19/10/2019
So here are were, back out at sea, continuing the journey west. Our plan was to make a strait shot for Gibraltar - a journey of around 550 nautical miles, which should take us around 3 days. It would be the longest passage we’d done since our July crossing from Lisbon to Ibiza. We were ready for it. As amazing as the Med has been to us, we were both getting anxious about having left the crossing to Gib and then onto Tenerife so late in the season, as we were now brushing up against the latter end of the recommended window. So we’d be skipping mainland Spain and just gunning it for Gib to pick up some duty-free fuel before heading on down the west coast of Africa.
Unfortunately, the wind for the next 2-3 days seemed to be coming from exactly the direction in which we were headed, which put us solidly in the “no go zone.” The angle was not sailable, unless we wanted to spend the next week+ tacking our asses off. We had no time (or patience) for that, so time to fire up the engine. It’s just the nature of sailing in the Med where wind conditions are so notoriously changeable that if you are in any way sailing to a schedule, you will inevitably spend a decent amount of time motor-sailing, or in our case today, just straight motoring, as we fought our way dead upwind. As we watched Ibiza grow smaller and smaller in the background, I felt a mix of melancholy in knowing our summer in the Med was officially over, and also nerves about the challenges ahead. Looking at the expected wind and sea state for our crossing to the Canaries gave me a bit of a pit in my stomach. The condition looked intimidating, especially the sea state, as we will have left the relative safety of the Med and be out in the Atlantic Ocean. It has to be done though - and we now have 3 days of passage-making to get in the zone.
The first day and night of the passage were relatively uneventful. The sea state started to pick up pretty aggressively at night however, and we found ourselves pitching nose-first into waves, which is not pleasant and puts a lot of stress on the boat. We had the engine in overdrive, which is an orientation that allows the boat to go quicker at lower revs, maximising both speed and fuel efficiency. We weren’t sure however if these choppy conditions were appropriate for overdrive, as it’s really intended for calm conditions. We had so many miles to cover however, we were reluctant to slow our forward progress from 7 knots to around 5.5 or so by gearing out of overdrive. There seemed to be a bit of current against us too, making us further loathe to intentionally slow down. This was perhaps shaping up to be a long and laborious passage. I was on watch the following late afternoon, by which point we had made it pretty close to mainland Spain and were making progress towards the southeast edge where we would turn and follow the Costa del Sol all the way to Gibraltar. I was settling into my watch when Stephen came on deck, soaked and visibly shaken. “We have a problem,” he said. Always words you want to hear when out at sea! He took me below deck to the forward cabin, where I saw reams of water gushing into the boat from above. It seemed the seal from the forward hatch had failed and there was now a small gap in between the closed hatch and the ceiling. This was particularly problematic as we were crashing headfirst into big waves. Every time Florence pitched forward, what felt like an avalanche of water came gushing down into the boat. It felt like a scene out of The Posiedon Adventure. I had a bit of a freak out, as I didn’t know what to do and was getting drenched at regular intervals as I futilely threw towels onto the bunk that immediately became soaked. Stephen came back with some epoxy he had found in our spares drawer and told me to take the helm to try to steer us away from the waves in order to give him time to plug the gap. I did my best to stay calm and to steer in a way that had the waves hitting us side-on rather than nose first. Stephen was able to epoxy the gap in a matter of minutes, and the water ingress stopped. I put the autopilot back on, and we both sat down to take some deep breaths. Crisis averted. It’s crazy how something seemingly minor like a failed seal on a hatch can become dire in the wrong conditions. We would have to get the seal replaced in Tenerfife, which should be simple enough, but for now it seemed the epoxy was doing a good job of keeping water out even in these rough conditions.
