My route

1st up hill

1st up hill
Originally uploaded by darenpackham

This was the first up hill climb and lovely for me to have company on this very first leg. As you can see I was not the first up the hill. But then I had another 700 miles to go! Funny how this first few hours was all smiles and obviously before any saddle sores developed.

Brendan

Brendan
Originally uploaded by darenpackham

Brendan joined me for a pedal up the first hill, out of La Ciotat, a welcome break to fix a puncture

The start

The start
Originally uploaded by darenpackham

All Journeys start somewhere and this one like most startted at the beginning!
This is just off the gangway of the boat, La Ciotat in the south of France on a hot sunny Sunday afternoon.

Tour de France leaves La Ciotat

Yes. Today an interesting whim means that a small adventure will start today, the 19th May. The blue bicycle bought in Savannah has been kitted out with very smart travel bags and I will leave this afternoon on a small journey through France.

Day 1
BS 105
TS 68
AP Scale 0-10 0
distance covered. TBA
Malfunctions. None to report as not started yet.
Town of the Day. Heading for Aix En Provence but will see how far I get.

Love Glove

Love Glove
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

This fluffy thing on my hand is a washing mitt, known affectionately as a Love Glove. Perfect for ball washing.

Intermediate Ball Washing

Mitch preparing
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

Here we see Mitchen-nugget preparing for monthly ball washing. Another man-lift was delivered to the quay and this time we were offered absolutely no rudimentry training at all! Having some small experience with this now, myself and Mitch were once again put forward for the task of washing those giant balls.

This crane was far more luxury than the one we had during our, 'crane driving and ball washing for beginners' experience, back in Sevilla. The French blokes obviously thought that the intermediate class needed no further instruction and left us to get on with it.

However a decision had to be made today, half way through ball washing, to stop! This kind of decision would normally be left to more experienced ball washers but I think we are learning fast.
When two grown men squeel like girls and grimmace, all while laughing nervously as the wind gusts around their airy cage it is time to say, " It must be tea time? Lets get down from here!"and then after tea say, " that wind is getting stronger you know! Lets scrub the deck instead..

launch the lot

launch the lot
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

Everyone was looking forward to having the weekend off last week. I had planned a Friday afternoon for the lads of launching all of the jet-skis and water ski boat to give them all a good pre season thrash. This onerous task had to be left till Saturday. Oh dear.

Naughty boys put leave in jeopardy

I am part of a team of naughty boys. Luckily I manage to stay out of trouble myself but they certainly can get themselves into it, without even trying.

I like them all tremendously though and find myself infront of the captain from time to time having to stick up for them. I haven't written anything this week but I am pleased today because two of my team have narrowly escaped getting fired for lesser or greater misdemeanors. I am happy for two reasons. Reason 1. Having some characters in the team makes for an interesting day. Reason 2. now that we are not losing two guys from the team, my beloved leave period that is fast approaching is now more certain.

The Ride

I don't know if the pictures do it justice. We had such a wonderful morning. There was a lot of up hill and some screaming downhill stretches on beautiful mountain passes, where we whooped like children. At the bottom of one such, down hill blast Mark stood studying his GPS to tell me what great velocity we had achieved. Our thunder was taken from us as we had the sudden realisation, that we had made a wrong turn at the top of the last hill! The nearly 60 km speeds were in the wrong direction. This was cause enough to liberate the map and make a route alteration.

There was no chance of a flat route as we were now on the other side of the mountain to where we had started, so we went instead, for the most beautiful route available. It was a great choice and at every turn we were treated with, sights, smells of wild flowers and stunning views.

As we slowly climbed hairpin bends crawling along and up the beautiful mountain passes, nearly all of the passing cars, slowed gave us space and with open windows called encouragement or waved enthusiastic thumbs up. This all helps your spirit and we made all of the climbs without having to get off an milk it. (walk)

After the last long down hill back into La Ciotat, like all things slightly adventurous and a bit sporting, we found a street cafe, ate muscles and chips and drank cold beers. Nice one.

La Ciotat By Bike

heli opps

heli opps
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

More lucky crew get the rock star treatment.

Landing

Landing
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

Coming in to land

Coming in to land
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

Some of the crew were lucky and got to fly back to the boat in the chopper. Tthis is them making their approach, as we sail down the river. Flight Marshal standing ready on deck and one of the guys dressed ready in fire fighting equipment.

Dressing Up box

Dressing Up box
Originally uploaded by darenpackham.

On the recent passage the boats dressing up box was out again and the guys are seen here, playing at Flight Marshal and on scene Fire Fighter.

World record in La Ciotat..

We sailed from the beautiful city of Sevilla down the long winding river and then onwards down the coast, through the very busy Straights of Gibraltar and tied up in the harbour there. You could tell easily that it is a part of Britain because as we came alongside it was gray and raining. To me, the only reason that anyone would want to visit Gibraltar, is to get hold of some duty free shopping and maybe go up the rock to see a bunch of cheeky monkeys. We were there for duty free fuel which, is important when you take on 300 tons! Our agent sent me the invoice this morning.......$171000!

Of all of the beautiful places to visit on the south coast of France, we have ended up in a nasty ship yard in the small town of La Ciotat. We will be here for a couple of weeks to have some work done, that the yard in Savannah either didn't do, or did, but not well! So we skipping Cannes but heading for Grand Prix racing in Monaco around the 20th May.

Although we are now in the dreariest part of the south of France we are here with all the belles of the ball. Behind us is Mr Abromovich's yacht, the Grand Bleu and my favorite, the J Class sailing boat Ranger is also here looking as sexy as ever, so at least we are not alone in this out of the way place.

Today a new world record has been witnessed right here on board! A pretty well presented representative from our French, Ships agents came to the boat. She smashed the previous record held by the Spanish rowing 8's for stopping work on deck! The minute her long french legs swung from her tatty Peugeot car, all 7 deck crew, through a clever system, of nods, head tossing and eye rolling immediately relocated to a place near to the gangway and found something not to do.