There And Back Again…AGAIN
Temperatures were cooling and we were getting ready to head south to Malta where we would leave Meraki for the holidays. We’d arranged for some additional training from our former skippering instructor whom we’d met in the UK in 2021. We wanted to refresh our current skills, and get one-on-one instruction onboard Meraki on night passages, radar, weather and safety. We picked up Gary Thursday morning in Tivat after three days of preparations in the marina in Bar. The original plan had been to go over the boat systems with Gary that afternoon and leave for Malta the next day, Friday, but with a couple of windy days earlier in the week it was looking like we needed to postpone a day and wait for smoother seas. Saturday’s forecast showed we’d likely encounter a bit of rough weather as we approached the heel of Italy, while Sunday’s models showed clear, mostly flat water and sunny skies the entire three+ day voyage to Malta. We decided to postpone yet another day, use Saturday as a training day, and depart on Sunday.
Saturday morning was super windy with short, rolling seas outside the marina. We had a leisurely morning coffee and a protein smoothie before beginning our study for the day. We spent a lot of time on weather - as one does, went over safety procedures, and discussed strategies for dealing with a man overboard (MOB) using our dinghy davit (crane) for pulling someone onboard should they be unconscious and in the water. MOB drills frighten me. The thought of Tom going overboard and me having to find him in, most likely, very rough water, maneuver the boat gently up to him, and haul him back onboard - scares the pants off me! I’m not a worrier by nature and don’t generally perseverate on worst case scenarios, so making this life or death situation the focus of study is hard for me on the best of days.
Meet Barb…she’s in a perrennial state of distress.
We had put together a weighted buoy (we’d named Barb) to use for practice. We motored into the rolling bay outside the marina and tossed Barb overboard. I had butterflies in my belly just thinking about this drill and now that we were out in the rolling waves I was definitely feeling queasy. With Gary’s step-by-step instruction Tom practiced positioning the boat to drift down onto Barb. This involves shutting down one engine while idling the other, which - in case you’ve never been in a boat in rolling seas while idling rather than making way, makes you feel like a cork bobbing on the surface. The erratic motion of the boat coupled with my anxiousness had made me full-on nauseated. To make matters worse, on Tom’s second attempt to recover Barb our starboard engine alarm sounded! He shut it off immediately and, while Gary took the helm, went down below to investigate. The floor of the engine room was awash in blue fluid. It turned out a small valve had accidentally been loosened and the coolant from that engine had spilled out into the bilge. I went to find a bucket and hose which I threaded through the main cabin and galley and down into the engine room so that Tom could bail out the fluid and hose down the worst of the mess. We circled around on the port engine and once cooled enough, Tom added coolant to the starboard engine and we restarted it.
About 30 minutes later we were ready to begin again. I was undeniably full-on seasick by now; sweating profusely, slightly dizzy and nauseous, but I said nothing. My thinking was that if Tom had fallen overboard we would likely be in rough conditions, therefore if I could manage a recovery in this gnarly situation then I could do it in a true emergency. I took the helm and Tom tossed Barb into the waves. With Gary’s instruction I maneuvered Meraki back to Barb. It took a couple of attempts, circling a few times and overshooting once, but I successfully retrieved and pulled her aboard. It was time to return to the marina where we had planned for me to practice my docking skills. Tom went below to tidy up the bilge, Gary took the helm, and I promptly beelined it aft and vomited several times over the transom. (I figured out two days later that the protein powder we bought for smoothies did NOT agree with my gut).
I sat down on a deck chair gathering my thoughts and trying to calm my churning belly. I desperately wanted to pull it together as today was quite possibly my only opportunity to do docking-practice with Gary’s assistance and a long unobstructed pier. Honestly though, I was a wreck! Thankfully, after realizing I was seasick, Gary suggested we come in, have a cup of tea (ya gotta love the Brits!), relax a bit, and then reevaluate the afternoon plan.
