As a child, I loved the romance of the old folk song, The Raggle Taggle Gypsy:
What care I for a goose-feather bed?
With the sheet turned down so bravely, O!
For to-night I shall sleep in a cold open field
Along with the raggle taggle gypsies, O!
50 years on, a simple, carefree life still appeals, but older bones and joints are less impressed with the notion of giving up a comfortable bed!
The standard bed, or bunk, onboard yachts is 2-4″ foam on top of half an inch or so of plywood. After 2 weeks chartering each year, my back is more than ready for a comfortable bed at home, and I’m usally feeling the early twinges of sciatica. 2013 was a particularly bad year and, although I made it up the steps onto the plane, I accepted the crew’s offer of help at Gatwick and was wheelchaired out through the airport. As we’re planning to spend 5 months a year onboard, a good mattress looked essential.
So at the Southampton Boat Show last September, having done our research on replacing the standing rigging, we tried out various mattresses. One stood out as feeling ‘Just like we have at home’ – firm, but not rock hard, good support and on which it’s easy to turn over. The company, Jonic, will make the mattress to any odd shape needed – bunks are usually a very irregular shape. All we needed to do was to draw a template and send it to them. Fine, except that we were in Sussex and the boat was in the Ionian …..
In the end, we went to Greece for 2 weeks in late September, early October, mainly to meet the rigging company to commission the replacement of all the standing rigging over the winter. We took with us the plastic template sheet and carefully drew round the inside of the bunk (the top end is enclosed by lockers, most of the sides and the bottom are enclosed by a 1.5″ wooden lip that stops the foam or mattress moving as the boat heels.)
At the end of March we sent this off to Jonic in Morecombe, asking them to make the mattress in 2 halves so we could get them into the boat, and about 1cm smaller than our template in case we’d got some of the twiddly bits wrong! (In order to draw the top half of the bed, you had to be kneeling on the plastic, so keeping it in the same place was hard!) Through reading the yachting forums, especially the CA (Cruising Association) Med net, we found a company, New Euroline, who quoted £80 to ship it to Lefkas, specifically to Nidri, on a truck arriving around 21 May. At the time, we didn’t quite know exactly where that would be or where we could moor, but it seemed like a good start. Jonic would ship from Morecombe to New Euroline in Daventry on 4 May.
So, I’d booked us onto the IBA pontoon from Sunday 20 til Tuesday 22 May in the hope of meeting up with our new mattress. IBA say they’ll help us get it from the builders’ yard where the truck stops (it’s too big to drive down to the quayside road – the truck, not the mattress!) Takis came and measured up for the cockpit cushions as agreed on Monday and we chose the fabric and agreed foam thickness, type etc. He’s still mega busy, so it will be 2-3 weeks before they’re ready. Another bit of comfort for old bones.
I email Hillary at New Euroline to ask about the truck and discover it’s due on Wednesday. We again seek out Richard, who manages the pontoon, “Richard, about our mattress …” Luckily, there’s room for us on the pontoon so we book in for Tuesday night too.
We meet up with Full Flight again and also Colombine of Chichester, who joined our renaming ceremony. They’re about to change crew. We’ve also got to know the crew of Stella, Dean and Jan, both originally Scottish, but who’ve been living in Australia for 30 years. They bought Stella at the end of last season in Italy and are having a new gantry fitted to take more solar panels – as we’re planning something similar, we took a close interest. We’re often to be found loitering on quays or pontoons, staring at and photographing different gantry arrangements – sometimes we’re so engrossed that we forget that the owners may be sitting in their cockpits while we look right through them! Once we explain, we often end up with more useful information to add to the planning process. Yotties are generally very happy to share knowledge and information, and to talk about their boats. We eat out with Stella on Monday (fabulous fresh Tuna at Ola Kala) and Tuesday (onion bhajis and chicken jalfrezi – really hot! at La Familia) and talk non-stop about anything and everything.
They have friends arriving in Athens on Friday, so they need to leave on Wednesday and get the last bit of work done there. They’re headed to Crete and then back through the Western Med and up to cruise France, the UK and the Baltic. We exchange details, but its not clear when our paths will cross again. We’re still not used to the transitory nature of friendships in this floating gypsy life, with boats moving off to new cruising areas. On the other hand, it’s a small world, so you never know….