may day, may day !!

What started as a lazy day ended with a disaster! We are okay though and so is the boat.

We, that is Rutger, Andy and Monique slept in and after we had brunch we launched the dinghy. We couldn't get the outboard started... no gasoline and I then remembered I forgot the external gas tank in Rijswijk. There was too little gas in the internal tank. A local fisherman came rowing alongside and wanted to help us. He only spoke Spanish and no English at all. Finally he understood that we were out of gas. So he rowed over to another vessel nearby and got us some. The outboard started but didn't run too well for some reason. The fisherman explained where to get some more gas and Rutger and I went ashore to get some. I thanked him very much and gave him € 10 for the gas and his help. He took the money for the one he got the gas from but didn't want any for himself. Instead he gave Monique 2 fish while I was away. While I was waiting for Rutger to come back from the gas station he came along and trew me another fish :-).

Anyway after a great diner prepared by Rutger with Andy supervising we left for a night sail to Corme, some 40 nm west.

We had just set the mainsail. I was down below checking the chart plotter when Andy and Ruthger urged me to come on deck. They just witnessed a collision between a fishing vessel and a big freighter. We immediately dropped the mainsail and went full throttle to the location of the collision, about .3 nm ahead of us.

I could steer the boat by the lights of the sinking finishing vessel. We heard people shouting in the water. Within 3 minutes we were there and saw 3 men in the water. Andy send had already send out a May Day. We picked one of the men out of the water, the second and the third one being picked up by a pilot vessel that came right after us at the place of collision. The man we picked up was not injured but in shock obviously. We could manege him to tell us there were 4 people on board of the fishing vessel.

I tried call the pilot vessel over the radio but the didn't seem to respond, at least not in English, so I handed over the radio to the man we picked up and they spoke spoke for a while. The pilot vessel picked up our man. We cruised around for some time to help searching for the 4^th person. By then there were at least 5 vessels and a helicopter nearby to search, using very bright search lights so we headed for the marina where I reported to the police. They made a first report and would be back next morning if needed. I also was interviewed by the newspaper that was already there...

We all had a drink and send out mails.. the modern way to write things off....

Anyway, we all did a good job I think, no panic, working well together with the search light, getting the man on board , making sure not to run over the sinking vessel... The throwing line didn't help though. There was an elastic cord on it I didn't know about and the brand new man over board system I bought in Brighton wasn't much help either. The rope was a mess!!

I'll have to check that out and make sure they're ready for use.

Anyway we made our way into the marina, not in for a sail anymore and all had a good glass of wine. Then it really sank in what we had experienced.... sort of... wondering what happened to the 4^th man...