At the end of October, we left Almerimar and headed towards Gibraltar. I began to notice that the fridge did not seem to be working properly, but put it down to incorrect charging on the alternator. The autopilot, which we had affectionately nick-named George (in honour of Forever’s previous owner) had been giving us problems for some time now, frequently breaking down for no apparent reason. We would switch him off for a bit and then later he’d work again.
At Gibraltar we stayed in Queensway marina; the staff were helpful on our arrival, but we met no friendly yachties during our stay. It was amazing to come into this little patch of Englishness in the middle of Spain – the pubs, the food, the language, the shops and supermarkets. There was a lot of strong feeling at the time about the forthcoming elections, with British flags everywhere and vans driving around with loudspeakers exhorting the population to vote NO to being reunited with Spain. We didn’t do much sightseeing and didn’t get to see the Barbary Apes, which I would have liked.
We did our big shop for the Atlantic here, stocking up on tinned food and luxury items like poppadums, mango chutney and English mustard. The variety was fantastic but it was expensive compared to Spain. The duty-free fuel was cheap, so we filled our tanks with diesel.
I had recently read the deeply affecting book ‘Adrift – 76 days at sea’ by the (then) young American sailor Steven Callahan whose boat sank in the Atlantic. He had drifted in his lifeboat for 76 days until he reached the Caribbean. His EPIRB (emergency position-indicating radio beacon) was the old fashioned 121.5 MHz type and it had been activated but no one had responded despite constant requests by his family. He survived (obviously) to tell his harrowing tale but the odds were stacked very highly against him. He wrote that during his long lonely journey across the Atlantic in an extremely uncomfortable life raft, he had actually seen nine ships, some passing quite close by, but he was unable to contact them. As a direct result of that book we put together a very effective ‘grab bag’ in the event of our little ship going down and our most important item was the VHF hand held radio, fully charged and with plenty of spare batteries. Our EPIRB was this same 121.5 MHz, and we had been reliably informed that the authorities no longer even pretended to respond to them, on the (I suppose) reasonable grounds that too many people set them off by accident.
Prior to our departure, I telephoned my sister Pairose in London and advised her that we should take no more than 10 days to get to Madeira at which time I would call her again. I told her about the official lack of interest in Epirbs and asked her to make a monumental fuss in the event that we were never heard from again. She found all this very discouraging, I think, but promised faithfully that she would indeed hound the authorities if we disappeared in mid-ocean.
I can tell you now, I was quite nervous about this, the first leg of the trip. The longest either of us had ever done before was five nights and that was in the little old Mediterranean Sea where land is not ever THAT far away. Admittedly, even a good, strong swimmer like Mike wouldn’t be able to swim to shore, but still, one feels, rightly or wrongly, that help in the form of a coast guard or even another yacht is never too far off. This was another beast altogether and very soon the nearest land would be that directly beneath us - just 3 miles down! I tried not to think too much about the things that could go wrong, but it was difficult as there are so many. The stories yachties go around telling each other are quite dire.
There’s the one about the sailor who needed to go up the mast whilst out at sea (never an advisable thing to do) so his wife hoisted him up. At the top, he tied himself off with a security line to the top of the mast to be safe and then promptly had a heart attack and died. As he was tied off his wife was unable to bring him down again. She had to sail the boat alone for many days with him swinging about up there until she reached land. Imagine that! Then there’s the one of the sailor who came into port, awash with tears, reporting that his wife had gone overboard and he had been unable to rescue her. Two days later a fishing boat came into the same port. The fishing net had scooped the poor dead woman, securely tied to a 45 kg anchor! We met sailors that had been in the Portuguese port when that happened so we considered it more than just hearsay.
The fact is, ‘falling overboard’ is not an uncommon method of losing an unwanted relative or shipmate and probably rates as the almost perfect murder, there being no witnesses and usually no body. The chap just mentioned was rather unlucky on that latter score. There are many more stories, most of which don’t bear thinking about, though one does tend to on those long nights when standing watch or trying to sleep in a rolling, lurching boat.
But it was too late for second thoughts. We would leave Gibraltar the next day, pass through the Strait leaving Tarifa in Portugal to starboard, with the Moroccan coast to port and the beautiful islands of the Azores dead ahead. Thereafter we would alter course slightly south for our next destination, Madeira. The whole thing was scary but exhilarating. I felt quite light-headed with anticipation.
This is a map of our travels so far in the Mediterranean Sea. We had sailed 3102 nautical miles and visited four countries.
And so, having shopped and filled our tanks with diesel and water, then, ‘laden to the gunnels’ as they say in sailing circles, we set sail at the beginning of November for Madeira - the first leg of our Great Atlantic Adventure. It was so exciting to be going across the Atlantic that I always thought of it in capital letters.
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