I am pleased to announce publication of The Voyage #2: Falmouth to Grenada. This follows the success of The Voyage #1 which told the story of my crossing of the Atlantic going the other way. That was something of an experiment: Would anybody be interested in a day-by-day account of an old man all alone on an old boat in the middle of nowhere – especially when nothing much happened and he spent most of his time counting Pringles?

But, as one Amazon reviewer put it: “The man can write. Entertaining and fun. Makes you wish you had the courage to do this too. He turns every disaster into an opportunity. Great character and great attitude.”

And sure enough, the book sells consistently in the wake of the original best-seller (in the sailing category) Old Man Sailing – and that’s important because I’ve just realised how hot it’s going to be in the Caribbean in the summer and ordered a rather expensive awning.

However, The Voyage #2 is a very different beast – for a start it’s a good deal longer. And this time something did happen: A knockdown, a broken rudder – 1,500 miles with the steering held together with string…

Believe me, this one’s got the lot!

You can find it on Amazon in Kindle edition and paperback at: https://amzn.eu/d/cMaUG1s

There is a man living in my chain locker. His name is Marcel and he’s a second-row forward for the French national rugby team.

Marcel is a big lad – just over 20stone (that’s 130kg to the French –  286lbs if you’re American). But stocky: Marcel has very short legs. Second-row forwards don’t have to run.

I am fantasizing, of course – but the weight is real enough.

It’s all to do with replacing the anchor chain. The last time I wrote about this was in March 2021 – when I was enthusing at getting it re-galvanised for a fraction of the cost of a new one.

Well, now I’ve got a new one.

Periodically, I was supposed to take the stainless steel swivel off the end and measure the last link. This was 10mm chain and one day the last link would rust away to 8mm – at which point it would need cutting off so the swivel could get on with sacrificing the next link. However, the corrosion seemed to have stopped at a fraction below 9mm – and a 32ft boat doesn’t need even that much.

Like many things about Samsara, the chain is somewhat unusual: When she was built 51 years ago, it seems she started off with 30metres, and then one of the succession of previous owners decided to add another twenty. It was the last link of this 20metres that I had been measuring so conscientiously.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, on a whim, I decided to measure some of the links at the other end – the older end – the end that was (not to put too fine a point on it) fifty years old…

I found one that was down to 6mm.

Not 10mm chain – and there’s a link somewhere even thinner than this!

And you know what they say about the weakest link…

So, a new chain was called for – and what did I say about a 32ft boat and 10mm chain?

The worst part is the way it gets jammed in the chain locker by its own weight. So, the new chain would be 8mm.

But then there is this thing called catenary – the weight of the chain providing a shock-absorbing effect. This would be reduced with a lighter chain, meaning that I would need a bigger scope. Up to now, I’ve worked on 3:1, which is very old-fashioned. Modern anchor manufacturers all seem to recommend 4:1 as a minimum.

Well, that was OK, because 50m of 8mm weighs only 70kg, compared to 115kg for 10mm.

Or I could get another 32 of length for the same weight. I would be able to anchor in 20metres – and still have 4:1 scope!

But who walks into a chandlery and asks for 82m of chain? I rounded it up to 85m – it was only another 4kg.

And this is where Marcel and his short legs came in. Instead of measuring all 85m, he cleverly paced out the remaining 15 to leave in the tub. In fact, he paced out 14, to be on the safe side – at least, that’s what he said he was doing. I was over on the other side, working out how many more chain markers I was going to need.

It turned out I didn’t buy enough.

When I loaded the new chain into the dinghy to row the half-mile back to the boat – and then, when I laid it out between two pieces of plastic tape stuck to the deck exactly five metres apart, it transpired that Marcel’s little legs hadn’t measured out 14metres to leave in the tub… but only seven.

Either that, or he’d forgotten to double it.

Either way, I’ve now got 93metres of 8mm chain, weighing a colossal 130kg or, as I say, just over 20stone (or 286lbs).

