Summer 2023, Leg 1, Soubise to Ile d'Yeu

thank you hey welcome aboard petronella are a classic French yacht a sister ship of Bernard watisier is Joshua number 29 in the series uh built by meta in the 60s and the 70s I think there were about 70 of them actually built all right just a little introduction for anyone who hasn't been following our blogs which is probably most people uh who are we my name is John and my wife's name is Helena and we bought about about six years ago this Joshua in Martinique and then sailed it back to the States fixed it up a lot needed a lot of work uh we would restored it to its original colors and uh did a whole bunch of work um and then after that we essentially snowboarded it from between the Bahamas and Maine for a couple of years two three years and then we thought oh let's let's sail to Europe petronella has across the Atlantic uh We Believe 11 times before we bought it three other owners so basically it's an obligation for every owner of petronella to cross the Atlantic so we thought we could do that we were ready uh just before covid uh but then of course covet stopped our plans and we had to hang out in the states for another couple years but finally uh last summer we were ready covid was abating and we decided that was the time to do it so we crossed from Annapolis to the Azores that took us 29 days and then stayed in the Azores for about a month and then uh went to uh from the Azores to breast in France in northern France and uh cruised cruised down the coast of Brittany to La Rochelle where the original Joshua is housed in a museum and uh spent the winter on the shahren which is a River just south of La Rochelle uh and uh that's where we were for the winter uh on on the hard we actually live in Montpellier in the south of France so what's our plan our plan this season is to sail up the coast of France to Brest maybe around to Normandy we haven't really decided that yet and then hop over the English Channel go down the southern coast of England for a while hop over to Ireland and then head up the west coast of Ireland that'll be like in July and then hop over to Scotland for the month of August and then then we'll haul out again in Scotland in the beginning of September for the winter [Laughter] so let's start with a tour of petronella she's a classic French yacht a very traditional long keel basically a Colin Archer type boat built in steel in the 60s and 70s she became very famous because of the Golden Globe race which was the first round the world non-stop race the one by robynox Johnson but almost won by Bernard Morticia on his Joshua the original Joshua and he famously decided to bail out of the race after almost completing the circumnavigation on his way up to uh back to England for the Finish Line where he probably would have won but he decided to turn around and head back to the specific so and then on Deck she's a flush deck has a big bow sprit and she's rigged as a catch with the with the main Mass stepped on Deck and uh like many traditional boats kind of low freeboard so these are all features that I I really wanted uh when we were looking at boats mainly because we cruised on other people's boats for a couple years and uh I tried you know we sailed with a bunch of different type of boats and we pretty much figured out the kind of boat we wanted which is exactly if I described to you low free board long Keel bulwark so that makes it nice and safe and things don't go overboard too easy flush Deck with lots of room to move around on and very importantly having the the mass step right on the deck so even when the boat is moving around a lot in high seas you're fairly close to the water and it's relatively easy to work on Deck because she's very steady stands up to a lot of wind and uh just as a very easy motion which might not be important to young people but we're in our 60s and uh it just makes a big difference for us because we're the weak links really on this boat we get tired I certainly I get tired a lot quicker than I did when I was young and it's harder to recover so for older people older Cruisers I think it's very important to have a boat that's stable and doesn't wear you out just from the motion so I love all these features and we've put a lot of work into her to restore her for example uh the deck you'll notice has not one Speck of rust on it and that's because we paint a lot if you don't like painting don't buy a steel boat so we try to keep up with it over the summer and I'm sure we'll have some videos about that when when the first time I see a little speck of rust will be on top of it so that's the bow let's take a look at the stern so uh the Joshua is a center cockpit boat uh not really in the center it's about two-thirds of the way back the hard Dodger that you see is not original to the boat uh I think the second owner added that I didn't like it at first because it breaks up the the lines of the Joshua but wow it makes a huge difference when you're out at Sea so we swiftly got to appreciate it and like it and we did a lot of work on that we replaced all the windows so you can see through them and painted it and looks a lot better than it originally did the cockpit quite small because this boat wasn't designed by a cruiser it was designed by a around the world Sailor and he knew he was going to be in nasty weather and he wanted a small cockpit so he got a small carpet she is a double ender pretty much all colon archers is out of the way and surprisingly she has a tiller we never steer here of course very uncomfortable there's instead of steering uh you know trying to sit back here and steer like you would with a normal Terra there is a series of cables on Deck cables go around the side deck into the cockpit where you can steer with that old-fashioned looking wheel all right so there's the beach at the Elder Ray which I'm sure it's where we are right now right across from La Rochelle which is a very interesting to look at and it's Sunday morning yesterday they were probably 15 boats anchored here now there's just a few of us so it's about seven o'clock P.M uh the 11th of June and we are off found a last minute problem that had to be fixed the wash down pump I wasn't pumping just because it's a stuck washer really it's a really simple problem but it took us a little bit of time to find but we fixed it and got the anchor up and I was I was a little worried that we had rigged something wrong like one line on the Mainsail wrong or something like that beefing line or something but actually they were all correct so everything went up pretty well and uh I'm just looking to make sure we don't run into somebody and we're off so we're going to be pretty much going with my plan uh we're gonna be tacking up this eel de array the next no exactly when the whole night and uh hopefully by tomorrow morning we'll be approaching uh you'll innate there you know good thank you Oh you mean watch you're not gonna have to keep switching sides Maybe some things you know is it gonna work out so after a long night and the winds that got up to about 15 knots in the middle of the night not too bad but a little uncomfortable fine and then here it is we were able to sell not directly upwind but towards the island anyway uh and then uh as often happens that's about it so it's a beautiful day all right so we made it uh we never did get the wind back uh maybe towards the end of the very last hour we might have been able to sail but we decided uh we only have an hour out the wind was still coming directly from where we wanted to go so we just voted that last hour right here fairly about one o'clock so yeah there's the beach we're in a place called uh ants uh I think which I think it just means Anchorage of the old people I'm not sure what that means to be honest uh something about old uh maybe the old Anchorage or something I really don't know I have to look that up uh there's a few fishing boats probably a local catamaran because he's inside these yellow buoys which we think I mean don't go any closer there's this line of big yellow buoys it looks like there's a channel a marked Channel with yellow buoys thought originally it was like to mark off the beach but no I think it's a channel that you can go into to get to the beach with a dinghy so we might try to do that this afternoon there's a couple people the first steps are sure he'll do yeah very appropriate for us good that's perfect for kids though Lagoon foreign this is a memoir uh to the 198 8 Sailors from Senegal three passengers is six uh crew members which were victims of enough Raj to sequana they were torpedoed by a German submarine in 1917 the week of June uh 1917. um that they're they're deaf will uh surprise even though it was a long time ago it's not gonna be forgotten foreign walking along this Cliffside path really beautiful stopped to actually see anything that's very patient I think it's a snake it's very beautiful yeah pretty much the end of our little walk now what do we have here a little baffle for bicycles yeah voila the snack truck ice cream yes [Laughter]