This testimony comes from my experience of three weeks aboard Enjoy with its famous skipper Jack le Rebelle.
Normally, I let the skipper get up first. First, because it is important to respect your sleep. Then because he wouldn’t let anyone prepare coffee and breakfast. He barely accepts hot croissants in the morning, but this is not compulsory.
Jack takes his morning coffee with sugar and milk; I don’t know how he used to, but he often insists on the importance of eating sensibly to « not gain weight ». Moreover, the milk disappears from the following coffees.
During breakfast, the topics of the day to come are often discussed: repairs to be made, weather, program for the day. Don’t dwell on the day’s program, it changes all the time, sometimes with surprising arguments for the novice that I am in long-distance navigation. The art of navigation is often mysterious and Jack masters it wonderfully, believe me. On the other hand, be very attentive to the « to do list » which will occupy a significant time of your day, even longer of his. As for the weather, it is the subject of rich debates on the models to be compared, according to the geographical situation, the expected precision, the deadline of the departure, etc.
After a quick washing up and washing up, the serious things begin: the maintenance of the boat. For example this morning, it was a question of tackling the repair of the second rudder bar, postponed for more than two weeks because of other much more urgent priorities. Enjoy having a redundant wheelhouse for safety reasons (double rudder, double helm, double autopilot tripled by a very discreet Chinese during my boarding), the unusable helm remained in the hold, until this morning, thanks to a lull, I extract him to encourage jack to take an interest in his case. That’s good, he got attached to all the pontoon neighbors he met yesterday afternoon, got on well with the manager of the Castle Bay « marina » and therefore has no desire or reason to set sail today . Yes!
However, several conditions are necessary for the implementation of the repair he has been thinking about for several weeks, every early afternoon. 1 – The weather must be dry for lamination. It’s not won, we must aim for weather windows even shorter than those favorable to navigation. That’s saying something. 2 – He needs electrical tools, plethoric on board thanks to Lidl promotions. From the grinder perfectly sized for the section of the ends, to the torch intended for burning dessert creams, everything is there. 3 – Who says electrical tools, says electricity. This is where things get complicated: all the elements of the chain work, from the pontoon terminal to the on-board transformer, but the light on the panel remains imperturbably off.
Armed with his multimeter (Parkside®1 model from Lidl), Jack roams the pontoon and the boat in all directions, chanting several times « ah, I understood » without managing to wake up this LED whose I will never know the color or location.
In the meantime, he will have made a « watertight » connection with a simple 25 cl water bottle, pierced in its bottom so as to let in only the two electrical wires. The sugars initially intended to ensure the bonding of the threads do not enter (and for good reason!) through the neck? Well, it will be! I did not attend the assembly of the wires inside the bottle, because the advanced hour encourages me to prepare the midday meal in the middle of the cases of tools and the electric cables which strew the ground of the square, but here are the valuable lessons I learned from this delicate operation:
• The mark « Kilimanjaro » which appears on the label of the aforementioned bottle indicates its Tanzanian origin. It should be noted here that the geographical origin of the objects on board awakens moving memories of their owner.
• A waterproof box costs « at least » a hundred euros at Big Ship, a brand that is also absent from this remote corner of the Hebrides.
• Jack obviously admits that soldering the wires together would have ensured their electrical continuity more securely. I deduce, wrongly, that Lidl did not offer the soldering tool which would have without a shadow of a doubt lit the recalcitrant LED. No doubt a neighbor and friend called on Jack who found it more pleasant to joke with him rather than risk getting burned. In the absence of welding, « do not pull on it ». I therefore also deduce that even Jack has limited confidence in his repair and infinite confidence in the human passing respectfully, being scrupulously careful not to knock his clumsy foot against the technological masterpiece spread out along the pontoon.
Mealtime is well past when, discouraged, our captain finally decides to postpone the repair of this extension cord which only delivers 130 V out of the 240 promised by his friend the harbor master… completion of the starboard helm repair project, postponed again to « later ».
Meanwhile, a fisherman approached the boat to offer 500g of meaty scallops, freshly caught and trimmed in their coral, for £15. In a reflex tested by his international adventures, suddenly leaving his electrical research, Jack is surprised at such a prohibitive price. The fisherman immediately goes down to £10 and at the same time makes a cautious about-face towards other less demanding victims. I will spare you the details of this anecdote which could be the subject of an article on its own, but we end up obtaining later in the day, and for only 20 €, the 500 g of scallops, a lobster nice size and a wonderful cake!
After the meal, Jack never deviates from the solitary reflection he leads for at least an hour in his cabin. It must be said that the subjects are not lacking: repairs to be made, weather update and continuation of the program of the day…
By the time Emilie pops up for coffee, soon joined by her minister friends Alysse and Léo, the day is well advanced. She comes to ask Jack for a boarding next year, with the idea of accompanying the race of these 6.50 m sailboats from the Sables to the Azores and back. Enough to feed the many naps to come in reflection, planning, preparations… and give the captain the desire to sail with a key objective.
It’s already 7:00 p.m. when we get back from the laundry. We may live wonderful salty adventures, but daily life and its thankless tasks must take place in our very tight schedule. It was then that our dear friends Georges and Laurence, whom we had met in Killybegs a few days earlier, pointed the nose of their magnificent Boréal at the entrance to the bay. A new opportunity to postpone the departure from the planned anchorage to escape the port fee.
After our delicious shellfish feast, we visit our minister friends. There are five of us on board a mini-transat, the time to tell them that we are going to the pub, a ritual step that marks our respect for local traditions. We find there Billy, our pontoon neighbor, who spent a restless night but without damage. He offers us whiskey even though we hadn’t finished our pint of beer, nor digested the gin and tonic for the aperitif or the white wine for the meal. All this accumulated energy will allow us to beat the young minists during a fierce game of billiards, where experience prevails over impetuosity.
Thus ends one day among others on Enjoy. If you have detected a certain benevolent irony against the captain, know that, unlike the author of these lines, he was able to build a 13 m sailboat on his own, to travel the globe upside down with a great mastery, to retire ten years before everyone else and that his popularity on the pontoons is unparalleled.

Jean Paul