Just Foul Play!

By Stephanie Thornton

It was Joyful’s first cross-channel trip under Present Management (she’s done it before: what 21-year-old hasn’t?). It turned out to be the most eventful and educational weekend I’ve ever had afloat. Who needs a tranquil sail into the sunset when you can have adventure?

First there was the late arrival in St Vaast – or to be exact, in the bay outside, in pitch darkness, having missed the tide for the entrance sill (because, owing to a snowstorm / gale / thunderstorm, I’d failed three times to scrub and antifoul, so we crossed over very slowly). The only minor excitement of night pilotage into a strange bay in the dark was the discovery that the 2 editions of Tom Cunliffe’s Shell Pilot aboard both emphasise the importance of leaving the entrance marker on the correct side – but one says port, the other starboard… interesting. (When in doubt, get a magnifying glass on the chart. Starboard, as it says in the earlier edition). Anchored up and had a very pleasant night.

Flush with the excitements of the next day ashore at St Vaast, the return journey seemed a doddle. We left in fair weather, managed a good sail up the coast and out past the lighthouse. And then the wind died. Engine on and a long slog home? Well - not quite.

We got part way over. Then, one minute we were batting along nicely, keeping up with the passage plan, the engine humming restfully (to a mother’s ear, anyway). The next there was a weird clunk, the engine began an outraged scream and lost power. Interestingly it didn’t cut out – though I didn’t give it much time to think about that, having diagnosed this as a good moment to switch off a.s.a.p.

Safety review: no-one hurt, no damage except the obvious. Not the best place to crash - we were outside the Pink Bits (traffic separation zone) but definitely in the likely pathway of big ships shaping up for that. Nothing visible at the moment. Lookout briefed to call for a securite shout on CH 16 should anything with funnels / a bow-wave appear on the horizon.

Situation review: clearly, no more engine. Moreover, the rudder was jammed solid - two grown men couldn’t shift it. It was obvious that something sinister was wrapped round the prop. Nothing visible over the transom – but then, the prop is fairly low down and raked under on Joyful. The rudder problem was solvable: Joyful’s spinnaker has long been replaced by an asymmetric chute, but the pole is still aboard, aka the major element in an emergency rudder (the spare leaf of the cockpit table is blissfully unaware of the sacrifice it might be called on to make here). We are a sailing vessel; my many nautical ancestors would snort that we should be able to sail out of this! Except there wasn’t a breath of wind.

I’ve always had a morbid terror of fouling the prop – especially after a previous episode where a child (mine) motored a Prout catamaran (someone else’s) straight over a lobster pot, effectively chaining us to the seabed for the three tight-lipped hours it took to saw through the metal reinforced, fist-sized line. Joyful’s prop is far less accessible (we’d previously established that we couldn’t even reach it with a scraper on a broom handle from a dinghy in harbour, despite having the crews of Fizzgig and Summer Song crammed in the bows to lift the stern). I’ve wasted hours of nervous energy planning what to do in a repeat crisis – I carry laminated copies of the Dick Everett article describing how to scoop such a fouling line to the surface in boats like Joyful. But this situation wasn’t like that. We weren’t tethered. We were drifting – back into the path of the big ships.

Summer Song was only a mile or so away. After a brief discussion on CH 72 Pam set out to take us in tow. I called Solent Coastguard for their information.

I’ve never been towed in a yacht before. Victor – a former merchant navy AB – was full of admiration for Pam’s knot tying (though as a feminist and strong friend of Victor’s I decline to repeat the exact wording of his obviously sincere compliment). Long-keeled Joyful is no light matter to take in tow – especially not with a rudder locked in a less-than-straight-forward position, creating drag. Thirty odd miles looked like a challenge. Back to the coastguard, who had a think and agreed. We were floating about near shipping, it was going to get dark soon, there was zero possibility of affecting a repair and still not a breath of wind. They decided to launch the Bembridge lifeboat, which, given how far out we were, would take several hours to reach us.

One incident was worth mentioning, while Summer Song stood by, towing us gently (out of the French sector, hurrah). Through the gathering dusk the cockpit crew of Joyful suddenly saw a big orange buoy travelling across the tide with an impressive bow wave, trailing a smaller buoy behind it. Crew from the two boats leaped up asking one another ‘did you see that???’. At the time I was dolefully convinced that it was a doomed dolphin as enmeshed in netting as we were, futilely struggling to be free. Less sentimental heads suggested that, since we were by now in the submarine exercise area, it was more likely a periscope absconding with some poor fisherman’s nets (an interpretation later endorsed by the coastguard, to whom such bizarre events are apparently mundane). It’s possible that my sympathy for fishermen was at a low ebb at that point.

