David carried out a thorough servicing of the fuel lines and oil filtration system on our Perkins diesel. In the process he sheared the slotted top off a vital cylinder plug. Fortunately we were able to remove the stump and obtain a cannibalised part to replace it. I spent hours trying to sort out a problem with the outboard. It was essential with all the coming and going from the anchorage, and was not performing well at all. I ended up replacing the impeller which seemed to fix it, even though the old one did not seem particularly worn.
Anne accompanied me on a trip to the supermarket to buy provisions for the crossing to the Azores. It was the first time I had had anyone other than David with me on such an expedition and I found it very difficult having to enforce the sailing budget on someone who would obviously much rather have been buying what she fancied. As fast as she was filling the trolley with exotic foodstuffs I was (as surreptitiously as possible) emptying it again. We followed a well balanced and satisfying diet aboard Tin Hau, but it tended to be based on very economical ingredients. My health required a low fat diet, which imposed certain limitations; we also worked to a strict cost per person per day when travelling with other people. What we were charging realistically only covered what was on my shopping list. I could allow only a few of the less extravagant items chosen by my shopping companion.
We had asked all our crew to be ready for departure on 1st July. You have to set a date to get them all where you want them, when you want them. The forecast was not up to much for a day or two, so everyone was free to explore the town, laze about, or visit other yachts. Avalon was in port, so we had the chance to get some more information about Cornwall from Nigel. He and Lynne had half-persuaded us to try it, as we still had not settled on a suitable place to base Tin Hau on our return.
4th July brought an easterly forecast of force six in the straits. We completed all our formalities in the morning and were ready, by lunchtime, to start on our first voyage into the Atlantic. At five minutes to two we called Gibraltar Radio and Lloyds to let them know we were on our way. We made our figure of eight to cut the dragon’s tail as we left the anchorage.
In the straits proper at quarter to four, we were in the tide rips with an advantageous current. The wind reached maximum strength (force five) three hours later propelling us through the remainder of the straits like a cork leaving a champagne bottle.
5. Atlantic Rollers
David set a course which would keep us in the northern inshore traffic zone for some distance beyond Tarifa Light. This was to ensure that we would clear the rocks and wrecks of Los Cabezos. Around sunset, we had a sighting of what appeared to be a boat being rowed by three men, some distance off the port bow. We were keeping a lookout to starboard for the rocks. After a while it became clear that the ‘oarsmen’ were, in fact, the rocks we were looking out for. The current was so strong it had set us well to the north-east of where we planned to be. Midnight saw us four miles to the south-west of Cape Trafalgar. The wind was dropping. So, with a one and a half knot current still pushing us towards the coast, we needed to get our engine on. All the while we were very conscious of the historical importance of the area we were sailing in.
The wind remained too light to work under sail alone and the swell was making hard work of helming. David found all the standing a real problem with his back. We were fast realising that a long ocean passage was going to be almost impossible for him to endure. A little light relief came when we passed the Russian sail training ship Tovarich heading for Gibraltar. She was probably returning after taking part in the Tall Ships race, which had just ended in northern Spain.
Eventually a good breeze did come up, but from the north-west, so it was quite useless. We changed our immediate plans and decided to head for Villamoura in Portugal. That would enable us to sit out the adverse winds and decide how to proceed.
At quarter to seven in the morning on 6th July, (Markie’s twentieth birthday), we were mooring alongside the arrivals quay in Villamoura marina. We hadn’t finished tying our lines when the mate from the boat ahead came asking for ice (if we had any). The lady in question looked very familiar and seemed to know my name. The need for ice was urgent, so I left off wondering who she was and dashed below to get what I could from the freezer. As soon as she had boarded her own boat, I flipped through our yottie record book to try and find a name to fit the face. It turned out to be Pat MacKay of Lapwing, whom we had last seen in Port Elizabeth when we were building Tin Hau. Lapwing was on the hard at the time. Pat and her husband, Gus, had been conducting pre-circumnavigation trials when they had hit a sleeping whale. Lapwing had been badly holed and they were lucky to have got her back into port. She was relaunched before our departure in 1986. It turned out that they had remained in South Africa till just three months before we met them in Portugal. They had taken part in the Vasco da Gama race from Cape Town to Lisbon; it had taken them that short space of time to reach the same place we had used four years to find.
We were allocated berth Q24 in the marina – the first time Tin Hau was tied to a floating pontoon. Supplied with abundant water and electricity, we got the washing machine going and did all our laundry. The abundant water also tempted Anne to have a prolonged shower on the deck. We tried to follow a policy of behaving modestly while in foreign ports so as not to offend local sensibilities. Though we were happy for crew to feel free to strip down at sea, we were not prepared to have them compromise our reputation in port by acting in a way which might upset our hosts. Anne did not take kindly to our views and we sensed this could lead to personality clashes.
