It`s Raining Again in Iberia

IT’S RAINING AGAIN IN IBERIA
Mark Holbrook
(Mark – who among other duties is responsible for the club’s Port Officer network – left
Scotland in 2007 for all points south and west. Rain Again is a 39ft Shearwater cutter from
the design board of Dudley Dix.)
Grey goo
There is a book entitled Engines of Creation which posits a doomsday scenario where
ultra-miniscule robots replicate themselves ad infinitum until all that is left in the
world is a grey goo. Nobody had heard of this before Prince Charles worked the
unfortunate phrase into one of his speeches on technology, and now the world waits
for its sticky come-uppance.
Only the come-uppance had started here, at 2.30 in the afternoon, 24 hours out
from Kinsale. We had survived our first dreadful night of northerly 9 and I was
attempting to revive spirits with a bacon sandwich – the first time we had braved hot
food since being rather overwhelmed by meteorological events. Crouching at the
sink, the boat being thrown violently from side to side, there it was being pushed up
past the floorboards on each port side lurch. Grey goo.
I mopped it up, another lurch, another squirt of end-of-the-world sticky stuff
appeared – mockingly. It must be breeding. Now I was very tired you understand, as
were we all. Poor Ginty, on her first long passage, had been sick almost since we left.
I had no idea how many times the heads had overflowed, so with all the mess belowdecks the origins of the goo were uncertain at best. But why was it breeding?
Murmurings of eventual apocalypse rather took the savour out of our breakfast, and
we started to focus on more mortal worries like why the hell were we still doing 6
knots even though we didn’t have any sails up?
The trip down from Ardrossan to Kinsale had been very uneventful (and markedly free
of goo of any hue). We left, we sailed, we arrived and tied up to the outside of the perimeter
pontoon of the Kinsale Yacht Club. That was more or less it. Then we got all the weather
maps and looked for the window to cross Biscay. But we couldn’t see any window.
Confused, and with a boat full of the ‘gung-ho, lets go’ variety, I shelled out £25 to
speak with the Met office. 1 – give card number; 2 – find out that I cannot see a
window because... 3 – ‘There isn’t one!’. ‘Wait a week’ is the best advice I could get.
With the news of delay broken to the crew I expected a mass exodus, but thankfully
they committed to waiting the week, celebrating Ginty’s birthday, and then seeing
what gave. A week later and I could see the window on the Grib file as it downloaded
over the radio link. I called / paid the Met office to confirm: ‘Yes, go on Sunday, you
won’t get anything stronger than a force 6.’ So 0900 on Sunday saw Rain Again making
her way out past the Old Head of Kinsale and on towards Spain.
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1100 saw us reducing sail to just the staysail.
1230 saw us dragging the storm jib out from under the forward bunk so that it was
ready ‘just in case’ – after all, we were still only hearing forecasts for force 6.
1300 saw me take the helm as Hamish and Andy wrestled down the staysail. The
conclusion was that the gusts of 55 knots we could see when we were brave
enough to look at the anemometer probably ruled out the storm jib.
I had no idea how Rain Again would handle under bare poles as I started to hand-steer,
and contemplated a short-watch roster to helm manually for the foreseeable future.
Everything seemed fine, RA tracked well, and we were still doing 6 knots. Experimentally,
and with mental images of the pages of the instruction manual admonishing the user to
‘Balance the Sail Plan’, I connected up Monica the Monitor windvane self-steering. She
steered the boat well nigh perfectly for the next 36 hours.
Every 30 minutes though we would be pooped – not Monica’s fault, you understand.
In the force 9 we were experiencing the average wave height should be 20 foot, but
it’s worth noting the word ‘average’. Some were less, some more, and when a 30 foot
one came along and our speed was markedly different from the wave’s it would fill our
cockpit, push us bodily sideways, and the next wave would sweep us.
