Passage: Bristol to Portsmouth

Much as we enjoyed Bristol, ten days in the city was long enough. We were anxious for some more sea time, and to head south down the coast and then turn east, ultimately headed to mainland Europe for the big sail festivals. More immediately, just a couple days' sail would get us to Portsmouth.

Up early-ish to time our arrival at the lock which had to happen at high tide. Now that we’re through we’re tied up to the sea wall waiting for the tide to go down so we can fit under the next bridge. Fast, then slow, fast, then slow, hurry up and wait. Despite minor frustration I’m reminded that my “everyday life” is someone else’s “once in a lifetime.” We have four trainee/passengers aboard, who have paid to spend a few days experiencing this life—my everyday life—with us, and explaining everything to them lets me see my world through their new eyes. Farewell Bristol, it’s been fun but we’re on our way to Portsmouth. 2 hours by car and a couple of days by sea aboard El Galeon. Also, as cars drove past us people would occasionally lean out the window to take photos. I was terrified that we were about to cause a crash until I remembered that this was England, they drive on the left, and the person with the camera was the passenger, not the driver, as my US-based perceptions of the proper side of the car to drive on got turned backwards!

We made it under the first bridge with room to spare as the tidal height when we arrived was less than predicted. Now with almost 4 knots of fair current hurrying us out to sea, passing the Welsh coast.

A local drone operator got this image of us passing the far higher and better known Clifton suspension bridge. If you could zoom in to an impossible degree you'd see me and first officer Ricardo on the quarterdeck. This bridge was where we switched helmsmen -- he took the far more difficult winding and narrow inner stretch of river between here and Bristol, and I got the far mellower section from here to the sea. 

A gorgeous night (note the view here sailing toward the crescent moon) filled with stars, Milky Way, and a few shooting stars ...

... deteriorated into a bumpy wet morning with a significant portion of the crew seasick; and after we turned the corner of England at Lands End, now a tranquil afternoon headed towards Portsmouth sometime tomorrow. Also, after several hours at the helm in challenging waves rocking and rolling the ship and a few pointers from the captain, I’m now a better helmsman than I was when I woke up.

Ilfracombe was a lovely stop to rest on our post-Galeon vacation in Devon and Cornwall last summer. This year, we saw it from the ocean side!

Ilfracombe by land, summer 2024.

Bring out your best “Spanish Armada” jokes. We’re waiting for the tide beforere we enter Portsmouth harbour and here comes the Royal Navy to welcome us! (Actually, a lot of the visitors made comments about the Spanish armada, usually with amusing attitudes. I reminded them that this time "you English gave us your money quite willingly" as they all paid for tickets to visit!

Bristol (Photo Dump with Annotations)

College town, diverse and multicultural, deep water port, maritime history, big enough to be lively yet small enough to explore on foot, all added up to make this town one of our favorites. Two different festival weekends back-to-back kept us more than busy. When we docked we were literally next to an outdoor beer garden and I had hopes of popping down there after work a few days. However, the ramp to come aboard proved just too tempting for many of the patrons after a beer or two. So after the first night we resorted to hoisting the ramp up after closing, a lot like raising the drawbridge over the moat, to deter them. We crew could climb down the ladder carved into the side of the hull if we wanted to go out after work, but it required a bit of athleticism to come back especially after drinking, so we mostly didn't. Uninvited visitors climbing the hull unfortunately became a theme later during the tour.

Coming through the lock into Bristol.

Narrowboats. If I hadn’t read Michael Broihier’s novel “Idiot Wind” just recently I wouldn’t have recognized them for what they are. Caught a brief glimpse of them on the train to Penzance when we first landed in England but got a much better view here in Bristol. Now I want to rent one for a holiday. 

I think this first appeared on my timeline for a friend whose pet had died. But, it is so true in so many more contexts. On the ship we make friends intensely and quickly. But we sailors are also terribly mobile an just as quickly they’re gone. The biggest problem with being friends with adventurous people is that they’re always headed off to new adventures and you’re always saying goodbye.

Bristol Harbour Festival. We were just the right amount of busy: enough tickets to have good income but still not too crowded to be able to interact with the visitors. Here, a fire boat display. 

This was a race I couldn’t quite understand but it involved paddling some VERY strange craft.

Yes, that's the group from the previous picture, rowing their slice of toast.

A few more "things being paddled that aren't boats" from the race.

This one, to me, took the award for the weirdest: a hamster wheel of plywood-and-styrofoam boxes, propelled not by oars but by crawling. 

The crowd enjoying the race.

