Sail! We Rrrripped the Sail!..

Sail! We Rrrripped the Sail!.. How to rip €4,000 out of the budget in four minutes 🙂 We are already in Mexico. We spent a week in the colourful bay off Isla Mujeres and decided to cross over to the mainland for repairs. Our engine is still running in emergency mode, after all. But in the meantime the crew have become quite proficient at handling the anchor under sail: we now weigh and drop anchor strictly under sail. The mainsail shoots up to the masthead amid a stream of swearing, while the anchor is simultaneously broken out of the seabed. The young sailor stands by, ready to start the engine if need be. So far we haven’t crashed into anyone; we trace graceful arcs accompanied only by the sound of the wind. In short, just like Captain Jack Sparrow—no exhaust fumes :). We set course for a marina with the lovely name Puerto Aventuras—the adventures must have been waiting for us there, judging by the name :). We decided to split the little passage from the island to the mainland, less than 60 miles, into two legs: 40 miles to Cozumel, a night at anchor without launching the dinghy, then a passage of about 20 miles to the Yucatán Peninsula. The children’s temperatures have gone down (they had slight fevers), and we’re sailing. The wind is almost astern; Puerto Aventuras is 20 miles away. The sky is clear and the waves are small, unlike the previous day, when we bounced along close-hauled (that’s when the wind is almost on the nose) through three-metre waves. The children and I disliked it all day long; only the captain was happy—whatever direction the wind blows from, wherever the waves come from, he is always fine, just sitting there in the cockpit, sipping tea and munching baranki. But when we’re close-hauled, none of us can get a single baranka down. Though sometimes we stuff them in anyway, just to keep up with the cap :). So, we spent the first day bouncing along, dropped anchor, lowered the mainsail and stopped off Cozumel. Everyone at the anchorage admired our manoeuvres (one neighbour—the others were ashore). We breathed in the delicious evening air drifting from shore (for some reason the air on Mujeres wasn’t as fragrant; perhaps the flowers ashore are different here). Dinner, a film, then bed. We slept well: the current was gentle and the swell rocked us to sleep. The short passage on the second day went like clockwork: we hoisted the mainsail, broke out the anchor and didn’t start the engine. Of course, the engine does start; on the Bahama Banks, Andryukha sort of repaired it. But there is one hitch: the transmission has fallen out of love with this particular grade of oil and flatly refuses to accept it. Or rather, it accepts plenty of it, but to no avail—it all comes straight back out, like diarrhoea. Two litres an hour: pour it in, and out it comes. We prefer not to pour oil into the sea, so we have trained ourselves to weigh anchor and anchor again under sail. Puerto Aventuras was chosen for the engine repairs for four reasons: Here on the mainland, we can immediately buy the part we believe is broken and fit it in calm water. A berth in the marina costs half as much as it does on Isla Mujeres (although over there we could also make repairs at anchor with no rolling at all). Without even going far from the boat, we can rent a car and drive around Mexico. That’s our plan. A girl I lived in the same building with as a child lives not far from Puerto Aventuras. Twenty-five years ago her family emigrated to the States, and now Nastya is married to a Mexican; they have a wonderful house a 20-minute drive from the marina and two children. To be honest, I’m still not sure Nastya remembers me well from our days in Zlatoust, but she welcomed us like family ))). Nastya, mariachi songs, a Mexican restaurant / Sailing along, minding our own business So, half the distance to the North American mainland (now!) is behind us. Lovely—the shore has been visible from the very start, the Gulf Stream is flowing past, and nothing foretells trouble. Someone is listening to an audiobook of The Jungle Book, someone else to a French lesson, someone is sipping tea and making small adjustments to the sails, and someone else is learning video-editing software. The wind has grown tired of blowing, and the boat’s speed has almost dropped to that of the cross-current of the Gulf Stream, carrying us north. We decided to set the gennaker. Ours is beautiful: blue-striped and red. ...It was. With the help of a menacing look, we motivated Nastya to go forward and help hoist the sail, while the first mate stayed by the laptop and the winch. The young sailor—as usual—stood by to lend a hand. The young sailor and the sail, colourful and beautiful 🙂 It could have lived The gennaker filled beautifully, played in the sunbeams, spread its coloured stripes out to warm themselves, and gave us some extra speed. Everyone went back to what they had been doing before. “You’d better put the computer away, Marinochka. It might start dripping out of that cloud over there.” The cap gently broke the silence of the editing experiments. Marinochka wrinkled her nose and looked sceptically first at the little cloud, propped up from the sea by a broad grey column (rain, by the look of it), and then at the captain... After some thought, she began lazily closing unnecessary files, intending first to put the MacBook to sleep and then to take it down into the saloon: “But it’ll pass us by, won’t it?” The moment the first drops struck dry shoulders coincided with the laptop’s flight onto the settee in the saloon. “Close the hatches, rain!” cried the captain, and the crew instantly transformed from layabouts into live wires eager for work. Rain outside, us inside But the transformation did take a little time, and the little cloud delivered a proper blast. “Get the sail down!” The cap’s shout coincided with a tearing crack, and our pot-bellied gennaker streamed out beautifully in tatters, parallel to the waves. We’ve torn it, the first mate thought in horror. Remembering that a gennaker tears at a rate of €400 per second, Nastya and I clenched our teeth and dashed forward to catch what was left. The luff and leech had turned along their entire lengths into narrow ribbons, while the sailcloth had become a triangle fitted between them. That was what we gathered in while there was still something left to gather. For a while the gennaker kept trying to scoop the entire sea aboard our yacht, but we didn’t let it get carried away and crammed the thin, puddle-soaked fabric into its special bag. “That was a good sail...” I sighed quietly when it was all over and Nastya and I were dragging the bag into the saloon. The cloud quickly passed by, the waves and heel instantly vanished somewhere, and the sun shone again. At the entrance to the port’s narrow channel, we ran the engine for eight minutes. The oil drained into the bilge, where we neutralised it with Fairy, because, as everyone knows, only Fairy can tackle grease (perhaps we could squeeze some money out of the company for the advertising?). 🙂 / At Puerto Aventuras Marina We moored right beneath the trees, which at least in the evening provide the long-awaited coolness. The trees come with a bonus: hordes of mosquitoes, all of which, for some reason, had already taken a liking to our saloon. For the first time ever, we rigged a mosquito net over the table and settee to create an evening cinema. Setting up the cinema on deck isn’t really practical here: there are lots of people around in the evenings. On our first night in the marina, nobody except Laduska slept—it was too hot for everyone. How much nicer it is to anchor during the hot season! You can always cool off in the sea, the mosquitoes don’t fly that far, and at night there is usually enough wind to blow right through the cabins. The only exception was probably central Gambia. There, in the hot river channel, we spent a month sleeping on the roof under a mosquito net :). That was how we travelled 350 kilometres up the river, with a mattress on the coachroof, like real gypsies. Epilogue I’m dreading the moment when the cap says something like: “Well then, Marinochka, I’ve repaired the sewing machine, so let’s stitch up the sail. About 20 metres down one edge... and the same down the other... nice big patches between the ribbons :). The ocean under gennaker 🙂 The children’s everyday life aboard, board games, funny sweets and lessons in the saloon To be continued :). Good luck, everyone!