The pooping waves were scary, but it was the following ones that were really nasty
– the solid green water would lift the two halves of Rain Again’s butterfly skylight and
simply pour in. Down below was soaking. At least now I know why I carry umpteen
towels with me, as they were all pressed into service. The water was nasty, but the
grey goo ... now that had a real nemesis ring about it. I mopped it up, but next lurch of
the boat to port and up it came again – the damn stuff was breeding!
We went into a formal watch system: for two hours you had your kip, or at least you
were horizontal; for the next two hours you were down below, but kitted up ready to
go and help the guy on watch; and for the final two hours you were in the cockpit and
ready to help Monica, should she need it.
Thirty-six hours later the wind moderated to force 6 and went round to the west.
We started sailing well and doing what we could to clean up the bomb site below
decks. Even the chart table was full of water, and the in-use charts were pulp.
Pulp ... now maybe that was a clue. The expanding grey goo was re-examined. Samples
were not hard to find. There was plenty of water below the cabin sole, trapped in
voids not linked to the main sump by limber holes, and with every slop of the water to
port more grey goo came up.
With the floor dried as best as I could with towels, I reached for the roll of
kitchen towel to finish mopping up in the corners. No roll in its usual place
below the sink – well, the doors had opened themselves from time to time as we
were tossed about, so it must have made its way somewhere. Finally I tracked
down what was left of the roll to the engine bilge where, soaked in engine oil
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It ain’t
half wet
Mum
Where the Celts went
Gracias a Voluntarios
King Brogan, with the
Torré de Hércules behind
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and seawater, it was rapidly making its transformation to feed the grey goo
fountain below the galley floorboards.
The wind carried on backing and dropped away to nothing, and then down came
the fog ... just in time for the approach to the shipping lanes off Galicia. The fog
continued as we closed the coast, so we didn’t even see the Torre de Hércules as we
entered the inlet which sailors of Drake’s time had called The Groyne, and tied up at
the marina in A Coruña. (The local Galego spelling – the more familiar La Coruña,
Lage, Finisterra, Bayona etc are Castilian Spanish.)
Wang’s Laundry in the Glass City
“Look Toto, we’re back in Kansas”, I said to Hamish, as we gazed from a very wet and
bedraggled Rain Again tied to the dock in A Coruña, right in the middle of the Glass
City. We were surrounded by tall, elegant, six-storey buildings, their verandas all
glassed-in with multi-paned windows, the whole scene set against a musical-chiming
church bell which told the quarters of the clock.
The Romans had founded the city and, realising the strategic importance of the allweather harbour, had built the first lighthouse where Torre de Hércules now stands.
The Roman foundations are still there – you can see them because the tower has
actually been jacked up above them – and the original Roman tower is cocooned in
subsequent structures. Around the outside of today’s building is the ghost of the original
wooden ramp, winding its way to the top of the light, which the oxen used to haul up
fuel for the fire at the top.
Legend has it that King Breogan climbed to the top of the tower and saw green land to
the north, which resulted in the Celts colonising Ireland. From there you can see a compass
rose bearing symbols representing the countries the Celts dispersed to – a grail for Cornwall,
a goose foot for Brittany, a thistle for Scotland, a shamrock for Ireland, a scallop shell for
Santiago and skull and crossbones for the Coast of Death ... this place. Once you realise
that the skull and crossbones are the local insignia you see them everywhere – on drain
covers, on street lights, on the municipal buildings, carved into bridges – just everywhere.
Drake sacked A Coruña in 1589, though you wouldn’t believe it by looking at the
statue of Maria Pita in the main square. Every Spanish schoolchild is taught that she,
singlehandedly, fought off the ‘pirate’ Drake’s assault on the town. Maria is certainly
a hero (heroine?) in A Coruña, but interestingly there is another one, a Scot. While
Spanish children are hearing about Maria’s exploits, their British counterparts are
told in English Literature lessons that:
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O’er the grave where our hero we buried.
Slowly and sadly we laid him down,
From the field of his fame fresh and gory;
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We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone,
But we left him alone with his glory.
