nearly left Gibraltar today....

Island Kea II
Steve and Katrin Everett
Sat 6 Aug 2011 14:02

We left our berth this morning but not very far as Steve found that our steering was jammed, on the way out of the berth.

Luckily we were able to drift onto the main concrete pontoon and tie up with only a little damage to the bows and did not hit the 2M brand new yacht opposite.

We emptied the aft locker and Steve could see nothing wrong with the cable but all was completely jammed.

Turining on the autopilot it did not shift either, so big problem with the rudder.

We looked at that and saw that there was what had been the lazy line stuck in the rudder.


Bathing ladder went in the water and Katrin went in the sea on the ladder to pull on the line.  Eventually it came loose.

 

 

After this excitement we headed for the fueling berth, filled up our tanks and all the containers on deck.

At £1.08 per litre it is probably the cheapest we will see for a while.

 

After all that we headed out, aiming for Lagos.

Forecast said light winds, 7-8 kts so all was supposed to be good.

However after about 30 minutes out we got 30kts on the nose and rising with  big seas, which was rather unpleasant.

 

We decided to turn back, called Marina bay but our berth had been given away.

 

We phoned Queenway Quay Marina, and luckily they had a space for us.

 

We are now sitting in a bar sipping water and lovely chilled rose wine.

 

Things could be worse..

We will try again for Lagos tomorrow...( weather permitting)