Boom Crack

We got our long-awaited weather window to leave Baiona, Spain.  The forecasters made all sorts of promises that they didn't end up keeping, but we're used to that by now, and the important thing was that it seemed unlikely that we would take a bashing from a storm.

In the late afternoon on Tuesday 29th October, we left our anchorage that had sheltered us so well from some truly horrendous weather and headed back out into the Atlantic swell, leaving the British yacht Moonshine all alone in a now rather spacious anchorage.  We hope to cross paths with Moonshine again as Warren and Faye are lovely, interesting people who have a similar outlook to us and they are also a bottomless pit of experience and advice.

We've been slowly gathering some experience of our own along the way.  Gone are the days of turning the engine on to leave an anchorage.  Things were going a little too well, however, as we smugly sailed away from anchor.  It didn't take long for the ocean to pull a few trump cards from up its sleeve to play against us.

Kate's big catch

As soon as we got outside the shelter of the harbour wall, the swell really picked up.  We had delayed our departure by a day due to the swell predictions and were glad we had given it some time to calm down.  Although not especially dangerous, the large waves did make our departure incredibly uncomfortable.  Along with the physical discomfort of being thrown around all over the place, the main problem that we have is that if the wind isn't very strong, as Firebird rolls over the top of a large wave, the mast moves away from the wind faster than the wind is blowing, so the sails momentarily empty.  As she reaches the end of the 'away' roll and starts coming back the other way, towards the wind, the sails fill with the force of the wind plus the apparent wind generated by rolling and the sails can bang full with a great deal of gusto.  This creates a lot of noise and is almost certainly not good for the sails or rigging, so we have to sail in undesirable directions to minimise the effect.

While trying to deal with our sails banging backwards and forwards, we were forced, like unwilling fat kids at summer camp, to play a game of British Bulldog against a large percentage of the Spanish fishing fleet that had decided to line up across the entire width of the bay we were leaving.  The light was failing for the evening and we were heading into the wind, which made our choice of direction limited.  On top of this, most of the small fishing boats seemed to consider nav lights to be optional extras, or maybe they think they're only for use at Christmas time.  Stupid fishing boats.  Thanks to Mr Craddock, my nautical studies teacher, who used to make us sail all sorts of zigzag courses through buoys when sailing dinghies down at the docks on Wednesday afternoons at school, we made it through the fisherman obstacle course and safely out to sea.

Well, 'safely' is used loosely here.  The gaps that the fishermen left were mainly in the areas behind which there were shallow patches, generating huge stretches of breaking waves, so next up was a gauntlet through these treacherous waters.  It was halfway through this lot that we found out what Boom Crack is.  Kate has seen a sailing book by this title, but wasn't sure what it was about.  I was about to find out, or at least come up with a convincing theory for the name.

Ainsley Mitchell at work

I was sitting at the helm, straining my eyes against the darkness, looking for telltale white patches of  the breakers.  This is usually one of the safer places to be on the boat, nicely out of the way and protected in the cockpit, but not today.  Out of nowhere BAM!  My head feels like I've just made the mistake of insulting Mike Tyson's mum to his face, but I can't understand why.  I can barely hold onto the tiller as I sway around the cockpit like an adolescent with a bellyful of Stella on a Friday night.  The next thing I know, Kate's next to me in an absolute flood of tears.  She thinks she's killed me, you see, but I still don't know what planet I'm on as I vaguely wonder what the nicely varnished piece of hardwood that I'm holding is for.

What happened is that Kate was trying to re-tension the topping lift, which is the line that runs from the top of the mast to the end of the boom, to prevent it from succumbing to the inevitability of gravity's pull in the absence of the mainsail being set.  She didn't realise that the main sheet was on really tightly, which was pulling the boom down, so as she uncleated the topping lift, it sprung out of her hand and the boom, along with the weight of the flaked mainsail on top of it, came crashing down, aimed with laser-guided precision for the top of my head.

Not long term damaged seems to have been happened to me, so nevertheless I think it no problem in the end.  As my dad would no doubt say, you never know, it might have knocked some sense into me.

The rest of the trip was the usual mixture of putting sails up, watching sails flap about in light winds, taking sails down, motoring, repeat.  So much for the three days of northerly winds that we were supposed to have.

Fish & chips.  Yummy

Kate did really well with her fishing and netted a bumper load of five huge mackerel, which we barbecued on our arrival at Cascais.  We even treated ourselves to home made chips.  It felt really good to have made it all the way to Portugal and the temperature continues to rise as we make our way south.

Our anchorage at Cascais, Portugal