Sir John Moore stands on one of the pillars in George Square in Glasgow, but whilst
he is relatively unsung in his own country he is renowned in Galicia. Moore was
responsible for ensuring the orderly retreat of the Iberian forces in the face of 200,000
of Napoleon’s troops. His defensive action apparently won such admiration from the
French that, when they finally overran his position some days after Moore’s death,
Marshal Soult built a memorial over his grave in the ramparts. The grave is easy to
find – just mention the words ‘Sir John Moore’ in any language you like and you will
be waved towards a well-tended garden standing on the old walls of the town, with
the words of the poem carved on the gates opening to the sea.
The inside of the boat was saturated. Bedding, towels, upholstery, books, clothes – all
was stripped out, washed if practical, and hung on the rail, boom and halyards until
we looked like some Chinese laundry. Order was resumed, Toto was back.
Along the Coast of Death
In 2002 the captain of an ageing, single-hulled oil carrier called the Prestige resigned
over the fact that his report on the numerous mechanical failings in his vessel were
being ignored by its owners. Not surprising, you may think since even now, six years
later, nobody can quite work out who owned the Bahamian-flagged, Liberian-registered
Prestige. On Wednesday 13 November 2002 the ship sent out a distress call. It was
carrying 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil loaded in St Petersburg, and was heading to Singapore
via Gibraltar. There then followed a catalogue of disastrous decisions, which resulted
in the ship being refused entry to port and drifting about aimlessly until it sank off the
Galician coast.
Its cargo came ashore where I was standing, on the most perfect white sand shore I
had ever seen. The place sparkled, and the sea was alive with fish and the shore with
birds. As we walked up to the town of Laxe we saw that respect for the environment
was echoed everywhere in the cleanliness of the place. Beside the main street was a
modern bronze sculpture of what looked like a spaceman with a gas mask and a rake.
It said ‘Gracias a Voluntarios’ – thank you to the volunteers. Laxe had been to
environmental hell, and had been brought back from the brink by an army of volunteers
who had scraped their beaches clean.
How strange, then, to find a very different attitude just to the west beyond Cabo
Villano. Camariñas depends on fishing for its living – it has nothing else. The Prestige
disaster threatened its very existence, and cleaning up the seabed was if anything
harder than scraping the oil off Laxe’s beaches. So why then, anchored down-wind in
the harbour, did we see an endless stream of fish boxes, plastic bags and discarded bits
of rope and netting drift past us? The shore was like a landfill site, and while we were
anchored boats returning to the fish dock seemed to make a game of seeing how close
5
Islas Cíes – the Gods
weren’t stupid...
Baiona
Waterfront ‘horreos’
(grain-stores) at Combarro
Main Square,
Combarro style
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and how fast they could scrape past our bow. In the night we were clipped by one of
them, leaving beer cans thrown overboard in its wake. The small marina was welcoming
enough, and the walks along the clifftop to stare out at the thundering surf on the
Costa da Morte were wonderful, but gales imprisoned us there for ten days. The pilot
book promised that this ría ‘often features as the highlight of a cruise on this coast’,
but we could not see beyond the mountain of rubbish on the shore, and the contrast
with pristine, grateful Laxe was too severe. When the seas moderated enough for us to
punch our way out of the ría and round Cabo Fisterra to Muros it was none too soon.
Sometimes bent is best – a Strange Tale of molluscs
Rain Again was anchored off Isla Tambo in the Ria de Pontevedra, and had been for
some days. Now it seems to me that the world can be classified into ‘sticky’ and ‘notso-sticky’ places. This anchorage, just east of the island, is one of the former and is
very hard to get away from. Did you hear that when they scored cities for ‘liveability’
in the USA, Pittsburgh came out top and everybody asked ‘Why?’? Well, it seems that
Pittsburgh didn’t score very high marks in any category, but it did score in all of them
so it outflanked all the other potential front-runners and scooped the prize.
