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The Kindness of Strangers
We limped back towards Falmouth feeling rather sorry for ourselves and nursing increasingly catastrophic theories as to what was happening (remember the deranged thinking after the baby kept you up all night?? Yup, in a nutshell). By the time we tied up back in Port Pendennis we had crazier theories than a MAGA supporter with access to Truth Social, convinced it was the joints on the seacock so we would need a full lift-out to get it fixed - aaaarrrgh! Fortunately, I decided to sleep on it before frantically phoning around begging for a date with a crane. It was a Saturday afternoon anyway, so who would be at work?
Sunday morning I went to the marina office to explain we had no idea how long we would be there as we would probably needed a lift out. The lovely Graham listened sympathetically to the distinctly dejected, slightly bonkers skipper and told me not to fret, he'd make some calls. 2 hours later Steve arrived. He works at Falmouth dockyard and had come to sort out something on his rib*, heard about our woes and was there to help. Cue more floorboard lifting followed by extremely sensible advice. Almost certainly the hose - they get brittle and jubilee clips are simply not good enough in that scenario - very unlikely to be the seacock and no, he wouldn't take any money, wine or rum, he was just happy to help. I admit, I hugged him! Consent was duly obtained I assure you - poor man had been through enough.
To cut a very long and boring story short, Dave is now thoroughly sick of those bilges but we have a glistening new reinforced PVC hose secured with high torque clips and CT-1 sealant.
They say it takes a village to raise a child, it seems it takes a seaside town to just keep a demanding matriach like Doris afloat! - from Graham going out of his way to ask his mate Steve on a Sunday morning, the incredibly knowledgeable Seaware guy who got out all the high torque clips and tried them one by one to find the best fit for the new hose, Joe at Plumbstop who didn't have the sealant Dr Google said I needed, but gave me much sympathy and some free rubber O rings for the leaking moonpool then recommended I call his mate at Armada Engineering, who chewed the fat with a frustrated stranger on the best silicone solution to try, to - last but not least - the lovely couple on their way to Majestic (to return the undrunk wine from their 40th Wedding Anniversary party!) who saw me staggering back to the marina in the heat loaded down with 3m of giant hose and assorted boat DIY paraphernalia, and drove out of their way because "boaters help boaters"!
This got me thinking about the phenomenal sense of community in sailing - why is it so strikingly different to the casual disconnect of 'normal' life? Is it the sense of shared adventure - we're all pirates at heart and therefore must conform to the 'pirate code'? Is it the old adage that 'everything on your boat is broken, you just don't know it yet', so very soon it could be you shuffling up and down the pontoon looking to beg a vital widget just to get back on the water? Or is it that most people are frankly decent and kind but they just don't get the chance to show it often enough? Who knows, all I can say is I LOVE my new, transient friends and neighbours - thank you all, I will do my best to repay the favours forwards.
*Rib: small powerful rubber boats, the drivers of which seem to delight in steering straight at yachts in the Solent before veering away moments before your cardiac arrest!
The Second Attempt
Fortunately, the 'heat dome' currently sitting over the UK, causing you all to reconsidering your life/career choices (sorry!), meant the weather forecast had barely changed and PredictWind gave us the all clear to set off again on Monday. So with relief in our hearts and water around our propshaft, we bimbled out on an ebb tide heading once more for Ponta Delgarda, - straight into a fog bank. Despite the brief limited visibility and donning of extra layers, it was fabulous, the crew had gelled, the offshore vegan cusine was fine tuned (yes, vegan, Dave is still alive despite the change to his normally highly carnivorous diet) and we were just elated to be underway again. The Cornish dolphins seemed to pick up on our excitment and were out in full force to provide Doris an honour guard as we rapidly slipped into our stride again.
The first night was one of the most magical sailing experiences I have ever had. Melina and I were on watch at about 3am when the sea around Doris started to light up with bioluminescence*. The fireworks rolled back off the bow wave, dissipating into streams of stars and our gently whirring prop left a sparkly trail behind us through the almost still water. I have never seen anything so beautiful, then our honour guard returned chasing a shoal of fish. I wish I were a better writer as I simply don't have the words to describe it! The entire profile of the dolphins were lit up as if they were wearing strings of fairy lights and the shoal of fish flashed and danced as they sprinted for their lives breaking the surface in showers of dancing radiance (think James Cameron's planet Pandora in 'Avatar'). We were mesmerized! Thank heavens there was virtually no other marine traffic out there as, for a brief period of time, we were definitely not conforming to the international coll regs and "maintaining a proper lookout" - oops.
Then to cap it all, with the sea alight around us, we had a simply magnificent moon rise - the stunning orange orb slowly rose over the horizon with a string of light, low clouds sliding across it. I think by that point I was a whisper off having a stroke from the sheer aching beauty of it all. We almost refused to go to bed when Dave relieved us at 4am - almost! I hope by describing this experience it helps to answer the regular question "why on earth are you doing this?" - because of experiences like this, simply that.......
The following day was glorious, light airs and calms seas. Alexander (AKA Big Z) even started working on his celestial navigation - an excellent skill to acquire in these days of threatened GPS terrorism (its real and has already been used against the British Navy - allegedly!). Little did we know that we may be grateful for such skills sooner than we realised!
It was about 3pm when the wind finally came in directly behind us. Time to turn off the motor and hoist our twin headsails. A bit of a tricky job as it involves two big poles and a LOT of ropes but Dave and Big Z did it beautifully - just moments before the Victron System alarmed an overheating message and immediately shut down our entire battery bank.
*Bioluminescence is the emission of light by a living organism, resulting from a chemical reaction where the molecule luciferin oxidizes in the presence of the enzyme luciferase, in the sea its due to microscopic, single-celled marine organisms called dinoflagellates - so now we both know!
Fog on the Fal is mine, all mine!
Our escourts from Falmouth
Big Z practicing celestial navigation
Beautiful sunset over a mill pond sea!
Azores attempt - take 2! 280 nm in total
Homeward Bound - again!
Now as an electric boat this left us quite a big problem - no engine, no communications (Starlink etc) and, quelle horreur, no bread maker! Thank goodness great Zephyr had seen fit a few hours earlier to bless us with wind so we weren't dead in the water. Gentle reader you would have been so proud of us, not a single expletive was uttered or any distress exhibited by the team - even at the thought of eating stale bread. We just got on with it, dropped the twin poled genoas, turned Doris around, raised the main (rather tricky without an engine to keep you head into the wind - small flex regarding our sailing ability there!) and headed for home.
My nights awake planning for every possible disaster I could ever imagine equipped us well, admittedly I was expecting complete battery loss from a lightning strike but hey, a plan's a plan! This plan included a hand-held satellite phone in the emergency grab bag which was duly commissioned to call our shore team (AKA my sister) who was tasked with contacting our OceanVolt rep. Wayne. 2.5 hours later, with cooled down batteries, he talked us through a hard reset on the battery management system - eh voila, we had power again. No need to embarassingly call for a tow into port.
So here we sit in Falmouth once more, waiting to get the parts to fit a battery coolant system having learned many more lessons, like how to make bread using a solar oven. Embarrassing and frustrating? Absolutely, but hey, 100% worth it, if just for that magical night with Melina!
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