Portuguese man o’tour
How to complicate a simple delivery
May be it’s just me, but in my experience I’ve found that there are few more desperate sea creatures than the delivery skipper, as virtually everyone who has ever asked me to crew on a delivery has turned out to be desperate, sectionable, certifiable, self-medicating and quite clearly unhinged.
After considering these qualifications I then ask searching and pertinent questions such as ‘will it sink?’ and ‘if we don’t will we stay in nice marinas with showers and nightlife nearby?’ Come to think of it, the second question makes the first one redundant, but if the answer to the second is the least bit equivocal or doesn’t contain key words like ‘St Tropez’ I turn them down flat.
Anecdotally, this scientifically proves that the only sea-dwelling organisms more desperate than the delivery skipper are delivery crew, certain limpets and me. However, when my mate Max asked if I fancied crewing for him on a delivery trip from Portugal to the UK I spared him the inquisition and simply said ‘yes’ – once I’d ascertained that Portugal was in the Algarve. You see, crewing is a leap of faith, and I have complete faith in Max. What transpired was the most successful delivery trip I’ve ever been involved in.
You see, Max’s track record speaks for itself. Years ago he sailed his own concrete boat to the Caribbean where, upon lifting it ashore, a great big lump of Essex mud dropped out of the hull to reveal what is known, technically, as a bloody great hole. Max, ever the optimist and a keen environmentalist, is continuing his experiments with Essex mud as the sustainable boatbuilding material of the future.
Moreover, Max has made a career out of delivering suspect yachts that other skippers have turned down. On countless occasions he has handed over leaky boats to the astonishment and disappointment of very well-insured owners who’d already filed their insurance claim. It’s a matter of great pride to Max that most of these boats sank within two hours of hand over. And when they discovered the wreck of the Mary Rose in The Solent, Max put in a very competitively priced tender to sail it into Portsmouth. That would have saved a fortune in salvage fees. In short, Max floats boats, and if he’d been on the Titanic it would have been the iceberg that sank.
And so to Portimão in Portugal, where the sardines are lovely and everyone speaks English, because even the Portuguese struggle with Portuguese. The other thing about Portugal is that it’s in Europe, and we’re not anymore, which meant Max had to get a 50ft trimaran out of Portugal in a bit of a hurry.
Seconds after we launched one of the two engines in the outer hulls failed. In Max’s book this barely rates as a to-do, as he’s more used to engine failure on boats with only one engine, and he performed a series of elegant pirouettes to gently nestle in a 60ft gap alongside the fish dock, then said: “Sardines, anyone?” Half way through my second sardine, Max poked his head into the saloon and said calmly “All hands on deck, we’re sinking,” so calmly I fact, that I had a third one before ambling on deck to find that we were indeed sinking. In no time Max put a stop to this kerfuffle, locating a water intake that had come adrift, and after several hours bailing we got the water out of the massive lazarette in the central hull.
As we headed for the Atlantic further minor teething troubles arose, including slack rigging, a swaying mast, exploding genoa cars, four steering failures as the hydraulic unions burst in sequence in 30 knot winds, and a perilous shortage of sardines. All of these, apart from the sardine crisis, Max fixed magnificently, but it was only when we ran out of hydraulic fluid that Max decided to return to port.
This was the definitely the most successful delivery trip I’ve ever done because it was round about then that quite by chance on Facebook I rediscovered old friends who live in the Algarve. So as Max got on with repairs I settled in with Karey and Bob and their two Westie terriers, swimming in crystal waters, basking on golden sands, eating sardines and watching the sun go down over the sea from their roof-top terrace for a week. In fact I might make it two. That floats my boat.
‘I had a third sardine before ambling on deck to find we were sinking’