Susan Mills – A Tribute

Susan Mills
10th December 1956 – 9th April 2013

 

We only knew Susan for too short a time; we met her and Andy in Italy, and then again on Corfu, spent the following summer cruising together in Greece and planned to spend the winter together in Messolonghi. Then Susan was diagnosed as having a brain tumour and we never got to welcome her back on board “Rampage” again. But in that time she touched our lives as few people outside of our family ever have.

Since her death a couple of weeks ago, both J and I have tried to think why it was that this random stranger, her illness and death have had such a profound impact on us. It is very difficult to pin down, if not impossible, but I feel it’s worth making the effort to do so and to share it with our readers.

Susan and Andy – you really can’t think of one without the other – were very much like us in many ways. After Andy’s working life in the police, they were living their dream by doing as we were doing and sailing off to who knew where. We both found their company relaxing and enjoyable and spent a lot of time together as we bimbled round the Greek coast.

Susan’s cheerful attitude to life was infectious, even to the extent of getting up with us at a seriously early hour to go walking round the island of Kastos before it got too hot. There was something in her approach to things that just made life in her company feel better than if she wasn’t there. It didn’t matter if it was coping with a gusty day’s sailing, or the drunk masquerading as the harbour master in Galaxidi or wandering round the ruins of Olympia. Susan would be there, grinning at Andy as he said something or did something that she found amusing.

Search as I might, I cannot find a single thing to put my finger on and say; that’s what Susan meant to us. I think it was the sum of things about her that made it work; the way she could bring Andy and I down from some flight of fancy with a simple ‘Don’t be daft’, all without making us feel the right prats we probably were. The way in which a simple glance between her and Andy made sure that they were both singing of the same sheet of music. There was her enormous generosity and her devotion to her daughters and grandchildren. She and J gelled immediately, both loving the life we’ve chosen but missing their families at the same time. I could go on for a long time but I won’t; I think you get the idea now.

We were in Messolonghi when we heard the news about her tumour. She and Andy had gone home to the UK for Christmas in Carlisle with their girls. Their boat, “Curly Sue” was berthed next to ours and we were expecting them to join us for a meal their first night back. Andy’s email announcing that they were not going to return hit us both like a body blow. We couldn’t take it in. It was only a few weeks since they had arrived in Messolonghi on a very blusterous day, both wearing life jackets and a bit damp round the edges but cheerful and happy to be safe and sound in their winter quarters. None of us had any suspicion that there was anything wrong – but from what we understand, that is the way with brain tumours. Too often there are no symptoms until too late.

There are many stories about Susan which show the grit and determination of her personality. One which will remain with us was the way she insisted on going down to the street in her wheelchair so she could soak up all the atmosphere of the Olympic Torch Relay, rather than taking the easy option of watching it all from the balcony of their flat.

There is a Susan-shaped hole in our lives now; we will miss her and remember her.

Delayed Departure

We haven’t put up a blog about what we’ve been doing since we were relaunched about 3 weeks ago. In part this has been because we’ve been busy, in part – well you’ll see as you read the blog.

 

Terri enjoying life before the pirates appeared!

When we published the last blog we were intending to set sail for the Balearics as soon as we had our guests, Iain and Terri, on board. And we did set sail, the morning after they arrived. The weather forecast was good – moderate winds from the south all the way across to Mallorca. We set off at midday to arrive as the dawn would be breaking in Soller. The run out of Sant Carles was without incident and we picked up a nice wind as we cleared the main breakwater. However, as we sailed along the coast of the delta, we saw a couple of small speedboats approaching from the landward side. There were bursts of machine gun fire and, despite replying with a water squirt left over from the grandchildren, we were forced to heave to, to be boarded. At this point, the dolphins intervened and overturned the pirates boats, leaving them struggling in the water. We quickly sorted out the sails and turned back to Sant Carles, where we treated ourselves to stiff tots of rum to celebrate the escape. Anyway, that’s what Terri believes happened; she had taken some anti sea sickness pills before we set out, as she knew that she was susceptible to mal de mare. In most people, the pills work well with no real effect on them except for a somewhat dry mouth and, of course, no nausea. Terri claims that they made her feel very sleepy but at the same time she was afraid to go to sleep as she was sure she wouldn’t wake up. She later claimed in a FB post that the above was her recollection of the trip. Hmm, I never realised that Stugeron was an active hallucinogen.

