Near Disaster in Fornells

After a lovely couple of days in Addaya we headed to Fornells, we carefully made our way out of the harbour, more carefully than the boat we greeted heading in. As we were almost out of the channel we turned to see that the boat heading in was not in the channel markers, what were they doing?! Next minute we noticed they were no longer moving and yes they should have stuck more closely to the channel as they were aground!  We knew it was mainly mud so were unlikely to have damaged their boat and there were at least 6 of them onboard so we were not going to be of any help so sailed off into the distance.

Entering Fornells bay

It was already a good 20knts of southerly wind blowing when we reached Fornells and motored around trying to find somewhere to shelter, funny that the pilot book described the “excellent shelter”. As the wind was southerly we were able to try to tuck in behind a small island but there was still a fair amount of rolling around. As we settled for the night the wind continued to get stronger, but we tried to distract ourselves with a dvd.  As we went to bed we both knew we were unlikely to get a good nights sleep with strong southerly winds forecasted plus a period overnight when it was expected to swing to a strong northerly.  Mark checked our position regularly as we tried to rest, about 4.30am the wind did seem to die off but only to hit us hard about an hour later from the north, a 180 deg wind shift, and this is when we had our big issue.  For the 1^st time ever our anchor started to drag, we were rapidly on deck, partially dressed and with engine on.  We were so close to the rocks we could have stepped ashore! We had a panic stricken few minutes desperately trying to motor away from the rocks and raise the anchor, whilst the wind did all it could to blow us onto the rocks! Once the anchor was finally up (with a huge ball of weed attached) we slowly motored to safer water.  It was still dark and the wind was well over 25 knots and we were without wind and depth instruments which had decided to completely pack up!

Just visible in the middle of the photo, with 2 white pillars
 is the island which nearly ended our adventure !

It was nearly light by this time, so we headed towards the sailing club hoping to be able to pick up an empty mooring buoy.

At this point we noticed some friends of ours (Alex and Carol in Kotare), anchored on the south of the island, were having an even worse time. They had been woken by a large catamaran dragging their anchor right onto Kotare’s bow. The only way Alex could extricate their boat was to cut his anchor line and drift free, which he did.

They noticed us on a buoy so came over to pick up another one, on the second attempt in the howling winds they caught the buoy - Carol is a good shot with the boat hook. However the buoy wasn’t secured well enough to take the weight of their boat in the strong winds so they got blown sideways onto another mooring with a small glassfiber boat attached. They ran halfway over the boat and its lines got entangled around their prop. They were trapped but at least it had stopped them being blown ashore.

Amanda and I sat and watched helplessly as this unfolded in front of us.

Knowing we were safe I left Amanda and jumped in the dingy to help.

The wind moderated so Alex and I donned wetsuits and jumped in to try and sort out the mess under his boat. The water was freezing but after about an hour we had released the small boat, refloated it and moored Kotare securely by the bow to a sturdy looking chain and mooring.

Kotare moored by her prop, the blue boat on the right is the "recovered" dingy

Amazingly, we both got away with minimum damage!

Magnum has scratched a small patch of antifouling off her rudder, but not even chipped the gel coat. So we touched the bottom but only very lightly…phew.

Kotare as a couple of minor scratches on her waterline and needs a new anchor and chain.

Even the small boat Kotare ran over wasn’t damaged, it just needed bailing out.

We were so very lucky.

We had had enough of Fornells and as even stronger winds were forecast we both decided to run back down to Mahon.

We left the harbour straight into the biggest swell we have seen in the Med, easily 4/5 meters and pretty steep. It was character building stuff as we beat under full sail to claw our way offshore and give ourselves the safety of a few miles of sea room.

Our mast is about 17m high and we had full sail up, but Alex said that even from 500m away he kept loosing us in the swells. The journey to Mahon was pretty unpleasant and I think only Carol remained completely free of sea sickness. We were all very glad when after 4hrs we turned into the safe tranquil waters of Mahon Harbour.

It seemed like a very long 24hrs !!