HERCULEAN TASK

DROPPING A 46FT MAST SOLO AHEAD OF A VOYAGE THROUGH THE FRENCH CANALS PRESENTED STEVE PICKARD WITH A MAJOR CHALLENGE

- Steve Pickard

The late Steve Pickard was the very essence of a cruising sailor. Never a high-aspiration man, he did not round Cape Horn or sail the Northwest Passage. Instead, he operated relatively modest craft in Europe and the Mediterranean. Often sailing with his wife, Deirdre, he managed this with a high degree of originality and wrote about it all with a unique style that could only be his.

His published work includes Imray pilot books of South Biscay and Mediterranean Spain, as well as further cruising accounts that are well worth seeking out. Like me, he was a member of the Royal Cruising Club and it was with sadness I learned through the club of his recent transfer to the Port of Kingdom Come. He was born in Manchester as I was and, like me, went sailing against the odds.

In this extract from his book More Ramblings Under Sail, we join him as he is about to enter the southern French canal system in Lone Gull, a classic Maurice Griffiths-designed yacht which he had rescued earlier in the book from cockroaches, human as well as insect, in Tunisia.

I'd had no intention of going ashore, but a little domestic problem forced an excursion. From the vaults of the supermarket I had bought a couple of glass bidons of Merlot. I had been dipping into this over the previous couple of nights and now there was a crisis, either drink the stuff at a much faster rate before the air killed it, or decant it.

The problem was that there were no empty water bottles aboard, or full ones for that matter. Reasoning that the walkers in constant evidence ashore must get through a lot of water and that there weren't bins all over the cliffs, logic led to the conclusion that a cluster of houses in plain view must have a large bin nearby. Arriving at the little square where the bins revealed themselves to be, I found every inhabitant of the little houses out playing boules.