Blue Moon's trip around the UK

These people are French.

I know this because I overheard them in the garden of the New Inn on Tresco, where I had slipped ashore for a swift half. But I didn’t need to hear them, I knew they were French the moment I saw them. They were wearing full offshore oilies, and had all their belongings in Guy Cotten waterproof bags. The sun was shining and out of the breeze it was pleasantly warm. Everyone else in the pub garden was wearing White Stuff. or possibly (this being Tresco) Agnes B.

The French have a different approach to sailing from the English. Most of them seem to be born to it. They care not for yacht clubs and blazers and flag etiquette, they drive to the coast wearing wetsuits and launch boats off beaches without launching trollies. They have no appetite for cosy saloons with upholstered settee berths and varnished mahogany and oil lamps, their boats have minimalist GRP interiors and wipe-down lightweight plastic cushions. I suspect they sleep in their oilies, even when not racing.

To the French, sailing is a philosophy more than a sport. It allows them to commune with nature, to be at one with wind and sea and be truly ‘authentique‘. This is the nation that gave us the Vendee Globe, Eric Tabarly and best of all Bernard Moitessier, a man so French that he became a philosopher-sailor, and when leading the original 1968 solo round-the-world race by thousands of miles discovered that he was enjoying it so much that he kept going, went around again and ended up in Polynesia chanting on a beach, leaving plucky but incredibly slow Brit Robin Knox-Johnston to win with his blazer, upholstered settees and varnished mahogany.

Now back to our neighbours. There are three of them in a tiny inflatable, paddling against a two knot tide and 15 knot breeze to the mooring next to me. Their dinghy has rowlocks, and they have oars. Why are they not rowing? They have a nice little 30 foot yacht, they can afford an outboard, why did they come to the Isles of Scilly (nota bene) without one?

I can only assume that paddling against the tide is a purer way and they are closer to nature without the artifical (and probably English) invention of the rowlock. How wonderfully French.

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You couldn’t make it up, and I promise I haven’t.

I was sitting downstairs writing this post when I heard an almighty racket. I shot up into the cockpit to find our three friends waving their arms and yelling. They had been deflating their dinghy and the inflatable floor had blown away, and was hurtling towards me. It passed well out of boathook reach. “Thank you for trying” they called.

A way downwind there was someone sailing an unbelievably tubby and slow dinghy, beating rather unsuccessfully into the tide. It was worth a shot, and I gave him my best fluent Scillonian yell and waved the boathook at the dinghy floor. He waved back, but surely he would never make it, his boat was so slow. I and my three new copins watched as if in slow motion he crept sidwways towards the flying floor and – completely improbably – caught it before it headed off to the USA. He recommenced his long slow beat into the tide and – because I had a blog to write – I suggested to the French that they could save an hour and make a friend by letting go the mooring and going to get the floor, which they duly did.

They just motored back waving and smiling and thanking me. What with yesterday’s mobile phone I am truly on a roll.

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Miles	13
Hours sailing	0
Hours motoring	2.5