David and I, meanwhile, were having endless discussions about how to proceed from Villamoura. He was inclined to believe that it was the end of the road. He was unable to envisage himself making the ocean passage towards the Azores and on to England. That being the case, I suggested that we try to make it home by coast hopping. In the light of his experience motoring against adverse winds in the Red Sea, David felt there was little to gain by motoring up the Portuguese coast. The prevailing winds were against us; the likelihood of our getting sufficient calm weather to make the northing, he believed, was very small indeed. Shelter along the way was virtually non-existent. I wasn’t prepared to accept that there were never going to be any calm periods. My argument went along the lines that it would be at least as expensive to stay in Villamoura as to try and get home using the engine only. Given that it was going to cost money either way, would he not prefer to think that at least he was getting a passage home for his money even if it was a slow passage?
While the arguments swung this way and that, we made our way to Portimao. On 9th July it seemed we might be able to get round Cape St Vincent; the wind was very light and variable. Once we rounded Cape Sagres, we realised it was hopeless – wind from the north-west made the cape impassable.
We returned to Baleeira, where we anchored outside the tiny fishing harbour. We were eventually joined by Avalon. They had been anchored in Lagos. We got permission from the police to take on one hundred and fifty litres of diesel – this enabled us to top up our tanks and carry three jerrycans as well. David walked along the cliff tops to Cape St Vincent. It was probably a mistake to do so when he was already so wound up about the task facing him. Viewed from the lighthouse on the cliffs, the passage ahead looked like a pipe dream.
The BBC forecast for 14th July looked reasonable; a north-westerly becoming westerly. At 4.30 a.m. we turned on the engine and by five o’clock we were rounding Cape Sagres for the second time. Forty-five minutes later we passed Cape St Vincent, leaving it seven miles to starboard. We made our way northward despite the fact that our promised westerly wind never arrived. By midnight we were abreast Cape Espichel and just twenty-four hours after leaving Baleeira, we dropped our anchor in Cascais. We had cleared the first hurdle. David was still unhappy with the plan we seemed to be following. The coastline ahead offered little in the way of stopping places. The few ports along that stretch were not ideal for Tin Hau.
We had reach
ed the point where our crew from Italy were getting a bit twitchy about our timing. Marko was concerned about possible problems with his visas which would not be valid for him to leave us in Spain. Carrying on with us to England might make them too late for the start of the new term. We were unable to commit ourselves to any ports of call in Portugal because everything was being dictated by the winds. Marko made a trip to his embassy in Lisbon to try and extend his Spanish visa, but this proved to be impossible. In the end, Marko and Anne decided to sign off in Cascais and make their way back to Italy from there. Markie and Lynn put no pressure on us at all. David was still talking about the possibility of calling a halt to the voyage. He was looking at the viability of stopping in Lisbon. I couldn’t see any point in that other than taking immediate pressure off him. It would only have been a short-term solution because we would still have had to face the return to England the following year. The problem of how to get home was not going to go away.
We deposited Marko and Anne on the beach at Cascais on the evening of 19th July. The forecast for the 20th was such that we wanted to leave immediately and try to get ahead of the coming good winds. We set off as soon as we had secured the dinghy, left Cascais behind and approached Cape Raso. Initially the wind was westerly and light, but it soon veered to the north and strengthened to force four to five. It didn’t seem likely that we would be able to continue, so we turned around. We backtracked two miles then decided we were being silly and had another go. We found ourselves back in Cascais by twenty minutes past nine. I didn’t go to bed that night, preferring to stay up for the forecast after midnight. I woke the rest of the crew at half past three and said we should be off. The forecast was variable three with fog patches. Generally foggy conditions tend to be relatively windless, so I was banking on low visibility and minimal wind. The only other thing we needed was a drop in the swell height.
To start with we were recording swell as being one metre with either slight or smooth sea. The variable wind never reached stronger than force two. These conditions remained with us throughout the 137 miles to Leixões. We dropped anchor at lunchtime and rowed over to Avalon to catch up with Nigel and Lynne again. We spent the following day in port and left in similar conditions to those experienced on arrival. Avalon went around the same time. They were planning to stop in Viana do Castelo, then go on to Bayona. We were hoping that we would be able to make it all the way through to Spain.
We spent the night dodging fishing vessels using the radar. There were dozens of them milling around and it was quite a job working out what they were doing. When I handed over at the end of my night watch on the 23rd, we were still motoring along with a force one north-easterly. Two hours later it had backed to north-west and strengthened to force four. David recorded lightning to the west and the sky closing in. He decided to make for Viana do Castelo. It was the last place he really wanted to be taking Tin Hau, as it was a very narrow harbour with limited access. The attendant was, unexpectedly, available to open the bridge for us to go in at dawn. There was nowhere along the harbour wall to tie up, but Nigel had heard our engine, roused Lynne, and kindly moved Avalon so that we could tie up inside them. We invited them aboard for a bacon and egg breakfast to say thank you. Markie’s Lynn slept through all the activity and awoke with the first crash of thunder and the lashing rain which then poured down.
We spent the day exploring the town and dined ashore with Avalon’s crew. The swing bridge was opened for us at midnight and the two boats headed out together to find the southerly breeze that would carry us to Spain. Seven and a half hours later we were in Spanish waters once again and tied up south of the breakwater in Bayona. We took on four hundred litres of fuel at the yacht club quay.