Iain aboard Rampage as we were leaving the lagoon and all was calm and tranquility!

What in fact happened was that, for once, the forecast was wrong and we ran into gale force winds and steep seas, which we were crossing at an angle, lending a nasty motion to the boat. Faced with another 18 hours or so of this we decided to head back to Sant Carles. A wise decision as the weather continued to worsen over the next 24 hours.

The following morning as we started to think about what to do next, our day was shattered by an email from Andy Mills telling us that his wife Susan had died from her brain tumour the night before. This put a stop to any thoughts of trying to continue to the islands with Terri and Iain, as we both wanted to return to UK to be able to attend her funeral and it is much easier to leave the boat in here in the marina than trying to sort out a safe mooring for her on Mallorca.

The hilltop castle at Morella

So instead of trying to resume the crossing, we took Terri and Iain to the ancient walled town of Morella. The town is at the entrance to a river valley which forms the route down to the coast from the interior. Morella sits at the top of this route and controls the countryside around it. The walls have been there for ever but the castle was last occupied and fought over in the 19th century. We had lunch is a small café before going back to Sant Carles via the back roads through some lovely countryside full of spring flowers.

 

Terri and Iain up on the ramparts at Morella

The following day we put Terri and Iain on the train to Barcelona where they flew to Mallorca to continue their holiday. We put “Rampage” to bed and on the Saturday we were given a lift to Reus airport by Roger and Lizzie of “Harvest” for our flight back to Liverpool. Between the news of Susan’s death and the weekend, I had been told the my Mum needed to be moved to a new care home, as the staff have found that she was becoming difficult to manage with my Dad in the same home, so I was signed up to be the removal man.

We picked up a van as well as a car in Liverpool and then on to Tattenhall Marina to meet up with Mike, Jane and Eve, as we were to stay with them aboard their narrowboat, “Gotaroundtoit” whilst we were in UK. Then disaster struck. J was found frantically searching her handbag, back pack and the car; her passport had gone missing, we suspect it had been removed from the back pocket of her jeans in Liverpool Airport.

Mike and Jane’s narrowboat, “Gotaroundtoit” with Eve in the foreground

Anyhow, I spent Sunday moving my Mum into her new care home just outside Tarporley with Susie whilst J and Mike researched how to get a replacement passport. J booked an appointment with the Liverpool office for 3pm the following day and prepared to raid the local post office as it opened on Monday for the required forms.

Monday saw J scurrying round the place, getting forms, filling them in, getting the countersigned and then going over to Liverpool in time for her appointment. She was told by the lady she saw that whilst the official time for a replacement passport was a week, it could be as little as 4 days. In the event, the new passport arrived on the Wednesday at 7.30am. Now, I know we paid a small fortune for the appointment but that’s what I call service! 30½ hours to deliver a new passport.

In the meantime, I’d been to Wrexham to drop off a repeat prescription request with the GP and visit a storage company to book a smaller unit with them and finally on to Shrewsbury to find an auction house to sell some of our stored furniture. As we had a few days in UK, J and I had decided to go through the unit, sell some of the furniture and generally check through all the boxes to decide if they should be retained or dumped.

Tuesday and Wednesday were spent emptying the unit, taking selected bits off to the auction house, going through all the boxes and deciding what to ditch and then removing the remainder to a new, smaller unit in Wrexham. We have now, I think, reduced our ‘stuff’ down to a minimum and may be able to fit the remainder into a yet smaller unit in due course. J has rediscovered a number of treasures (including her teddy bear) which have come back with us onto to the boat, along with some more practical items such as bed linen and cutlery.

