An Update:
We left Barcelona on December 10. We thought that we were en route to Marbella, near Gibraltar, to fuel up one more time to get out through the Strait and then on across the Atlantic. That has turned out to not be the case. Historic weather, some unknown faults in the boat, and God’s plan for us have all determined that we are doing something different than we planned. Semper Gumby (always flexible) is one of our family credos, so Gumby we shall be.
The first storm was on the 11th. We encountered it just off the coast of Spain, about twenty miles from Barcelona. The kids were horribly sea sick as a result of heavy seas. Our motor overheated and died as a large wave came in and broke our steering linkage where it was attached to the port rudder. We deployed our Drogue, which kept us ahull to the waves that were between 2 and 3 meters high. On the 12th, the wind and waves calmed just enough for Alex to effect a temporary repair. We then motored North to avoid the land becoming uncomfortably close. We had changed our destination to Mallorca, as that was the direction we were now heading. We motored away from land though to gain more sea room, as more storm activity was forecast. We wanted sea room in case anything else went wrong with our steering. It turns out that was the exact right decision. At ten o’clock that night, we woke from an exhaustion-compelled nap to discover that the linkage on our starboard rudder was now broken. My terse journal entry at the time: “Awoke to find the starboard steering gear snapped. Will fix it tomorrow. On the storm anchor. Going back to bed.”
Alex fixed the new damage by lashing the tillers to the rudders with line. By three o’clock in the morning on the 13th, the steering linkage had snapped in another spot. We were discovering by now that the steering on the boat was going to need to be completely redone. How it had worked up to this point when the boat was sailed previously is still a mystery to us. We spent the 13th (yes, FRIDAY the 13th) riding out the worst of the storm, completely adrift at this point. We had taken at least one large wave over the entire cabin top and our berth was swamped. Several smaller waves were still large enough to be very intimidating, and we were pitched around several times before we just pulled a mattress up and set it on the floor in the middle of the saloon. We had a slumber party of sorts while waiting for the storm to pass. We rolled from port to starboard and starboard to port while staying reasonably warm and dry in the saloon. We watched movies and talked, comforting each other and trying one and all to be brave. This new life would clearly take some adjustment.
We managed that night to eat for the first time since the storm had come up, some egg drop soup. We felt better. The sea state had calmed a bit and the winds were down to 25-40 knots instead of 50+.
On the 14th, we rested and recovered some as the winds and sea continued to calm. I wrote, “So we’ve made it through our first storm story...over Friday the 13th no less. We cuddled, we barfed, it was wacky fun.” We watched Labyrinth and continued to drift.
We spent the 15th making repairs and planning our attack. Alex repaired the steering linkage to the best of his ability and worked up several spare parts in case of further breakage. We updated friends and family on our progress, and then rested. The wind generator dropped some vital bits of itself into the deep, so Alex secured the blades to be repaired later at anchor.
We got underway for the first time in days at 0130 on the 16th. We were hoping to make it to a bay on the Northeast corner of Mallorca before sunset. The going was slow, as the wind was coming from exactly the direction we needed to go. We sailed close hauled with the steering breaking twice more and Alex fixing it with the spare parts he had worked up. We were exhausted and ragged, every one of us by now too tired to even be really scared anymore. We sailed all day and all night, then into the 17th. By 0900 on the 17th, we were still 24 nautical miles from our goal.
We made it into the bay at Port Pollenca just before midnight on the 18th. We dropped anchor for the first time ever in the dark, and it was good. We were safe. We were still. We were exhausted. The bay was beautiful and still, with several boats moored out in front of us. We slept like we had lapsed into comas after we finished gabbing like magpies about our amazing trip and deliverance from disaster. When we got up at about 1030 in the morning I made a huge breakfast of potatoes, cabbage, and cheesy scrambled eggs that was inhaled by a crew that was happy to finally WANT to eat. We spent the day mostly resting and recovering. Little did we know that it was not to last—this peaceful easy anchored time.
The wind started really going for it again on the 20th. It was blowing 20-30 knots, not overly impressive, but from such a direction as to cause the peaceful bay to fill with rolling waves. Alex took a fall through the anchor hole in the dark after securing our dinghy, landing on the anchor roller solidly with his hip. He was bruised, but miraculously unbroken. The 21st was beautiful and still again during the first part of the day. That night, the wind kicked up in a storm that the locals say was the worst of its kind for at least the last ten years. We held anchor (we had two out by this time) until about 7pm. Then we started dragging badly, directly heading for the shore and another catamaran that was anchored between us and Punta Avuncada. We tried to raise help on the radio only to discover that it was no longer working. We summoned assistance from the Spanish coast guard finally with our Garmin GPS device. Approximately 200 feet remained between us and the anchored catamaran that we were heading directly for when the tow boat arrived. They pulled alongside us in choppy, chaotic seas and high winds that were blowing at 60-70 knots.
