San Miguel, Tenerife

Well, we are still here in San Miguel marina with the wind being a steady 27 knots, gusting to 30+ and this being inside the marina, a quick look outside and the answer is easy, I don’t think so!

Ugrib is telling us that by Wednesday this should start to die down and a quick chat with the local confirms what we believe, which is that they have never know it to be so windy for such a long period.

But never a dull moment…

We had helicopters and ambulances arrive one evening a couple of weeks ago, we gather because they had spotted an immigrant boat. We could see an orange rescue boat out at sea, but after a while they were all stood off, maybe they were landed up the coast or a false alarm, I don't know. I gather it is a fairly regular occurrence though now.

It also looks like we have missed out on some salvage dive work here, an extremely dodgy looking commercial dive operation were running out of here daily when we arrived with one of those commercial trailer compressors used on road works strapped to the deck of their 18ft wooden boat, standing a good two foot proud of the rails, with a normal commercial compressor (not a diving one) strapped to the wheelhouse roof. I have no idea what they were doing but they went out everyday in this overloaded boat and the swell outside is big. The only way you'd know it was a dive boat was the hardhat painted on the side. Anyway, the other day the little dive boat didn’t come back as usual and another small boat turned up instead, there was a bit of a flurry and a van arrived with a hard hat painted on the side. Then over the next couple of days, the second little boat goes out then arrives back towing a big yellow lifting bag each time. We went to look and in the lifting bay of the marina there now sat a towable commercial and another portable commercial compressor, which we are guessing were salvaged off boat number 1. We can only imagine that the generator was dislodged in the swell and took the side of the boat out when going over board, sinking the lot. Anyway, needless to say, no signs of any of those troublesome Health and Safety types to be seen! They certainly do things differently abroad hey!

So you see, there seems to be no end of entertainment sitting in the marina.
One morning we watched in horror at a big gorgeous wooden 75 plus foot Turkish gullet sailboat going out for the first time in months it seemed. Within the harbour they managed to accidentally deploy the headsail and have that flogging around whilst the poor helmsman tried to turn it round in a strong wind and the crew blustered trying to furl it. The marina is still under construction and is very shallow in places for a boat like that. However, they ended up the wrong side of the channel markers, in water so shallow that there were clouds of mud coming up when they motored. They hit three of the channel markers coming back into the channel with two lines trailing in the water at the stern. There was a lot of shouting in Bulgarian aboard, guys jumping into the tender which was being towed behind with a line loose enough to get round the props. They then tried and failed to start the tender (the name of which incidentally is Joker Boat!). Next, someone jumped off the pontoon and swam out to help them. It looked like they were trying to go straight back to their berth but after several attempts at reversing and ending up beam onto quite a strong wind they headed out to sea for the day. We were just pleased that a local motorboat had turned up that morning to take the spot between them and us on the pontoon!

We were then just waiting for the next instalment when they got back… though there was some fairly nasty black smoke coming out the exhaust, so we weren’t sure they would. However they did return, this time with someone on board who could now park the boat. We were informed by one of the marina staff that they had turned back due one of its engines failing.

The following day we heard from one of the people on board, who spoke a little English that they were trying to get to La Gomera and would be departing later that day. They left the dock and proceeded into the marina to get the best chance at turning this huge boat around to depart. At the point of making its turn and now beam onto the wind, both engines failed, I watched in horror as this massive vessel was heading straight for us under its own momentum. People were frantically running round the deck with the usual screams in Bulgarian and I shouted Jo on deck to get ready to help out with what seemed our impending doom. The boat slowed down to a halt about 10 meters in front of us. With the wind being as strong as it was and they being beam onto it, they started to move side ways down the marina passing us just out of harms way, phew!

If we thought the first time was entertaining, we had seen nothing yet. They tried to deploy the anchor, which later on they confessed that no one knew how to do it, but had gone through the motions anyway. One of the crew jumped into the water with a line with the intention of swimming to shore and securing a line. Halfway across they found out that the line was not long enough, so frantically they scrabbled around on deck to find another which would reach. On finding a line they threw this to the crew member in the water who then re-started his swim to the pontoon.

At this point we decided to help, because there was no way he would be able to climb out of the marina onto the pontoon unaided. We took the line from the crew member and secured it to the mooring cleat and then pulled him out of the water. The boat then started to slew round into the wind, as you would expect. The length of the line they had out would mean that they would pull up alongside the boat behind their berth, using it as a fender. The owner had just gone back home the following day and I am sure he would not have welcomed the sight of this huge vessel using his boat as a fender.

