Positive news about Portugal needed

Reuters marked the latest phase in the nation’s economic crisis with the headline, “Portugal faces suffocating 2013 budget.”  

The lead paragraph in an Associated Press report on the same day said that “Portugal's government is taking the bailed-out country deeper into austerity, announcing Monday sharp tax increases next year that risk worsening a recession and stoking public discontent.”

The South China Morning Post ran the story below an AP photograph of riot police guarding the parliament building in Lisbon near a fire set by protesters against the austerity measures.

A couple of days later the Economist commented: “Seldom have protesters, economists and politicians been so united in describing the plans: ‘brutal’, ‘a crime against the middle class’, a ‘fiscal atomic bomb’. Few agree with (Finance Minister) Mr Gaspar’s claim that ‘this is the only possible budget’ and that to question it is to risk being subjected to a ‘dictatorship of debt’ with Portugal condemned to depend on its official creditors indefinitely.”

As the story moved on, the Washington Post declared in a headline that “Bailed-out Portugal raises $2.4 bln in debt auction despite economic crisis.” Bloomberg Businessweek’s take on the same subject gave no hint of achievement: “Portugal raises less that maximum amount set at bill sale.”

A dispatch run by Canadian Press among others was about as good as it got this week: “The junior party in bailed-out Portugal’s coalition government has ended days of political tension by endorsing a plan for severe tax increases next year, ensuring the new austerity measures are approved in Parliament.”

An important side issue in this grim economic saga is that not only has it created great despondency in this country, but also made Portugal internationally synonymous with despair.

Time magazine recently ran an article by Bill Clinton entitled ‘The Case for Optimism.’ The former American president opened with the following observation. “Our world is more interdependent than ever. Borders have become more like nets than walls, and while this means that wealth, ideas, information and talent can move freely around the globe, so can the negative forces shaping our shared fates. The financial crisis that started in the U.S. and swept the globe was further proof that - for better and for worse - we can't escape one another.”

Optimism about Portugal has become hard to find, but there was a welcome respite amidst the reportage of economic gloom. “Portugal: small but mighty in the world of wine,” declared a headline in the Huffington Post, which claims more than a billion page views monthly on its worldwide news network.

We could do with more of that.

Dumpling voyage postponed

Nick Cole’s dream of sailing off into the Atlantic on Dumpling is in limbo – at least for the time being.

He took extended leave from his work as a dentist in the UK to work solidly on Dumpling for the past six months. But it has proved to be just too big a challenge.

The niggling things that still need to be done are relatively small but there are too many of them and time has run out. To make things worse, deep depressions are developing over the Atlantic. Favourable northerly breezes between here and Madeira have changed into adverse southerly winds. Storms are brewing.

“When I took her for a test sail in perfect conditions, I felt no joy because I found so many things not working. I feel so physically and mentally drained that if I went now, it would not be with relish. I want to go with gusto.

“If I was 39 again, I would not hesitate to deal with the remaining problems as I sailed. But this time I don't want, for example, to find myself in the path of a fast moving fishing boat and no navigation lights due to a flat battery as happened before. No, I want Dumpling to be properly seaworthy.”

 So Nick has put off his planned voyage until next spring. He is arranging to have the boat lifted out of the water to spend the winter tucked up on the dockside in the fishermen’s harbour at Portimão.

The postponement is obviously a big disappointment - but in no way is Nick abandoning his dream. 

Dumpling’s departure delayed!

Today was supposed to have been the day, but, sure enough, Sod’s Law stepped in.

Mention of it at the end of our last report had nothing to do with premonition or tempting fate. The fact is, if something can go wrong, it will – especially on a delightfully unsophisticated sailing boat like Dumpling.

Nick Cole admits that over the long hot summer, with a tight budget and an October deadline, he cut a few corners in trying to refit his 10-tonne, 13-metre ketch.

“As time passed, I had to accelerate the work. I put things off in the process. After we got Dumpling back in the water, I made lots of little discoveries. I found too many things half finished.” 

And then there were one or two mishaps. The bowsprit got slightly biffed in a dodgy quayside manoeuvre. A paraffin lamp mysteriously smoked out the galley and head one night.

Even when Nick finally managed to get the rigging sorted, he still could not go for a trial sail because of a two-day delay in loading 140 sandbags of ballast.