This is when we discovered that our cleats were not properly braced to the deck. The tow boat had lines attached to four cleats on our port side. When Alex cut our anchor rope, it was like an explosion went off and we suddenly had holes in the boat where the cleats had been. They were attached by only a single layer of plywood, with no reinforcement whatsoever. We had a hole also in the forward berth where the tow boat’s anchor struck as they came alongside. We were towed in by a single cleat on our port stern, a bumpy and stressful four-hour struggle in to the marina pier. We tied up alongside the Port Pollenca pier in the early morning hours on the 22nd. We were grateful to the crew of the tow boat and grateful that the damage was not much worse—which it would definitely have been if we had run aground or collided with the other catamaran.
Christmas and New Year’s were spent getting acquainted with the area and getting to know our neighbors here in the bay. We met some wonderful and helpful people—a new tribe! We attended Christmas Eve services at the old church in Pollenca. We did not understand a word that was spoken hardly, but we absorbed the peace and beauty of the service and the Church and its members all the same. Alex and Cooper recovered our anchor on the 30th with our neighbor, Raimund’s, help. We had Raimund and another neighbor, Flaty, over for New Year’s Eve. We ate, we laughed and played some music. It was grand. The next couple of weeks we spent adjusting to island life, and enjoyed settling in to a new pace and way of life.
The third storm began on Cooper’s 14th birthday, January 19th. It was fairly mild at first, then picked up a little more on the 20th, then became crazy on the 21st. The wind was from the East, with the bay and its topography offering little protection from both the wind as it reached about 45-50 knots and the waves. The violent rolling action of the waves caused many boats to break loose from their moorings. We kept watch all night from the 20th into the 21st, constantly checking our own mooring. At about 0545 on the morning of the 21st, the first boat that we saw broken loose drifted past our bow, a white ghost with a ragged sail flapping uselessly in the wind. One more boat passed us on its way to the beach just a little while later, then at about 1230 in the afternoon, as we were watching a neighbor’s boat break free from its mooring, we were struck hard by a heavy motor yacht, “Tala Yaut”, hard on the bow. The impact was hardest on our port side, where our prow is now split open. The impact knocked us mooring and all into the boats behind us. The heaviest boat behind us, a big steel vessel named Lunar, got fouled between our rudder and transom with her mooring lines. When we broke free, she kept our rudder for us and we gained a gaping hole above the waterline and a small one below the waterline.
Alex recovered our rudder the next day and we were dismayed to find a bit of wood rot in the skeg. The stress of the storm had a negative impact on my cardiac health for a couple of days. We discussed everything thoroughly and decided that we can not afford the expense of hauling the boat out and putting her on the hard in a foreign country and still be able to fix her. We had a frank discussion with the kids, and it turns out that Hannah is not crazy about the liveaboard lifestyle. Her happiness matters to us, everyone’s safety matters, and so we have decided to sell the boat as she is and go back to the States.
We still want to sail. Alex and I love it and both kids like it and are good at it. We just have to take a more conservative approach to it in the future, maybe on a smaller boat. This chapter closes, but the next is already being written. Our neighbor here in the bay, a fascinating fellow named Giacomo, is a wooden boat enthusiast who has always dreamed of Wharrams. He is taking the boat over faults and all with the intention of fixing her properly. She is perhaps destined to then become a teaching boat of sorts. He has also told us that there will always be room on her for us, which we are very happy to hear. Giacomo (check him out on Facebook at a page called Man on the Snow, or his website, www.bewater.info) is passionate about saving this beautiful planet of ours one human being at a time.
It is friends like him and the many other wonderful people whom we have met and who have helped us so kindly and without hesitation that are the real treasure of our story. We do hope sincerely to be back this way in the future, and to count them as friends for the rest of our lives.
So it is with a mixed bag of emotions that we say goodbye soon to Mallorca. It is sad and we will miss our boat, 2Imagine (she was going to become Honu Shasu once we got her back to the States). We felt so at home so fast on her. We will miss the wonderful people here. We will miss the warmth of the Mediterranean. On the other hand, however, we have had the adventure of a lifetime. We have learned volumes about ourselves and this world we live in. We have done things that many people never even get the chance to experience, and we are better for it. Most importantly, we are still healthy and happy people and even closer as a family than we were before this incredible shared experience. It is with gratitude and more happy than sad, then, that we close the book on this particular journey as we look eagerly towards the next.
Stay tuned.
