Our original dinghy is still, we believe, somewhere in a Charles de Gaulles bonded warehouse. Sniffer dogs are trying to decide if it smells of cocaine or rubber. A douanier is wondering if there are any ham sandwiches hidden on it.
And so, we now awaited the coming of our second dinghy. Rumours abounded that SAS in Canet (who fitted out the boat) had not only received the dinghy, but checked it and sent it down to Port Ginesta. But no-one could tell us the courier, or a tracking number. Given that it is two-and-a-half-hours between Canet and Port Ginesta, we should just have asked my sister and her husband to drive it down for us.
Thursday morning, I emailed SAS. Very politely, I asked if they knew when we might get it, as our weather window was running out to get to Sardinia. I sent the email to the lovely Maria, but her husband Pascal, who runs the Canet part of the organisation, emailed me back and said (in French) "I don’t know, but you were welcome to leave without it." [Ed, you can sense the Gallic shrug] We’ve said before that customer service is not part of their mission statement. Nevertheless, we hoped it would arrive on that Thursday, and went into Castelldefens to get antigen tests for entry into Italy, as they do not accept the NHS vaccine app.
We got a call at 13.40 from the harbour office, our dinghy had arrived. We rushed around to retrieve it before they closed for lunch at two, then finalised preparation for our departure to Sardinia. We stopped for fuel, and then called Sari and Thorne, as they wanted to see us depart on the marina webcam. Finally, we bobbed out of the marina, waving frantically to them, and thus into the Mediterranean Sea.
We had very little wind, out of choice as we wanted a smooth, easy crossing. The journey was estimated to take 48 hours, which meant that we would operate a watch system overnight while the other slept. I volunteered to do 10pm – 1am, and 4am – 7am as it would be getting light during the second watch. Richard had the tough 1am – 4am slot.
I must admit, I didn’t want to be on board on the overnight crossings. The plan was that we would have friends join us, and some would help crew on the overnight sections. We had had a long 20-hour journey down from Canet to Port Ginesta on quite a rolling sea, and I was shattered by the end of it.
Richard has done quite a few yacht deliveries, when he was a sailing instructor, and loves the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere. But not me. We therefore agreed we would get a professional skipper to travel with Richard to Sardinia, while I would fly the delights of Ryanair from Barcelona.
But it wasn’t to be. Friends could easily enter Spain but would have to quarantine for 5 days on entry to Sardinia. And all contacts and enquiries for professional skippers came up blank; everyone was away leading charters to the Balearics. So, I said I would do it, as long as we had a good weather window.
Thursday afternoon was lovely; we saw dolphins, we read, we chatted. Then Richard went below at 10pm to sleep, while I took first watch. The lights of Barcelona stayed with me for hours, it was comforting to see land. Our electronic navigation system, B&G Zeus, allows us to see other boats around us on a screen, based on their AIS number (Automated Identification System), assuming they have one. All large vessels must have an AIS number, whereas sailing yachts can choose whether or not to. We have one for Missy Bear, and transmit the number wherever we are. If you want to track where we are, look us up on a website such as Marine Traffic.
On my first watch, I could see lights behind - a yacht was approaching us. One of the fields on the Zeus system described it as “Dangerous”. Whut?? My imagination ran riot – could it be a vessel that had been involved in piracy and they were now coming for us? Anyway, I called Richard in case we needed to take evasive action. By that I mean change course rather than sharpen the cutlasses ready. During his shift, he looked into the term 'dangerous', and discovered it meant we might be on a collision path, whereas if the field said 'safe', then we were fine. You can customise the parameters so dangerous could be a distance of e.g., 500m, 1km, 2km etc.
The night passed without incident, and Friday started well with more dolphins. We took turns to have a sleep, talked, and listened to a few episodes of the inimitable John Finniemore’s Cabin Pressure. If you have never listened to this, check it out on Radio 4 Extra, it is so funny.
The only issue niggling us was that we seemed to be using fuel very quickly, much faster than Richard is used to on long passages. The tank gauge had dropped from 60% to 50% so suddenly. We had a little wind and sailed for a while, rather than motor sailing. But soon, the wind dropped again and we put the engine back on. We needed to keep to our timetable of getting to Sardinia mid afternoon as there were very strong winds forecast for Saturday night.
Friday night came and went. I check for lights every 5 minutes or so (I’m over-cautious) – I look down both sides of the yacht, and peer behind, plus check the AIS screen. That’s when I noticed we appear to have changed course. Eeek. I called Richard up. Apparently, I had put the autohelm off, and the wind had put the boat on another course. It’s quite easy to do, and R had done it twice on the way to Port Ginesta. He reset it, and went back to bed.
At 7am, I went down to wake him up, and put the kettle on to make tea. There was a funny smell – it was a bit “boaty”, like a well-used charter boat. I sniffed in the main heads – no, not there. Richard emerged and said he could smell it too, and said it was strong sulphur (hence the reason I had checked the heads). It turned out to be the starter battery for the engine had overheated.
Richard’s blog covers it from a factual perspective but it was rather worrying. We turned the engine off, but the battery immediately dropped in power (13.2v, 13.1 and down to 12,6v) and he was concerned that if he didn't act, he wouldn’t be able to start it again. We let it cool for 10 minutes, and decided to get it going again.
Fortunately, we now had 3G from Sardinia, so Richard contacted our agents (in Scotland) to discuss options. He deciced to swap one of the domestic pack batteries (lights, fridge etc) for the engine battery. But – we had no tools on board, as we had been unable to buy a tool box set in Port Ginesta, and had planned to buy one in Alghero.
By this time, the battery is beginning to ooze acid. Richard decided to use his Leatherman (basically, a posh Swiss Army knife). Amazingly, he succeeds in swapping the batteries, but it was a lengthy operation. We didn’t know if the battery could catch fire, so we had nearby fire extinguishers at the ready. Plus, we had our lifejackets up in the cockpit, together with our EPIRB and hand-radio: if we had to get into the lifeboat, we had our lifejackets, could radio a mayday, and the EPIRB transmits our location via satellite.
We crossed our fingers as he tried to start the engine on the new battery. It worked!! We put the gas back on, made coffee, and let the adrenaline subside. Another episode of Cabin Pressure calms us down. A few hours later, we chug gently into Alghero, with the dud battery on the cockpit floor in one of those damn France Equipe bags from Intermarche.
We are now safely tied up in Alghero, and have an electrician coming to the boat in the morning. We already know that at least one of the batteries supplied with the boat had a problem holding charge and had to be changed. We were told it was a problem with two batteries, but the wonderful Pascal told us he’d changed one. So what happened to the other? (we have 5 batteries on board). It might not be the battery, and could be the alternator, hence the electrician callout.
In case you think we had overdone the motoring. R never went above 2,000 RPM, and he pointed out that on professional yacht deliveries, the skipper will often use the engine non-stop to meet their deadlines. Apparently they can easily put over 1,000 engine hours on an engine in a week's delivery. So our little 48 hours should have been nothing. We have since heard other horror stories of this happening, and Sunbird even said that Beneteau may need to check serial numbers and issue a battery recall!
I have to say, I was absolutely bowled over by the way Richard went about it, and got us safely to Alghero. I was very impressed. [Ed, and no, I didn't make her write that!] But we will still try and find crew to help with the overnight trip to Sicily, while I look up ferry timetables. It’s that dark cockpit you see. 😉.