I could just cut off the excess – but who throws away brand new Vigouroux chain? Also, the extra eight metres only adds another 15kg…

But when you add it all up – with another 20kg for the anchor – that’s an awful lot of weight up front. It’s a whopping 150kg!

As I say, that’s the same as having a rugby player in your chain locker (instead of where he should be, on the weather rail.)

I can only hope that the Rival’s famously fat and buoyant bow will be able to cope…

I’m still rowing.

Apparently, I’m the only one.

In the vast anchorages of the Caribbean, this is so unusual as to be considered truly eccentric.

Currently, I am in Le Marin in Martinique. I pulled in here on the way to Antigua because the Starlink only connects one time in five and if it’s the inverter that’s the trouble, I’ll have to take it back to Trinidad. Also, I’ve been trying everywhere to get an 8mm gipsy for the anchor windless. Sometimes I think cruising is nothing more than an exotic shopping expedition.

But it meant that yesterday, I made four trips between the anchorage and the dinghy dock – a total, according to my track on Navionics of more than three miles.

On my second trip – with only 50 yards to go, someone in a RIB with 15 horsepower on the back offered me a tow. I really must check my schoolboy French for: “It’s all right. If I don’t do this, I have to go to the gym.”

And it’s true. My son the doctor informs me that over the age of 60, you don’t make any more muscle – so, at 75, it’s really important to hang onto what you’ve got left.

Which, as I say, is why I am not buying an outboard after all.

I came very close to it.

Here was my problem: When I found Samsara seven years ago, it was as if the clock had spun backwards. I owned a Rival 32 in the 1980s – that was Largo. Suddenly, I could go back to the way things were. I could be 35 again!

Nobody had RIBS and davits in the 80s, so I looked up the smallest, lightest two-man dinghy – and came up with the 3D Twin-Air at just 2.3m and 13.8kg.

I knew which outboard I would put on it: The Suzuki 2hp. I could pick that up in one hand and swing myself over the guardrails and into the dinghy.

Well, that’s what I could do 40 years ago. Strange how the new one had to be laid on the side deck and then sort of shuffled into place. Also, it wasn’t really “new” at all and had acquired many of the cantankerous habits which come to us all in middle age. When it failed to start on the way home for Christmas and had I to wait for the tide the next day, I decided to give myself a present of an electric one.

Just think of it: No carburettor, no choke – no petrol. Not even any maintenance…

The little Haswing Osapian 40 weighed just 7kg (and only cost £150). Admittedly I had to add a 60ah battery which weighed as much as the Suzuki – but at least it was smaller to manhandle.

For a season, I glided silently about the anchorages of the south coast and the Channel Islands and, eventually, The Canaries.

Silently and slowly. If I wanted the battery to last any time at all, I had to limit myself to 2kts.

Well, I can row at 2kts.

Moreover, if I was rowing, I was getting some exercise. Also, I didn’t have to faff about putting it all in the dinghy and taking it all out again.

And here’s another thing: Nobody’s going to steal a dinghy without an outboard: The dinghy thieves of the Caribbean regularly abandon their purloined RIBs on the beach. The outboards, however, are never seen again.

So, I put the electric outboard on eBay and took to rowing. I might take longer to get where I’m going, but I have all the time in the world – and while I may get a bit wet going to windward in a blow, I have never yet failed to arrive.

And this was all fine and dandy – until one of the rowlocks broke.

These, I discovered, were made of plastic in moulded rubber housings glued to the tubes. Never mind, Sunny of Sunny Yacht Services in Gran Canaria made me stainless steel copies.

And all was good for another year – until, one evening in Falmouth, the moulded rubber split.

There was no fixing this – but on the other hand, the dinghy was five years old. Also, I had the wrong oars: I had lost one in Alderney and bought a new pair in Weymouth – longer and with curved blades just like the Oxford and Cambridge boats. It turned out the rowlocks weren’t designed for that kind of power.

In the end, I gave it away to someone who had an outboard and ordered a new one (promising myself that I would use only the oars which came with it.)

And everything was fine for another year – until, last week, the moulded rubber split in exactly the same place.

