On Monday, the 23rd of October, we left Lisbon for Porto Santo, a small island just next to Madeira. This crossing was, to put it simply, just awful. So awful in fact, that we genuinely reconsidered our whole plan to cross the Atlantic.
On Sunday we prepared a lot of food for this crossing. We knew that with Jenny and my proneness to seasickness, we would be unable to cook for the first few days on board. And for our guests, Flurina and Clara, it was their first major crossing so we were not sure how they would manage. We cooked a big pot of chilli, prepared two salads and made some Birchermüesli. We also prepared a snack box full of goodies, from chocolates and crisps to rice waffles and zwieback. If you feel sick and want to grab a snack, the last thing you want to do is dig deep down in some boxes inside the boat, so a box under the table comes in very handy. In the morning we topped up on water and unplugged the boat. I was sure we thought about everything, but I still asked Jenny just before turning on the motor if we really hadn’t forgotten anything and she assured me that we hadn’t. So we let our lines go and left our dock, only to realise that in fact, we had forgotten something. The draw bridge at the entrance of the marina was closed. But luckily we only had to wait around 10 minutes before it opened up again and we could pass. We got some fuel in a different marina since ours didn’t have any, and then we were finally off.
We realised pretty soon that this wasn’t going to be an enjoyable crossing. We were going upwind and had some nasty waves coming at us. On the first day, it didn’t take long before our second crew went feeding the fish, as some sailors like to call it. On the second day, Jenny joined and I felt pretty bad as well. As there was nothing much we could do we just continued and tried to sleep as much as possible. But after 16 hours of sleeping that was easier said than done.
For the first 24 hours, we could sail upwind at a decent speed. On day two, however, the winds changed. We had a strong headwind up to 25 kts coming exactly from where we were going. As we all were not feeling well and didn’t want to be underway a night longer than necessary we decided to turn on the motor and go straight into the wind towards Porto Santo. But as the wind grew, so grew the waves, and going head-on into the waves was very uncomfortable. The waves were not really that high, probably less than two meters, but the period was really short, only around 5 seconds (the wave forecast was 2m at 18s). This meant the waves were very steep which makes the boat fly up the wave only to plough down head-first into the next one, completely submersing the front deck. These nosedives make you lose all your speed. As we only wanted to run our motor at low rpm, the motor did not have enough time to speed up the boat before the next wave came. This meant that as the waves grew steeper and steeper our speed slowly decreased. And once our average speed was less than 3 knots, we decided that sailing was probably the better idea. So we hoisted our main sail in Force 6 winds, something we had never done before because usually, you would rather get it down in such strong winds. We put in two reefs and went close-hauled to the wind as close towards our destination as possible and turned off the motor. It wasn’t pleasant, but much better than before. We were doing 6 knots and had a VMG of 3-4 knots (VMG stands for velocity made good, and it is the projection of the velocity to the wind or to your destination). So we were not really faster than under motor, but the waves were more pleasant and we were not using any fuel. The constant smashing into the waves ripped out one of the knobs of the kitchen cupboards so it kept swinging open. But luckily it was the bottom drawer so putting a heavy box on the floor in front of it fixed the problem and kept the drawer shut.
In the afternoon of the second day, our seasickness was so bad we decided to go a step further with the medication we were taking. We have already tried Stugeron before leaving Lisbon, but as we suspected it was too weak to help much. For that reason, we wanted to bring some Scopolamine patches. These patches are no longer sold in Europe because they have stopped production. So the only way to get them was from a shop which still had some in stock. We asked many pharmacies in England but none had any left. The only ones we could find were from an online pharmacy in New Zealand. After a couple of e-mails back and forth with the pharmacy asking us why we were ordering so many, we imported a few packs via plane to Switzerland. So far we haven’t used them, but I decided that now was the time to try them. Scopolamine is one of the only compounds that actually helps against motion sickness, which means it can have strong side effects. So what happened to us was that we traded sea sickness for a flu-like state; fever, headaches, restless sleep and a very dry mouth. But at least Jenny didn’t have to throw up anymore so there was some improvement. There is a mnemonic in medicine about these so-called anticholinergic side effects which we can now confirm to be true: “Dry as a bone, hot as a hare, blind as a bat, red as a beet, mad as a hatter”. All in all, it was an interesting experiment.
