Sink or Swim

According to Mr Google, the definition of irony is “the expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite….”. 

It was midnight and, as we fell into bed after another full and exhausting day, I said to Steve, “This was a good day…… nothing went wrong”.   Ten minutes later all that changed.   But I’ll come to that in a bit, first let me set the scene!

With the autopilot drive unit repaired, returned and installed, we were on track to leave Gosport on Friday 10 July.   We said farewell to our Australian friends, Mike and Nicki who had been living on their boat for ten years and were a mine of information and useful advice.  

We set off early and sailed around the southern side of The Isle of Wight enjoying the westerly winds as we unfurled the genoa and staysail, making a lovely eight knots as we sped to the south easterly headland.  The smile on my face was making my cheeks sore as we cut through the sea and let Cerulean take us for a lovely ride in 15knots of wind on the beam (side of the boat).   She loves this wind angle and makes excellent speed giving us a really comfortable ride.   We passed The Needles and the wind dropped so we turned on the engine and headed towards Poole.   We could see the coast of France to the south with large cruise ships anchored in the mist.   As we approached Bournemouth another three cruise ships were mothballed off the coast.

We anchored in Studland Bay – a beautiful bay sheltered from the westerly winds – with a lovely sandy beach and a very popular spot for Solent based sailors.   We decided to stay for two nights and allow the stress of the last few weeks be washed away…..!   A friend from Cambridge, David Baxter, came to visit us and we enjoyed a very chilled afternoon on the boat and in the local pub overlooking the bay.

The next few days we continued to head west – Warbarrow Bay, where we listened to a man calling the Coastguard after loosing a finger in his anchor winch, rounding the treacherous Portland Bill with strong currents spitting us out the other side of the headland at a rate of over 10knots, a wonderful sail to Beer only to find the swell too much to comfortably anchor so continued to Brixham in Torbay.  

We stayed a couple of nights in Brixham before continuing west and after a short sail, we saw the headland of Dartmouth with twin castles guarding each side of the river entrance.  It was wonderful to approach this lovely town from the sea and get a feel for what it must’ve been like when the castles were built in the 1400’s to protect this picture postcard town.  A chain used to be slung across the river mouth from one castle to the other to protect it from naval attacks.

We made our way up the river and berthed at a floating pontoon overlooking Dartmouth on the Kingswear side of the river.   There were a number of other boats sharing the pontoon and we soon created a lovely community, enjoying each others company and sharing stories, boat problems and plans. 

After spending the day exploring Dartmouth we returned to the boat and spent a lovely evening boat hopping and saying goodbye as we intended to leave early the next morning to continue our journey west.   We returned to the boat and finished our passage plan, entering our intended course in the chart plotter.  Feeling tired, we fell into bed and it was then that I said those immortal words…. “Today has been a good day….”  Which brings me to the aforementioned irony……

We were both drifting off to sleep when we heard a strange noise.  When you hear a strange noise at night on a boat, you are immediately alert and awake.   Steve jumped out of bed and I said, “I think it’s just a boat going passed…”  I was wrong for the second time in less than 15 minutes!   It didn’t take long for Steve to discover the cause of the noise and announce – “It’s not a boat…. We’re taking on water!!”   I was up in a shot to discover not a trickle but a fountain of water spurting up through a hole where one of the through hull fittings had become detached and there was now no barrier between us and the gushing water.   To make it worse, the fitting had not completely detached and, as we were unsure whether, or what, it was attached to on the outside of the boat, breaking it off was not an option, as we could have made the hole bigger.   We keep a large bung beside each through fitting, just in case of failure, but as the fitting was still partially attached, the bung could not be used.    We managed to push the fitting back into place and found that if we held it upright, the main flood of water was stemmed.  We tied this in place and started pumping the water out the boat, fortunately all the water was in the deep bilges and the rest of the boat stayed dry. 

While Steve made sure the temporary repair didn’t move, I called for help.   Within 30 minutes the RNLI arrived with three young guys on board.  They wore helmets and facemasks so when I went out on deck to meet them and one of them said to me as he climbed on board, “Hello, we met earlier…” I had no idea who he was!    On inspecting the damage, they quickly realised that if our temporary repair failed, they didn’t have a pump big enough to keep up with the water in-take so the decision was made to move us to shallower water and close to a haul-out area.   As a back-up, in case we started taking on water again, we waited for a crane on a barge to arrive so they could stop us from sinking, if needed, as the lifeboat towed us to a berth beside the haul out area.   Fortunately the temporary repair held up and they left us at 4am with a large automatic pump in the bilges and suggested we try and get some sleep before the yard opened and would lift Cerulean out the water.  

