I met Pipot on the island of Lanzarote. Pipo is 35 years old, originally from Alicante, but has moved to the Canary Islands, where it is a paradise for him. He bought a small boat that had already sailed the Atlantic with the previous owner all the way to Cape Town and back to the Canary Islands. The previous owner was a Norwegian and he sailed alone with that little plastic shell. The barge was 8 meters long and had to be transported from Tenerife back to Lanzarote, where it would again be home to Pipot, as he got a job on this island.
He asked me if I could help him transport it, saying that he was not experienced enough to bring it himself and, on top of that, the internal engine does not work on the boat, but he has two external engines, which he is not sure if they work at all. My boat was waiting for an elevator in the Areciffe marina and since I had nothing smarter to do, I was of course willing to help him. We bought a plane ticket and had a flight on Saturday. We agreed to have a good rest, so I went to bed quite early and since there was a big concert in the marina every Friday, I spent the night in town with a friend and he on a friend’s boat in the marina, but there was nothing from his rest comes in, as he went to bed quite late or early about an hour before leaving. I knocked on his boat and tried to wake him up, but to no avail. Three hours later he just crawled out of the cabin and of course we hurried to the airport in a hurry.
When we arrived at the port, where he had a boat moored, the port seemed very familiar to me, because years ago I drank coffee on the terrace of this marina on the last day before I had a flight to Slovenia.
When I saw his boat, I quietly regretted it all, and at the same time I was looking forward to the adventure. He had two auxiliary engines on the boat, one American, Mercury, and the other the legendary Tomos 4. He had both engines mounted on the rear railing board, so it all looked pretty ridiculous. Balkans and America – a great combination. I disassembled the tomos and reassembled them. It only lit up for a minute and then went out and no matter how hard I tried, I failed as a small part was missing in the carburetor that could not be found anywhere. Later, Pipo explained to me that his neighbor tried to fix the engine and completely disassembled and reassembled it, but it also seems to have lost that part in the meantime. The picture became clear and the engine was on the fence just for decoration.
We went to the office and asked the mariner to take us out of the marina by boat. The wind from the south was still blowing that day and sailing in the canal between Tenerrif and Las Palmas would have been much easier with that wind.
The marinero soon knocked on the boat and it was time to untie the ropes and tow them out of the marina. We caught a light breeze, which completely subsided after two hours. We tried to train another American, but as Pipo was clumsy, the heel of the engine got stuck and it was necessary to swim in the middle of a canal in the Atlantic. We look at each other for a while, saying who is going to jump into the water, he says there are sharks in the Atlantic, and I answer him:“There are whales too, and did you read, a week ago a giant octopus flooded the north side of the island. The head of the octopus was bigger than the cab of the truck, and the tentacles were longer than the whole truck, the news wrote. “
Of course, he didn’t want to put the tap in the water.
And I tell him, “Do you think you’re any safer on this boat than in the water? In case such an octopus wants you? In addition, the boat is yellow and therefore even more tempting. “
Anyway – I jump into the water, take off the heel of the engine and on the way I see the underwater part of the boat, which impressed me a lot, as it was almost not overgrown. The engine manages to start us first, then shuts down. The faucet pulls again the ignition rope, which remains in his hand, and the engine runs. Now the only question is when it will go off and when it goes out, it will no longer be possible to turn it on, as there are no tools on the boat with which to at least forcibly repair the rope.
The engine stopped in 30 seconds and we just flirted and laughed. Hjahhhh Americans! We were left without a motor, without wind, in perfect bonaca and we could do nothing but watch the current carry us back south from where we came from. We had no choice but to watch the sunset, meanwhile cook dinner and open an old bottle of wine, which we found strewn between old engine filters and other junk in his boat. Overnight, a whale came to visit us, whistling around the boat. In the morning we were greeted by dolphins. The wind is still out of nowhere, and it’s already noon. I mentioned to him that if I had gotten up earlier yesterday, I would be in the north of the island now, where I would catch the wind and I could now sail towards Lanzarote. Well, what is, is and will have to be faced.
A red alarm for the channel between the islands began to ring on the radio station. They repeated force 9, wind with S SV. We just waited and watched the clouds gather around the island, first it started to rain and at sunset it blew. He had no nautical charts on the boat, he only had a phone on which he hadNavionics, however, did not have a charger for the phone, and the battery was discharged yesterday for instagram. That’s why we helped ourselves with Google maps, which don’t show much. The wind blew and we sailed into the wind with those weathered sails that I sailed as hard as I could, the boat was just sailing into the orco. The waves started and from minute to minute they got bigger. The boat sailed over them without any problems at a speed of between 3 and 6 knots. Me on the rudder, Pipo on the winch, and as we turned the direction, it took perfect coordination and a quick change of side of the sails at the right time when the barge reached the top of the wave and then a quick turn.