Was I going to buy a third new dinghy? I had written to the makers and pointed out their design flaw, but it seemed they didn’t understand the concept of rowing. Anyway, they never wrote back.

The solution was to buy yet another (and this time, heavier) dinghy. I could haul it aboard with the staysail halyard.

Or maybe I could repair the old one well enough for emergencies and get a really reliable outboard. Four-strokes are reliable – and the lightest is the Honda 2.3. But that still weighs 13kg – and that’s without the fuel and oil. Also, you mustn’t turn a 4-stroke upside down (which can happen if it weighs 13kg and there’s any chop in the harbour…)

Alternatively, there is the ePropulsion electric outboard which comes in two parts – neither of them weighing more than 11kg.

As if to compensate for this, it costs twice as much as a petrol one. Also, it has to be fed with electricity – a commodity not always available aboard Samsara.

But first, I had to manage a repair of the rowlock.

There wasn’t room to get a bolt through it. But I do have a 1½mm drill bit – and any amount of sailmaker’s thread.

Invisible mending

…and preventative measures on the other side.

I’ve tested it – all that rowing yesterday. There is no sign of the thread pulling through the rubber. In fact, I have a reel of black thread for some reason, so you wouldn’t know it’s been repaired at all. On the first trip to the dinghy dock (when I didn’t know where it was and ended up rowing 0.8 miles) it took me just 25 minutes – that’s 3kts.

And when I found the dinghy dock jam-packed with RIBs, I just pulled mine over the top of them all, upended it onto my head and went and tied it to a tree.

Charlotteville is different. Nobody in Charlotteville has any money.

Don’t get me wrong. They’re not poor – Joe the fisherman whose boat has “Joe” written down the side in big red letters only bothers to go out three days a week (he offered to take me on Monday but that’s when I’m leaving for Trinidad). The other days he spends sitting in the shade with his friends, fist-bumping anyone who comes by and asking how they’re doing.

He doesn’t sit under the coconut trees, of course. Only strangers like me would think of sitting under a coconut tree – which is why there’s a sign reminding people not to (a coconut falling from 70ft is an official cause of death around here).

No, the reason nobody has any money in Charlotteville is because the ATM machine hasn’t worked for two months and the only place that takes cards is the bright red Shopping Mart where the till is empty after two months’ of paying everyone Cashback.

I wouldn’t have come if I’d known. But Tom on Bonny said it was delightful. He could afford to. He sailed on a reach from Barbados. I was hard on the wind all the way from Grenada – and then had to put in two tacks to make it into Pirate’s Bay two hours after sunset.

Actually, I was aiming for Man o’ War Bay because the app said that was where I would find the Customs Office. However there wasn’t a single light in the whole bay, and so I picked a spot sort of midway between the two. A lot of rowing the next morning found me tying the dinghy to a tree just as the immigration officer strolled by.

Charlotteville is an official Port of Entry for Tobago, so it is reasonable to assume it would have a uniformed Immigration Officer and a proper brick-built Immigration Office – and a Port Authority Office and a Customs Office. Going round the three of them, I had to fill in a total of nine forms (everything from what contagious diseases I had to how many firearms and stowaways).

Also, I had to come up with 315 Trinidad and Tobago dollars. All I had were East Caribbean dollars – and no, they didn’t take cards.

Which is how I ended up in debt.

Here were my debts by the end of that Wednesday morning:

$315 to the Immigration Officer for clearance.

$210 to Donna the Digicel rep on her balcony opposite the football pitch for a SIM card.

$32 to Gray at the bright yellow Royal Harbour Restaurant and Bar on the beach (two bottles of Carib and a $10 loan for the bus to Roxborough and the nearest working ATM machine).

No, the bus doesn’t take cards. In fact, the bus doesn’t even take cash. You have to buy a ticket from the Licenced Ticket Trader next to the bus stop – it’s $4 each way.