Soon it was my birthday again. We set off with Avalon to Islas Cies. We had a lovely sail over there in absolutely ideal conditions. The youngsters had planned a barbecue on the beach. They had managed, somehow, to get a cake in Bayona and had smuggled it aboard without my knowing. We had a lovely evening together celebrating life beginning!
The next morning we set off in company to sail to Finisterre. We broad reached virtually all the way with a force three to four. The sea state was more or less what one would expect for the wind strength, but suddenly we were very aware of the Atlantic rollers. When we arrived in Finisterre, we were delighted to find Scaffy at anchor. We had last seen her owners, Tony and Kate, in Larnaca. They had been to England and had added to their crew while there. They were on their way back to the Mediterranean for a spell before crossing the Atlantic and returning to Australia. Their baby was just three months old.
It was sad that we hadn’t the time to explore more of the Spanish Rias. The little we saw was exciting and unspoiled – just our sort of cruising ground.
On 27th, Friday we cleared our anchor chain, which had fouled on a rock, and set sail for Camarinas. We planned to wait there for a south-westerly wind to blow us to England.
On 29th July we got the forecast we were hoping for – south-westerly, force four to five. As we left Camarinas Ria we passed some twenty or so boats packed to the gunwales with celebrating locals. There were friendly waves from them and fireworks ashore to send us on our way. We found our favourable wind as soon as we were out of the Ria. We turned off the engine at half past midday and sailed past the north-western tip of Spain. We lost the wind six hours later. The engine went on and stayed on all day, in spite of a slight following breeze which came up again later. The swell was the most memorable thing about that leg of the voyage. It reached a height of around five metres for a while just beyond the tip of Spain, then reduced to about three metres.
F
igure 16: Astral Navigation Sheet (sample page) (off north-west Spain)
We hardly saw the wind again, just a smooth sea and the swell. We motored alongside huge schools of dolphins, were followed by whales, and watched countless shooting stars falling to earth. Forty miles from Falmouth we picked up an easterly breeze. At quarter to ten on 2nd August, Tin Hau shuddered violently and our ears were assailed by the sound of a single loud explosion. I was convinced that we had been hit by something. There was no sign of any damage so we concluded that we might be approaching an area where naval exercises were under way. We had seen quite a few naval ships during the previous twenty-four hours. Customs officers in Falmouth solved the riddle of the explosion – Concorde.
By lunchtime we were picking up conversations between Cornish fishermen on VHF channels ten and seventy-three. It was very frustrating, we could not see land at all. We knew it was not far away because it showed up on the radar, but it was not until we were half a mile off the approach to Falmouth harbour that it became visible. What an emotional moment, when we first glimpsed the rolling hills and grazing cows. David and I got horribly soppy and sentimental. We put on a tape of patriotic music and opened a bottle of champagne. Tears flowed freely as Tin Hau slowly made her way into her first anchorage in England. Despite all difficulties placed in our way, we had brought our beloved Tin Hau home at last.
6. What Followed
Our arrival in England was not meant to be the end of our adventures with Tin Hau. Falmouth was ideal for us as a port of arrival and it also turned out to have a boatyard capable of taking Tin Hau out of the water almost immediately. While waiting for our date on the slipway, we explored the nearby anchorages, looking into various possibilities for a place to overwinter. The Helford, St Mawes, Penryn and Truro were all considered, but we had made no decision when our time came for the haul-out. Mark stayed on to help us.
We had three weeks of concentrated work on the boat – scraping, cleaning and re-antifouling. Several conversions had to be carried out to make Tin Hau suitable for living aboard through an English winter. We breached the watertight bulkhead between the engine room and forward cabin areas. We reasoned that having to move fore and aft above decks in icy conditions was plain silly. Changes and sacrifices had to be made to accommodate the new arrangement. We installed a solid fuel stove in the new
sitting area forward of the engine room.
While busy working on these changes, we had a visit from representatives of the harbour master at Truro offering us a berth for the winter. The rates and conditions were acceptable, and we agreed there and then to move to Truro at the end of October.
Our berth in Truro was quite unique. We were alongside Town Quay, floating and grounding twice daily, within sight of the beautiful cathedral. It was a three minute walk to the city centre. When aground, Tin Hau sank into a nest she hollowed out for herself in soft mud. David was handily situated for getting all the medical attention he could possibly want. The best supermarket for miles was sited on the other side of the river, well within reach of our feet, bikes or dinghy.
We lived in Truro for ten months. David underwent further tests which did show some problems with his back, but nothing which really accounted for the severity of the pain he suffered. We realised that the chances of his finding treatment were very slim indeed and had to accept that our cruising life was not helping the situation.
I was emotionally devastated at the thought of losing Tin Hau and the life of the cruising yotties. However, David’s health and well-being were far more important. We put Tin Hau on the market, bought a small cottage ashore and became landlubbers once more. I cannot describe how weird it was to be driving again; to have family and friends available at the other end of a telephone connected to where we were living; to have a permanent postal address. It was a while after moving ashore that David eventually went back to work. It was not an easy adjustment for either of us, having grown so used to being together all the time.
Cutting the Dragon's Tail Page 37