On the third day, the wind finally veered (turning clockwise) and we headed close-hauled directly to Madeira.
On the fourth day, the sea got a bit calmer and the wind picked up and we were able to really push the boat. Between 8.5 to 9 knots of average speed, still sailing close-hauled, we made good progress. Finally, our trimaran was able to show how it can perform. Coming closer to Porto Santo we were greeted by a magnificent sunset behind the island. Porto Santo (holy harbour) really stood up to its name, visually (see picture below) and also for our sanity after another tough crossing.
We arrived just before 11 o‘clock at night and motored into a very dark harbour. We were told the day before that there was no space in the marina for us. Instead, we should pick up one of the mooring buoys. What we didn’t know was, that these buoys were about the size of an apple, impossible to see at night. We were driving aimlessly around for a couple of minutes until a very friendly man on another boat called us via VHF and guided us in the right direction. Buoy manoeuvres are always a bit tricky for us because there is no way to grab the buoy from the bow since it’s too high and our hook is a bit short. This means we have to approach the buoy backwards, attach two lines to it, and quickly bring them around the side to the front of the boat, where we attach one on the left and one on the right hull to form a bridle. After a couple of tries we managed, secured the boat and immediately went to sleep.
Porto Santo is quite a small island with only 5’500 inhabitants. The island is very barren compared to its lush sister island, but it has one big feature that Madeira doesn’t have: a proper long sandy beach. For that reason, there is a ferry that comes twice a day to bring tourists from Madeira.
On the first day, we walked into town and went to the beach, played some board games and generally just relaxed and regained some of our energy. On the next day, we rented a car and went on a hike to one of the mountains (Terra Chã and Pico Branco) which was really spectacular. At a certain height, we came into the trees and there were loads of plants, birds and lizards. Arriving at the top we were greeted by spectacular views of cliffs and the ocean. After continuing by car on the only road around the island we also visited some sand dunes which were behind the former NATO air base (although to call them sand dunes is a bit of an exaggeration). We finished the day with a drive to the far end of the island to Ponta de Calheta, the name referring to one of the rocks at the beach that forms a bridge. After a big wedding party arrived that took hundreds of photos on the beach it was time for us to leave and we went back home, very tired but happy.
Returning the car the next day I forgot to refuel it, but the car rental guy agreed with me that the tank was still full, although we drove along every single major road on the island at least once, which goes to show how small it is.
For Sunday we had planned a relaxing day, sleeping in, eating a nice breakfast and playing some board games. But our plans were changed by unforeseen circumstances.
During the night I was suddenly awakened by someone repeatedly shouting with a French accent „Can you help me?“. After the fifth time or so I realised I wasn’t dreaming. Hoping that it was only something minor I looked out of the window. I saw multiple dinghies already in the water and by now Jenny was awake too, so we jumped into our own dinghy still in our pyjamas. Only then did we realise what was going on. Another sailboat was drifting without control maybe ten meters next to our boat, and after only about 15 meters it was going to hit the rocks on the shore. Three or four dinghies had already tied themselves to the sailboat and were trying to pull it into deeper waters with the combined power of all dinghies. But we quickly realised that we had nowhere near enough horsepower to pull a 10-tonne boat being hit by waves and the wind from the side. So we changed strategies. The man on the boat started handing us lines to try and attach them to neighbouring boats mooring on buoys (ours included), but we already heard the first thuds of the boat hitting the rocks. The lines were all too short so we started tying them together and we went to get all of our own lines too. Even the 70 m long tow rope we had to buy to register our boat under the Swiss flag was used for the first time.
