TOM CUNLIFFE
were pumping forward with gaps at their aft faces you could post
letters through. As they shaped up for a trip into orbit I shouted at
Nico to go easy on the gas, but he was past caring. He couldn’t
hear me, perhaps because the Cubans were at full volume with ‘Yo
no soy marinero...’
It was down to me then. I grabbed my staysail sheets and
hitched them round the posts. Then I secured them to purchases
and led the falls to my diminutive Gibb sheet winches. I cranked
the posts aft with all my strength and to my deep satisfaction they
creaked back into line.
As Ipanema beach swung abeam Nico came to, saw what was
happening and took off some way. He delivered me to Conception
where a whole new world awaited me. That’s another story, but I’d
already learned three lessons: never trust an untried mooring;
always back up a towing attachment point with everything you’ve
got, and don’t enquire too closely if a man from the eastern
Mediterranean suggests that things are best done the Greek way.Portuguese, then legged it towards the forehatch with Nico in hot
pursuit. He tripped over a sheet car halfway there, fell in a heap,
and peace was restored.
In the morning when I called across waving a towrope the cook
was nowhere to be seen and Nico was in pain from a
comprehensively broken toe. Was he still up for the job, I asked,
concerned for his health and my own problems.
“Yeah, yeah. It’s easy. Cook’s gone. No loss. Couldn’t cook
anyway,” he said. Undeterred by the pain in a toe with a bandage
straight out of The Beano, he weighed anchor and backed up
towards me, handling Typhoon with his usual expertise. I hitched
the towrope to the bridle I’d rigged from my two massive foredeck
Samson posts, Nico took the strain, slowly applying power like a
seasoned tugboat skipper.
The job went smoothly until we cleared the local headland and
set course along the coast for the Sugarloaf. I’d noted at hook-up
time that Nico had already downed half a bottle of painkillers.
They clearly hadn’t worked, because, although not really a
drinking man, he now upturned a rum bottle to his lips in classic
pose. His exhaust note changed and the big yacht settled to her
heading as he engaged the autopilot. Next I heard his monster
cockpit speakers strike up Cuban dance music. He leaned harder
on the throttle and soon we were making ten knots. A lot too much
for my 28ft waterline. My boat was just disappearing into the hole
left by her displacement wave when he passed out.
I lashed the tiller and clambered forward to see if Typhoon was
pulling my bow off. It was still intact, but the two five-inch posts