And maybe this is the time to explain the exchange rate. One Trinidad and Tobago dollar is 12p Sterling. So, the bus ticket was 48p (and the bottles of Carib, £1.32 each), so maybe that’s why Charlotteville has been getting along so well without too much money.

It took the rest of the day to get mine – the bus went at walking pace for much of the way (and if you saw some of the inclines and the tortuous bends, you’d be glad it did). Then, when we got to the ATM machine in Roxburgh, that one didn’t work either.

Never mind, there was another at the gas station at the other end of town.

I missed the bus back.

When was it due?

• It leaves Scarborough at 4.30.

So, when does it get here?

• When it arrives.

Never mind. The only people who use the bus are schoolchildren and anyone with a bus pass. Everybody else stands at the side of the road and holds up their hand. Here is the scale of charges for ad hoc private hire vehicles in Tobago:

If they’re going your way: $12.

Part of the way: $6.

The rest of the way: $8.

How does the driver know you’re going the rest of the way, not all the way?

• I’m sorry, I don’t understand the question.

So, it was after dark again when I got back to the boat – and it turns out that now I’ve been here three days and become rather assimilated (see Joe’s offer of a day’s fishing).

Much of my time is spent on the bench outside the Royal Harbour with a bottle of Gray’s Carib using his wifi because it turns out Donna’s mobile signal is rubbish (and you can’t sit inside Gray’s because he likes his reggae at full volume).

I could take my custom to Eastman’s Restaurant & Bar, but their wifi went the way of the ATM machine.

Still, the Shopping Mart had a grater to replace my rusty one and Priya’s shop was good for fresh vegetables.

When I say “fresh”, I mean they weren’t in a tin like the ones in the Shopping Mart. However, they had been cooking in 35° under the sheets of polythene which keep the rain out – Priya’s shop is charmingly basic even though she’s got everything from motor oil to Epsom Salts in the back.

Priya and her shop

I can’t wait to go ashore again, lunch today is Sharon & Phebe’s (they have tablecloths and are on Tripadvisor). I can’t leave until Monday – if I don’t get my clearance form, they won’t let me into Trinidad and I’m getting a Starlink system delivered there.

At least I hope I am – I gave the address of Peake’s Marina without bothering to ask them if that would be OK. But people on the Navily app keep saying how friendly and helpful everyone is at Peake’s – they even organise a bus to the supermarket and put on Friday night barbecues…

More pictures on my PolarSteps site at https://www.polarsteps.com/JohnPassmore/11140829-from-grenada?s=0A864A90-C234-4F13-A00C-24E41CCA7292.

Yes, I thought that would get your attention. Of all the things on a boat that can break, the rudder is particularly difficult to fix – being somewhat under water.

So, this was the rudder stock – just as important but you don’t get wet.

To clarify, by “rudder stock”, I mean the massive bronze casting which connects the rudder shaft to the tiller by means of a stout pair of jaws and a 10mm bolt. The whole thing is hugely over-engineered – but then there are times when there is so much strain on it that even the strongest helmsman tends to get dragged across the cockpit like a toddler being removed from Sainsbury’s in the middle of a tantrum.

So, I was a bit surprised when this happened.

Also, maybe not so surprised, since it has happened before – if you want to read about that, come back at the end and have a look at https://www.oldmansailing.com/getting-to-the-jester/

and, if the picture seems familiar, that is from the same occasion. I forgot to take a new one.

The man who brazed it back together that time, assured me it would be as strong as ever – but maybe not, since this time it broke in exactly the same place.

Last time, I didn’t consider it my fault. This time it was: I had met an old boy on an old gaffer in Falmouth (yes, one of the many) who assured me that if I set a double-reefed mainsail behind my twin headsails in the trade winds, and steered with the wind just a little on the quarter, the boat would not roll incessantly for three weeks and leave me craving to get off and sit under a palm tree at the other end.

It worked – but the strain on the steering was tremendous – especially when those 28kt squalls came blasting through at three o’clock in the morning.

Although, it must be said that it was during the after-lunch down-time that I began to wonder why the boat was heading for Antarctica.