On Thursday we went up to Low Bentham to stay with Susie; a catalogue of errors meant that we missed the food at the local pub and wound up eating pizza, but we did manage to introduce her to the delights of geocaching! She now realises that there are tens, even hundreds of caches in her local area so I think we have another convert.

Friday was a long and difficult day, as it was Susan’s funeral in Carlisle. We arrived in good time and were humbled to discover we were amongst somewhere in the region of 250 people who had come to bid her farewell. The funeral was conducted by an independent celebrant who hit just the right note and managed to convey the essence of Susan to all present. The funeral finished with a tea party at Carlisle Race Course, looking out over the magnificent countryside. A difficult event but a fitting farewell to our lovely friend.

Jane and Eve geocaching

We went back down to Susie afterwards and managed (just) to get down to the pub in time for supper! We returned to “Gotaroundtoit” on Saturday and Mike took the boat down the canal to the Shady Oak pub – about an hour or so away. We visited some geocaches on the way, (Mike, Jane and Eve are now hooked now too,) and had a lovely meal in the pub, spending the night moored up there before driving off to catch our flight at crack of dawn the following morning.

Since then, we’ve been watching the winds here in Sant Carles waiting for a period of about 48 hours without a gale between us and Mallorca. It hasn’t happened and this seems likely to continue for a few days yet. This is a bit serious, as J has a flight booked to Dublin from Sardinia in mid May and at this rate we may not be able to make it. Plans remain flexible and I can foresee us sailing as far as Pollenca and J flying back to Dublin from Palma.

Looking down on the town of Miravet and the Ebro river from the castle above

In the meantime, we’ve been doing more geocaching (31 in one day doing a trail called the Vandellos Ring), been to visit the castle at Miravet on the Ebro river and generally keeping ourselves busy. After the somewhat frantic rush to get all the jobs finished off before Terri and Iain arrived, it does feel a little flat just waiting for the winds to sort themselves out. J has done a few sewing jobs including a gin pennant of which she is justly proud I have done a little running repair to our plank which was threatening to split in two!

Fed up with the wintery weather, D decided to make fudge this afternoon while I was sewing. Licking out the pan afterwards is possibly the best bit of all!

Ah well, that’s about it. There’s a small separate piece on Susan that you might care to read. Our plans remain flexible, so keep an eye on FB and this site to see what happens next.

Farewell and adieu, you fair Spanish ladies…

The title should have been ‘Farewell to Sant Carles’ but I couldn’t resist it.

OK, OK.  It’s been some time since we last brought you up to speed with what we’ve been doing but today it is pouring with rain so it seems like a good opportunity before we depart from our winter berth.

 

Mike aboard his new narrowboat “Gotaroundtoit” before we set off from Tamworth.

While J was enjoying her “Erotic Onions,” D was hard at work in an icy-cold UK helping his brother and wife move their new narrowboat to the marina where they are going to be based most of the time at Tattenhall in Cheshire.  Mike, whether by accident or design is unclear, managed to sprain his ankle on Day One of the trip so Jane and Duncan were obliged to do all the leaping ashore, working the locks, tying up etcetera.  One day they did no less than 25 locks and were utterly shattered by the end.  D, unused to the extremely cold weather, found it particularly bitter, especially when taking his turn at the helm.  He and Mike would do hour and hour about, going inside to thaw out and warm up before taking their next stint.  Unlike with a sailing boat, there is no autopilot, so whilst at the helm you cannot allow yourself to be distracted for a moment or there is every likelihood of careering into the bank or another craft.

