#WaterAid Painting coming up soon...browse available prints here
...continuing from PIRATE ENCOUNTER. <= Click here to read the first part of the story.
The night was a proper nightmare. The wind got up and was screaming through the rig. The swell was more than a swell. Even for a makeshift anchorage, this was proper rough! We now know exactly what it must feel like being trapped inside a washing machine.. Both of us had now put our faith in the little seasickness pill and wished in silence for the day to come quickly.
The day came - not quickly - and brought fog with it. The THICK variety.
We could see nothing beyond the bow. And spent the whole morning on the lookout - in apprehension - waiting for the fog to dissipate. I could not sail in this! It would be like driving blind!
The pirate ship made a comeback and started circling us, and this time - although knowing its most plausible story - it felt really uneasy as, in my mind, there was a real collision risk.
And the idea of being hit and foundered by a fake pirate ship was.. not appealing..
No. Not even in a kinky sort of way.
It was just weird.
I could only, in fact, think about getting out of there. The seasick pills we took might as well had been some Jack-in-the-Box plaything left in the medical cabinet for a laugh, as by this point we were both blue in the face with sickness.
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We wanted to go to Falmouth... Ahh Falmouth. To be in Falmouth. Enjoying the protection inside the harbor bay. That´s what you want..
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1120 on the ship's clock. The thick of the fog did lift - a bit - and off we went.
We had, however, a small problem.
You see, what I have not mentioned until now was that the diesel on our tank was on the low side. We were actually carrying two extra 10 litre 'emergency' jerry cans, full of diesel inside our port cockpit locker - these came with the boat (thank you Mr Colston), but with the sea being that ...'sporty'... I wasn't so confident in my ability to retrieve them from their locker and fill the main (well, only) tank without some major spillage. And I haven't come this far just to commit a crime against the environment, thank you very much!
Alas, refueling still needed to be done.
It's a lot of work doing things this way.
After gathering all the 'stuff' we needed (filters, pipes, etc.) you must very carefully, which reads as 'as slowly and steadily as humanly possible', start dispensing diesel into the tank. And that's what was going on now.
Hooray! about one cupful went in - no spillages.. a bit more, a bit more.. yes, yEeSss..! another cupful. It was then when The Admiral turned to me and said: 'Isn't marine diesel supposed to be red? This stuff is translucid-like, and...' ?? WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATTT ?? We looked at each other and could almost touch the 'question marks' popping out of our heads. They were saying "NO CLUE, MATE"..
The only thing I knew was that the last thing we needed was to put some 'random liquid' in the main (well, only) tank - the consequences of which don't bear thinkin..!
So I made the executive call to put the jerry cans away.
We would try to reach Falmouth with the little diesel we had in and, once there, ask someone less dim than me (anyone's shadow) what the 'mysterious liquid' was. The answer would then have to be expressly tattooed on my forehead in a dark consecration ritual, so I would never again be "unsure".
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OK, despite the pitiful situation we were in, we got ourselves together and tried to raise the mood by saying 'we can try to actually sail the boat, can't we? This IS A SAILboat after all!' It will be alright!
'IT - WILL - BE - ALRIGHT'. Famous last words