The best thing about this was that I knew exactly what to do – after all, hadn’t I done it all before? Without missing a beat, I lashed the broken side together with a 17mm spanner (there’s a 17mm nut on that side), got the boat sailing again and carried on as if nothing had happened – apart from the tiller waggling a bit and the Aries working overtime to catch up.

Four days later, the other side broke – and this was most definitely my fault. Why hadn’t I lashed another spanner (18mm to starboard) on that side just in case?

For the next 12 days, I didn’t make any more mistakes. Indeed, I consider those 1,486 miles to be among the most significant in all the annals of seafaring. Day after day, as the great Trade Wind rollers swept Samsara ever westwards and, each midday, I wrote carefully in the log: Wind: E5-6 occ7”, I became the world’s greatest living expert on how to hold your steering together with string.

This is what it looked like by the end.

Key:

1. The Aries adjustment chain was lashed to the tiller as far forward as possible. This pulled the tiller back and helped it remain engaged with what was left of the rudder stock.
2. These two lines were made up of 8mm polyester and 8mm doubled shock cord. Made off at the stern cleats and lightly tensioned when the tiller was amidships, they proved to be worth their weight in gold. When the Aries pulled the tiller to starboard, the port shock cord exerted an increasing tension backwards on that side and helped keep the linkage straight.
3. Two lines from the autopilot pin to the aft ends of the two spanners bracing each side of the casting. Without these, the spanners tended to work backwards and disengage from the nuts.
4. Here, a single piece of line around the shafts of the two spanners and over the top of the tiller stopped it dropping down as it worked.
5. These are the four main lashings bracing the spanners against the broken casting and holding the whole thing together. You need to have two at each side of the break so that you can untie them one at a time for tightening. In the beginning, this needed to be done two or three times a day. Towards the end, they would last several days – presumably as the line stretched to its limit. Eventually, it would get chewed up and break (which is why every ship should carry miles and miles of 3mm line. If your rudder doesn’t break, you can always use it for messengers when removing the halyards ready for a hurricane).

Technical notes – Tying the lashing:

Although I earned my “Knots and Splices” badge in the Boy Scouts, I take issue with Lord Baden-Powell who advocated clove hitches to start and finish a square lashing. This does not allow for applying enough tension to something like a rudder stock.

Instead, I humbly propose the following:

Take 2m of 3mm line and tie a small bowline in one end, leaving a 100mm tail on the short end. Place the bight at the top of one side of the tiller and pass the long end underneath and back through the bight so that you can pull back in the opposite direction, using this purchase to increase the tension. Continue with this for as many turns as you deem necessary, maintaining the tension at every turn. Tie off to the end to the 100mm tail of the bowline using a reef knot (while playing hopscotch with your fingers to maintain the tension.)

Overall, it worked so well that I didn’t feel the need to rush into Spice Island Marine on Grenada to get it fixed immediately. Instead, I called in for a few days’ crawling the rum shops of Carriacou’s Tyrrel Bay. I felt I deserved it – after all, the bodged rudder stock steered us through the somewhat narrow and certainly lively pass north of Frigate Island and then kept a dead straight course between the anchored yachts while I stood on the foredeck yanking the chain out of its latest yoga position down in the locker.

Tyrrel Bay.

Of course, you do end up with this…

And now, some showing off: How about three headsails!

… actually, it didn’t make much difference.

And (not showing off), this was the biggest flying fish on deck in the morning:

Finally, that link to the last time I broke the rudder: https://www.oldmansailing.com/getting-to-the-jester/

Better now

Thanks to Kenrick

The Maritime Police arrived not in a coastguard cutter, nor even RIB with a pair of 90hp outboards and a blue light on the gantry.

Instead, they came chugging up in the little boat that takes the tourists to see the turtles.

But then, this was Bahia Sao Pedro at the south end of Sao Vicente in the Cape Verde Islands, where Thibaut and Cécile on Orion had written on Navily: “Pleasant anchorage. Frequent gusts but excellent holding in sand. Anchorage surrounded by green turtles. Keep your hands closed to avoid them mistaking your fingers for a piece of fish!”