The captain and crew seemed confused what to do next and were stood on deck watching things unfold. We shouted instructions to place some fenders down on the starboard side to at least give some protection to the now imminent contact with the neighbouring boat. They sort of got the message with one out nine crew members doing something about it. At this point the marina guy arrived, having been attracted by all the attention and was looking on saying that this happens every year!

We both jump onto the moored boat and attempt to slow down the collision with additional fenders and as much brute force as we could apply to keep the boats apart. Jo was trying to communicate with the skipper of the boat to tell him to start winching in on the line to the shore to move the boat forward and out of the way. After something resembling charades, Jo had by way of visual imitations managed to get her point across and someone started to winch in the rope, not with the huge windlass on the front but a small winch on the back of the boat. Apparently, no one knew how to use the anchor windlass and they were not sure it worked anyway?

The boats at this point were almost touching, so I requested that some of the crew come on board the boat being crushed to help with fending off. Eventually, after sometime and the marina guy insisting that they come and help, not just watch the proceedings, they complied. The fenders on the boat being crushed were now flat against the dock with all the weight that the big gullet was applying, just glad it was not my boat.

I then had a chance to get on board and start to see what was being done as the gullet seem to have stopped moving forward- the answer was nothing. One of the female crew was still having breakfast and clearly that was more important. So, I found the biggest winch I could and lashed the only line we had at that moment to the dock and began winching in the mooring line and moving us slowly up to a vacant space. I grabbed one of the crew demonstrating my actions and getting him to continue, after all, it’s not my boat. The next thing was to get another line ashore, which I did after some communication problems with the skipper. I climbed across the other boat back to the dock to now catch the second line.

The skipper had other ideas, he had waved his arms at the submarine support boat to come across and act like a tug to pull him off. He threw the second line across to the support boat on the port side of the gullet, who then cleated it on and began the process of towing, only for it to rip off the starboard railing on board the Turkish gullet with an almighty CRACK. It then became clear they had taken the tow line from the starboard bow over two sets of rails before throwing it to the support boat! At this point the support boat decided that he had had enough as they were too stupid to have re-run the line to a secure towing point and promptly departed with sounds of laughter coming from the wheel house. The line was eventually passed to me on the pontoon, where it was securely moored to a strong cleat.

A request to recommence winching was acted upon fairly quickly and slowly the boat was inched up alongside the other boat, until it was back into its own mooring. As we were watching all this, the marina guy was telling me all about them, saying that this was typical every year and they don’t even have any communication onboard, no VHF, nothing just mobile phones.

Once the boat was secure to the dock we said our farewells and went back to our boat, the owner had to be prompted by the marina guy to say thank you, which he did in due course and returned back to chat with one of his crew member’s. The marina guy thanked us no end for helping out and explaining that without it, he would have not liked to see the outcome.

Who needs TV! To be fair it is not nice to crow, it could be us one day struggling, actually it was quite terrifying to watch.

The following day, they eventually succeed in leaving the marina, third time lucky, but not without the usual pantomime and nearly taking out the submarine, the whole marina sighed a big relief, but as we know they will be back!!

We have also found a local doctor to complete our vaccination records and take on board some drugs, which we thought would be useful - powerful painkillers and antibiotics, which the doctor prescribed without any trouble. I got the feeling we could have asked for anything and he would have been only to happy to help. The doctor was quite a character, spoke very good English and Spanish of course, he must be under 30 years of age, t-shirt, jeans and trainers, playing solitaire on his computer as he was talking to us. He took a keen interest when we told him what we were about, as one of our next destinations would be the Caribbean, he himself coming from Cuba. Anyway he also recommended we take some powerful seasickness remedies, which he was sure we would get from the local pharmacy. He wrote out the prescription, which we dropped off at the pharmacy to collect the following day. The list was quite big one, 3 pages, Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Tetanus, Diphtheria & Typhoid vaccines, 2 types of Antibiotics, various painkillers and the Anti vomiting solution. The look on the pharmacist face on reading the list was a classic, what the….

Anyway the following day we picked up the drug stash and made our way back to the Doc’s for him to perform the injections, which he did promptly and not using the needles which came supplied with the drugs, as they made six inch nails look feeble and I for one am glad he did not. He also supplied us with half a dozen syringes with needles to administer the anti vomiting medicine as tablets could not be guaranteed to help if you are vomiting, makes sense. He then trained us both up on how to inject one another with the dose, what a nice guy. One of the boxes of antibiotics was said to be £60.00 a box back in the UK, we got them for 4.5 Euros, bargain.

We are both sat recovering on the back of the boat with Jo having one sore arm and me with two.