Gee's Sailing Diaries: Part 6

Running Into Trouble

It started when I was once again woken from the middle of a long sleep. This time, it was because the engine room fire alarm was going off. I stayed out of the way in the hope that it was spurious, but no such luck. Skipper Max walked with purpose past my bunk (we share bunks with up to three other people as we rotate through watches) and upon seeing me awake, told me it was time to get up on deck. There were no obvious flames and no one was rushing or panicking, so I was certain there was no actual fire. Something else must have tripped the system.

He briefed us all on the situation. There has been an engine failure which rendered it unusable. And just when we needed it most. We were heading through the Doldrums, an area notorious for little to no wind, making sailing very difficult. The ducting where seawater is mixed with engine exhaust had entirely sheared, so dry engine exhaust was being spewed directly into the engine room instead of being disposed of otherwise outside of the boat. We aired the boat out below deck as best we could and an attack team of critical thinkers (and myself) pursued a solution to at least give us some confidence in using the engine during a potential emergency, like a man overboard. Of course, we only had available to us what we were carrying on board, and this did not happen to include that particular, highly bespoke spare part. Our team solution eventually included dismantling part of the galley railings with a hacksaw to use as an internal sheath between the two different diameter ducts (which I must admit, was one of my favourite parts of the repair – who else can say they hacked a handrail from the boat to fix the engine?!), using copious amounts of aluminium tape, and a whole heap of epoxy putty (the highest temperature rated bonding material we had on board). The rest of the fleet speedily motored away from us as we tried to keep the boat as flat as possible in order to carry out the repairs. We were literally down in the Doldrums. During this time, as the on-watch crew were dutifully keeping the boat moving and steady for us, Chris, unfortunately, got inked on the back of the neck by a squid who decided it wanted to try to fly. How Chris knew exactly where to stand at the point that the squid decided to test its abilities, we will never know.

Once I'd helped to dismantle a key hand-hold below decks and during my now on-watch (after avoiding a rather large floating tree), we encountered a small group of what we now believe to have been local fishermen about 12nm offshore from some of the Solomon Islands. They made it very clear they were curious about CV21 and pulled alongside us in about 5 separate smaller boats. We weren’t sure if these fishermen were friend or foe. After about 5 minutes of being in very close quarters with these boats, we woke up the skipper and called for more hands on deck as a deterrent. We still hadn't had a chance to test if our engine bodge had worked at this point due to the curing time on the epoxy putty, and the RIBs would clearly be faster than us anyway even if we could increase our speed to help remove ourselves from the situation. At one point a man in the closest boat asked us if we had any cigarettes for trading. As it happens, Lorraine had smoked the last one on board that morning. The men quickly realised that we didn’t have any, and upon more crew members joining us on deck, they decided we weren’t very interesting anymore and so continued on their way, cutting in front of us to head back towards the islands in the distance.

Shortly afterwards, there was another yell from the helm. ‘Whales! Port side!’ All crew who were currently on deck and the standby crew below came across to watch the magic. It was a large pod of pilot whales, including some younger ones who were very much enjoying breaching and playing in the waves. They put on a show and swam alongside us for what felt like a very spectacular 10 minutes before disappearing again, off into the depths. Was this a sign that things were turning around?

Not just yet. Rounding up an already long day was the generator impeller needing replacing yet again, and the aft heads (toilet) having an unfortunate leak, which was once again fixed by our ever gracious skipper with yet more epoxy putty, the crew's new favourite thing. Since we can only carry so much with us and we were at sea for a long time, the generator is critical to powering the onboard water maker, without which, it could be catastrophic. But spirits remained high throughout CV21 despite these challenges, and we savoured the extra sailing time although it might not quite have been what we had hoped for when we found ourselves in a favourable position just before the engine carried out an unplanned rapid disassembly. There was a suggestion that the only luck that CV21 seemed to be getting was bad luck (especially those who knew the history of previous races on the same boat). However, with rudder damage on the previous leg and other incidents since the start of the race back in September 2023, the team really pulled together and I maintain that they are exactly who you want around you when it comes to a crisis. I was becoming a more experienced sailor and a more well-rounded human as a result, and as a trade for some points on the race table, I’ll take it.

Physicists often describe the concept of entropy as the idea of everything eventually tending towards chaos. But I love the theory that the more ordered something is, the more chaotic it actually becomes. That it is a cycle. From chaos comes order, and from order comes chaos. Like the structure and order of waves causing the boat to bounce and for a beautifully presented dinner in the galley to go flying. Like thousands of hours of repetitive vibration causing fatigue in the exhaust housing which, as we later found out when back on dry land, happened to be the very last one of that type in the entire fleet. And like the arrangement of cells in our bodies creating a human being, with infinite thoughts and emotions, left to our own devices, all on board the same boat.

I’ve always said that if things went perfectly as expected all the time, we’d have no stories to tell and that life would be boring. After over 24 hours of little to no sleep for me and many new experiences that I’m sure I will continue to recount for many years to come, taking to the helm that same night with the music on point under a beautiful Milky Way and bioluminescence creating a sparkle party all around us felt a little bit like a dream after the day’s events. These circumstances may not have been what any of us wanted, but it’s what we got, and collectively we were all committed, determined, and supportive in getting the whole crew through it, safely and happily.