Ahoy, You won’t believe me what happened today.. but I’m telling you anyway..
When we asked for permission to anchor in Isla Clarion, which is only inhabited by 9 persons maintaining a small military or navy base, we got told that there is a ship coming the next morning and we might have to leave. I didn’t understand why with a bay big enough for multiple boats, even ships, but anyway that was yesterday and who cares about tomorrow.. right?
But,
Around 6 in the morning we received a call on Ch 16 and guess what. We were asked to leave. The ship will be here soon. We could see the lights already. So jumpstart! We wanted to leave anyway but our planed schedule was first breakfast and then anchor up, not the other way around. Unfortunately we broke the dolphin striker with the anchor chain while doing so. The strong wind, the huge swell and some bad communication led to a broken – in half !- dolphin striker. Shit.!
Without it we can’t cross an ocean. Or better we shouldn’t. I knew I had some spare stainless tubing and Powertools to cut and drill but welding and bending? That’s above our paygrade.
We dropped anchor again and asked the comandante of the base for assistance. They were careful but willing to help. The first attempt failed because of misunderstandings about the amount of powersupply on ZERO, so they took the huge welding machine back ashore and said they need to transfer fuel from the mothership to shore and we should communicate with the navyship directly. So we did and just got help offered when I realised a bunch of 50 gallon drums floating close to the beach. And hey are this people swimming there? With lifejackets on?
The binoculars showed more. The panga was almost down already and barely floating. What happened??
I did mention the huge swell, right? And this bay seemed to catch it big time. Marco and me thought about surfing here. The swell turned into massive waves breaking hollow in the strong offshore breeze pounding on the beach or rock’s. And with a big set rolling in it looked amazing. They must have been caught by one of the bigger ones and got rolled. Right in front of us!
The panga got washed on the rocks but the drums were floating so high that the wind pushed them towards us. We jumped in, rescued 4 of them and signaled the swimmers to swim to us. Our dinghy was stored on deck, deflated and with freshly applied patches absolutely disfunctional. No way for us to go to them. The mothership launched their panga to pick em up, but even though they did it quickly it took time to finally reach the swimmers.. Noone got hurt or injured and with watertemps around 28 Celsius a little swim is actually nice and all drums found their way back to the ship.. hussa!
After the trouble was over we got picked up to get our parts manufactured and a few cuts, welds and grinds later we had it done in no time. We thanked the comandante for his outstanding and super friendly support and they dropped us off again. What a service. Thanks Mexican Navy!!
We mounted it right away, tuned the stays, checked for other damage and pulled anchor. Adios!
Now we’re sailing 100AWA with 7 to 8kn and are on our way again. Next stop .. Paradise!
Man, what a day.. ! Another adventure!! Hope you could score a challenge today as well..
ALOHA Christian
Sent from the Ocean.