Thus it is with Isla Tambo. Big paper mill across the ría? Sure, but it gives you
something to look at at night. Big city nearby? Of course, but Pontevedra has this
really interesting pair of bridges and it’s fun to watch the yachts go up there full of
hope and then come back half an hour later, scared their masthead instruments would
fall off when they hit the bridge. Tourist trap at Combarro? Yes again, but if you
anchor at Tambo then you can visit Combarro when all the tourists have gone and its
unique seafront grain-stores (which look like tombs for drying out your less robust
crew) and twisting, rock-hewn streets are fascinating. So, for us, Isla Tambo excelled
as an anchorage and we had been ‘stuck’ here for a few days.
One morning, though, we were not alone. Tambo is a military island, and is guarded in
daylight hours by Armada persons who abandon it at night to whatever the dark hours
will bring. And that night the dark hours brought 70 or so little boats, each one armed
with what looked like a 40 foot bamboo pole with a bit of supermercado trolley stuck to
the end of it. For the next four hours they prodded, pulled, whacked and waved long bits
of stick both in and out of the water – but why? No amount of playing with the £75-fromCompass special binoculars produced an answer. We were agog.
The next day brought a trip up the Río Tambo to Pontevedra (by dinghy), to view the
bridges which had upset all those yachts. Ever since I read Heart of Darkness, trips upriver
have brought portents of deep insights into the human condition – human thus far, please
note, not mollusc. Now Pontevedra old town we found to be a bit of a mess, nothing like
the restored medieval streets we had seen in Muros, Combarro and Santiago. The city
had the same sort of granite buildings with cloisters, but was rundown and abandoned ...
except for one dark door near the old church. Smoke and alcohol fumes wafted out in
generally equal proportions, so we wafted in. The interior decor (term used very loosely
here) was driftwood stuck together with nails and bits of varnish with large numbers of
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the local witches (megas) hanging from the rafters.
Having struggled through ordering two beers, I then proceeded to butcher replies
such as ‘We are from Scotland’, ‘We are from a boat with a mast that is too high to get
under the bridge’ and ‘We are anchored off Isla Tambo’. The last comment brought a
flicker of interest from our host, and the need for more beers with him included on
the imbibing list. ‘But Tambo is a special island, no?’ ‘Yes, it is a restricted military
island.’ ‘But not just for that, it is special for the shellfish.’ ‘Oh, what sort of shellfish?’
‘Well, that is where the giant razor fish grows.’ ‘But I thought that small razor clams
tasted better than big razor clams’. ‘Yes, normally that is true, but at Tambo the razor
shells do not grow straight and then not taste good. Instead they grow bent and taste
wonderful – that is why the armada has the island restricted so that they have all the
best navajas for themselves. Only on one day a year is the town permitted to fish, and
for the rest of the year it is forbidden.’
Deep knowledge my friends: seek ye out the big bent razor clams and enjoy with relish!
Baiona
Take a medieval walled city, add a fairytale castle with long battlement walks on top of
the hill, throw in replicas of Christopher Columbus’s returning ships, long white and
impeccably clean beaches running along the main drag, the world’s best yacht club which
enters the America’s Cup (and loses graciously) and protect the whole ría with the most
beautiful barrier islands in the world. What have you got? You have Baiona.
As we come alongside the hammerhead at the Monte Real Club de Yates in Baiona
our ropes are taken by Joseph and his wife Mary. ‘Jesus! Its Mary and Joseph’ quips
Frances, as she recognises our Irish friends who have been here every time we have –
and why? Because Baiona has everything, that’s why. It even has complicated foreand-aft moorings to struggle with, which keep most of the visitors away, mooring
instead at the new marina where you can come alongside a conventional pontoon.
The new marina has portacabins for showers, however – here we have the yacht club
built in the castle grounds, complete with lifting gangway steps to get you up the
walls, leather chairs so deep you need to come up for air once you have sunk yourself
into them, and gin and tonics so big you could take a bath in them.
There can only be one reason to leave from this place, and that is to realise how
everywhere else falls short of the mark so that you appreciate Baiona yet more when you
come back. Paradise is only paradise if you have the other place to compare it with.
