Yacht rescue – flying from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro to see if we can safely bring a yacht back to South Africa.

5 am. on Tuesday 11 November.

We fly to Rio tomorrow…..to fetch a boat we need to do a few repairs on and then sail her back to Cape Town. Here’s the rundown on how my life changed in the space of 4 days….

Received a desperate phone call sometime last week from a yachtie friend I had not spoken to in more than a year. They bought a yacht in Croatia, a 54-foot Sovereign, and organised a South African skipper to deliver her home to Cape Town.

Off he sailed into the sunset with his girlfriend as crew, all the way to Recife in Brazil, everything (according to the emails received by the owner), was going well. 5 days out of Recife, he decided he was not going to continue with the Atlantic crossing but turned around and headed for Rio. His reason was they seemed to have a “leak” and the autopilot was “stopping intermittently”. He had taken on a Brazilian crew member who had not sailed before (yes, really) so perhaps this was an issue.

The owners were in a total panic, which marina in Rio should the skipper head for (there are a few and they are all pretty pricey), where do they find a new skipper, how are they going to get their dream boat home, how bad is the damage (leak?), who can they trust to go and oversee their boat? They cannot do it themselves due to business obligations plus no experience in crossing an ocean! To say the owners were completely shell-shocked is an understatement.

While we were chatting – on speakerphone -Captain Mike merrily says ” don’t worry, we will do it”…….say whaaaat????

That’s how it all began……

We met, discussed, planned and bought tickets to Rio in the space of a few very short days. Captain Mike has sailed solo across the Atlantic twice, so they are confident in his ability to do the crossing.

We fly out first, chat with ex- skipper, once we have checked the boat out thoroughly with him and see what needs to be done to make her safe for the crossing, he leaves. There is a small amount of fibreglassing to be done plus Captain Mike has to check out all the electrics, being an electrical engineer, this is right up his alley.

My son and new daughter-in-law fly in 2 weeks later to do the crossing home with us. We will do sea trials to Ilha Grande for about a week before we head off for roughly 30 days across the Atlantic, home to Cape Town.

We have one suitcase dedicated to equipment: current clamp meters, an AIS receiver, a new autopilot display unit and various other tools and bits and pieces as we have heard it is hard to source things in Rio and also very expensive.

It has been hard to think of all the things we take for granted on this boat that we will not have on the delivery boat. I have just thrown 2 loo rolls into my bag plus bedding! Books, music, medicines, a lot to plan.

Feelings right now are a jumble of excitement, nervousness, disbelief, and trying to think calmly and logically so that we are well prepared, or as well as we can be. We have been so lucky, Royal Cape Yacht Club where we have been for the past 2 months with our own boat, has arranged a month’s free mooring in Rio as they have reciprocity with us. We are looking forward to chatting with the marina management and staff about their preparations for the Cape to Rio race which starts here in early January. Will have to brush up on some Portuguese…..

So I am signing off now. Need to check our checklist for the zillionth time.

Chat next from Rio!

Captain Mike and Nikki