we finally got out of there and somehow make it back to the boat alive. After a day of mountain hikes, snorkeling, fried fish and siestas we conclude we have discovered the sublime, and then like good Americans we decide it is time to move on. The Spaniard among us, a very fine sailor and good companion (and not a drug dealer, incidentally) can only shake his head and come along.

We fight with the wind so we can make Cartagena 20nm to the northeast. It is at the point where Spain's coast turns from east/west to north/south, a crucial strategic port in the Med since antiquity. It has been conquered and re-conquered all through the ages, by the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Moors, the Crusaders, and it was the last major hold-out of the Republic against Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Its deep cultural layers are evidenced by the fact that it wasn't until very recently they discovered and excavated an incredible roman amphitheatre adjacent to the port which had been continuously built over by new inhabitants for 1500 years.

And we are offshore again, 250nm to Barcelona, running clean hot water, catching fish and eating it for dinner, training new crew and sailing an easy 6 kts under all our sail in flat seas at sunset amid a sense of having reclaimed parts of our own lost civilization.

Miss and love,

STS

After a 3 week run of fair winds, we've hit the doldrums, and when the wind stops so too does the crew; we sit on deck in the heat of the day and smile at each other like wrinkly old men in the sauna. With the boat moving 1 kt under full sail, we take turns jumping off the bow into the water as the ladder midships floats by, which is thrilling because sharks don't eat you and also because if the crew is planning to mutiny, they've chosen to let this moment pass. The only thing that gets us moving is the Argentinean's hunger for more red meat, and so we bbq outdoors in 5 kts of apparent wind, which creates the perfect draft to stoke up a fire. After 48 hrs with only fleeting moments of wind at sunrise and sunset, we no longer relate to the dolphin of the storm but rather the motionless sea turtles who drift by seemingly wondering why the ladder hasn't been extended to them.

After 1,000 nautical miles to Africa and back, we arrive in Barcelona, the height of modern civilization in the Med. Poor James, this is the port we were meant to sail into, not that stinking Tijuana of Morocco with no pedigree for service, but fair skinned Barcelona, the LA of Europe, a great combination of ancient and modern, with natural beauty all around, and a safe clean port for sailboats nestled adjacent to the old town. In all its wanderings over the years, Marlow has never been more at home.

Despite the friendly environs, it doesn't take long to be reminded that ports are more dangerous than the sea, as we've learned in previous tales. With Eric departing the next day, we have a proper fair well dinner, great Mexican food and requisite tequila shots, and then head to a night club, where we finally run out of gas. While we are waiting in line for a taxi cab home, I take pity on a couple of Romanian hookers who are chatting us up, and give them a $50 bill and some advice to change vocations as we hop into a cab. The cab driver excoriates me for giving money to a worthless whore, whereupon I take exception to his criticism of my charitable work, and deliver a tongue lashing that apparently forks some lighting, because he pulls over and demands we exit his cab. Fine, we get out and hop into another one, but he is waiting for us and flags down our new driver and demands we get out of the cab, whereupon he challenges me to a fight. After the sailing adventure and the tequila, I am somewhat de-sensitized to fear, to my detriment, and so jump out of the cab ready to defend hookers everywhere when he picks up a big wooden stick and starts swinging it around. I begin negotiating an arms reduction treaty, while Eric stands tall at my side, and outnumbered the silverback retreats to his cab and speeds off, a moment not entirely unlike my favorite scene in Harry Potter, toward the end of book one, when Ron, Harry and Hermione confront a troll together in the bathroom, forever cementing their friendship. We snicker on the walk home, an appropriate cap to a great week, savage sailors readjusting to life on the grid, Chance getting quite an education, and Eric has get up in 2 hours for the long journey home.

T_________ has departed for Palma, the crew is down to two now, Chance and I see Gaudi by day and European soccer by night. We join a small bar full of fanatical Italians to watch Italy completely outfox Germany to reach the finals against Spain. They make the technically skilled, upright Germans seem so clumsy by comparison, it makes me wonder if there is not some parallel to be learned here with respect to the EU debt crisis….perhaps these sly southern nations knew exactly what they were doing in running up a tab at Germany's expense.

It turns out six college age British birds are partying next door on Daddy's boat for a week, one of them is apparently a "10", and Chance strikes up a conversation and then is invited for drinks and night clubbing, and he's still not back. I sit home alone listening to tunes and awaiting with great excitement the arrival of my darlings, anticipating their reaction to Marlow in the port of our dreams.

That is all my dears, thank you for coming along on another adventure of the sailing ship Marlow, and its burgeoning cast of crew, which you are as ever welcome to join at any time.

Yours Truly,

Sniffy Trufflesniffer, over and out.

PS–

OK Mom, it is morning now and he is home safe.

We arrived in Palma, our final destination, a splash of rain red with particles of African dust falling as we pull on to the dock, a cooling moment after a hot and rather intense expedition. We survived the ever changing dynamics of a boat and crew at sea, 35 days aboard, up the coast from Barcelona to near the French border and offshore for a night sail to the north coast of Menorca and east around the island and then southwest to Mallorca and down and around to the magnificent Bay of Palma, 450 miles in total, 17 stops, 20 nights on docks and 15 on the hook in the wild, 1 night in a hotel, the rarity of which is cause for much criticism from the crew, 8 days of the Tramuntana, the local breeze that blows and blows 30 kts from the northwest, and those on board who mimic it, 1 bottle of Menorcan gin and 3 large fish that got away.

We traded a nephew for an aunt, and then journeyed by our lonesome, the ever rocking sea and foreign turf chipping away at our psyche, bringing forth a form of madness common to seafarers abroad, made up of one part homesickness, two parts seasickness, 30 whole squid chopped and fried, two tons of salt, way more family than the recipe calls for, and then bake in the sun at 100 degrees for a month for 14 hours a day. It is curable I am sure, by the company of dogs in the shade of familiar forests, a steady diet of old friends speaking the American form of English, perhaps some exercise that you get to do when you feel like it, as opposed to when the situation requires it, and doesn't include a knife and diving below your comfort level to cut a line caught in your propeller, and generally an abrupt hiatus of anything related to the ocean, but particularly fish and stories about fish, and ………………crazy Captains who are supposed to be your Dad but then order you about every day in every way and how the hell do you get off this boat because I was so desperate back in that one port that I just got in the dinghy and detached the rope and started to float away and it felt so good to be away from them all at last and the wind was blowing me out to sea but then that French couple came and "rescued" me and towed me back to my parents and that sloppy babbling Jemima whose stuff is EVERYWHERE and that was weeks and weeks ago and I'm still here with them!!!!!

Ok, obviously we are ready to come home and can't wait to see you all for a taste of CT summer.

Love,

The Cult of Paolucci