As we check in with the friendly club staff, who recognise the boat’s somewhat
pessimistic name – and note that it is particularly apt for the dreadful wet start to the
season that Spain has seen – we learn that the Islas Cíes are now a national park and
complicated permits are required to visit them. We balk at separate licences for
navigation (sailing close to them at all), anchoring (disturbing the sea bed), and
landing (pretty self-explanatory) all in a Spanish which is well beyond my ‘Hola!’
level. No matter, the club staff sort it all out and my application is lodged. Now we
must wait but in Baiona waiting is a pleasure. The place livens up as night falls, so we
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Top:
The bridge and marina
at Viana do Castelo
Above: Sorted!
Right:
A tow from Port Officer
Terry O’Brien
9
climbed from the seashore up the hill towards the old town to find a local restaurant,
where we sat outside next to the street.
Islands of the gods
Ptolemy knew a thing or two about the world, I mused, as I stood on the summit of the
main island of the Islas Cíes looking south towards Portugal – in his Geographia he
called these ‘the islands of the gods’. I have seen a few islands in my time – though not
as many as Ptolemy, right enough – but these must still be as beautiful as when they
were named for the ambrosia eaters. The Atlantic bashes away at one rocky side,
whilst between the islands runs a narrow isthmus with a tidal lagoon in its lee. Beyond
the island of San Martín lies the end of Atlantic Spain and the start of Portugal – an
adventure for the next day.
Border Town
It was my birthday, as we passed to seaward of the Islas Cíes and headed south. My
boat was full of family and friends, all of whom had been promised a leisurely jaunt
down to Portugal. But, as so often happens along this coast, the gentle northerly wind
of the forenoon had whipped up into a bit of a hang-on-by-fingernails blow by the
afternoon – just in time to enter the river at Viana do Castelo. The pilot instructs us
to head on a leading bearing from the castle, but I couldn’t distinguish the castle from
all the other buildings on the shore. However there was a fancy-looking temple up on
the hill, so I took a bearing on that instead.
In fact, following a bearing into the river turned out to be a bit pointless since the
most urgent things to do are (1) avoid lobster pots (yes, inside the entrance); (2)
avoid sandbanks; and (3) avoid kite-surfers. I failed on the last one since the kite
ditched to port, the surfer to starboard, and all of it 10 feet from my bows. I passed
over the top with hopes that my rope cutters were sharp. Once in the river proper we
got a bit more depth and headed up towards the bridge.
Now Mr Eiffel built this bridge and it looked like he used all his meccano set doing
it. I would not fit underneath it – at least my sticky-up bit wouldn’t. The marina is to
port just before the bridge, with another bridge across its entrance which we also
wouldn’t fit underneath, but at least this one opens. We were 200 yards from Mr
Eiffel’s meccano project and I couldn’t see the marina; then we were 100 yards from
oblivion and I still couldn’t see it. I checked that I still had astern available to me as
an option and that it was not impeded by windsurfer body parts. 30 yards to go, and
there was a nice gentleman waving at me – no, he was waving me away, and then I
saw the second bridge. It doesn’t open upwards – instead it swings out across the river,
so as I did a quick pirouette I had to avoid it as it projects across the river.* Then I was
in – and in to stay – as the swing bridge closed behind me. But surely he had to be
* This bridge is new since the current edition of Atlantic Spain & Portugal was
researched in 2005.
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kidding. There, true enough, was a section of pontoon for me to come alongside. Well
maybe my bowsprit could come alongside, but what about the rest of me? Oh well, I
thought as I threw out the stern anchor, at least I’ve got to the Green Coast.
Viana was founded in 1253, and gained importance as one of the principle ports
from which the Portuguese set sail on their voyages of discovery. As a border city it
has had a complicated history, with Jews, Spanish, pirates and even English wine
merchants all making it their home. The old town is strongly fortified, and even the
15th century cathedral has a bastioned look to it.
Sieges are strange things in this part of the world though. It was near here that the
Portuguese, under siege from the Spanish, reacted on the point of starvation by letting
an eccentric widow bake rolls from the last of the flour and toss them over the walls.