They were right about the gusts. It took me as long to beat into the bay as it had to sail the six miles from Mindelo. By the time I had everything squared away, it was getting late. Never mind, I could swim in the morning.

However, the venue did not live up to its reputation.

First of all, the water wasn’t at all clear. I did see three turtles – all too deep to mistake my fingers for a piece of fish. Frankly, there were more interesting things growing on Samsara’s bottom.

Then the tour boat came by and informed me that I couldn’t anchor there. I told them I was leaving anyway.

They came back half an hour later. Instead of the tourists, this time with the Maritime Police.

Anchoring was forbidden, they informed me. The bay was not a designated port and they needed to see my ship’s papers along with the certificate of departure to my next port which I would have been given when I checked in.

Ah, slight problem, there. I hadn’t actually checked in. I was only here because a solicitor back in England wanted me to sign a document for the house sale. In the end, I did it with my finger on the pdf (which I could have done on mobile data without stopping at all – it still looked as though a spider with inky feet had crawled across the contract).

I tried to explain all this but I think a bit of it got lost in translation,

“You must go to Mindelo.”

But that’s into the wind…

“You must go. We will keep your papers.”

Now, here is an essential truth that holds good wherever you happen to be in the world. I have travelled far and wide and I know this to be true:

Never, ever argue with a policeman.

Especially if he has a gun.

So, instead I smiled. They told me their names were Alberto and George (they had them embroidered on their uniforms). They would see me in Mindelo. Everything would be fine.

Ah yes, but would it – once they realised I had been in the country illegally for two days?

As I watched the anchor chain crawling aboard, the blue 30metre marker disappearing into the chain locker, then the yellow-and-white 25metre, I began to worry in earnest.

Every cruiser knows the story of the sailor who put into a quiet bay in Samoa to fix his watermaker. It was the beginning of the global COVID lockdown and he was on his way to the Philippines with his Filipina girlfriend (it was the only country that would let them in). He called the Samoan coastguard and informed them that he would only be 24 hours and would not set foot on shore.

They didn’t reply.

Instead, they came and collected him and his girlfriend and threw them in jail – leaving the boat unguarded in the unprotected anchorage.

Pictures of their jail cell went viral – with half the comments pointing out that it was exactly the same sort of jail cell that Samoans had to put up with. What did they expect?

I wondered what a Cape Verde jail cell might be like. I used up a bit more mobile data emailing the OCC Port Officer for the islands, asking for advice. How much trouble did he think I was in? Maybe he knew Alberto and George – it was a small island. Should I suggest he might ask them to go easy on me?

At least it stopped me toying with the idea of doing a runner: I don’t know how many maritime authorities around the world are aware that the cash-strapped UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency has done away with their very grand cardboard-bound Part One Certificate for the Registry for Yachts. I’ve still got the original for Samsara issued in 1973 – you would think it belonged to the Queen Mary.

Now all you get is a sheet of paper. I keep a spare – just in case.

This meant that I didn’t really need to go back to Mindelo at all. I could just turn south west – next stop Grenada and show them the spare…

Except, for all that stuff about always complying with instructions from police officers – especially if they not only have guns but also a fast patrol boat that could catch me in a couple of hours and tow me back to that prison cell.

And even if not, was there some sort of international maritime black list? Would I arrive in the Caribbean to find myself instantly arrested and placed on a flight back to face Cape Verdean justice.

Better go back to Mindelo…

But the forecast had been for a northeasterly Force7. Then there was Anne Hammick in Atlantic Islands: “The Canal de Sao Vicente is notorious for its strong winds, the two islands combining to produce a classic venturi effect.”

Apparently 10-15kts over the open ocean increases to gusts of 35-40kts in the channel.

So, if the forecasters expected 25-30kts over the open ocean…

I reefed. I reefed again. These weren’t gusts. This was a solid 30-35kts on the nose with a sea to match.