Eventually they had to be lugged on board across the deck of a fishing boat moored between Dumpling and the quayside. While this was going on, maritime police officers dropped by to check that the contents of the 25 kilo bags really was sand.  

Meanwhile, Nick discovered an underwater plug was leaking where Dumpling’s propeller shaft would normally be – if she had an engine and a propeller, that is. The leak was “no big deal.” But then he found a more serious one in the bow.

“I was a bit morose for a few hours after that. You must be sure everything is okay before you set out. Unless the boat is right, you can’t go.”

He has now reluctantly concluded that not only will his departure be delayed, but he will have to curtail his plan to sail via Madeira and the Azores to the Hebrides off the west coast of mainland Scotland. For now, Madeira will probably be as far as he can go.

Despite these disappointing developments, Nick, his wife Sally and one of their twin sons visiting from England, David, manage to sit down on Dumpling’s deck occasionally and have a laugh. 

“Boats bring out the Laurel and Hardy in people,” says Nick.

Never a dull moment on Dumpling

Dumpling was placed in a quayside position exactly as a top harbour official directed, but no sooner was her bottom wet than another official came along and said she couldn’t stay there.

“Could she not just stay tonight? Nick Cole asked.

“No,” was the blunt reply.

The space allocated to Dumpling had suddenly been given to a fishing boat apparently in need of a power line for minor repairs.

The first indication of trouble was when another fishing boat tried to nab the space while Dumpling was still airborne over the quayside. You can see it trying to muscle in on the right in this photo.

A harbour official arrived as Nick and his crane driver were preparing to put Dumpling’s masts in position. The official insisted that as soon as the masts were in, she had to move.

So, late in the afternoon of what had been a spectacularly eventful day, Dumpling had to be hauled a short distance along the quay to sit alongside a bigger sailing vessel charmingly named Atlantic Rose.  

As Atlantic Rose occupied the inside position next to the quay, Nick would have to cross her deck every trip to and from Dumpling. Luckily, Atlantic Rose is owned by a friendly German couple who don’t mind. Still,  coming and going with heavy gear is not possible. Another plan had to be devised to later take on board three and a half tonnes of sand as ballast, plus a month’s food and water. For that, Dumpling will have to move again.

Today, there has been no activity on the fishing boat that successfully muscled in, or on the smaller fishing boat  in need of repairs. Together they are still occupying Dumpling’s original mooring.  A bit irritating.

Tickled, perhaps, by the sight of Dumpling twice in mid-air, Nick has spent time aloft himself. First time (pictured here) was when he was hoisted by crane to unsnarl a sling on the main mast. He has since been busy up there on the main and mizzen securing shrouds and stays, or “tuning the rig” as it’s more romantically called.

Nick is spending his second night on board after the relaunch. He’s starting to feel at home on Dumpling once again. He says he tends to wake up every time a rope creaks, but the good news is that the paraffin stove works well and the ‘head’ is flushing just fine.

The other good news is that the forecast for Sunday, the day Nick plans to leave, seems ideal: wind northwest force 4. That sort of weather should see him safely through to Madeira without problems.  

“So far, so good,” says Nick. 
      But of course you can't rule out Sod's Law!

Dumpling – back where she belongs

A sailing boat looks odd propped up in the countryside amid gnarled olive trees and dry stone walls. What looks even odder is a sailing boat in mid-air. It all looked very odd indeed yesterday (Wednesday) morning -  nerve-rackingly so – as Dumpling was hoisted over telephone wires, before being lowered on to a truck to be transported back where she belongs – in the water.

“I could do with another day,” said Nick Cole, as he worked feverishly on essential last minute tasks before the huge crane and truck arrived.

He could have done with another two days, another week, another month. Fastidious improvements and fiddling can go on for ever, but time had run out.

Dumpling had been parked at Nick and Sally Cole’s rural retreat for years. She had been painstakingly refitted stem to stern, intensively so over the last six months. Now, with the red antifouling on her hull gleaming in the early morning sunlight, and the fresh white and blue paint on her masts and spars barely dry, it was time to go.

Suddenly, Dumpling’s weight was a worry. Apparently the crane could only manage a maximum of nine tonnes. Would Dumpling make the weight limit? Would she be able to leave at all? As the crane took the strain and started lifting, the weight registered as six tonnes, seven tonnes, eight, nine…. ten!