 

Yes, it really was as cold as it looks. Jane and I work the locks as Mike takes photos and takes it easy at the helm……

Anyway, Duncan rejoined “Rampage” safe and sound on the 5^th March, ready to tackle the remaining tasks on the Winter Jobs List.  First, however, we decided to have a day out while we still had the use of a rental car so on the 6^th we headed towards Tarragona, making first for the Francoli aqueduct and Puente del Diablo or Devil’s Bridge.    The aqueduct lies a few miles north of Tarragona and was built by the redoubtable Romans to supply the city with fresh water from the Rio Francoli.  The bridge, which is composed of two tiers of arches, stands 26m high and is 249 metres spanning the valley.  Despite the fact that it was raining while we were there, it was a spectacular sight although we later realised that we would have been better to have visited later in the day, as will become clear shortly.  It was still trying to rain when we drove into the centre of Tarragona so we decided to find somewhere for lunch first.  As a result we reached the cathedral at about 14:05 to discover that it was closed from 14:00 during the winter months and we were therefore unable to go inside which was a shame.  We did have a nice potter about the narrow streets of the old town and admired the remains of a huge Roman circus with seating capacity for 25,000 where chariot races used to be held; Tarraco, as it was known, was quite obviously a significant place in Roman times.  Then as we were making our way towards the amphitheatre down near the waterfront, we came across the Historical Museum which proved to be well worth the €3.25 entry fee because it gave access to very impressive underground vaults and tunnels beneath the circus.  Since Roman times these have had a number of different uses included a storage area for military munitions and a prison.  As we walked back to the car, the sun came out and it turned into a lovely afternoon.  Had we gone to the town first we’d have been in time to see inside the cathedral while it was raining and enjoyed the aqueduct in sunshine.  Ah well!

The Devil’s Bridge – a Roman acqueduct near Tarragona. I visited this about 40 years ago on our first overseas holiday.

 

Since then, we’ve been focused on finishing the Winter Jobs List before Iain and Terri arrive next week for their cruise to Mallorca.  The list had been whittled down somewhat since we arrived with projects such as the dinghy cover being completed and ticked off.  However, there was still quite a lot left to do and not all that much time to do it in.

Perhaps the most difficult of our winter projects; a UV cover for the dinghy.

 

J has been doing a lot of sewing, some of it on purely domestic projects like a lovely apron for Lily but most of it making things out of canvas.  We had thought that we might make a new sprayhood this winter but we figured out that we needed to replace the cockpit tent at the same time but didn’t have enough canvas to do the job.  We got a quote from the local sailmaker but it was far too expensive so we dropped the project.  Instead, J simply (!) replaced the worn out windows in it – a job that had her cursing and muttering for several days before she produced a very professional result.  (J would particularly like to thank Sheila for her excellent tip of using paper, between the pvc of the window panel and the sewing machine foot to help to prevent it from slipping.)

 

Lily’s apron.

She has also made a bag for the dinghy, spray dodgers for the stern of the boat and other little projects like a cratch cover for Mike and Jane’s new home.  Oh and there have been various knitting projects as usual.

Just to demonstrate that you can now see through the windows on the sprayhood.

 

In the meantime, I’ve been finishing off projects that I started some time ago.  I’ve wired in the light sensitive switch for the masthead anchor light (final step on that is to replace the current bulb with an LED one), replaced the old VHF radio with a new one which has a cordless remote (so we can use the main radio from the cockpit), re-done the wiring behind the chart table instrument panel so that it’s no longer quite the mess it once was and completed the work on making an antenna farm to lift the Navtex and GPS antennas out of harm’s way on the pushpit.

I’ve installed a gas drain in one of the cockpit lockers and we now have a 6kg gas bottle there to replace the (very expensive) camping gaz bottle.  At usual rates of consumption, this should last us about 3 months and cost the same to refill as a camping gaz bottle.

 

Spray dodgers, new windows in the sprayhood and all the fenders wrapped up in their new fleece covers.

