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Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Ilja de Arousa, Galicia, Spain.
42º34´116´´ North, 008º51´506´´ West
For five years the Fools were engaged in making theatre and cabaret in the Basque country and later in Amsterdam. Now, to hop the continents, attention quickly shifts to the ship, the old lady herself who badly needs more attention than the blue diamond facelift she received last year in the ship yard. Sailing over the Atlantic showed a whole range of shortcomings. For most of the crew a strong breeze already is a storm.. And with no more than a strong breeze booms and gaffs broke or bended and the gib dissapeared altogheter. All three safety rafts went hobbling, one of them prematurily into the sea. In three different places the incoming water had to be pumped out. On a certain moment none of the four generators were in running order, risking to turn the ship in nigth time into a kind of flying dutchman. On those moments, at least, Big Brother is not watching us on our Automatic Identification System. Dissapeared from the radar. The motor room, that we try to keep clean and clear, amassed an incredible multitud of sticky oily objects and instruments that started to slide to and fro. My skin got greased in a mix of sea salt, arnica and motor oil. And we kept changing destinations. We changed the Canarian islands to Madeira to make it possible for our star singer Merante to attend a well paid gig. I was tempted to interrupted already the travel in the North of Bretagne, knowing there’s a ship yard run as a social project by volunteers. And just when the favorable Portuguese North winds promised to bring the ship smoothly to Madeira, I thougth it better to cancel further chaos and improvision and to concentrate on some basic technical conditions we better comply. That could take two weeks or two months. One of the jobs is to patch the roof of the fourteen tonn water bunker that flooded the dressing room and turned the drinking water every day more colourful. So this morning, the Fools entered the bay in such a thick mist that there was no distinction between the sea and the sky. We moored on a floating dock of a tiny fisherman’s harbour of a scenic island in the Ría de Arousa, in Galicia. Even the achor manoevre failed. We visited the island already in the last milenium and again five years ago. Being old friends, the environement of the Ría is propitious. Plenty of mussels. We know there’re some gaita players around who could be most helpful to realise a music project in the Cape Verde. On the way hussling the Canarians. Last time the heading of the local newspaper in the Ría described the project as “A Single Ship’s Journey to Lucidity”. Una Singladura hacía la Lucidez. We might make turns but we get further.
