Red Sea approaches - 2003 delivery trip

Many of you may know that in early July (2003) I set off to Oman to crew on a yacht delivery from Mina Salalah, Oman to Turkey via the Suez Canal. 5 weeks later I am now back in the UK with plenty of stories to tell, a full beard and 2 stone lighter.

The yacht, Cap Cod, is a 40-foot catamaran previously owned by Sunsail and used for charter in the Seychelles. She is not an ocean going vessel as we were about to find out.

The crew for this leg was made up of Rob and Alex. Rob the skipper is a former Royal Navy diver has spent 30 years in the Manchester fire service. (i.e just two of us on board)

The intention was to go from Oman to Egypt in one go – a distance of about 2000 nautical miles taking 4 weeks or so. Leaving Mina Salalah we encountered the first of our technical challenges as the steering bolt had sheered leaving us with no steering. 24 hours later following some Omani engineering we set off for real into the Arabian Sea.

Our first night was spent in a calm followed the next night by a force 9 storm where, due to the wave steepness and size, we were forced to heave to (stop with the sails up) and be pushed downwind away from where we were heading towards. The motion of a catamaran yacht in this kind of sea was very uncomfortable and coupled with the heat and physical nature of managing the storm conditions made me feel very ill and I was sick at sea – the first time for many, many years.

During the following days we settled into the yacht’s routine – 4 hours on the wheel, 4 hours off watch grabbing a couple of hour sleep and maybe a snack. The weather soon became predictable with a force 6/7 every morning for 8 hours and calm overnight. Coupled with our destination being upwind and a 4-knot current pushing us back to Oman we were making very slow progress.

10 days into the trip the boat began to fall apart. First it was the laptop that we were using as our prime navigation system including all electronic charts. Next it was the heads (toilet) that failed causing us to use a ‘bucket and chuck it’ routine – not very dignified. Following that the autohelm (computer aided steering) that gave up. We were hand steering anyway as the autohelm uses a great deal of electrical power but the autohelm does give you the opportunity to let the computer take over for a couple of minutes at a time to check the navigation, adjust the sails or wake the other crew for their watch. Without the autohelm we were forced to hand steer for the full 4 hours of our watch and shout loudly to wake the next crew. Tough work in the 40 degree heat.

Cap Cod had a few more surprises in store as the next day the jib (sail at the front) furling gear broke forcing us to take the sail down. Many yachts carry different sized sails for lighter and stronger winds. Furling gear enables a yacht to carry just one large sail that can be rolled up to suit the weather conditions. Without the furling gear we could either have the sail fully up or completely down restricting us to using the sail in the lighter wind conditions. Partially disabled we wondered what would be next. The answer came the next day as the mainsail (the large sail) came unstitched horizontally to such an extent that it was not reparable with the kit we had on board. We were therefore forced to reduce the mainsail size to the 2nd reef which, when coupled with our headsail problems, wasn’t a combination that was ever going to take us to Egypt so we began looking for a port to enter to make repairs.

A satellite phone call to the owner later and our technical problems were put into context. There are only 3 ports along the entire Omani / Yemeni coast. Mina Salalah, the port we set off from, Al Mukalla and Aden. Our man from the local UK embassy informed us that Al Mukalla was not an option due to the high risk from pirate attack. Aden also didn’t look promising as although it was the nearest it was upwind in a direction that we were struggling to make any progress towards before we had our technical problems. The Somali coast was a definite no-no.

Our diesel reserves were not sufficient to take us to Aden so we continued to try to make progress sailing against the adverse current when the weather permitted but the nightly calms and our disabled sails we always lost all distance we gained during the day.

“Securite Securite Securite this is ship Britanis we are under pirate attack”. There isn’t much that can concentrate the mind more than hearing of a pirate attack over the VHF radio (like a CB) especially when it is the dead of night, the moon has set and the ship is only 16 miles away from us in the South Westerly direction. (We were travelling SW towards them). The captain of the Greek freighter continued to give a status of the 4 speedboats that were intending to board his ship until the captain lost visual contact in the darkness. 45 minutes later a 2nd ship the Carmen B from Spain came on the VHF with a similar story. Worryingly they were only 10 miles away from us in the South Westerly direction so the pirates were coming in our direction. A coalition warship was summoned to the scene by a US patrol aircraft and the Carmen B continued to communicate their status.

