Stephen Hawking may have written a jolly good “short history of time” but he’s done less well, if we’re honest here, at identifying a practical means of slowing it down. All that whizzing about at close to the speed of light isn’t much use to people who just want to do a bit of sailing.
So time passeth and a bit after her sixteenth birthday, XII Bar Blues finds herself with a crew of pensioners with the thought in what’s left of their minds that they will embark on a journey under sail to the island of Menorca. Accuracy would demand that the author point out that levels of enthusiasm for this venture are not distributed evenly through this sample of bus pass holders.
At first light, well, let’s say at sunrise at 0600 XII Bar Blues left the cosiness of Port Napoleon for the first sail of the 2014 season bound for the Balearics. Mr Noa’s grib files suggest a north-westerly airflow over the Golf du Lion to be replaced with westerly winds further south and, indeed, that is exactly what happened providing beam reaching conditions in F4 to F6.
With a reef in her mainsail and a couple of rolls in her No.2 genoa XII Bar Blues sped south to achieve an average of 7.5 knots for the crossing of a bit over 200 miles. A more sprightly crew might have added a knot to the average by hoisting the asymmetric kite.
The pensioners, seeing that another trip to the post office to collect funds was again in prospect, were sufficiently cheered (or maybe just relieved) to allow themselves a small sherry by way of celebration.