To great relief, the crane’s capabilities turned out to be more than adequate. After a careful loading operation that lasted all morning, the truck drove Dumpling on the scenic route through beautiful countryside to Silves, over the bridge and on past Lagoa, to the fishing harbour at Portimão.

It took most of the  afternoon to get Dumpling safely into the water.  It had all been rather tense, but it had all gone better than anyone could have expected.

Phew!

Nick had confided at the start of the day that he was “excited but anxious.”  Now he was obviously knackered.

Sitting next to deep-sea trawlers and navy vessels, Dumpling looked small and vulnerable. And that’s when things went unexpectedly wrong….

We’ll talk about that later today.

Nick Cole - Daring to fulfill a dream

Nick Cole, an Anglo-Australian with strong Algarve connections, is about to reach a key moment in fulfilling a dream that has been brewing for six decades.

At an age when most professional men are looking forward to taking it easy, Nick has taken on a daunting physical and mental challenge. Having spent virtually every day for the past six months single-handedly refitting a sailing boat he built by himself in the 1980s, he is preparing to put her back in the water and set off alone from Portimão into the wide blue yonder.

His boat is called Dumpling.  Nick delights in her simplicity. Most sailing boats nowadays are high-tech, luxury items, but Dumpling has no engine, square sails and is equipped only with basic necessities. She's "green".

Nick's latest adventure is fostered by a seemingly insatiable wanderlust. Born in Melbourne, Australia, he went off with his parents to Singapore at the age of two. A year later, they took him to England where his father set up a dental practice in London’s Harley Street. After graduating from Cardiff Dental School, Nick started his first job - back in Melbourne. He was soon on his way again, to a string of far-flung locum appointments in Somerset, London (where he met his wife Sally), the far north of Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

He took a break from dentistry, bought a 45-foot trading boat in Java, sailed her to Bali for a refit and later “pranged” her on Christmas Island.

After a short spell working in Charing Cross Hospital, the intrepid traveller followed in his father’s footsteps and bought a dental practice in Harley Street. That was in 1979. A busy decade followed. Sally gave birth to twin boys. Nick created Dumpling from a design he had found in a book in a Melbourne public library. He completed a master’s degree in advanced restorative dentistry before sailing Dumpling to the south of Portugal where he opened a dental practice in Lagoa in 1990.

Six years on, the twins, David and James, completed their secondary education at the Porches International School. The family returned to England so that the boys could go to university. Since then, Nick has worked as a dentist in various places, all close to the sea: in the port of Plymouth, on St Helena island in the South Atlantic, Totnes in south Devon,  the Isles of Scilly, the Shetland Islands, North Wales, Scarborough in North Yorkshire, and the Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.

His passion for sailing was aroused as a child by the stories of English author and journalist Arthur Ransome. His childhood hero was Joshua Slocum, the first person to sail around the world single-handed. Nick greatly admires Slocum’s qualities: “He was skilled, brave, enduring, modest, kind, funny.”

So is Nick.

Having sailed dinghies and small boats from his school days, the design that took his fancy in the Melbourne library was an 11.6 metre ketch, gaff rigged and with square sails on the main mast.

After four years in the building, the voyage on Dumpling from England to Portugal in 1989 was most eventful.

Nick recalls with typical self-deprecation: “I got a bit beaten up in Biscay and felt like a hero when I dropped anchor just east of Sagres. But I felt like a berk shortly afterwards when I ran aground off Ferragudo.”

Worse was to come on a subsequent trip off Portugal’s south coast.  “I went out without checking the weather forecast and got clobbered. Lost my mast and had to sail back under jury rig. Tried to get into Portimão but missed. I anchored off Praia da Rocha but had to be rescued by a Portuguese naval patrol boat.”

Dumpling has been standing propped up on a grassy patch in the Cole’s rural home near Silves ever since.

Over the past four years, Nick has periodically taken time off from private practise in the UK to restore her, always on a tight budget.  Crucially, he has enjoyed the unrelenting understanding and endorsement of his wife and sons. Dumpling now has a fully repaired hull, new masts, better accommodation, a proper galley and a ‘head’ that works well.

It was on the remote island of St Helena that he came up with the idea of getting back to an old-fashioned unpowered sailing boat with a hold for transporting traditional cargoes. All rather arcane and looked down upon by those who spend most of their time anchored in expensive marinas, but Nick has incorporated most of his fundamental ideas.  Dumpling has no way of going anywhere without wind in her sails. Her navigation lights will be powered by a solar panel but all other lighting will come from paraffin lamps, candles or a head torch. While a small GPS will be on hand for emergencies, he will navigate by the sun and the stars - just like his hero Joshua Slocum.