Rattled but determined to keep going, we prepared for the night watch. Still reeling from the afternoon’s scare, I didn’t sleep much during my off watch from 10-2. At 2 AM, I took over and settled in for what I hoped would be an easy watch. We had rounded the southeastern tip of Spain and were making headway along Spain’s southern coast. We were still motoring, as the wind was still coming from directly ahead, but the engine seemed to be doing OK. The sea state seemed to have calmed a bit, so I wasn’t as worried about the overdrive issue. That is until we slammed nose-first into a huge wave, and I immediately felt something in the engine shudder. Florence seemed to lose speed almost instantaneously. On deck I was met with a pungent acrid smell, like something burning. I took a look at the engine gauge and saw that the engine revs were jumping all over the place, despite me not touching the throttle. What was happening?? I got Stephen on deck. He could smell the burning too. We feared we had perhaps been mistaken in keeping the boat in overdrive in these seas and that in doing so, we might have shot the gear box or something dreadful like that. The engine was sputtering uncomfortably until it just stopped altogether. This was not good. We tried not to panic. Stephen checked the engine room, where nothing immediate seemed off. We held our breath and started the engine again. It croaked to life, though didn’t sound right at all, and after about 3 minutes of choking, it again died a death. Shit. It was the middle of the night, pitch black, and our engine had failed. What on earth were we supposed to do now? We checked the fuel gauge, which told us we should still have about 200 litres of fuel in the tank we were feeding off. There was now way we could continue on to Gibraltar without an engine, so we needed to find a place to get the boat safe ASAP. We had learned in our RYA training that engine failure qualifies as a May Day disaster alert, or a Pan Pan at least. We scoured the chart for the closet port. Malaga was the closest, though given the wind angle, we couldn’t sail there. The next port along was a place called Torremolinos, which looked to be just about sailable for us if the wind didn’t shift. So we set the sails and headed towards the port at a slow pace of about 3 knots, which hopefully would give us enough time to figure out what to do. We weighed our options. We could sail the boat as close as possible to shore and try to anchor in the dark, just praying the wind didn’t shift or pick up. We surveyed the land off the marina area, and while it looked as if it might be possible to anchor, the coast was strewn with a number of dangerous underwater wrecks, the exact locations and soundings of which were not very clear. It seemed a big gamble to try to anchor in the dark without use of the engine and only the tiniest amount of breeze in an area with a number of nebulously-marked shipwrecks. And we couldn’t enter the marina without the use of our engine. Should we call a Pan Pan and see if we could get a coastguard resue? It seemed drastic, but objectively our situation seemed to call for drastic measures. We couldn’t believe we were actually doing this - every time I hear a Pan Pan distress call on the radio, I tend to think, "Those poor dudes, thank god I’m not in that situation!" Now it was our turn.
We picked up the VHF and sent the distress message: "Pan Pan, Pan Pan, Pan Pan, All Ships All Ships, All Ships. This is Florence, Florence, Florence." (I’m glad we had paid attention in our VHF marine radio course). We had to call twice before Malaga maritime radio responded and relayed us to Tarifa Traffic radio, a station just passed Gibraltar. After we explained our situation, the woman answering the distress asked if we wanted a tow to the closest marina. We asked the price, which she said would be EUR900/hour and that the charge would start from moment the rescue boat left its home port and continue until they returned back. Hmmm. OK, maybe anchoring under sail amongst a bunch of sunken ships wasn’t the worst idea… We said we’d think about it. We were seriously considering taking our chances with anchoring as we approached the coast, when they called back to say they had gotten the price wrong, and it was actually only EUR350 an hour. Well, that makes quite a difference. We did a quick cost/benefit analysis and figured risking fouling our boat on a dangerous wreck in the middle of the night was not worth saving a few hundred euros. Alternatively, albeit for a price, we could be towed into a marina where we knew the boat would be safe and from there would be in a good position to find an engine professional to come out and assess our problem. So we made the call and told them to send the rescue boat.
We slowed Florence's forward progress down to a crawl, as we were only about a mile or so outside of the marina, and we waited. We still had about 2 hours of darkness before the sun would rise. About 45 minutes later, the rescue boat arrived. It was large, orange, and created an intimidating amount of wake. This was around 6 AM, and Stephen and I were bleary-eyed from our stressful all-nighter. The rescue it seemed would involve a tow. No one on the rescue crew really seemed to speak English, so there was a lot of eggagerated gesticulating as we tried to figure out what they needed us to do. They threw us a couple of massive tow lines. As they were doing so, Stephen and I rememebred that maritime salvage law dictates that if someone offers you a line to tow your vessel in a rescue, legally they are entitled to take full ownership of your vessel. As ridiculous as this law seems, it’s a real thing, so before we grabbed the lines, we tried to ask if salvage law applied in this situation. They didn't understand. Given that this was a professional rescue boat that charged an hourly fee, we saw it as unlikely salvage law would apply, so we took the gamble and attached the lines to our bow cleats. They began towing us towards the marina, which was a very loud and bumpy affair. Once at the south of the marina, they rafted up alongside us and towed us in the rest of the way, using the world's largest fenders to prevent contact between our two hulls. I felt somewhat superfluous holding our relatively tiny fenders between the impact points, but anything I could do to protect the boat! The rescue fender dudes seemed to sometimes slip into a daydream and not notice that one of their behemoth fenders had popped lose, so I took on the responsibility of periodically clapping my hands and bringing them back to attention. The sky was just beginning to lighten as we rounded the jetty into the marina. For lack of a better place to put us, the rescue boat deposited us alongside the fuel pontoon right at the marina entrance. We passed our lines over their boat, and when they slipped out, we tightened ours so Florence eventually sat flush against the pontoon. We were safe. After settling up with the rescue boat and speaking with the marina, Stephen and I just sat in the cockpit and stared into space, both ash-white and completely spent. That had to have been up there with one of the worst nights of my life.
It was technically breakfast time, although after that white night of hell, all I wanted was a drink. Coffee would have to do for now. We wasted no time getting on the phone with a Yanmar professional located a town away who said he could be with us first thing the following morning to try to diagnose our problem. We both mentally prepared for an involved and costly fix. Were already under a time crunch, as we had intended to get to Gib the following day before beginning the 5-day crossing to Tenerife early the following day, hopefully making it to Tenerife in time to see Stephen’s bother and his family who had booked a holiday in hopes of overlapping with us. Given this latest setback, that plan wasn’t looking good. Too shaken to sleep and frankly just wanting to get off the bloody boat, we decided a bit of a walk and some food might do us good. So we stumbled ashore to see what this town of Torremolinos was all about.