I stopped worrying about my prison cell and began wondering how long it was going to take me to cover the six miles this time.

The answer, since I know you’re dying to know, is twelve-and-a-half hours!

All right, it would have been a bit less if I’d had a proper chart instead of Google Earth and hadn’t confused the next headland with the next island – but that’s not the point. The point is that nobody decides to beat into a Force7-8 if they have any choice.

I didn’t. I “must go to Mindelo.” In a strange way, this was the best way to look at it. If there was no choice, I didn’t have to wonder whether it was wise, what might get broken – if there might be some shelter to be found on the way. I just had to go – bash, bash, bash…

Of course, if you are going to bash into a gale, there are few better boats for the job than the Rival 32.

Admittedly, one of them is the Rival 34 – the deep keel version. It was clear early on that while the 32 with her 1.4m draft, was ideal for creeping into small coves and the like, she does make a lot of leeway when hard on the wind. I have never actually measured it – that would be too depressing. Suffice it to say that, beating up the Canal de Sao Vicente, was one time I really wished I had a 1.8m draft.

Still, there was nothing to be done about that – and besides, the sun was shining, the air temperature was 26°C and the spray, when it caught me on deck, was a not-unpleasant 23°.  It dried in five minutes. One way and another, I rather enjoyed myself.

Then the tide turned. This was a bit of a surprise. I had read in the book that in the Cape Verde Islands “Tidal ranges are small… tidal streams are also negligible…”

Had I been a bit more thorough and read on, I would have discovered “…but can run strongly in the passages between islands, particularly in the Canal de Sao Vicente where, combined with the ocean current, it may attain over four knots…”

After two tacks of three miles each, each taking an hour or so, I found myself precisely 0.86miles further up the channel.

After the next two, I had made another 0.21miles!

Clearly, this was going to take some time. I settled myself in the companionway with a kapok cushion to soften the sharp edges, I opened the Kindle and reminded myself that, with one or two notable exceptions, tides do not run in the same direction for more than six hours. All I had to do was keep going for longer than that.

The good thing about it all was that I was very familiar with the layout of Mindelo harbour after dark (complete with its unlit wrecks).

The last question was answered after I set the anchor and was walking back down the deck saying that I was damned if I was getting the table out for dinner.

The last question? What was going to get broken?

Answer: Another section of teak toe rail.

The knockdown had already destroyed about four metres, now a jib sheet must have got itself hooked round the protruding end of what remained and popped that off, too.

It could have been worse.

Nine o’clock in the morning found me in the immigration office. The officer was not remotely interested in my excuses. Instead, he gave me a form to fill in, pointed out that I had put my own name in the space for the boat’s name, stamped me in and immediately out again of the Republic of Cape Verde, and sent me round to the Maritime Police. There, George greeted me like a long-lost friend, produced my ship’s papers, added the missing Certificate of Departure for Grenada and wished me Bon Voyage for the crossing.

I felt it best not to complain about the twelve-and-a-half-hours and the missing teak rail.

I’ve now had three people write and thank me for a single reference in Old Man Sailing.

I never thought it was anything special when I wrote it, sitting at anchor in St Helen’s Pool in the Scilly Isles. Certainly, there was no thunderclap as the words crawled across the screen. But it does seem to have struck a chord, so if you missed it, here it is from page 126:

“It is a great comfort to be stupid. Disasters about to happen do not trouble the minds of those too dim to imagine them.”

I have been thinking about this as I sit at anchor in the bay at Tazacorte on the Canary Island of La Palma waiting for the house sale to go through back in England so I can push off to the Caribbean.

Because, the other day, I did something that was incredibly stupid. Well, it seems like it to me. You be the judge, for here is the whole sorry story:

I had pulled into the marina at Santa Cruz on the other side of the island where there is a fabulous old Spanish colonial town but also incessant noise from the ferries and the cruise ships unloading the tourists who come to see it. But at least I could top up with diesel.

