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Although Tommy and I see a lot of each other, because of related work and because we also enjoy each other’s company, it is not the same as the bond that one experiences working so closely together as a team. So as we entered what we thought was going to be our last harbor on this trip we found that once again our strength as a team was put to the test!! Excerpts from ships log: 12:00 Noon Monday 7/5/11 41 40n 010 00e Log 383 Days run 175 Light s winds and visibility down to 4 miles. 14:00 Wind has come up from the SE about 15 k. We are still motor sailing as we want to make Porto Ercole before it gets dark. 21:00 Motored into Porto Ercole, to find a quaint little town surrounded by steep hills. On the top of the hills to the east and west are the ruins of 15 century Spanish forts. Beautiful! As we slowed down the engine to get ready to maneuver to a dock. We found that we could not select astern again without the engine stalling! Very reminiscent of the first marina that we stopped at in Spain. This time it was much worse! Not only could we not select forward either but we were in a very small turning basin with no room to maneuver. Well, not much room to anchor but we had better anchor right now and try to figure the engine out later!! After much head scratching and a close eye on dragging. Tommy disconnected the fuel stop solenoid. This may or not be the answer!! We don’t know!!! Not exactly easy to do a thorough test while anchored in the dark with very limited space to maneuver. 00:00 Sunday 7/5/11 Trying to receive an e mail and make a call to Dave on the Sat phone, but am not able to get connected!!! I’ll try again in a few hours. Off to bed to try and get some sleep! 02:00 Got up to try and send e mail! No luck yet! Back to bed to try and get some sleep! 06:00 Woke up to the crash of thunder and the jangle of anchor chain! Got on deck to see the day break and an ominous black cloud coming over the mountain top that borders this little town. The rain started in fact so hard the we could barely hear the thunder and had to yell to hear each other!! 07:00 Rain stopped so time to get outta here! As we pull the anchor we confirm what we already suspected. We had snagged one of the mooring chains that the marina has put on the bottom of the harbor for the boats to attach them selves to! Yes we should have attached a trip line to the anchor, but really, there was barely time to get the anchor onto the bottom without drifting into some other boat. Fortunately we were able to get the anchor up high enough to get a trip line under the mooring chain. We lowered the anchor while holding the mooring chain up so we could get the anchor stowed while still holding onto the mooring chain. This turned out to be a good thing as the rain thunder and wind started up again and we were able to stay safe attached to the mooring line until the squall past. 9:00 Motored into the harbor at Cala Galera went over to the fuel dock and was assigned a slip. The next days our hours will be filed with the type of clean up that is associated with the end of a lengthy passage. |
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