An Epic Tale - Andrew Palfrey's journey to the UK from Spain

by Andrew 'Dog' Palfrey on 21 Apr 2010 Professional sailor and coach and raconteur Australia's Andrew 'Dog' Palfrey tells a great story- grab a coffee and enjoy this...

Currently moving across the European continent, dealing with the volcanic ash interruptions to air travel. Have been reflecting on how I got into this 'sitchie'. One thing I have is time. So I started jotting down some thoughts.

2010 so far has been very hectic. In February I spent almost three weeks in Dubai with Team Artemis in the RC44 class. Then straight to Auckland for the first three weeks of March, again with Team Artemis, but this time in America's Cup class boats at the Louis Vuitton regatta. Then home for a week, spent preparing to rent out our house for 12 months, and for us to move to the UK.

Spend six days in Palma for Palma Vela regatta with Team Artemis TP52 squad. Light air regatta, team wins, all positive. Whilst in the early stages of the Palma event, Kate makes vague reference of hearing on BBC radio about some volcanic eruption in Iceland and flights to Scotland being cancelled - weird hey? Won't affect us...Will it?

Sunday 18th April:
Obviously the volcanic ash thing grows into a massive disruption to flights. Becomes main topic of conversation at the regatta in terms of how everyone is going to get home, or to their next event. Boat designer Tobias Kohl from Judel Vrolik office in Bremen, Germany, is stuck in Palma for the last two days of the event, as German airspace is closed.

Our skipper, Paul Cayard bails a day early, as he can see the writing on the wall and has some meetings and stuff to do in the US in the days following the event. Below is a tweet from him regarding the first part of his journey.

I also bail on the last day of the regatta after seeing the team off the dock. Very keen to get to the UK, as I have only six days there before I start a trip that takes in seven regattas over eight weeks without a day's break at all.

Every day with family is really precious, so I make a lot of effort to get on a flight. Unfortunately the Palma airport is now shut... My plan was to fly to Madrid and then wing-it somehow on trains and ferries to the UK (where airports have now been closed for five days). But the volcanic ash model now has Spain airspace being affected, so both Palma and Madrid airports are shut. I wait for a couple of hours, but nothing new and nobody knows anything. I leave the airport and head back to the hotel to dump bags and start looking at other options.

I go to ferry terminal in Palma. The queue is 200 metres (and approx 8hrs) long. This is for tickets the following day… Not an option for an impatient prick like me. Go back to dock and work on three or four options; hitching a ride with yachts being delivered back to Valencia on Spanish mainland. These all dry up, as people start to realise how bad things are and all start scrambling for rides. Boats get filled with their own people. The Jigs on the boats have never had so much help!

Sarah tells me of ferry option on North side of island going to Barcelona the next morning. I hesitate, as there are rumours that Palma airport will re-open. I call Iberia airlines. They tell me my flight is now officially cancelled, even though airport will open. Another flight re-scheduled for 1130 the next morning - but good luck getting on it - the last 40 flights to mainland Spain have been cancelled, so there is a bit of a back-log of people... They give me number to re-book. I call it and wait on hold for 15 minutes. I give up on flying.

I call my wife Kate (who is in the middle of hosting a family lunch back on the Isle of Wight). Ask her to find the ferry option Sarah was talking about. She does and books me on it - 130 Euro. Need to be there at 0700 the next morning. Organise taxi with help from people at hotel - 0600 pick up.

Enjoy a few beers with guys that night - somewhat liberating not to be worrying about when airports might open and when I might be able to re-book tickets. Lots of laughs. Series of our guys coming back from airport after un-successfully trying to get on their flights. Three guys flying to Valencia get out (Clarkie, Fongo and Chad). Anyway, the rest of us enjoy a good night at the San Lorenzo Hotel. Feels like our little bunker.

Up at 0500 on Monday morning, the 19th April
Get ready for epic journey (another one). Read on internet that British air space shut until at least 1900 that night. I am sure I am doing right thing making my own plans, as the back-log is likely to be long once the planes are flying again.

Hour long taxi ride as the sun comes up over Mallorca. 80 Euros. Check in for ferry and wait as the morning brightens. Ferry leaves on time at 0830. I have heaps of bags. Have to wrestle them up stairs etc and get a window seat with power outlet for the laptop.