Carmen B – “There are 3 speed boats and one mother ship – I can see them all on my radar” – At this time we were not far from the pirate attack taking place a few miles away and, as we did every night, we were sailing with all lights turned off so as not to attract any unwanted guests. Due to our ‘lights out’ status the Carmen B had decided that we must be the pirate mother ship – and with a coalition warship closing onto the scene we were left with a tricky decision – do we turn on our lights so the warship knows we are not pirates or do we leave the lights turned off so as not to inform the pirates of our existence? (We were also maintaining radio silence)

We decided to leave the lights off and maintain radio silence and I was left to complete the remaining 2 hours of the night watch alone on deck. There is nothing quite like knowing that there are pirates within a few miles of your position to keep you awake and alert!

The next day we still had our low fuel problem to resolve. The owner then came up trumps and in combination from a gentleman from the local UK embassy, gave us a rendezvous position near the Yemeni coast in order to pick up more diesel. At that time we were off the Somali coast looking for favourable winds so we had to use all our remaining diesel to make the rendezvous position.

Rob, the skipper, used the expression ‘Throwing bricks from the castle wall in order to repel invaders’. Quite.

We were meant to get to the rendezvous position between midnight and 4 am (the moon set at midnight and daylight starts at about 6 am) but we were a couple of hours late. We tried communicating via VHF but no reply and our satellite phone was at that time discharged so not of any use.

The only ship that was near the rendezvous position was a medium sized trawler. Unusually it was just sitting there not working. This is an uncommon sight as normally trawlers cost money to be at sea so a trawler at rest is unusual. Maybe it was our diesel? Off we motored to investigate… could it be pirates? Could it be people smugglers? Could it be our diesel? Upon arrival we found that it was not our diesel and we couldn’t make out what the boat was doing at all. We quickly motored to about a mile away to await further instructions from the owner as we realised we had missed the rendezvous. Later in the afternoon we were still drifting with the current away from the rendezvous position still 1 mile away from the stationery trawler. No nearer to finding out about our diesel from our UK embassy man, we had to go back to the trawler to see if they would help us.

We closed the trawler and our anxiety level was raised again as we drew nearer. We had been watching the trawler for 18 hours or so and it still hadn’t done any fishing. What was it up to?

Rob waved a couple of diesel containers to communicate our need and we managed to come alongside the trawler. This is not something to be advised as within a couple of minutes we were causing some damage to our yacht’s side as she banged into the relatively static rusting trawler. Not good.

In basic Arabic Rob communicated that we wished to pay for the diesel. It was a very blank look that we received from the trawler crew – and it was then that we saw the ensign flag – Chinese! Not only that but the superstructure of the ship was covered in radio communication aerials and listening devices – completely new and in good working order – fully out of context to the rusting hull and poor state of the deck equipment. Blimey – it’s a Chinese spy ship – not something you expect when trying to arrange for a fuel drop from the UK embassy.

We did manage to get 80 litres of diesel in return for a bottle of whiskey – a fair rate of exchange – and we returned to the rendezvous position to await further instructions.

“Nigel here – OK here are the details of the fuel drop off – motor to the shore off Irqah – turn all your lights on – and you will see an man on the beach who is sitting there with some jerry cans of diesel for you”

You have to be joking – firstly this is a shore last charted in 1832, our chart was a passage planning chart (our main charts were on our broken laptop), our echo sounder was broken so we didn’t know how deep the water was, we had to get to the beach after the moon had set and we were looking for a man on a beach flashing his car lights…. we didn’t see this working out – and even if we did get to the beach turning on our yacht lights would be bound to attract all sorts of undesirable guests.

However, in we went and, amazingly, we saw the car lights on the beach and then held position as requested. Out came a very small dinghy with 8 Yemen chaps and our 17 jerry cans of diesel. The exchange was quickly completed and off we motored to Aden.

The next three days were fairly uneventful and we made our way into Aden port in Yemen spending most of the time under motor.

So – 26 days at sea to sail 2186 miles on what should have been a 5 to 6 day section of the voyage!