My Dutch friend Moni finally explained it to me: "It's a fun Amsterdam tradition; the Pieremachochel parade. Originally the word pieremachochel is old Amsterdam slang for a rowboat. These days it refers to a selfmade object used to partake in a canal parade,  during Sail. Rules are: selfmade, no motor and no keel. There is an actual competition for categories like most beautiful, funniest, most original and most unfortunate. The first pieremachochel canal parade was 50 years ago, originated by youth workers of Amsterdam noord, the area where most (building and repair) docks were back then. As you can imagine great creative fun for both the builders as well as those coming to watch the parades."

The festival also had races and parades of boats in various categories old and new, demonstrations, concerts, fireworks. Our ship was docked in a location with prime viewing for them all. Several of the concerts were so loud that I could hear them at a comfortable volume below decks in my bunk. The captain complained that the music was far louder in his cabin, up off the quarterdeck astern, facing the concert venue. (But he did so with a wink and didn't complain too loudly, as that would be beyond insensitive in a let-them-eat-cake way; he was quite aware that the rest of us didn't have private cabins at all, much less with windows and a view.)

Jet boots stunt demonstrations

A personal best! I jokingly "collect" photos of all the Jack Sparrow imitators who visit the ship; I have an album of them on my phone. But this is the record; I had four Jacks at the same time.

After standing for standing long days in a row giving tours and explaining the ship, we decided to spend our day off … walking all over Bristol! We found history, food, museums, and stories from Blackbeard to Banksy.

Cool building facade. The city is an extraordinary mix of old and newer, multicultural, delightful.

There are four of these odd bronze posts in front of the corn exchange building. I was telling some visitors the origin of popular phrases like “learning the ropes” and “pulling your weight,” both of which come from the ship. In return they told me that the phrase “cash on the nail” (meaning to pay instantly and in full) came from deals that were conducted when this was the section of town where the banks were. Auctioneers’ gavels would also strike on these tables.

A more complete view of the corn exchange building

Text on the top of one of the bronze posts. Check out the date — 1594!

Getting quite English: Dan got a new wool hat at the indoor market; then we had a lunch of cheese toasties (grilled cheese sandwiches but made with nice quality English cheddar) and rested our feet in a small cafe with a fun view.

Elaborate facade of a building. Dan believes the cherubs in the middle are pressing grapes.

The pub of Blackbeard/Treasure Island fame, built in 1664. The odd name: Llandoger is a town in Wales; Trow is a kind of small barge that carried cargo back and forth across the Bristol Channel here. Many visitors recommended this to us. Cool that it is from about the same period in history that our ship represents! (Fortunate that I heard the name multiple times, because I didn't get it on the first hearing. Or the second. Or the third.) 

This funny guy reminded me of the Annapolis chickens. Actually he and his mates scattered throughout the city were connected to a charitable campaign for donations to children's cancer research.

Dan was delighted to find this weather vane in the shape of an old boat.

It's a university town; here's one of the buildings.

Closeup of the front of the building. The dedication identifies it as the gift of Sir William Henry Wills to his fellow citizens. This is far from the only example I have of “old money” fulfilling the obligation to give back to the community. (And anyone who knew my mother Lillian heard this comment in her voice; it was something she also believed and embodied.)

We didn’t realize how steep the hill was until we started back down. Note the stairstepped rooflines leading down to the river.

The cathedral has a section devoted to mariners. Not open today; we hope to go back later in the week.

"Pretty, isn't it?"

The old pub interior

Drone view of our ship in the early morning.

Another, more regional, aerial view. The Matthew is docked to the lower right, tied to a green barge; we're in the upper center, just as the canal splits into a "Y" next to a cubical beige building. 

  

Here's another pic of the ship in the morning light, this time from ground level from across the river.

The aptly-named narrow boats.  (They’re really narrow -- look like about 2 meters/6-1/2 feet, and very individual personalities, no two alike.)

The harbour pilot who guided us in recommended this pub. At 4:30 it was empty; an hour later it was jammed!

Good food too!

One of our shipmates goofing around in the dorm. It amazes me that as we each bring a single checked suitcase plus backpack, that we have room for fun stuff (and to see what others prioritize!) (But then again, we brought a streamlined version of our pirate garb, so, all's fair.) Behind him you can see the curtains providing privacy for four of the sixteen bunks in our dorm; Dan's and mine are just outside the photo to the lower right.

Protest art from today's museum visit. Strange bedfellows? Selling your principles for power? I don't think this piece was done with today's GOP in mind but it certainly seems to me to fit.