For a brief time the world is at peace as I feel like I am making good progress. Ferry is a nice five hour journey, but chock-a-block with Pommes and Germans. Kate informs me she has booked train out of Barcelona, but it does not depart until the following night, meaning spending 30 or so hours in Barcelona. Normally would be nice, but keen to get to family, so we talk about me trying to get to France border somehow and getting a fast TGV train to the Chanel coast (to try to get on a ferry to the UK).

1500hrs Monday 19th:
Arrive in Barcelona. High-tail it off the ferry with my four bags in tow. Knock over about 15 little Spanish folk in process. You get that on the big jobs...

Another hurdle - Get a lift with friendly cab driver to the train station. Aiming for train to somewhere over the Spanish/French border. Perpignan would be nice I think. I am informed that all of the south-east French train system is on strike. Nice one guys! Just to make things a little tougher for European travellers... I would normally swear, but it seems I am getting calmly resigned to the fact that this adventure is far from over and there will be bigger humps in the road ahead. Maybe also getting mellower in my advancing years. Maybe I'm just plain f.......ng over it...

Switch plan: Our trusty yacht designer, Tobias Kohl hitched a ride with the German mini-maxi yacht Container from Palma to Valencia. It took them approx 20hrs - it's about 160 miles by water. They had a good night weather-wise, but the engine shat itself about 20 miles from Valencia. They had to get towed into dock. As it is full of German crew, they made a contingency plan a couple of days ago to get a bus from Germany to come down and pick them up from Valencia.

Spoke to Tobias. They have just got on bus and are heading north towards France and Germany. Barcelona is en-route for them. So, I decide to forget about tomorrow's night's train booking (is it any use if the French remain on strike - how would you know?). Drag my friendly taxi driver into the train station, so we can use the English-speaking train official to interpret for us. I convince him to take me up to the main highway between Valencia and the French border and drop me at a service station.

Let Tobias know where I am and sit it out for three hours, waiting for them to get northwards on the E15 auto-pista. In meantime, I set up my own little office suite in the road-house restaurant and get some video editing work done from the event footage I have. Ingest a few more coffees. Charge both phones. Charge up the laptop. Basically re-charge everything (inclusive of myself) for the journey ahead.

Options from here include going all the way to Hamburg with the Germans (approx 2000km - about 24 hours) and trying for a ferry from there to the UK. Sort of depends when the French train dudes go back to work and whether I can get on a train when they do... Kate is on-line for me back in Cowes trying to figure that part out.

At the road-house, there is coach-load after coach-load of northern European and British people all getting rides back toward their homes. These coaches are put on by the airlines to help get people back home. I ask a couple of the English bus drivers for a ride. No dice...

1930hrs:
The Germans arrive... Unbelievable set-up. A full-size coach with three drivers that are rotating, so the bus continues non-stop. Only twelve or so sailors on board, so everyone has a full row to themselves. The aisle sets can move outwards toward the middle, so that you can lie flat if you wish. The boys look a little fatigued from last nights delivery trip on the yacht, but as I board, the red wine is opened, the cheese and salami is aid out and we all have a little drink and talk about how each others journey's have gone so far. What a great sport we are in!

Meanwhile Kate is slaving away in front of the computer, whilst trying to bathe and feed the feral kids in Cowes. She has now booked me on the TGV train from Lyon to Caen (on the English Channel coastline - south west of Calais). I leave Lyon at 0600 tomorrow morning. Change trains at Paris and arrive to Caen at about 1400. Once she gets the kids to bed, she is moving onto Ferry bookings... That might be entering a new world of pain... But if anyone can do it, Kate can.

0245hrs - Tues 20th Apr:
Woken from a deep slumber on the bus by brusque German accented men. 'Where the fuck am I?' is first thought that comes to mind. The bus driver has pulled up on the verge of the six-lane freeway and this is my 'stop'. A few handshakes and I am out into the cold morning on the outskirts of Lyon.

I pull my bags along the stopping lane of the motorway and off an exit ramp for 1km or so. At least this warms me up. Probably five or six degrees, but a still night. A couple of very random dudes walk past me. Little scary. Similar level of feral factor as the central coast of New South Wales at midnight, but then again, they speak better English here than on the coast. This is something I will remember for some time...