With tea in hand I reviewed what had happened; my fear of Tom going overboard and my anxiety over my ability to manage all of what needs to be done in a life and death situation. I shed a few tears and explained why I had not told anyone that I was feeling ill. The bottom line is that I had learned the necessary basics and now just needed to practice it over and over again IN CALM SEAS until it becomes more natural and reflexive. Repetition builds confidence and that’s what I’m mostly lacking at this point. We slipped the lines again a short while later and I did rehearse docking within the now calm, nearly windless, marina. This too is something I need to practice repeatedly before I’ll feel confident of my abilities, though the perfect conditions (a long unobstructed pier) are a bit harder to find. You can bet I will be seeking them out along the way as we venture on.
Making notes on ports of refuge.
The weather predictions still looked good for the next day so we prepped for a 6am departure, reading up on ports of refuge should we need them and developing a watch schedule. We went out for a quick dinner and went to bed early. No sooner had we settled in for the night when a howling wind came out of nowhere. Not a single weather model had predicted this! We saw gusts of over 40 knots! We added some dock lines and tried to sleep - though all three of us were awoken several times during the night before our alarms roused us at 5am. We checked the weather predictions again. Nothing showed the wind speeds we were still experiencing. Clearly we couldn’t leave as planned, so we went back to bed for a couple of hours hoping to make a decision after reviewing the 9am daily forecast.
Oddly enough, at 9am no weather updates were available, our assumption was that there was a scramble to determine what had gone so drastically wrong with the previous predictions. The wind speed was dropping (and was now much lower) so we determined it was safe to go. We departed the marina around 10am after coffee and smoothies, figuring we might experience some confused seas before it leveled out, but that the waves too would eventually settle making for smooth sailing. We checked out of Montenegro at the Customs Dock for the final time and set our course for Malta at around 10:45. As anticipated the water was a bit rough though it did, in fact, settle out and about two hours later we exited the territorial waters and I went to the rooftop to lower our Montenegrin flag.
The water was calm, the vast blue sky and horizon spread out in front of me. I wallowed there on the roof for a few moments and was reminded of just how engaging the sea is, and how profoundly it connects me to something timeless. I am continually humbled by its medicinal power.
Around 13:00 the sea state changed again (possibly because the water depth had rapidly decreased) and we were in steep rolling waves once more. Our speed slowed to about 5.5 knots as we quartered into them. I began to feel queasy and I lay down on the couch to rest (suspicious, finally, of the protein powder!). Gary had designed watches every 2 hours during the day and we would switch to 4 hour shifts through the night. I had the 18:00-20:00 watch and we had agreed it was best for me to cook dinner beforehand so that everyone could eat whenever they were hungry. The motion of the boat was uncomfortable and I was still nauseous but I figured under these conditions it would take me longer than usual to prepare dinner, so at 15:00 I took some seasickness remedy and roused myself to begin rustling up a pot of food. My cooktop has pot restraints but cooking underway is still tricky. The shape of our pans does not allow them to secure solidly so it requires I hold onto the cookware at all times. I wedged myself against the cabinets and tried to settle my belly by keeping my sights on the horizon. Thirty minutes later we heard a Mayday call on the radio. We listened as the Montenegrin Coast Guard (MRCC) operator assessed the problem. It was a MOB - apparently there was a man in the water, wearing a lifejacket and he had a radio. We wondered if perhaps he was single-handing his vessel when he fell overboard? It was unclear exactly what had happened but we then heard the MRCC operator call the vessel he’d fallen from and instruct them to retrieve their crew member! Either there was no response from the vessel or we simply couldn’t hear the transmission, we weren’t certain. The situation seemed rather odd.