And then, being a conscientious engineer, I added the diesel bug treatment – 10ml for 20litres. Tucked in the cockpit locker next to it was a bottle of something called Diesel Blast (at least, I think that was what it was called, the label came off long ago). In fact, I hadn’t seen it for years. Apparently, when everything got turned upside down in the knockdown on the way from Falmouth, the Diesel Blast got thrown to the top of the heap – thus swapping places with the galley scissors which I haven’t seen since.

There wasn’t much left in the bottle. Did this sort of stuff go off? Might as well use it up. I squirted 15ml up into the measuring chamber at the top of the bottle.

And that’s when I saw the slug. Well, that’s what it looked like – a drowned slug. On the small size as slugs go but very large for a lump of diesel bug which was probably more likely. Anyway, you wouldn’t want either of them in your tank, would you?

I’m very particular about what goes into my tank. When I took on a deck cargo of 50litres of diesel from the dodgy-looking filling station in Banjul so that I could motor the 100 miles up the Gambia River to Baboon Island and back, I put every drop of it through a 5micron filter.

But not the slug.

The slug, I reasoned, would end up in the engine’s pre-filter anyway. I mean, something that size isn’t going to get through the pre-filter is it? Even if it did, what chance has it got with the main filter?

Well none, now I come to think about it. Because it’s going to get stuck in the pipe before it gets to the filter, isn’t it?

And what will happen then?

The engine will stop.

I’m not very happy about the idea of the engine stopping – haven’t been since last summer coming into Portland Harbour.

This was during one of my incessant trips up and down the English Channel. What with Amsterdam for the Aries, Beaulieu for the OCC rally, Newort IOW for the watermaker (twice), Cowes for the Royal Yacht Squadron book club, Liverpool for university graduation, Dublin for the weather and lunch with Jim Gallagher, the family in Jersey – and Falmouth, of course, at every opportunity because it is, well, Falmouth after all … I really can’t remember when it was that I went into Portland Harbour.

But I do remember there was a gale coming. I had it all worked out. I could get there just before the gale arrived.

I was on time. It was the gale that was early.

Of course, I could have sheltered in Weymouth Bay – anchored just off the beach. I’ve done that before. There’s good holding in sand – but, of course, Weymouth sand is famously fine (hence the annual sand sculpture festival) and while my new Spade anchor has glowing reviews from all the experts, it is physically smaller than the Rocna and might therefore, not be quite as secure in soft mud or fine sand.

Maybe I would sleep better in Portland Harbour. I’d never been to Portland Harbour. Why I thought this was a good reason for going there, I have no idea – especially as the wind had now climbed over 30kts and I couldn’t take in the second reef because there were a couple of navy ships at anchor to leeward. Instead, I started the engine to give the boat a bit of a lift for the last mile to the entrance.

In fact, what with too much sail up, too much heel and, consequently too much leeway, by the time we reached the entrance, the little 21hp Nanni was the only thing that was keeping us going.

And it continued to be the only thing keeping us going as we passed (agonisingly slowly) through the north entrance with the great granite boulders of the breakwater two boat’s lengths under our lee.

I remember thinking to myself that if the engine were to stop now, I wouldn’t be able to tack. We’d just sail sideways into the harbour wall. There’s many a ship that’s sailed sideways into a harbour wall.

We didn’t of course. We just spent 40 minutes burning diesel and punching at about half a knot into what was now a full 40kts across the deck. By the time I tipped the anchor over the bow on the western side, I was thinking that really, Weymouth Bay had a lot going for it – sand sculptures or not…

So, you will understand why the slug has got to come out of the tank.

The official routine for doing this is to empty the tank, open the inspection hatch and get in there when a good supply of clean rags.

If you don’t have an inspection hatch and you’ve just filled the tank to the brim, you have to wait a bit and when there’s hardly any left, pump out what there is, pass it through the 5micron filter you should have used in the first place, pour it back, stir it round, pump it out again – and keep on doing that until it runs clear.

And you still don’t know whether the slug has been hiding in a corner the whole time and is just waiting for the right moment to reappear – like Portland Harbour in a gale…

Like I said: Stupid.