It’s time to discuss gremlins...Gibraltar to Tenerife was our first real long stretch without the ability to hit a friendly port within 48hrs or so, so naturally it was the stretch on which we had the most ‘incidents’.
The first was the Morrocan fisherman and their fishing nets....... These are nets that seem to run around 1500m floating on the surface, and are generally guarded by one small fishing boat. Some are lit with flashing lights, some have a light at one end, others in the middle. Add to this that they lay these nets across merchant shipping lanes and you start to get the picture. Using radar and guesses, we avoided ten or twelve of them, while listening to fishermen pleading with merchant ships to turn North or South of their individual nets, always without being able to identify either their location or the ship they were trying to plead with. In the end while dodging one net, a fishing boat approached us waving us off, guessing he was protecting his net, we turned away from him, right into an unlit net. Luckily, just as before our keel popped over the rope it was spotted so the props were stopped before they could become fouled, although in the next two hours that it took to get clear, many’s a time I wished we had done what the merchant ships seemed to do, and that is give up and assume that the line cutters work and stem full speed ahead.
All this was occurring in very calm conditions, the next day we had a bit of a blow which continued well into the early hours, at around 1am there was a loud crash which turned out to be the stay of the main sheet where it attached to the rear of the boom deciding that it was time to retire. After an hour or so of swinging around at the end of the boom in a brisk wind with a 3 or so metre swell, we were able to get another line through the stays and get the boom back under control.
Around the same time the following night, after doing a quick deck check and grabbing a coffee, I flicked on the deck light again for some reason, only to see our Parasailor streaming out of its deck bag and over the side of the boat. A very quick dash secured the end of the sail, and after we got the boat hove to, the workout commenced. Let it be said that a 15m x 7m sail that has had the chance to fill with water in its sock is not the simplest thing to haul back in. Luckily the sail itself didn’t catch on the keel, but some of the lines did, so they needed to be cut, and later repaired. Needless to say, the sail now lives in the forward compartment not the deck bag J After that, a cold wet crew was looking forward to a hot brew, whereupon Miss Bossy actual discovers halfway through boiling the kettle that the gas bottle while still very heavy is empty.... Luckily we have a generator and an electric oven and electric kettle, however that meant no steaks for the rest of the trip.....
Finally the sea state subsided and the winds shifted so we could deploy the Parasailor, that worked fine, but it seemed that the early morning gremlins were not to be outdone, as the topping lift decided that what if was good enough for the main sheet stay, was good enough for it as well and it snapped in two with barely a murmur, luckily the main was up on the second reef, so not a big drama, but it was something else to repair.....
So, we had a great start, calm condition through the Straits, after which the wind died, then two days of wind right on our nose with moderate to heavy swells, followed by another few days of very light winds, but downwind at least. And something to make every night watch memorable.
In all some nice lessons learned ( we now have two massive gas bottles), some practice in exigent repairs and a belated but safe landfall in Tenerife.
Getting there...