Another 15 minutes later (15:45) and Meraki was hailed by MRCC and we were asked to respond to the casualty. We radioed back that we were traveling at 5.5 knots and were approximately 2.5 hours away! Again, we were asked to assist with the MOB, so we diverted our southerly course and headed west to render aid. At the rate we’d been traveling we calculated we’d be lucky to arrive at the man’s location before dark, so we increased our speed hoping to arrive with enough daylight to find him and pull him out of the water. I was just finishing cooking dinner, we’d been on a westerly course for about half an hour, when our starboard engine alarm sounded - AGAIN! We immediately shut it down, radioing MRCC that we were still making way - continuing towards the casualty, but that we were now partially disabled. MRCC acknowledged us and began calling other vessels in the vicinity, and found one other that could also respond. There were now two of us en route to the MOB. I hoped the other rescue vessel was traveling faster than we were, was closer to the man in the water and would get there quickly. We continued west on our port engine and within the hour we learned that the other vessel had indeed recovered the man in the water! Weirdly, we next heard on the radio that the man had been returned to his own vessel, and that the rescue vessel had resumed their transit toward Istanbul, Turkey! They had recovered a man who had been in the water for several hours, brought him to his boat, dropped him aboard, and immediately continued on their way!
Hardened steel shaft which should NOT have broken off
MRCC then radioed us, thanked us for our assistance and wished us safe cruising. Hoping we could repair our disabled engine we turned our nose southward once again just as my watch began at 18:00. Tom gobbled up a bowl of food while he waited for the engine to cool a bit before descending below to diagnose the problem with the starboard engine. Within 5 minutes he reemerged having discovered that the water pump shaft had sheared off - there would be no fixing it, we needed a replacement. Nothing to do now except abandon our voyage. We checked our notes on ports of refuge. At this point, though we were slightly closer to Albania than Montenegro, we decided that it would likely be easier to find parts in Bar, so we turned around and headed north - back to where we’d started.
It would take us 8 hours to transit back to Bar. We maintained our 4 hour watch schedule, trading places at the helm with Gary assisting both Tom and I during a portion of each our shifts. The seas settled as we ambled back towards Montenegro on the port engine and I had one hour at the helm, all alone, in the quiet of the still night. I felt a calm settle over me. Cruising encompasses terrifying self-reliance and the elegance of simplicity.
Grey marina morning
We limped into the customs dock at 02:00, checking back into Montenegro 15 hours after checking-out. Drained and disappointed, we tied Meraki to the marina pier. I was ready to drop when Tom and Gary headed outside to fasten additional dock lines. It was flat calm in the marina and seemed unnecessary to my depleted brain but I helped secure a couple of extra lines before dropping into bed. Yes, you guessed it, we were awoken way too early the next morning by more raging wind racing down the mountains and rattling through the hatches. I was thankful that the guys had had the good sense to further secure the boat before they too, dog-tired, succumb to their exhaustion.
Tom rallied early the next day and began researching how to get a replacement pump from the UK to Montenegro. He is amazing at logistics and so good at thinking outside the box. We already knew how difficult and expensive it is to receive parts in Montenegro (we had a friend deliver parts to us from Alaska in August for exactly this reason). Lots of options presented themselves, some of them quite insane to be honest. But in the end we chose to have the new pump shipped to a distributor in Split, Croatia where we would drive (6.5 hours each way) to pick it up upon it’s arrival. In the meantime, we got Gary a flight home to the UK - the best schedule leaving from Dubrovnik the following day.
We used the intervening time for a bit of further study, practiced our line throwing, and watched a crazy man, presumably repairing something, swaying in the wind at the top of the mast of a neighboring boat. Gary packed, we rented a car, and made the three hour drive into Croatia, arriving with enough time to stroll through the old city of Dubrovnik and have a quick dinner before dropping him off at the airport and turning around to drive back to Bar. We returned to Meraki around 10pm after several very long, exhausting days.
Cruising brings independence and self-sufficiency, we can visit places few people get to see, explore at our own pace and linger as long as we like. It allows us to experience local communities in a way land travel rarely affords. Yet it also means doing our own maintenance, repair, passage planning, weather decisions and being responsible for everyone aboard’s safety.
It requires resilience and resourcefulness, and while all adventure brings more than an average amount of uncertainty, there have definitely been times cruising when I doubted myself to the core of my being, wondering what made me think I could do this in the first place.
What I do know, unquestionably, is the lows are lower and the highs are higher and I hold a watchful reverence for the sea.