Dumpling will be back in the water next week and departing - first stop Madeira – a few days later. Initially anyway, Nick does not plan to sail around the world like Slocum. But who knows?

* We will report on the  final preparations in our next blog and keep track of Dumpling’s progress thereafter. 

Freedom of expression questioned

Hundreds of thousands of anti-austerity demonstrators took to the streets in cities across Portugal last weekend united under the slogan ‘Que se lixe de troika!’ This appeared in most English-language Internet reports translated as ‘Fuck the troika!’

‘Que se lixe’ is slang, but much more subtle than the bluntly profane English version, and so Portuguese newspapers had no qualms about quoting it on their front pages. As to the f-word, should it be confined to f*** - or not used at all?

Questions like this are cropping all the time in our increasingly permissive world.

The peaceful demonstrations in Portugal coincided with public outrage in Muslim nations about a video made in the United States. The video insulted the prophet Mohammed and was offensive to most Muslims.  

While not illegal in the United States where freedom of expression is held in high esteem, the video was clearly divisive and inflammatory. Was it also unethical?

Clearly there is no uniform agreement on freedom of expression. It varies not only in legal terms from country to country, but also in moral terms between different cultures and between people of the same culture. Increasingly, there are divisions of opinion even within families between those who embrace and those who shun the unfettered social media.

Judgements about freedom of expression are sometimes influenced not only by what is actually said or shown, but by perceptions or biased viewpoints. The Mohammed video was followed by publication in a French magazine of cartoons depicting the Prophet naked. The cartoons were supposed to be satirically funny, but the French government has felt obliged to temporarily close its embassies and schools in 20 countries for fear of a violent international backlash.

Many of those in non-Muslim countries think the violent reactions to the video were grossly exaggerated and perhaps deliberately promoted. In any case, is physical violence more excusable than blasphemy? Is racial abuse or deliberate provocation more permissible than suppressing freedom of expression?

Readers chastised the New York Times last week for publishing a photograph of the American ambassador to Libya in an unconscious state after the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. The more liberal minded asked why it was deemed to be wrong to publish such a picture when the US news media have no compunction about showing photographs of enemy dead?

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression,” according to the UN’s universal declaration of human rights. “This right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”

In practice, it is not quite so simple.

In Britain, the publication by a French magazine of topless photographs of the Duchess of Cambridge elicited widespread indignation, even in the notorious British tabloid press. Prince Harry naked in a Las Vegas hotel prompted smiles, but Kate exposed while sunbathing in a private estate in France provoked anger.

Was Kate not fair game since the pictures were taken from a public thoroughfare, albeit with a telephoto lens? A French court ruled not. In the court of public opinion, however, many people outside the UK found it was not worth getting hot under the collar about. Publications in Ireland, Italy, Sweden and Denmark were ready to satisfy their readers’ innocent curiosity about a royal celebrity.

Would the British public have reacted less indignantly before the mood-changing Leveson Inquiry into tabloid phone hacking and bribery? To what extent are attitudes being caught up in prescribed customs, fashionable causes and propaganda?

Even in the United States there is no clear line about what is admissible in the media and what is not. For example, ABC News has just been sued by a beef company for describing their products as not beef at all, but “an unhealthy pink slime, unsafe for public consumption.”

Back in Portugal, the McCanns v Amaral libel action was postponed yet again last week. The parents of Madeleine McCann insist Gonçalo Amaral libelled them in his book A Verdade da Mentira (the Truth of the Lie). Plenty of people, especially in this country, believe Amaral was within his moral and legal rights to publish his opinions on the investigation he once co-ordinated. Plenty of people, particularly in the UK, believe Amaral’s actions have been criminally reprehensible, even though the ban on his book has been lifted.

The Portuguese constitution declares: “Everyone shall possess the right to freely express and publicise his thoughts in words, images or by any other means, as well as the right to inform others, inform himself and be informed without hindrance or discrimination.” 

So why is Amaral, who is said to be ill and broke, facing a claim for well over a million euros in damages?

In principle, freedom of expression in free societies is a fine thing. But how free are we really?