We practice, practice, practice. Pretend, imitate, rehearse.

I’ve heard an engine hunting for fuel before, late at night, and had the skipper appear on deck cursing and frustrated, to siphon fuel into the tank. I’d never had an engine fail, in 10m depth, and with two to four knots of tide against us. Yet this was where we found ourselves shortly after we left anchor on a delivery up the coast of Portugal a couple of weeks ago.

Not a true calamity; we had two very qualified engineers on board, and technically as Yachtmaster my helms skills should have been sufficient to keep us away from the coast. If it wasn’t for the fact the wind was registered at 3 knots – from all directions – the best I could do whilst the guys tried to source and fix the issue was keep us drifting backwards at 1.6knots (steering 280-300, drifting 160!). At least we had enough chain to drop anchor if we got too close to shore….. It was also interesting to see tides in action, we don’t get many of those in the Canaries; funny that we’d laughed the day before whilst being pushed down a river by a tide at 6knots – little did we know then we wouldn’t see a boat speed of 6knots again for a while.

Five and a half hours later, the engine was functioning, but we only worked it at half power and, with no wind, progress was slow at best. At one point I broached the washing machine style forepeak for a nap, an hour later we were further away from our destination. And more depressingly; just passing our anchorage of the night before.

Then the engine failed again.

Twice.

You talk about beating up the coast; you assume full engine, you don’t assume half power and sails flogging in fluky wind. I am definitively never buying a boat with a stay sail. Head to the mast makes sense in theory, but in this case it was deafening.

We eventually slipped into our destination marina mere hours before I needed to leave for the airport…. partook of a well deserved parking beverage at 1am, then realised due to time difference that it was actually 2am, and I needed to be off the boat by 6.30!

Having only had three hours sleep a day each since Wednesday night – I could fully appreciate why humanity under sleep deprivation is considered volatile – without waking my shipmates, I crept off the boat that Sunday morning, and headed home.