Ruairi’s Ramblings 2025
Part 1
It started innocuously enough, ‘the lady’ in the Ivory tower that serves as our office here in Vliho said “Can you pop out to BLUE MOON and see what is wrong with their autopilot”.
Only after leaving the quayside in Fred our chase boat, did I stop and make a call to ask, “what and where is Blue Moon”? Having realised that it was not one of our long-term boats! Thus, having been appraised of my current IQ by ‘the lady,’ I found myself tied up alongside a floating tennis court.
Blue Moon is a Catana 581 and was the new home of Gill, Nami, Ailee and Seneca. Just bought from Eastern Greece, they were enroute to the Caribbean, Columbia and finally to Malaysia, their long-term base. The boat had, they explained, been laid up for a couple of years prior to purchasing, masking problems which had really come to light on the short trip from Athens across to us.
To paraphrase Gladys and the Pips, they had heard of us through the grapevine and were in need of some help, having drawn a blank on that front in the Athens area.
The autopilot was simple to diagnose, the rudders were seized in their bearings, only considerable force on the helm would encourage movement. Maybe some grease, Gil had asked hopefully. Rudders out, I replied dejectedly. Not a chance for them to slide out easily, only a bloody big hammer would get them free.
Rather than continuing with the composing of our rhyme, we agreed to move the boat to the pontoon the next morning.
Project Creep: normally when a job list keeps gradually increasing from the initial task to a never-ending list of add-ons. Well, we could not accuse Blue Moon of that, even as she reversed onto the pontoon, it was apparent that all was not well with her propulsion set up.
By the end of the day, we had agreed to remove and replace bearings of both rudders & remove and replace both prop shafts, the half shafts and thrust bearings, remove and replace the water maker, have the 5.5 metre rib retubed, oh and replace the Kevlar rigging on the 70ft carbon mast!
This was definitely ‘project avalanche’ but at least we had plenty of time to complete all the above. Until Gil pointed out, they only had 6 weeks or so left on their Schengen Visa! I will not go into the trials and tribulations of this fairly major refit, parts delayed, wrong parts arriving, customs shenanigans and some international flights to physically collect vital items, making even assembling the required equipment difficult, never mind fitting it.
I thought I had gained a reprieve by farming the boat off to one of our partner companies in Lefkas for a week to have the rigging replaced, only to get a phone call to say that the boat was too wide to fit in their lifting dock.
The boat came back to Vliho & after an abortive attempt to lift her out of the water, we secured her to the yard pontoon and called Costa Crane.
Next morning after some exacting calculations and planning carefully scratched with a booted toe in the gravel, we together with the gang from Waypoint, let go of the rigging and lifted the mast ashore. When I write it nonchalantly like that, I gloss over the two and a half hours of vein splitting stress that was involved.
Back at the end of September, when Gil was voicing concerns about his Schengen visa and the timing of the progress, he also admitted the family’s uneasiness of crossing the Med during wintertime, as their initial plan had been to make the trip in easy 1–2-day hops through Italy and Spain. This idea was now out the window due to the rapidly decreasing time on their visas. I had glibly said at the time, do not worry, if it comes to it, I will run you across to Gibraltar. Approaching the end of October the reality of that promise was looming large. The rig was back on, last minute things were underway and I was going back to sea, for a 10-day offshore passage.
Everything written about sailing offshore talks of preparation, none of it mentions Vicky being in the UK, one hundred boats being derigged and boats breaking down at night near Paxos.
As it was, I had about an hour to throw some kit in a bag, stock up on fags and collect 2 weeks’ worth of vac-packed curry & chili from our chefs. Normally I prefer to cook on passage but as I am vegetarian and the rest of the gang dead animals only, it seemed prudent to self-cater.
Like ships passing in the night, I welcomed Vicky back from the UK and she left me out to Blue Moon, now moored in the bay. Without fanfare we up anchored and departed around 1pm, destination Gibraltar.
With an Irish Catholic upbringing, I know a thing or two about omens, let’s face it, I basically did guilt for O Level. The incessant beeping coming from the Garmin display did not create anger, frustration or worry. In fact, now 2 NM into our trip, it was almost a sense of relief that something had gone wrong, impending doom being a key facet of my education. The irony of the alarm being caused by the much-tested autopilot, the very reason the boat had come to us, was not lost as we dropped anchor behind Tiglia island.
I started my fault diagnoses in the tried and tested way. “George, can you jump in the rib and come out to Blue Moon”, then with knowledge on its way, I dropped into the engine room.
The problem, a faulty electromagnetic valve was easy to diagnose, digging through our piles of obsolete spares in the workshop to find, then modifying a part took longer, but by 4pm we were underway again, personally happy that ‘shit going wrong’ had been ticked off the departure list.
First night offshore is normally uncomfortable. The boat and crew have not settled into the rhythm of watch keeping, appetites are suppressed and the magnitude of distances at sea are brought home by the incremental progress of the little black triangle across the screen.
We had been determined to depart when we did as the wind had stopped blowing from the west for the first time in weeks, the south easterly blowing now would be favorable for a couple of days allowing us to reach the south end of Scilly before it went back to the normal West Northwest.
Favorable of course, does not mean comfortable, only fast. As we were on a cat I will describe the motion in feline terms. Imagine a cat (pussy) encountering a puddle in an alley (potentially an alley cat) with the determination to reach its goal or without the sense to go back, it forges on across the stretch of water, trying to keep only one paw submerged at a time. That was our experience of 8-12 knots of boat speed and an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon in the future. One by one the crew succumbed to the conditions. I did not mind the long watches as it was still a bit of a novelty to observe how the big tennis court performed and 2 days later, as we passed between Malta & Scilly, all onboard were in much better shape and raring to go.
Which as it turned out was just as well…
