Mind the gap
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Tue 8 Nov 2011 00:52
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Bertie's girlfriend, Estella, arrived today.
Estella has spent a few weeks on Anastasia in the past, but now she is joining
us for the trip around the world. Welcome.
Sorry about this being another post without a
photo. We were going to photograph the enormous leap from Anastasia to the
shore but when we got back from dinner the tide was in and, while it is still a
near-impossible gap, it does not look half as intimidating as it did at low
tide.
The problem is that we have been moved into a
"special new place" for catamarans, Vela Latina, which is basically the old
fishing harbour tarted up to look like a marina, with a "brand new shower block"
built in the portaloo style. This new place has only one floating pontoon
and the rest of the catamarans have to moor up against the harbour wall.
We had a feeling that the places on the pontoon might get snapped
up quickly so we sneaked in after lunch and grabbed a space on the
pontoon, but discovered that the mooring lines there were too short to hold
Anastasia securely.
So now we are moored with our stern to the harbour
wall, which means that at low tide we have to leap a six foot gap and grab onto
a steel ladder set into the wall and then climb twelve feet to get to the
harbour side. At high tide we just have to leap the gap, which is still
nearly impossible, although Bertie managed to jump down from the wall onto the
sugar scoop (back steps) after a few drinks.
We can't just move closer to the wall to
make the ladder more accessible because, with the boat going up and down nine
feet with the tide, the lines from the front get much tighter at high tide and
slacker at low tide so we would either bang against the wall at low tide or
break off our cleats at high tide.
We spent the last week looking forward to moving
away from sewage guy, but, faced with spending the next two weeks commuting to
shore in the tender, the smell doesn't seem so bad any more.
We have considered planks, rope bridges etc, but it
is difficult to come up with a simple solution that can handle the 3 metre tidal
range.
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