We love our boat, nurture her, take care of her, fix her and tend to her every need. We hope that this will give us an easy passage. We have since learned this is an illusion like all things in life, we have learned to expect the unexpected and get on and deal with it.

Our latest adventure, (and no matter how hard we try we keep having them,) had us drifting along with the current on a dark and stormy night with no means of steering our boat. About two in the morning, and it’s always about two in the morning when these things happen, the wind and the sea got up, I was blissfully asleep and Tony on the helm. We were heading for Chesapeake and keeping a good course and speed. The only thing for miles around was a great big red buoy marking the shoal we were keeping well off. The big red buoy was quite close, say half a mile away when the steering jammed. I woke up, somehow I seem to know when things are ‘different’ even in my sleep, and went up to see what was going on. We had hove to and Tony was wrestling with the steering trying to get us on course. I noticed we were heading for the big red buoy. I calmly asked Tony if he’d noticed this too and he said that it was okay as we’d passed it. “No we haven’t “ I said , “we’re heading straight for it”. “No we’ve passed” it said Tony, “no we’re heading straight for it” I yelled.

Now this was weird. What the heck was going on? We decided to take the sails in as we were constantly gibing , heaving to and then getting going again, all involuntarily, so we took the sails in which calmed things down a bit and put the engine on. We passed the big red buoy again, you really don’t want to hit one of these things, and relaxed. The next moment we were heading straight for the big red buoy again. What the heck? The penny dropped. “I think we’re going round in circles” I said. Hmm, yes, maybe. How do we deal with this? If it wasn’t for the bliddy great big red buoy we could have gone round in circles all night, no worries. We cut the engine to see what happened. As we slowed down we gently passed the big red buoy and slowly slowly slowly we drifted away from it. We were in a current that was curling us around the shallow area that the big red buoy was marking, about 5 miles off any immediate danger area so we decided just to drift along and monitor the situation until daylight. We didn’t really have much choice. It was a long long night. Thankfully the wind had died down and apart from the horrible rolling we were in no imminent danger but felt completely helpless. We had our VHF if any shipping came close so we calmed down and had a nice cup of tea, and drifted along until dawn when we could hopefully see what was going on.

Dawn broke, , and we looked around. First of all Tony checked the steering cables. He’d fitted new ones about six months ago so he knew what to do. We thought the chain may have jumped off the thingy but it was fine. Ok, what next? Tony looked under our mattress at the steering quadrant, all fine at that end too, apart from it not moving and now having the mattresses in the saloon. We then got out the emergency steering system. This consists of three steel poles that fit together; go through a special hole in the deck, down through our cabin ceiling and onto a block on the quadrant. We took it out of the lazarette, tried to get some of the rust and flaking paint off and fitted it together. Apart from making a magnificent mess this did absolutely nothing either and we now had the ceiling panels in the saloon too. We still couldn’t steer and we were getting closer and closer to the shore. I felt a slight moment of panic, well actually I had the screaming habdabs, had another cup of tea and thought things over. We’d both gone all night with little to no sleep and a small amount of fear and still had no solution. We could put out a pan pan, or heaven help us, a mayday but we don’t give up easily. Out here the coastguard are wonderful and will rescue you with helicopters, but, and a big but, they don’t rescue the boat. I was dreamily thinking about the experience of being lifted off the boat on a sling when I had the bolt of lightning thought. “I think we have something jammed in the rudder” Now Tony is action man and fearless. I am a scaredy cat and see danger, the result of raising four children who were also fearless, (well three of them were, and you know who you are). He said “I’m going to get my scuba gear on and take a look” The boat was rolling in the swell and the stern was slapping into the sea. I imagined him being hit on the head, breaking his neck and being killed. I expressed my fears in a calm and reasoned manner through my sobbing tears. This frightened me more than our situation. I told him we should say goodbye to each other, fully convinced he would be dead in a few minutes and then he jumped in the water. The next moment he popped up and said “get me my knife”. We had a piece of rope jammed in the rudder which was stopping it moving. The rudder was fully over which was why as soon as we powered up we were going round in circles. It only took a few seconds and then Tony was safely back on the boat, we had steerage, I burst into tears again then had another cup of tea.
We turned the boat around, put the engine on as the wind had dropped and got on our way. It cost us about 50 miles and half a day.

Why am I still doing this you may want to know? I’d like to know too. Well, at the time it can be pretty scary but I’m now warily getting used to it. Tony is a marvel, keeps calm, does what needs doing and never bursts into tears. We are prepared, we know where our tools are, we have the equipment and know this doesn’t mean nothing will go wrong but that we have the ability to fix things and deal with it. We learn from these incidents, we learn about the boat and we learn about ourselves, we learn to love each other more and most of all we learn how to make a really lovely cup of tea.