The Start of Our 2009 Cruising Season

Welcome back to the first addition for 2009 of Lone Star Times. It is so nice to be writing this using all 10, well make that 9 7/8 digits! We restarted our adventure March 31st by doing the “planes, trains and automobile” routine in reverse from what we did in September when we rushed back to Texas. However, at the end of this journey, we walked to a local restaurant in La Rochelle, had a terrific dinner and shared a bottle of French wine instead of collapsing in Craig’s parent’s home; turning on the TV and watching Hurricane Ike render its wrath on the Gulf Coast. Afterwards we strolled back to the hotel and settled down for some much needed sleep. It seems Craig has lost his ability to go to sleep on a plane so neither of us had much sleep on the trip over.
The next morning (April 2nd) we were up early and drove to the marina to see Lone Star again. It was almost like starting over with a new boat. We wondered how much we would remember of what had been taught last summer, but we knew help was close by if we could not figure out some systems. Lone Star looked great and it was very satisfying to bring her back to life. We slowly worked through the process of turning the main batteries back on, going into the engine room to check the status of the sea water intake, condition of the equipment and various other steps one does when boarding a vessel after an absence. As expected everything was in perfect order and soon we had a fully functioning boat. Sectur Blanc, the company we hired to take care of Lone Star over the winter, did an excellent job of looking after her.
Craig will not want this to be well known, but since this is only to a few “close” friends, I will mention that he had Franck Chivé, from Sectur Blanc, come by and together they put the jib and staysail back on the furlers. Craig said Franck was there only to do the manual labor, however without Franck’s help the process would have taken much longer and no telling how long it would have taken Craig to figure out the correct way to do it.
Our plans were to spend two weeks in La Rochelle provisioning, reacquainting ourselves with the boat and waiting for the weather to warm up. As all cruisers know – the first thing you do is throw the schedule out the window! Two weeks stretched to three as we waited for Mother Nature to cooperate. It seems the definition of “spring” to folks over here is more like Texans’ definition of winter! Cold, wet and windy! We had to do some calculating to figure out that 10˚ Celsius is just 50˚ Fahrenheit and that was the high on many days. Fortunately we had plenty to occupy our time including meeting new friends Molly and Rob and Cléo their Golden Lab and official boat greeter, who had taken delivery on their Amel 54, “Cléo”, in March. We even managed to get a picture of the famous Cléo when she joined us for sundowners one evening. Molly and Rob, from Dublin, are friends of Dennis Woods who we met last summer. We spent several evenings sharing dinner and sundowners and stories which helped pass the days in La Rochelle. Molly and Rob plan to sail Cléo to Ireland and Scotland this summer and into the Med next season. Kaj and Lotta, from Sweden, who we met last summer also stopped by. They were in La Rochelle to check the progress on “Amelit”, their 54, which they take possession of in May. We enjoyed dinner together and learned they are taking Amelit back to Sweden this year and plan to start a circumnavigation in 2010. It will be interesting to see how everyone’s plans turn out. One other thing about being back on the Amel pontoon – everyone – from Amel employees to boat owners we had met and owners we hadn’t, knew about Jan’s accident and were very interested in the details and results.
Finally after waiting one extra week we got a decent weather window and after saying our good byes to the Amel folks with promises of not returning – unless we want to, we were off for an overnight sail to San Sebastian, Spain. We were definitely cruising again – very little wind and what little we had was on the nose. A beautiful, uneventful motor sail to San Sebastian. By 11:30 the next morning we were successfully tied up to the visitor’s pontoon in the San Sebastian harbor. No accidents, no blood, no missing body parts, and no boat scratches – we did it! Maybe we can cruise again.
San Sebastian is an absolute jewel of a port town. Located in the heart of Basque Country San Sebastian was once the holiday playground of the Spanish nobility and is now the heart of the Basque cooking revolution as well as the site for a major international film festival in September and a summer playground for the rich and not so rich. We were lucky and got a place on the visitors pontoon in the old fishing harbor and were able to walk everywhere in town. We ate lunch at this little restaurant that was less than 50 feet from our boat. Then we walked past the fishing fleet into the town to do the “tapas crawl” on two of the nights we were in the port. All of Spain is famous for its tapas, little bites, however in San Sebastian it has been elevated to an art form. Early each evening the agenda is the same. Folks hop from one bar to the next in the Old Town sampling the pinxtos (the name for tapas in Basqueland) and washing them down with a red wine, beer or the local drink Txakoli. Txakoli (pronounced Cha ko lee), a sparkling white wine, is poured with great fan fare. The bartender holds the bottle high above the glass as he pours the wine. Based on our in depth nightly research the bars are definitely in competition with one another in producing the best tapas spread. On the one good day of weather we walked the 2 mile promenade around the bay and rode up Mount Igueldo on the oldest funicular is this part of the world. However, it was nice to see the cars were updated!

On Saturday our third and last night in town we were lucky enough to get reservations at Arzak’s. For those of you, like us, who are Food Channel junkies, Arzak’s has been featured in several food channel specials. For those of you who actually have a life, Juan Arzak is a very famous chef in San Sebastian who has turned his family home into a restaurant and is at the forefront of the Basque cuisine revolution. Agreeing that the evening would cover birthdays and an anniversary, we arrived at 9:30 in the evening and did not leave until 12:30. We were astounded by the kinds of flavor we experienced as we partook in Arzak’s tasting menu. It is not an overstatement to say the flavor explodes in your mouth and, as would be expected, the food presentation was kicked up several notches.
Alas, after 3 days of way too much wonderful food we are leaving for Zumaya, 14 miles west. But more on that later.