The Spanish were convinced by this falling manna that the town was well supplied
and their siege had failed, so they retreated from the town.
Manhattan behind the sand dunes
Well that is what the pilot book says: head south from Viana, and as you close on
Póvoa de Varzim you see what looks like a miniature Manhattan rising from the
sand dunes – and there it was, right on cue, shimmering in the haze like a miniature
Big Apple. Not what you would expect for a town reputed to date back 4000
years before Christ. We were told to expect strange looking people here, and
there they were, everywhere – bright blue, piercing eyes and aquiline noses. The
Castor pre-Celtic people had apparently maintained trading links with the
Phoenicians, and as the Castors declined the Phoenicians increasingly colonised
the area until their practice of marrying within their own class system started to
dominate. Even when the Romans arrived and set up their fish factory to
manufacture garum, a kind of fish sauce cure-all, the people from the eastern
Mediterranean stayed on – and their descendants are still here.
More recently gambling has taken over from the fish sauce – not that fishing is
not popular, you understand. Just to the south of the marina the combined sewage
of Póvoa and Vila do Conde pours out of a pipe behind a sand dyke into the sea.
The locals flock to fish there, hauling out lunch with rod and line. A very effective
form of recycling, I suppose.
The casinos are enormous, and the accompanying huge hotel complexes give
the place a strange aura. Mile upon mile of sand, with casinos at one end and a
rather bedraggled little town at the other. But Póvoa has quite a lot going for it.
High season on a marina pontoon cost me • 150 a month, including water and
electricity, with the staff tending my lines (it is a very windy place). A 12-month
in-the-water tariff for my 40ft would have been • 1000 – try squaring that up
with what marinas in the UK will have off you. The fast, modern, clean rail-link
into Porto is just at the back of the town, and there is acre upon acre of hard-standing.
Mind you, if you leave your boat there uncovered over the winter she will be sandblasted whether you want it or not. I liked the place. I will be back.
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Lagos: from
sat-coms to
leaping
dolphins –
the latter
decorating
Rain Again’s
bow
A PO catches new members. Left to right: (rear) Barbarra O’Brien,
Terry O’Brien, Ruby Overbury; (front) Pam Overbury, Mike Overbury
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The Engine
It is said that at about 0300 the link between a soul and its host is at its most tenuous.
That the golden thread that keeps us alive on this earth is then most likely to snap. So
if something is going to go wrong, then this is when it will happen.
Three o’clock in my morning found me deeply asleep in the pilot berth on Rain
Again as we motor-sailed past the mouth of the Rio Tejo on our passage from Nazaré
to Lagos. If any part of me was conscious it heard, and was soothed by, the drone of
the engine. Then there was a bang – a very loud and expensive sounding bang –
followed by quiet. My own golden thread faced up to the snap (heart attack) versus
rewind (wake up and shout/panic) issue, and chose instant action as opposed to longlasting repose. Kenny was on watch, and greeted my sudden appearance in the
companionway with the same question as my own – ‘what the hell was that?’
Ignition off, water off, electric pump on, floorboards up, engine bay opened. No
water in the bilge, no smoke or oil in the engine bay – but prop solid. Of course it
would be, we were in gear. Into neutral, prop still solid. So it’s a rope. Are we tethered
to a net? How are we going to clear it in the dark? Spotlight out – no, we still have a
wake and nothing obvious being towed behind us. Water on, neutral, ignition on –
engine starts okay. Ease into reverse and immediate stall. So do I still have a ‘P’ bracket?
No way to tell right now, but at least we can still sail. Well we could if there was any
wind, which there wasn’t. So we flapped about for the rest of the night.
The next morning we thought – sorry, okay, skipper’s fault, I thought – that it would
be a good idea to make our way towards the land and try to get some shelter from the
swell under a lee and dive on the prop. At a snail’s pace (still no wind) we crawled
towards and then under the shelter of the cliffs at Sesimbra. One bumped head later
we crawled out again, still with the net wrapped around our prop and hoping for wind
– any wind! The breeze came back from the north at about 1400, and for four glorious
hours we sailed towards our destination. Then it went away and we flapped about
again. That night ditto.
