Popeye's Atlantic Liner

Popeye is a sailor. And a good one too. No doubt about that.

Popeye loves to travel but there is nothing closer to his heart than the sea - seas and oceans - any vast expanse of water, preferably salty!

Guess why he fell so much in love with Venice? Easy, isn’t it? A romantic city? Wrong. Well, maybe but more surely because Venice used to rule over the oceans and stands in the middle of a laguna, right by the sea.

I still remember our trip on the Eastern Coast of the United States. Of course, we had to spend one night in Newport (Rhode Island), a Mecca for sailors, or else... The weather was very bad and foggy. Since our hotel was right by the harbor, the foghorn kept us awake all night long. Popeye was so delighted... I was furious.

Cars are almost inevitable in our life because there is travelling to be done even if we tend to travel by train a lot. But Popeye is not obsessed by cars.

Boats are his obsession! For years and years, he’s been going to the Paris Boat Show... and comes out of it with eyes shining and a mind filled with dreams.

Of course, we’ve been the proud owners of boats ever since we got married - almost!

Our first boat was a «Zodiac», an inflatable dinghy. Let’s not laugh at Popeye. He was happy as a lark, bobbing up and down the Mediterranean waves!

Years later when we settled down in Brittany, we bought our first real boat... a boat that looked like a boat with a hull and seats... A boat I hated so much that I used to throw myself overboard and swim to the shore whenever the waves would get too wild to my taste!

We had good times with this boat though. It was a good boat for wakeboarding... (for beginners, I mean...)

We still talk about one of our first engine failure right in the middle of the Rance. We were lucky to encounter some very nice old people on a huge boat from Jersey. They had to tow us to the nearest harbor. Their dinghy was bigger than our boat! I am not kidding. We still laugh about it!

This boat lasted quite a long time and kind of died on us... Popeye was crushed but since it happened right at the beginning of the cancer years,  he made the best of it. I mean, loosing his boat.

As soon as I started to feel a little bit better and therefore less self-centered, I realized his great loss and goaded him into buying a new boat! Don’t take me wrong! There was no spirit of sacrifice there because I chose the boat myself! Well, almost.

The «new» boat was nice and comfy, as comfy as a boat can be for me. It was 10 years old and sturdy. Not too small and not too big. Big enough so that I would not get scared if the sea turned choppy. Very fast for our wakeboarders. And fast enough to make landfall very quickly as needed. And it boasted two brand new engines. (An engine failure far from the coastline is very stressful when your boat only has one engine and then what?)

It was small enough so that we would not be tempted to «camp out» at sea since there was a cabin (small), a toilet, etc.

«Altariel» was a nice boat. It taught me not to be afraid while spending one whole day at sea. It taught me that being on the water can be a lot of fun and that the coastal countryside as seen from the sea can be very beautiful and striking.

We did have lovely times aboard Altariel.

Last summer was cold and rainy. Since Altariel had no top, we stayed home a lot while a sulky Popeye watched the sea from Les Tertres.

This was something to think about. And think we did.

This summer, Popeye will pilot an Atlantic liner... Her name is not “Titanic”. He called her "Galadriel".








 
*Good Luck, and Good Night*