Day 6 plus
The afternoon of the last night..... we had just logged our position which has become a daily ritual for us. It’s great to see our progress on the chart and also for a little bit of fun and with complete guesswork, as we have a competition running to guess to the nearest nm the distance travelled. The prize for the winner is for Ein Gross Bier. We were settled around the lunch table eating fried eggs, with a Mediterranean salad . Laughing and joking is common p,ace at the table as have been our spirits which have been high throughout the journey , Holger was in full conversation about making me dive under the boat when we arrived in Cape Verde or if we got caught in a fishing line. Suddenly, without warning the boat came to an abrupt stop, the cutlery and plates flew off the table and at the same time from the lifting keel came an enormously large bang. This shuddered through the yacht and the noise was similar to a car crash. The boat appeared to pivot on the keel and then rest, the engine then kicked back in and the boat lurched forward. My heart raced and a surge of adrenaline kicked into my body. It was my initial assessment that we had either hit a large submerged object or a whale, either way the noise was terrifically loud. I immediately went to the stern of the boat to check the engine, shaft and steering, my thoughts were that whatever we hit had to be going backwards under the boat. I was looking to see if there was catastrophic damage, once again Neptune smiled upon us. I went on deck and tested the steering to see if we had directional stability whilst Holger and Simone had checked forwards to the saloon. We did not have any water ingress and the structural integrity of the hull was in order.
Holger wanted to dive on the keel so we cut the engine and let the boat settle, Simone and I prepared prepared diving knives, snorkels mask and safety lines and discussed our plan of attack. I prepared a free line from bow to stern at waterline for a grab line and a second line attached to the life ring. Simone marked our position on GPS just in case this got any more serious. With 4500 metres of warm African Atlantic water Holger looked at the keel and superstructure from the water, the only obvious sign of the incident is a scratched mark at the section where the horizontal flying keel meets its vertical shaft. It appears that it is is either whale related or a partially submerged article with some weight to it. Either way we will never know, however these are the moments when you know that your not in an armchair and that it’s real and dangerous. But, that’s why it’s an adventure!!