The lifeboat arrived, took us in tow. We waved goodbye (and a giant thank you) to Summer Song and were towed at 12-15 knots back to Bembridge. What to do with several hours in the dark behind a lifeboat? I opened the champagne bought to celebrate 2 crewmen’s first ever channel crossings and put an opera (Pearl Fishers) on the player. After which we played cards and put bets on how much of the weed and netting would be blasted off the hull / prop by travelling at this speed. (Quite a bit, actually: the tiller, locked rigid at the start, would move through a good 15 inches at the end).

The lifeboat people were fantastic. Admin was minimal: I scribbled a report on a scrap of paper which may even have been the back of an envelope and that was that. Coastguard came down to meet us too, established what they needed to know with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of friendliness – and let us get on with partying with the crew of Fizzgig, who had blessedly diverted to meet us.

Next morning Mark, one of the lifeboat men – also stationed at Attril’s boatyard - turned up first thing to say they were coming to put us on the piles at high tide (high noon). We prepared ourselves by marching over the dunes to a beach breakfast café and having The Works. Peter, the chap in charge of the moorings where we had been deposited refused to take payment (since we’d been dragged in under duress). He turned out to be utterly charming and the author of a book about his life as a merchant seaman (which I bought, it’s in Joyful’s library, well worth a borrow).

I cocked up my first pile mooring. We ended up nose down and leaning over too much, a horrible angle. The only time I’ve ever felt seasick in my life was standing in the interior of Joyful in that awful orientation, that day. Blaaauuugh!

As the water went down two things became apparent: (a) that getting off that pile without the Attril’s boat acting as bow thruster (unlikely to be on hand, as we had to leave at midnight) would be a delicate precision manoeuvre, in light of where the mud and assorted metal poles were; (b) the prop had truly been in deep trouble.

As we thought, we’d hit a strip of fishing net that had balled itself round the prop. Before the water went away the Attril’s man thought we’d have been okay if I’d only had a prop cutter. After the full situation was revealed, he said not: no prop cutter could have gone through that. It took 2 hours to get off with hacksaws and knives. You can do a certain amount of unravelling by turning the prop if it’s not in gear – but less than you’d think. The thing had knotted itself on with a vengeance.

I was outraged! How could some fisherman chuck such a menace in the water – where it floats below the surface, invisible, just waiting to be sucked into a prop? Nothing you could have done to avoid it, said the RNLI coxswain. Perhaps to be consoling, he also told me that their main trade is in rescuing fishing boats caught in the giant version of this problem. Apparently, somewhere near the Nab there is an abandoned net 500 metres square and tethered to the seabed, cut loose by some fisherman to float with the tide… it catches fishing boats all the time and strands them. Somehow, this news wasn’t particularly comforting.

We removed the net, scrubbed the hull (not in that order), endured the nauseous angle of the boat, ate supper and worried about getting off. My fear was that the beach was steep and narrow, posh yachts parked nearby. I’d no idea how the engine would respond to the recent insult: would it start? Having started, would it pull? Having pulled, would it cut out? Was this narrow, shallow, unlit pool at midnight where I wanted to be, unable to manoeuvre? Better safe than sorry. As daylight faded, we put a line across the pool from our winch to the Attrill’s yard boat so that, were the engine to fail, we could winch ourselves alongside that rather than ramming the super-yacht opposite. Having no Big Bertha, we inflated the dinghy to use as a giant fender Just In Case.

In the event, the Bukh 20 worked a treat and we got off in style. The only drama was that my chandlery-bought searchlight overheated and cut out – just as we were trying to come alongside a dainty Contessa. Happily she was white, and just about visible.

I wrote to thank the Bembridge lifeboat, coastguard and so on. I am seriously considering a refit at Attrils – a friendly, family yard who specialise (as it turns out) in Bukh engines and Rustlers. I’ve binned the chandlery searchlights and installed maglights (thousands of cops in the NYPD can’t all be wrong). Haven’t learned so much – or had so much fun - in years.