Suddenly the raft was pushing towards the hulk ...

(Continues from yesterday ... )

To lose a yacht far out on an ocean is desperately upsetting, not just from the very seriously vulnerable position you find yourself in, the immense dangers that suddenly confront you, but from a professional and human point of view, too.

This yacht had once been a most glorious upmarket machine. She was far from it when I stepped on board. And she proved a most obstinate vessel when sailed short-handed.

Leave the wheel for a moment, for instance, and she would swing off down-wind and sail any direction at all, except your chosen route.

Obstinate, difficult, disobliging

However, she did have a strong spirit of that sort that's just about impossible to describe. She was obstinate, difficult, disobliging, and definitely anti sailors.

But then she had been allowed to slip into disrepair or poor condition.

In many ways, she was like a dog that had been spoilt rotten as a puppy, matured, and suddenly found itself unloved, pushed out of doors, and kept out, and all just because it stopped being a sweet puppy – no fault of its own, in other words.

And that was how this once gorgeous vessel affected me. To see her now, utterly swamped just waiting for some slight change to send her plummeting to the bottom …

Empathy, acute worry

It was tragic to watch, and you couldn't watch without feeling great empathy, while our own veins were filled with acute worry over one’s own very likely fate.

Hours and hours passed without much change to events. The wind strengthened, the waves became more unfriendly, and then the elements relented and the sea became more manageable.

Then quite suddenly, the direction of the wind changed. The raft began to be pushed … Continues on the blogs for my sailing adventure story, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com