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Biguá - Log day 17 - Helping SV Garuda!



Hello fellow sailors.
Yesterday we had an intense day on board.
By the morning, we received an ARC email, warning us about a sailboat asking for help, Garuda. They had lost their mast and didn’t have enough fuel to get to St. Lucia.
We ourselves are consuming more fuel than we had predicted we would. We lost our generator and need to charge our batteries with our engines.
Still, we did the math and realized we could lent them a hundred liters of fuel.
We turned around and started searching the boat using only the last position ARC had given us. Tough task out here at sea.
We couldn’t contact them through the VHF radio and their AIS was inoperative.
After many hours, we could finally get closer to Garuda and contact them through the radio. We then started updating our positions constantly. But we still couldn’t see them. Even though it was a fifty feet sail boat, it had no mast and, consequently, no sails. And besides, the boat is white, just as the crest of all waves of the sea around us.
We could only find them in the evening, when they threw a parachute flare in the sky.
By this time, another boat, Venus, was already coming to help Garuda as well.
When we were close to the broken boat, we realized the risk of transferring the five fuel bottles.
The sea and its waves were big, with both boats surfing with the wind, and besides that, they appeared to have some steering problems.
We slowly started approaching Garuda so that they could throw us a rope. If both boats touched the damage could, of course, be big.
At that moment, something really incredible happened.
A huge whale, way bigger than the boat, showed up right next to us, between both vessels, swimming in the surface of the ocean. We could almost touch it.
Throughout all the time of the transfer operation, it swimmed around Biguá, our boat, as if it was taking care of us.
It was an impressive view and a magic moment.
After many attempts, we were able to grab the rope they threw at us, and chain two fuel bottles to it, then we threw to rope back in the water. We placed Biguá in front of Garuda’s bow so that they could fish the floating rope. It was a little bit complicated because when we accelerated, the rope would move away and when I slowed down, they get really close to our cockpit.
Between many tries and mistakes, we were able to transfer the five bottles, that they needed, safely.
When the maneuver ended and we started to separate from Garuda, our cetacean friend dived and disappeared into the dark blue of the abyssal sea.
In Garuda’s deck, the whole crew would wave and thank us, touched.
And we left with the felling that something very special happened and that we had fulfilled our duty.
A day that will surely be in our memory forever.
Márcio Machemer - captain of S/V Biguá

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