On the morning of 7th August 2015 an old sailing yacht started to leave its berth in the marina, Porto Tino Rossi, Ajaccio.

As the elderly gentleman began to turn after leaving his berth his engine suddenly stopped, fortunately in calm conditions his boat drifted broadside but slowly into the bows of the moored yachts. The crews and skippers scrambled to fend him off their anchors and held him safely, gently moving the yacht forwards.

We were ahead of the drifting yacht, but fortunately managed to catch lines and man handle the yacht to raft and tie up alongside our beam.

The old guy, skipper had a second person on board and so as we secured them to us we began the pleasantries of ‘hello’ etc and asked what had happened and what was the problem.

The older guy said he had an oil leak and had recently had it fixed. We wondered if he needed help to get back to his berth but he said he could re start the engine.

The next part of his sentence made us smile….he said, he had found that if he collected the oil from the engine as it spilled out and put it back in….he had about 5 mins worth of engine running time before it stopped again. This he thought would have been enough time to clear the marina berth and set sail.

We looked beyond the harbour wall to the glass-like stillness of the sea, not a breath of wind... hmmm!

We looked at one another thinking how far did he think he was going to sail that day!!

I asked the elderly Skipper where he had sailed from..he replied… ‘I started in Santa Barbara, California’ and I replied ‘and sailed here’.

He introduced himself, ‘Jack ‘. So Jack went below and put his collected oil back into the engine, started it up and quickly got back to his morning before the 5 minute cut out.

Later that evening we bumped into his crew friend. He told us he had flown in to help Jack sail to the south of France. He had first met Jack in Panama, when Jack was passing through the canal with his wife on board.

Jack had lived on the boat for 27 years since leaving Santa Barbara and had sailed thousands of miles. He added, ‘Jack is 84 and isn’t too keen on sailing these days but his balance isn’t too good on land' !!!!

Apparently Jack was talking about making his way through the French canals. ‘He doesn’t enjoy solo sailing and prefers company’. I guessed that he had made many sailing friends along his years of travelling and hopefully had willing crew to help him.

So Jack had probably seen it all and done it all over the years. But I couldn’t help wondering why he would choose to set sail north along the west coast of Corsica to head for the South of France with no wind.

The west coast of Corsica has steep cliffs and eroded rocks weathered by the on shore waves formed by the predominant on shore NW wind.

Not an ideal place to be without an engine, in light winds dangerous, but in good wind it would be possible to get offshore quickly and sail to open sea….before making landfall in France with hopefully a 5 minute window of opportunity to anchor or moor up.

What an interesting gentleman, an old sea dog, just gets on with it all.

When we left Ajaccio, Jack was still in his mooring awaiting a mechanic to come to repair the engine before setting sail, we were relieved.

Lets hope he got his oil leak fixed beyond the 5 minute window and safely sailed to the French canals and beyond into his centenary year.

Photo of…

Jack and his yacht from Santa Barbara, California.

Love to all

T and T xxx