Today the rock locally called “A Pinela”, one hundred yards
offshore the beach, has claimed a victim, a French-flagged sailing yacht. I
couldn’t distinguished boatbuilder nor model from the distance. She looks beamy
and seaworthy, aproximately 35 feet or more.
To be precise, it was not only the rock who perpetrated it, but
also the conspirational tide, which covers the hazard in high water.
So the yacht was standing in an auckward position, heeled
but not heeling, strangely still. It is disturbing to watch a boat, born and
bound for sailing the ocean, hanging defenceless on a hard dry trap. Not funny…
The owner was struggling around on a dinghy. Heartless rock:
it had hit both of them (boat’s hull and sailor’s seamanship) in foreign
waters… It may be just a minor scratch, but who knows. Maybe they now will have
to careen into an unfamiliar yard, and perhaps change all their passage
schedule, long-planned on winter evenings to be deployed on longed-for summer
holidays…
It was me and my daughther witnessing the situation on a
bycicle ride to the grocery, feeling sorry for not being capable of any help:
you cannot tow a ten-tonnes grounded vessel with a bike…
“Shall we inform him about tide times?”, I wonder. I don’t
think so – I answer to myself - that mustn’t be any news for him, he must
already know. Moreover, it is bad news
anyhow: it will be still ebbing for half an hour…
“It could be us” is my first inmediate thought.
“May there always be water beneath your keel”… What a wise
advice. So easy to unobserve.