Now I don’t mean to be unkind, but if you are looking for Dante's Seventh Circle of Hell, look no further than Torremolinos. The town has taken what would otherwise be a nice stretch of beach on the southern Spanish coast and turned it into an amusement park of the gaudy and cheap. Walking along the promenade felt a bit like being in a bad dream - every storefront or restaurant was something awful like Tex-Mex Ted’s Wild Steakhouse Supreme or Paddy McWilly O’Shanihan’s House of Booze - "Serving EUR1 pints and Full English Breakfast All Day Every Day!" Clearly, this was not the place to come for authentic Spanish culture. Let’s not forget the large waterfront emporium we walked passed called Prison Island that seemed to feature a wide selection of strip clubs (“Live American Nudes!”) and all-you-can-eat Chinese buffets, with 3-for-1 specials on tropical drinks. You know a place is classy when they have plastic replicas of the drinks they serve on display outside the joint. Wow, this place was grim. Stephen resisted the urge to suggest I might apply for a job at one of the strip clubs featuring said Live American Nudes to help pay for our engine repair, which I thought was considerate.
After walking back and forth for a while, hunger and exhaustion defeated us and we settled on a place called the Curry Leaf that specialised in Indian, Mexican and Italian cuisine. How versatile! The meal went over a bit like cold sick. I can’t say I would recommend making this place a must-visit if you find yourself on the south coast of Spain. Post lunch, we walked in the other direction and did find a nice stretch of beach. As long as you ignore all the gaudy establishments, the beachfront of the town is actually lovely. Feeling a bit ill from our Indian/Mexican/Italian mistake, we went back to Florence and passed out. Tomorrow, the engine dude would arrive at 9 am to deliver our fate.
The Yanmar man showed up on time, and we quickly explained the issue of the engine failure the prior night and showed him the engine room. He asked us to start the engine for him, which we did. It sprung to life, then died about 30 seconds later. We left him to fiddle around back there for a while. I prepared myself for bad news - something like a shot gear box that would entail a costly and lengthy fix. He peered into the saloon a few minutes later and said, “This may be a stupid question, but do you have any fuel?” Umm, we think so? We showed him the fuel gauge, which indicated our 600-litre tank was about 1/3 full. “Never thrust those things,” he said. He told us there was a lot of air in the engine, indicating that the engine was sucking in just air and that no fuel was making it to the engine. He guessed either the tank was dry or something was blocking the fuel feed. We lifted the floorboard to give him access to our fuel tank. He did a dipstick test, which came up compeltely clean. The tank was apparently empty. What? How could our fuel gauge be that off? After bleeding the engine of air, we swtiched the feed to another tank that was showing 3/4 full, and sure enough, the engine roared to life immediately, sounding completely normal. Stephen and I looked at our technician and at each other with a mixture of relief and utter embarassment. So it appears there was nothing wrong with the engine afterall. We felt a huge sense of relief that we hadn’t somehow damaged the engine, but also regret at having gone through that painful, expensive and ultimately unnecessary ordeal. How were we to know the fuel gauge on that tank was so far off? We usually keep that tank as a reserve and have rarely used it. I suppose if we had been thinking more clearly at the time of the engine failure and had done a thorough diagnosis of the potential issues before calling in a Pan Pan, we might have tried changing tanks, but again - how were we to know? It was embarrassing nonetheless. Live and learn, I suppose. 6 months in, we are still getting to know Flo and some of her idiosyncracies. This is one mistake we would not be making again.
Still both frazzled from what had thus far been the passage from hell, we didn’t have time to linger and recoup. Also I think we were both read to get far away from Torremolinos. We need to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps, try to brush off the mishaps of the passed 48 hours, and just keep soldiering on. If we left the following morning first thing for Gibraltar, we would make it there before sunset and be able to have hopefully one night’s solid rest before starting the journey to the Canaries. If we waited another day, we would miss our weather window and would likely be delayed by another week, at which point we would certainly miss Stephen’s family. So, no choice but to sally forth. I have noticed over the course of this trip that our recovery time from setbacks is getting ever quicker. It seems sometimes being short of memory and long fortitude comes in handy in boat life.
The following morning after a very deep sleep, we were up early and preparing to continue our thus far ill-fated journey. As we were already tied to the fuel pontoon, we took the opportunity to fill our tanks (surprise, surprise, the 600-litre one was indeed empty), and departed from lovely Torremolinos. Flo’s eginine is purring encouragingly. It should be about 15 hours to Gibraltar, where we will anchor for the night in the large bay before undertaking our most difficult passage yet through the Strait of Gibraltar and down the coast of Africa to the Canary Islands - a journey of roughly 750 nautical miles. And so the journey continues…