“Uno, dos, tres … ahora (now) Pipo!” And the boat turns, the sails flutter to the other side, the winch tightens and we go on in the other direction. We turned every half hour, while Pipo rested in the cabin and every now and then jumped to the door, saying what it was, as the barge sometimes shook violently when three consecutive waves arrived. In Spain they are called 3 Marys and for a reason, especially on such a small boat. The red alarm is constantly repeated on the VHF station, and at three in the morning they report that a cargo and fishing ship has collided in the canal. The fishing boat sank, and there were 12 fishermen on deck looking for them by sea.
The mainsail was already so torn that there wasn’t much left of it, so I unscrewed a little more genoa. Soon after, the winding system broke down and an entire genoa took place. The barge lay down and immediately after that I let go of the rope from the winch, left the rudder to Pipot, and told him not to sail with the main one sharply against the wind, as I did not want to soak my suit. However, this wish was in vain. The high waves crashed over the bow, and I wrapped my leg around the fence and tried to fix the winding system with both hands. They say one hand for themselves, one for the boat. That was not possible at the time. I had both hands for a boat that wasn’t even mine. However – she was from a friend and that was the only thing he had in his life.
Pipo yells at me, “Walter, this is impossible to fix!”
“Nothing is impossible, believe me!”
After ten minutes of swimming, showering, and bouncing on the bow of the boat, where the waves oversalted me well, I only managed to fix the winding system and crawl back into the cockpit. Jadrava further, I order Pipot to report to channel 16 our position and our situation: no engine, wind, sails, etc. We continue on our way, me at the helm again, Pipo at the winch. There was more and more empty space in the handlebars, which means that it is only a matter of time before the steel wire will loosen and the handlebars will be there just to keep something hanging and nothing else. It became clear to us that this boat would not see Lanzarote and that we would have to land in the first port somehow.
An hour and a half before sunset, we just sailed to S Island off the town of San Andreas, where Pipo knew the people in the marina. We could not enter the port because as we approached the entrance, the wind ran out and the current carried us back again. He tapped the anchor, very angry, with the whole chain, 40 m deep. I watch him and think: oh you Spaniards …
“You know Pippa, the more chain you lower, the harder it will be to lift it!”
“Yes, yes, Walter,” he replied sadly. When the sun rose, a mariner came to our aid with his speedboat to pull us to the marina pier. However, the chain and anchor had to be pulled onto the deck now. Pipo said again, “That’s impossible!” But I explained to him again that nothing is impossible, and we just pulled everything together on deck together.
We parked the boat in the marina. Pipo went to the office and I went to the first cafe where I booked two plane tickets for the flight back to Lanzarote. When we moored the boat, I dared to lift the plastics on the suffixes and looked at the suffixes, which I didn’t want to check at all before, because I said to myself – I better not see. And when I saw the back stay, how it is already full of rust and the aluminum part is barely holding on, I got pretty sick, and at the same time I was happiest to be here. She could lose her mast, then probably her rudder, and be there in the stormy sea like a bottle being tossed relentlessly by the sea. And when the mast falls, he usually makes another hole in the boat until you cut all the attachments and throw the mast into the water. Of course, there were no tools for cutting or pinching the attachments on this boat, so in the end we were both happy to be where we are.
We booked a plane ticket the same day and it all went pretty fast and happily. When we landed in the marina, we had no money for the bus, we had a bank card, but no ATM anywhere. I searched for it myself for 3 hours and desperately returned to the marina. Pipo was already waiting for me with his luggage at the bus station and when I told him I couldn’t find an ATM, we asked for 4 euros in the bakery, where a friendly Spaniard helped us without any problems and gave us two more bottles of water on the way. We drove to the capital, then boarded a bus to the airport, where we arrived half an hour before the flight. Most interesting with planes on thesem archipelago is that they are not too accurate in inspecting otherwise prohibited items on aircraft. Once I was on the boat, I reached into my pocket with my hand and found in it my knife, which I always have in the pocket of my Luxury Marina sailing jacket in case I need to cut a rope or anything. He was not found on inspection before boarding the plane. On the way back, we had a spare sail soaked in petrol, which Pipot spilled all over the cabin and, of course, on the sail while tossing on the waves. Before boarding, they called us for an inspection and told us to open the sail to check what such a smell had, saying that the smell was suspicious after the explosive. We both laughed honestly at this and tried to untie that knot on the sail bag, but the cops changed their minds when they saw how heavily knotted it was and simply threw the luggage into the plane.
We headed back to Lanzarote and back to the marina. As interesting: what happened to this sailboat later when I was painting my boat in Rubicon, Pipota and his boat were pulled by the coastal police. Between the islands of Tenerife and Lanzarote, his rudder failed because the steel wire was torn – and the very one I pointed out to him did not listen to me. Well, it all just ended happily and now he has his boat anchored in front of Playa Blanca on Lanzarote.