When a legacy is … complicated. This is a statue of Edward Colston. He was a wealthy sea merchant, philanthropist and member of Parliament in the late 1600s to early 1700s. Streets and buildings were named after him and his statue was in the town centre. But the money ha donated was tainted, very tainted, as he made most of it from the slave trade. During the George Floyd protests in 2020 his statue was pulled down by protesters and dumped in the harbour. It now resides in the local museum as part of an exhibit about political activism. Both here in Bristol and our previous port in Whitehaven cities are grappling with the history of the triangle trade. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Colston

Some cities offer pub crawls. With several pubs that date back to the 1600s (the era of our ship! in actual buildings that existed then!) and our visit sandwiched between the Harbour Festival and the Cider Festival and us docked steps away (literally!!) from an outdoor beer garden, I was sure we’d be drinking our way across Bristol. But there’s an actual BOOKSTORE CRAWL a walking route to visit 20 independent bookstores in town. Okay, my famed “bars to bookstores ratio” I use to evaluate a town has officially been proven, and I have found my place.

This bridge was designed by the aptly-named engineer William Bridges. It spans the Avon River in Bristol. The name “Avon” derived from the Celtic word “afon” which means “River.” The name Bristol, as a place name, originates from Old English. It literally means "meeting place by the bridge" or "place at the bridge." This is derived from the Old English words "brycg" (bridge) and "stow" (place or meeting place). Over time, the name evolved from earlier forms like "Brycgstow" and "Bristou" So the Bridges Bridge spans the River River in the bridge place. Ain’t English wonderful?

One of the only cloudless mornings we’ve had here, and we were treated to the sight of a gathering of hot-air balloons. They sound like I imagine a mastodon in heat might sound. I later learned that there was a balloon festival in the town of Bath, quite nearby by car. But in my mind the town was part of our post tour of duty vacation last year, and quite out of range from this year's trip.

Passage: Whitehaven to Bristol

 

By land, this trip would have taken just under 5 hours, which of course for us was an overnight. It's also the only passage of this tour where we had (minor) problems due to ship handling. On our initial departure, we ultimately couldn't get out of the basin in Whitehaven due to cross winds and currents and the slow speed we had to maintain to navigate the docks -- we were really too big for that harbour! For a while it looked like we were going to be pushed sideways into a row of docked pleasure craft, and a local fishing boat that happened to be available, plus Diego in our trusty dinghy, saved the day with no damage except to our dignity. We ended up dockside again after an aborted attempt, analyzing what went wrong and how to approach it differently the next time, which would be at the next high tide. 

Next high tide, we got off without a hitch, and headed out to sea. 

This photo from a local photographer shows why we had such a dicey time leaving the basin -- that is one tight fit in the lock! Captain Miguel joked that he wanted to send this picture to the home office in Spain so they'd understand how tough it was, and ask for a raise. 

Once through the tight squeeze of the lock, Captain Miguel could relax a bit. We had an escort until we left the outer harbor.

Must be careful not to take this extraordinary opportunity for granted! (Just another day at the helm of a 50-meter, 500-ton, historic replica galleon.)

Had a variety of weather conditions at sea, from sun to grey; we've learned to expect this in England.

One thing I've never taken for granted is sunrise/sunset at sea. Always different, always wonderful.

Next time I looked, it was grey.

We came up a long river to get into Bristol, with a rather jovial harbor pilot who was full of stories. We fired our cannons as we passed a small river town where, he told us, many of his colleagues lived, to everyone's delight. We also had two bridges to pass under. One was quite tall and no issue, the other gave us a very narrow window of opportunity. We were too tall to pass at high tide, and the river wasn't deep enough for us to pass at low tide. The bridge, at our perfect timing, gave us 33 meters of clearance and our main mast was 31.5 meters tall. We had to send someone to the very top of the mast to lower the flag and pole before we tiptoed under. Thankful to have the pilot and his communication with the bridgetender for that one! The locals are quite proud of their bridges and absolutely loved that story; I told it multiple times to visitors each day I was working and it never failed to bring a smile. 

Finally we made it through a much roomier lock than the snug one we had leaving Whitehaven. As we came upriver into town, we passed a replica of the "Matthew," the ship John Cabot used to discover Newfoundland, motorsailing downriver.  It represents an era in history about 150 years before ours. We acknowledged each other, one tall ship replica to another. They rang their bell, we fired our cannon. We'd enjoy visits to each other's ships during the time we were in port. We docked, finally, just in time for a weekend maritime festival, a great way to kick off our week in what would ultimately become one of my top 3 favorite cities in England (the other two were Ramsgate and Falmouth).