And we did all of this before we lifted out last week to do the usual bottom scrub and anode replacement thing.  Although we had thought last year that we could probably get away without a long liftout, I decided that we needed to make sure that the Saildrive oilseals were intact and the only way to do that is when ashore.  We lifted out on Monday 25^th March and returned to the water on Thursday 28^th March.  We found that the Coppercoat, despite being 13 years old this month, is still holding up very well and very little fouling had built up over the winter.  The Saildrive leg and skin fittings were another matter!  The heads fittings were so overgrown that the heads were almost inoperable and it was a miracle that the engine cooling water was making it in through the growth on the Saildrive leg.

 

A very fouled Saildrive leg and a surprisingly clean prop!

We spent a busy couple of days on the hard, interrupted by a rainy afternoon on Tuesday but got the few rust patches on the keel sorted, oil in the Saildrive changed (the seals were in good shape, so we left well alone), primed and antifouled the Saildrive and refitted a very shiny Brunton Autoprop.  We also inspected the anchor chain and found that the middle 20 metres or so had lost all the galvanisation and was going rusty and weak, so we chopped it out and bought new chain from the Fisherman’s Co-operative here in Sant Carles.  J repainted the length marks so we’re all good to go on that front; apart from the fact that the anchor windlass decided not to play.  More on that later.

‘Go faster’ stripes on the anchor roll bar…. aim is to make it easier to spot underwater to make sure its set properly.

 

Thursday morning saw us removing the masking tape from the boot top (where we’d repainted the anitfoul) before being lifted back into the water at 10am.  An intense but very rewarding 3 days which saw lots of jobs ticked off the list but one added – sort out the anchor windlass.

Antifoul paint on the Saildrive leg along with a highly polished Autoprop.

 

Once back on the berth we took the rest of the day off and relaxed.  I then spent a happy morning doing fault-finding on the windlass.  The main relay box seemed to work just fine.  The wireless remote also seemed to be doing what it was meant to, so I investigated the connection between the winch and the power cables; this is where the problem lay.  I removed the winch and replaced all the connections and J patch painted the winch where some of the paint had come away.  Anchor problems now sorted.

“Rampage” on the hard, with fesh antifoul on the keel. Sant Carles yard is one of the best run we’ve come across and not too expensive either.

All of this activity was, in some ways, displacement from the main remaining task.  This is one we’d been putting off all through the winter, namely removing all the caulking between the teak strips in the cockpit and replacing it.  Have you ever put sealant round the bath or shower?  It’s a bit of a messy job isn’t it?  OK.  Now imagine you’ve got about 50 or 60 metres of this to do, with only a couple of inches between each strip of sealant.  And it’s black.  We’ve done the seating area but the deck will have to wait until we pause for a week or so in Sardinia in May.  Partly this is because we ran out of sealant but also because we’ve come to realise that we have to let the sealant cure for a few days before it can be sanded back into the wood so time is against us on this.

J with a masked up area of the cockpit seating ready for new caulking.

 

It hasn’t been all work and no play though!  Quiz nights have continued and we’ve set the quiz again and won once or twice.  It’s great to see that people are still coming to the evenings and that we started something that folks enjoy so much.

 

Bottled meat stew and chilli con carne ready to be used when we’re in out of the way palces this summer.

We’ve been geocaching once or twice as well.  For those of you who haven’t heard of this, there are lots of small containers hidden about the place which have a little log book inside them.  Their location can be found from a website (www.geochaching.com) which you download onto a handheld GPS and use that to navigate your way to the site.  On finding the container (making sure no one’s watching) you record you visit and re-hide it.  You log your find on the website and that’s it.  It’s possibly rather “ geeky” but it’s simple to do and a good way to get out into the country away from the boat to explore places we possibly wouldn’t otherwise visit.  As there are thousands of geocaches dotted worldwide it fits well with our roving life and we have to thank Maggie and Colin for introducing us to this new hobby!

 

New cockpit cushion covers in the completed cockpit, ready to set off.

So that’s it.  The newly-covered cockpit cushions can finally come into use without fear of being covered in black from the old caulking, the smart, protective fender covers (again courtesy of J) are in place and “Rampage” is looking pretty shipshape and ready for another season’s cruising.