T
he day started well. The July sunshine
was warm and there was a gentle
breeze. Though perhaps a little groggy
first thing, we were all looking forward
to another wonderful day relaxing and
swimming in the clear warm waters.
Sharing our Princess 58 Cloud9’s first summer
in Mallorca with my wife Gill and I were Gill’s sister
Rachel and our good friends Ian and Teresa.
The day’s plan involved a very short hop to
our favourite local anchorage, Cala Mondrago.
We arrived in good time to get a nice spot, and
dropped the anchor in 3m of water. This would
be the perfect place to spend the day before
returning to our home port of Cala d’Or for dinner.
The morning flew by, punctuated by a gentle
swim, snorkelling, sunbathing and some suitable
refreshment. It was soon time to think about lunch
at the Chiringuito Cala Mondrago.
The jetRIB was duly dropped into the turquoise
water. To avoid overloading, Gill volunteered to
stay on board Cloud9 while I delivered the rest
of the hungry crew to the beach to bag a table.
The right side of the inlet has a channel marked
for the safe approach of small craft and the launch
and retrieval of the ubiquitous pedalos adorned
with their incongruous plastic slides. I remember
thinking that you’d never get me on one of those.
Keen to impress my guests with my seamanship
skills, the beach landing was textbook. I killed the
motor to avoid sucking up sand and slid gracefully
over the side at the right moment (not too deep...
done that before!), guiding the tender gently on to
the beach. Once the crew had alighted, Ian steadied
the RIB as I clambered, less gracefully, back aboard,
and like all good friends said that he would get the
beers in so “don’t be too long.”
I blame the next sequence of events on my haste
to return to a cold beer. I reversed away from the
beach and spun around to head back out and collect
Gill. But just as I accelerated forward, there was
a sharp jolt and instant silence from the motor.
Floating about helplessly in a drifting vessel
is never a nice feeling, even in the most benign
circumstances, not to mention the embarrassment
of a beachload of people watching. I went straight
back over the side and nonchalantly dragged the
RIB back to where Ian was waiting on the beach.
I realised almost immediately what had gone
wrong. In the excitement, I hadn’t checked that
the painter was safely aboard. It was now bar-tight
and wrapped around the shaft of the jet pump.
I suspected this was something that was going
to be very difficult to put right on a beach without
tools. Help was offered by a friendly swimmer,
a sickeningly fit young man who must have looked
at me and taken pity. Despite my protestations
that it would be futile, we took the boat to deeper
water and our hero spent an impossibly long time
underwater trying to release the rope to no avail.
This interlude had given me time to come up with
a plan. Gill would be getting worried and we had no
phones. Just when you need a beach full of other
tenders to tow you home, there are, of course, none.We waited a few minutes. Still none. There was
nothing else for it.... “Ian, we’re going to hire a
pedalo. I can paddle the RIB back to Cloud9 if it only
has me in it, and when it gets more difficult in the
breeze, you can take me in tow on the pedalo. Yeah?”
Ian hesitated, smiled, and agreed. He pointed out
that the pedalo would need to get back to the beach
afterwards. The strongest swimmer, he volunteered
to swim back to Cloud9 after dropping it off.
With our lunch plans abandoned, Rachel and
Teresa boarded the pedalo. The next 20 minutes
must have been quite a spectacle: a bunch of
middle-aged people in a red pedalo with a green
slide, towing a high-tech jetRIB containing a very
large bloke... all of us laughing uncontrollably. Surely
one of the most embarrassing rescues possible!A bunch of middle-aged people towing a high-tech jetRIB in
a pedalo is surely one of the most embarrassing scenes possibleRICK TAYLOR: After vowing I wouldn’t be seen dead in one, it dawned on
me that hiring a pedalo was the only way of recovering my broken-down RIBI was rescued
by a pedalo
I’LL NEVER FORGET THE DAY...
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FOR ANY WE USE! [email protected]138COLUMNSRick tries to laugh off the
shame of being towed to
safety by a bright red pedalo