On our way to St Florent, with more troubles afloat!
On the 3rd August we set sail at 8 in the morning to head around Cap Corse, with its stunning scenery. Cap Corse is notorious for high winds with churned up seas, but today we were lucky, or so we thought, we had gentle winds pushing us along, giving us time to take in some of the scenery.
By 10am we had rounded the top and were about half the distance down the finger to Saint Florent, when the wind exhausted itself and we went to turn the engine on….😱🥴😩 Just about sums up our predicament when the engine electronics system failed and we could not start it. We spent nearly a hour troubleshooting the problem, trying to override the system to get the engine started, but to no avail, not helped that the engine’s external temperature runs at about 90 degrees, so way too hot to touch and would take hours to be cool enough for us to work on it properly. We did manage to change the fuse, but the new one soon melted, emitting blue smoke which was very likely to catch fire, so we had no choice but to completely isolate the engine to avoid things taking a dramatic turn for the worse.
By this time, the onshore swell was pushing us ever closer to shore, which was far too rocky for our liking. With still no wind, realising that we clearly needed help, we placed repeated pan pan calls out on the VHF to see if any boats, preferably with a hefty engine, would come to help us. 40 minutes later, with no response, we called the coastguard. We were still 12NM’s away from any safe landing spot, so knowing it would take sometime to get the crew organised and a boat out to assist us, we put the dinghy in the water hoping that a 4hp outboard would be just about enough to keep us off the rocks if need be!
Thankfully the cavalry arrived before things got desperate, so we didn’t have to find out the answer to that! Soon a line was thrown and we attached it to our bow and the tow started… It’s not at easy as it looks as we still had to steer to take into account the side swell that was hitting us on our beam, to continue inline with the tug.
An hour and a half later we came in sight of Saint Florent, faster than we normally would have, even with some wind!
At this point, the guys pulled us alongside and strapped us securely to their tug to start the rather tricky negotiation through the port, blowing their very loud horn repeatedly to get all the boats entering and leaving the port to get out of our way, as it appeared to be rush hour, but still with enough time for one of the guys, now onboard Seaclusion to pretend he was on the Titanic!
Once inside, they carefully manoeuvred us into the service area where the crane lives, not that we were going to need that, but the port was full so there was little choice.
Then came the really nasty bit, the bill, it’s not like the UK and the RNLI, it is not a free service and it hurt, we have our fingers crossed that our insurance company will cover the cost! There are certainly cheaper ways to secure a berth in a port! So next time you see a RNLI tin, pop a pound or two in, as we will…
One blessing though was that one of the crew was actually a Volvo Penta engineer, so he soon came aboard to diagnose the problem, and confirm what we suspected, we needed a new MDI unit, the brains of the engine for want of a better description. Why, oh why do these things happen at a weekend!
Stranded, and in need of a drink with some food, Seaclusion not being in the most salubrious of surroundings we walked into town for just that! Rather pickled after drowning our sorrows, we negotiated the crane without falling in to return to our poorly yacht to crash for the night, although not before catching this amazing sunset.
The next day, being Sunday with nothing likely to happen to get us back on the water, we went for a looksee around town.
Saint Florent
Well, there are worse places to be holed up in, that’s for sure! The bustling heart of St Florent is the old town, with its narrow streets and vibrant bar terraces, full of atmosphere, people playing boules and generally relaxing and enjoying life!
We also walked up to the old fort, not the prettiest by far, but again the views were wonderful.
That evening, more shenanigans came our way as the coast guard had another call, more serious than ours. Sad to see as the little boat in question we guess must have fit the rocks and was sinking. So we had to move, as they needed the crane! No mean feat with no engine, so with us on board, 6 guys ashore, 2 in a rib and lots of lines, they pulled us out of our slot to the other side, blocking in a number of taxi ribs and some official looking work ribs to boot, they were not going to be happy in the morning!
By the time the coast guard returned, the speed boat was definitely more under water than out, despite the floats. All they could do at that time on a Sunday was tie it to the side, to be lifted in the morning….
And in the morning…
But that was before the taxi rib guys arrived and were not happy with us….there really was little we could do before our engineer arrived and in our pigeon French we did manage to communicate that to them, it wasn’t long before they had contacted him and got him to come and help… which he did, with the engine now cold, he got it started, saying we had about 5 minutes before it caught fire, so he helped us move to the nearest now available space in the port, he couldn’t switch the engine off fast enough!
We had hoped that we could stay there, but it wasn’t long before the harbour master came to tell us, we had a few hours, but then had to move, god only knows where as the port was full and we couldn’t go back to the spot by the crane. Thankfully our engineer came to the rescue and found us a make shift spot, rafted up to an old boat that wasn’t going anywhere. Safe, but right in the channel so mid morning and early evening it was like being stuck in the middle of the M25 for boats!
We were in St Florent for a total of 5 days, sadly not able to go anywhere as we were told each day the part will be here, but wasn’t! When it did finally arrive, and was fitted, we couldn’t wait to leave, to find an anchorage, some peace and to start enjoying the trip again!
8th August 2024
