Return to the UK - Friday 30th July 1999

Fetched St Mary's (in the Scilly Isles) some time ago (30th July) after 16 days at sea from Horta, on Faial, in the Azores.

View of Hughtown St Mary's from the visitors moorings

Had lots of calm, some good sailing and a strong North-Easter (up to Force 6-7) a few days before arrival. Burned lots of diesel fuel but with good fuel management arrived with 11 gallons left. Did the annual Round St Mary's race on Sunday 1st August with some local crew to St Agnes. Had a really good time and afterwards at the prize-giving at the Turks Head various prizes were given and then the committee stated that they weren't really sure what to do about the "Lady Helm" prize.

View of the Turks Head on St Agnes at low tide from Ramprasad at anchor

 As it happened Louise (one of our local crew) had been steering for about 95% of the time and so I put our claim to the race committee. They considered our claim against the opposition and since we had beaten them we WON!!! The trophy was/is a beautifully carved wooden elephant which of course reminded me of the popular Hindu deity Ganesh. We celebrated by drinking lots of beer before the local crew got the ferry back to St Marys.

Pettifox - One of our competitors finishing the Round St Mary's race at St Agnes after us - 1st August 1999

Sailed here to Falmouth on Monday 2nd August - got bits and fixed the engine alternator bracket on Tuesday. Tried to fix the Seahopper dinghy in the rain and went to the dentist on Wednesday. Had some Canadian yachty-friends round yesterday - Aub & Judy of Veleda IV (and so didn't fix the dinghy) but managed to get to the library for 1st acquisition of email since Horta. This part of Cornwall is Eclipse Mad at the moment but with Falmouth Classics and Falmouth week about to start the place is pretty lively.

One of the Falmouth Classics sailing through the anchorage in Falmouth

The beer is good (but expensive @ about 2 pounds a pint) but a terrific choice of real beer and the shopping is good and surprisingly inexpensive - even compared to Porlamar (on Isla Margarita, Venezuela where clothing shopping was also good but the weather was fairly hot.)

We celebrate the eclipse on a hillside overlooking the Helford river. It was cloudy, it rained, it got dark, it got light, we all had fun!

The Azores were really wonderful. Did a race from Horta (on Faial) to Velas (on Sao Jorge) about 20 miles and back one weekend with 6 Portuguese girls on board (local crew) none of whom had ever been on a boat (other than a ferry) before! 

Some of our crew relaxing on deck during the race to Velas

Velas was having its 500th anniversary. Race entry was 3 quid per boat and included cheese and wine at the briefing, 2 prize-giving dinners with the one at Velas being "Eat and drink wine as much as you possibly could!" Live bands until 0300 and then in the morning what we expected to be a bus tour of the island turned out to be a visit to a dairy where we had milk, cheese and bread for breakfast and saw and heard the dairy folk dance troup perform a short-stepped local dance and then most of us visitors joined in with them. Throughout this the farmers were arriving with their milk churns in a variety of small motor vehicles and in two cases by pack-horse. The farmers dogs looked pretty mean but were all well behaved.

The start of the race from Velas - the dark tan-sailed boat is "Riverdancer" a ferrocement Colin Archer

The race back to Horta went slightly better with the improvements to the crew which included Theresa who had never sailed but had spent a year on the Azorean Tuna boats as a marine biologist with the job of checking that no harm is done to cetaceans (of which there are many small and large around there). Returning to Horta we went out to a dance and Sam somehow got very friendly with Sophie (of french yacht "Meccano") who had got very emotional about her experiences with the officials in Cuba.

The Ramprasad painting on the harbour wall at Horta marina which Simeon did before we did the race to Velas

However sleep was disturbed at about 0730 (about 2 hours after turning in) with an enormous BANG and a huge jolt when 25 ton twin-engined sports fishing boat "Andromeda" starboard quarter was in collision with Ramprasad's port bow. "Andromeda" was reversing out of the narrow necked channel which Ramprasad was constricting on the direction of Horta Marina. OK the marina was very crowded but Andromeda's manoevre had gone wrong at an early stage on exit from his berth and so that's why he was reversing out. The hole was 6" x 1 1/2" (inches) on the outside but the damaged area turned out to be about 9" in diameter.

The hole from the inside after the damaged mortar had been broken out

That was Monday morning. On Tuesday we moved the boat. On Wednesday we investigated repair material, on Thursday we prepared a quote and on Friday we reached a basis for settlement and at last I could get on with the repair.

I went to one of the Agricultural merchants, bought some chicken wire and proudly walked into Mid-Atlantic Yacht Services (the Chandlers) and briefly got involved in a discussion on the merits of chicken wire as a boat construction material ( - or was it about making chicken coops for the foredeck ?) 

The "structural" part of the repair from the outside - West Epoxy filler - before Les did the cosmetic bit

On Monday Les of Andromeda did the cosmetic bit of the repair to the outside and it is now very hard to spot the repaired area on the outside.

We tried to give Les mental space by going off for a walk around the new volcano at the other end of the island (Capelinhos). It extended the island of Faial Westwards quite a bit about 40 years ago. Faial is still quite seismically active having had an earthquake about a year ago which did quite a lot of damage to many of the older stone houses particularily on the North side of the island and killed around half a dozen people !

On Wednesday we checked out and left Horta and towed "Dhanu" (a wooden boat with an engine that hadn't worked for about 5 years) which Ben had bought in Trinidad. Dhanu's first mate was Cato the tom-cat and this was one of the reasons that Ben was heading for Lorient in Brittany. The tow lasted about 30 hours (this was until we found a breeze) during which time we exchanged fish. Cato much prefers it at sea because he gets to eat more fresh fish !

Ben and Cato on Dhanu after we dropped the tow

This is of course only a snippet of the many experiences which we had on Ramprasad in one year and three weeks away.