Dawn brought us the sight of (1) no wind and (2) a trawler on the horizon. We must
have had the trawler in sight for over two hours as it made its way towards us. We
called it up on the radio, we waved at it, and at a range of 200 yards we started to
sound ‘you are heading into danger’ signals on the foghorn and waving white flares
threateningly at its bridge. No more than 30 yards off it finally veered away – with all
its gear out – and made contact with us on the radio. It was as if we had had some
strange magnetic attraction for it over those miles of intervening sea.
So much for excitement – then we carried on flapping around again. The afternoon
started with – you guessed it – more flapping around, and then we got wind! Yes, for
one whole hour we actually sailed! Then we went back to flapping around again.
We decide that this really is not much fun and that we should ask some kind soul to
give us a pull to where there is wind – I mean, surely there’ll be some off Cabo de São
Vicente? We sight a yacht and the kind soul inside it is hailed over the radio. ‘Where
are you going?’ ‘Lagos’. ‘Will you give us a pull?’ ‘Yes’.
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Now for once we seem to have some luck on our side. Kenny is with us and he’s a
lifeboatman and so knows all about tows and things, so the next hour is spent happily
doing all those tow things that you think about when you have nothing else to occupy
your mind. You know – bridles, and strain relief, and bits of rag, and mutterings of
‘Lloyds open form’. That sort of stuff. Then you look up from your happy labour to
find yourself in the presence of a very workmanlike bridle but not, unfortunately, of a
kind soul in a pulling vessel. We had the name of our saviour, so we gave him a shout:
‘Golden Spirit, Golden Spirit this is Rain Again, Rain Again. Errrrr, where are you?’
‘We’re chasing you! And you’re making such good speed that we can’t catch up.’
‘Umm, perhaps you aren’t chasing us, because we have no wind and are not going
anywhere fast.’
‘Oh. Well where did you say you were?’
Having agreed that positions are very confusing things, Golden Spirit of Islay hove
into view three hours later. We had obviously not talked to the yacht we had in sight,
and neither had Golden Spirit who were a good 20 miles away when they responded to
our call. Anyway, pleasantries exchanged (and our rope as advised by the almanac),
and my offer of payment very kindly refused, off we go to find wind.
In the event there wasn’t any and Golden Spirit towed us all the way to Lagos bay,
where we dropped anchor and waited to see what the morrow would bring.
It brought very little, certainly in the wind department, so I dug out my mobile and
called up my good friend Terry O’Brien, the OCC Port Officer, who lives close to the
marina. Yes, he could see me; yes, he would tow me in. More super-officious preparations
involving code flag ‘D’ and outriders (well outdinghiers) armed with foghorns, and
Terry turns up in his 7m Selene, ties off at our port quarter, and off we go to the river
mouth. Traffic races in, traffic races out, Hamish races about in the dinghy and sounds
every foghorn signal known to man, but nothing deters the Portuguese need to get in/
out of harbour as fast as possible, and in any event not to get stuck between that weird
Brit boat being pushed by another weird Brit boat.
And so Rain Again finally made it to the reception berth at Lagos to find, standing
waiting for us, a diver. Ten minutes later we had a neat pile of bits of net and rope on
the reception berth and smiles all round. We did our very best to make a crisis out of
the drama, but Golden Spirit and Selene kept it all moderated down to nothing more
than an exercise of their impressive seamanship – thanks!
Well it has to rain sometime...
Lagos is a very dry place. In fact it had been dry all year – they only have one wet
month, and then all the water goes underground and that is it for another year. It’s
just that they never know when the wet month is going to be ... at least they didn’t
until I tied up next to Moody-Bleu from Largs in Scotland, close to my home port of
Ardrossan. ‘I see you brought the rain with you,’ said a familiar accent, and so, it
seemed, I had. It’s Raining Again in Iberia.
E
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