I have no clue at all where I am heading, but I hit a suburban road with a bus stop. It has a map. I get my bearings. It is about four kilometres to the train station, and I have three hours to kill. No prob. 'Harden up Australia' and start walking. About a kilometre into the journey, a cab turns up out of nowhere. There is absolutely nobody around and this is the first car I have seen in close to an hour. I think the cabbie is more surprised than me. Get to train station. 20 euro for a five minute ride. Not complaining. The bags were getting heavy.

At the station plaza, there are three people in same circumstances as me with all sorts of baggage, having come from Egypt and the South of France. They are French and two of them are elderly women. The other is a bloke in his 50's who is a mathematics professor from Lille. All trying to get home from holidays. We have to wait 90 minutes for the station to open. We are talking, when a drunken beggar is quite aggressive toward us demanding money. Then two young guys of Algerian extraction turn up, looking pretty desperate. If things get ugly, I figure the old ladies and the maths teacher will not be much help to me. This is not going well…

We move as a group away from them and toward some shops that are all closed. I am thinking this could develop into anything from just plain theft to something more. A security guy pops out of a Subway sandwich shop and the desperado's scatter, yelling abuse. A white knight! The security guy is friendly. His mate owns the Subway sandwich shop and the roller door is buggered, so his job is to watch over the shop all night. We are very lucky he is around... Did not see the police the whole time we were there.

The security guy is only about five feet tall, but stocky and a little menacing looking. He tells me that he studied a particular form of martial art and he is a black-belt. I ask him if it was derived from China. He says he can't remember that part of the study - but he remembers the bit about how to kill people... re-assuring at this point of the journey. We look at pictures of each others kids on our phones. I show him pictures of boats. He shows me pictures of souped-up rice-burning hatch-backs. We part when the station opens. We might keep in touch on facebook he tells me… I get my tickets like clockwork (thanks Kate). I get onboard the TGV. I sleep all the way to Paris.

0830 - Gare Pairs de Lyon train station:
Peak hour. This place is chockers with either stressed looking travellers or busy French people on their way to work. I need to get an underground metro train for a few stops, as my train to Caen departs from St Lazare. It's a very hectic 30 minutes up and down escalators and thru ticket turnstiles with my baggage. Finally I get to where the Cherbourg train leaves from. Lots of people with big bags and pommy accents.

Get on train. Quite crowded, but OK. Two hour journey. My ferry booking is confirmed as 2300 tonight, but there is a ferry leaving at 1600. It showed full on the internet when Kate was booking. I hope to get on it. Do not fancy waiting 11 hours... Pretty weary.

Midday - Caen Railway Station:
Most of the train's 1000 or so passengers seem to disembark here. Bit of a scramble but, after seeing there were no cabs, I manage to get on first bus to ferry port, which is about a half hour journey. Only knock over some elderly people in the process. No problems (kidding).

Ferry port is chaos. Chockers with people and vehicles of all shapes. I get to booking desk at approx 1300. Earlier ferry leaves at 1515, but bloke tells me no chance, as it is oversold. I have to wait until 2300. There is free fast internet in the port building (must be the last place in the world that has this), so I sit and try to catch up with the world and upload some TP52 video for the team... I return to my bloke at the desk every half hour or so, just to see if there is any likelihood. He says no every time, but we are getting on well... doing some heavy-duty grovelling there.

With 30 minutes to go, most people have boarded. I go back to desk and he says there are two coaches running late, but after they have checked in will be the final, final answer.
The coaches arrive with 20 minutes to spare. Bedlam for 10 minutes. Passports flying all over the place. Officials and the Gendarmerie yelling. Kids screaming. Sort of like my house at dinner time. Anyway, the dust clears and my man gives me a wink. Within five seconds my passport is in front of him. I have my boarding pass. All good. I am on ferry to England! As Churchill said - never, ever give in... Never in my life thought I would be so happy to be heading to the UK.

Due to land Portsmouth at 2130, which is a heap better than departing at 2300 and arriving at 60600 without even an assigned seat... I type this with a view of the English Channel and a cold beer by my side. Will need to transfer over to another ferry to the Isle of Wight, but that ought to be easy after what I have been through to get here... In saying all of that, I guess it is like what travelling used to be, like before everything was so programmed with airlines and having the world of internet in your pocket on a mobile phone. Great experience, but I wouldn’t want to go through it again anytime soon.

Just read that the eruption has cranked up again... we could be living through this for a while yet...