Less than an hour later, at 5am we were woken from our deep sleep by Ben who organised for us to be hauled out.   Ben got us in the sling and hoisted before any of his team arrived.  He explained they were exceptionally busy and usually had three boats in/out the water before 10am each day.  We were jumping the queue and I think part of him was wondering what the emergency was as we were not taking on a lot of water.   When he raised Cerulean out of the water, we were all shocked to see there was nothing left of the outer skin fitting.  Ben couldn’t believe we had had new seacocks fitted just six weeks earlier and, after a few phone calls, found us electricians and shipwrights who could fix the boat.   By 11am we were back in the water, leaving Ben with a backlog of boats to sort out and schedules to catch up on.  

Two lovely young electricians arrived to do the “quick job” Ben had told them about.   Boats are complicated – sea water can quickly corrode fittings, and boat parts can be made using different types of metal.   To prevent corrosion, boats are fitted with sacrificial zinc anodes which then have electrical contact to ensure the anode gets corroded, not the other metals – don’t ask me how it works, but it does.   Until recently it was thought that seacocks should also be protected in a similar way, with electrical currents earthing them to prevent corrosion.   This is what had been attempted on Cerulean but, instead of earthing them, someone had made them live, sending currents into the fittings and speeding up their deterioration.     It was meant to be a quick fix, but it soon became apparent there were other serious issues with the wiring and finding all the problems was going to take some time.   We spent the day tracing and testing wires while struggling to understand exactly what was going on, what had happened and how we could be certain it wouldn’t happen again while fighting the weight of mental and physical exhaustion.

When the electricians left, with a promise to return after the weekend, we returned to the pontoon we had left in the middle of the night.   Our friends had heard of our rescue and were very happy for us to raft along side them as the weekend had brought an influx of boats to Dartmouth and moorings were limited.   As we pulled up beside one of their boats, they welcomed us back, gently berating us for not waking them to help, and announced there was a big G and T with my name on it!   When we climbed on board their boat, I could feel myself relax for the first time in nearly 24hours.

On hearing about our dramas, my sister Bea and Andy decided to drive from Falmouth to give us some much needed moral support and advice.  Together with my uncle Tom, in Germany, Andy had educated us about Galvanic Isolators, electrolysis, whether or not to ground seacocks and how to ground anodes.   This is essential information for any serious cruiser, but most of these learnings were new to us!   Our additional problem, although not related, but co-incidentally happened at the same time, was our alternator had stopped charging the batteries.   The alternator, like in a car, will replenish the power in all the boat batteries when the engine is running.   As we had been instructed not to plug into shore power until the electricians returned to finish the job, our wind generator was not providing much (if any) power, we were not able to turn on our generator and now the alternator had failed, it meant we had to be really careful with how much power we used over the weekend in order to protect our batteries.     As Andy is an electrical engineer, it was wonderful to have them on board and discuss our problems and possible solutions   They were also our first over night guests and, after four months in the UK, the first time we had seen each other since we arrived.

Bea and Andy’s stay was over all too quickly.  After a quick trip into Dartmouth we moved the boat to a berth in the marina, ready for when the electricians arrived in the morning.   It was a relief to be back near a shower, fresh water and easy access to the chandlery so we could get on with other boat jobs while we waited for the electricians.

Once again the electricians arrived thinking they would finish the job in a few hours but ended up working all day.  They found a lot of wiring mistakes which they corrected but it was finding them that was the issue – they could see there was a fault but had to trace wires and cables to discover where the problem was located and then correct the mistake.   By the end of the day we had a working alternator, new galvanic isolator installed, all seacocks checked and secured and anodes grounded – we were safe and operational again!   A huge relief but an expensive one!

At last, we were able to continue our journey west.   We left early Tuesday morning on high tide and headed up river to the beautiful village of Dittisham for a quick look before the tide turned.  Dittisham was home to Agatha Christie and her lovely little cottage still stands on its own surrounded by woodland on the East side of the river.   It is in a beautiful, quiet and peaceful setting and we will return to explore the area more as it is a very special location.  We loved our time in Dartmouth and met wonderful people who made our extended stay very special and memorable.

As we headed out of Dartmouth, leaving the two castles on the headland behind us, a gentle wind blew behind us and we set our sails for our journey west.