The harbour was not well protected from the southerly winds and waves, lifting the boat and smashing it back into the rocks with every wave. It also made navigating in the dinghy and attaching the lines quite difficult as the boat kept rising and falling about one meter in every wave, especially with five lines floating around in the water. But even with five lines attached to other boats and trying to tighten them over our winches the boat was still stuck in the rocks and hitting them repeatedly. The poor man was now just helplessly sitting on his deck, defeated as there really wasn’t anything to do except wait for a tugboat. It was a small harbour and they didn’t have an employee present 24 hours a day and after maybe an hour and a half the tugboat finally came. At first, they didn’t see the web of lines we created by attaching them to different boats and tried to go straight through them. Everybody was shouting until they finally saw the many ropes and quickly reversed away. The tugboat then drove around and approached the boat from right next to us. The three people on that tugboat started tying their own lines together, as they ironically didn‘t have one long enough to tow another boat. They managed to attach it the to stern of the sailboat and tried to start tightening it. During all that time the tugboat was repeatedly going into full throttle back and forth. Going full throttle on a tugboat creates a huge stream of water accelerating the tugboat to a much higher speed than necessary in a situation like this. They of course need this power to pull a big container ship, but imagine the power they have while on their own. Why they went to full throttle I’m still not sure, either their throttle lever had only one setting to go forward and backwards or, more probable, they were just incompetent and did not have any training for a situation like this. By doing that manoeuvre, they were always drifting to the side and coming very close to our boat. We jumped up and grabbed some fenders trying to push them away. The two men on deck also realised that they were going to hit us so they ran and grabbed some of their own big ball fenders and put them between the two boats. The first time we managed to fender ourselves off, but they had to get back to the sailboat hitting the rocks. Once they started tightening the tow rope they speeded (again with full throttle) sideways to us. By that time we managed to put up most of our fenders and they hit us and our fenders sideways. Repeating the whole manoeuvre a third time the fenders were not enough and their hull crashed against ours. Being a tugboat they had a big rubber ring around their boat so it wasn‘t too bad, but it still damaged some of our gel coat (the grey and white coating of our hulls). Quite angry at them I decided we were leaving now, as they still hadn’t freed the sailboat. So we started the motor, untied all our ropes from other boats and the mooring buoy and left. With waves in the harbour and 25 knots of wind, this was something you really don’t want to do and we didn’t know how we were going to catch another mooring buoy later. We drove some circles within the harbour walls and contemplated what to do next. The marina was still full and all the buoys were taken, except for ours. So we decided to anchor inside the harbour next to another catamaran which had arrived during the night.
After setting the anchor we saw the tugboat finally pulling the sailboat away from the shore, and bringing it into the harbour, almost hitting a couple more boats while making their way out through the mooring buoys. Drenched by the heavy rain that started halfway through the rescue, we sat on our boat trying to come up with a plan. At least it was daylight by now but we couldn’t stay at anchor because we were too close to the other catamaran and there was no other spot in the harbour. Leaving the harbour was no option because the sea was too rough to anchor on the beach. So in the end Flurina got into the dinghy and drove to our previous buoy. We followed, handed her some lines to pull through the buoy and then secured them back onto our boat. So, still in our pyjamas, we went for one last and very wet dinghy ride to the shore for a long and warm shower.
We later went over to the battered and bruised sailboat now in the harbour to collect all of our lines. The completely exhausted old man who was alone on his boat told us what happened. He was on anchor on the beach right in front of the harbour. He was woken up at around two o’clock by one side of his hull hitting the outside of the harbour breakwaters and realised that his (very very rusty!) anchor chain had ripped. So he motored into the harbour for some shelter and started driving in circles around the harbour. After around two hours his engine died and he started drifting past all the other boats, hitting a couple, and finally hitting the rocky shore with the other side of his hull. He had several holes in his hull and around 500 litres of seawater in his boat. We also learned that we were quite lucky with our small piece of missing gel coat. While pulling the sailboat into the marina the tugboat hit another sailing vessel making a melon-sized hole into its hull!
This is the stuff for nightmares😱😱!
It is not all that relaxing, sailing tremoggia… you could write
a horror novel.
Indeed, horror, as Eva wrote. I think I’m going to be seasick in tonight’s dreams. Sister, do you still intend to go on board in February? As for me, I am happy to feel the dirt under my feet.
Andrin, Du bist ja ein Schriftsteller! Es gibt sicher noch kein Buch mit dem Wort Tremoggia im Titel.
Ich freu mich auf die Fortsetzung, wünsch Euch aber trotz des spannenden Lesevergnügens eine ruhigere und weniger aufregende Weiterfahrt🍀⚓️