Mayday Call

With tears in our eye's we say good bye to our crew,  as the time has come for us to move onto to Curaçao. We are short on time, as we do need to get Intle Breeze out of the water, so where will we be spending a few days for some enjoyment Curaçao or Trinidad? As I am sure you can imagine, this is a no brainer, definitely in the perfect waters of Cucraçao. With love we wave you Au revoir. 

Then there were 3 embarking on our 4-5 day journey, we managed to change Mr Oxley's damage sheet so he will be up in the air soon enough, tanks are full of diesel so it should be smooth sailing.  Now it is time to go cruising again, good bye Trinidad.

Approximately an hour out of the Trinidad Marina, a MAYDAY call came over the VHF radio, to which we responded even though we were going in the opposite direction and we were about two hours away from them, we pulled down the main sail and put both motors on full throttle, thankfully we now had enough diesel to do this, as if we were in trouble I would certainly want someone to respond.

After reaching out to the coast guard we were given instruction to continue to the co-ordinates as they were taking on water,  soon after, the next information that we received was that they had abandoned the vessel, in fact within a rather short period of time. Fortunately at this point a tanker had also responded to the call, also going in a different direction but he was closer than us and of course much faster. They were able to rescue the survivors, from the water and take them on board, while waiting for us to arrive, to transfer them back to land, because as you can imagine it would be much easier and less complicated for us to take them back then for the tanker to do it.

Wow what an incredibly traumatic and sad experience.🥲

As we neared this enormous tanker, that was bouncing up and down in the water, due to sea state and sheer size, this in reality was fast becoming a scary situation for us. The possibility of hurting Intle Breeze became a real risk, we had started to take our chances and hold our selves steady along side, while being tossed around. Thankfully the survivors saw the situation was too challenging and dangerous and said we should move away from the tanker, and they would lower themselves back into the water into their dinghy, that had no motors and no oars. 😳

After a nerve racking 15 minutes dealing with the transfer, we had them safely on board, and their dinghy tied behind us. We then proceeded toward their fishing vessel to see if there was anything salvageable, as we arrived, Eric had the idea to tow Mistress back to Trinidad, Dale clearly had more experience on the water than us and said he would never risk our boat and let the tow happen. Well that sure was a sensible decision because after those words where uttered, Mistress sank to her demise in less than 1 minute. Such an incredibly sad moment for these wonderful men, to watch their livelihood wash away into the depths of the ocean to her final resting place.

We took a solemn sail back to Trinidad where we spent the night, the most important note from this day for me. The storm may scatter our belongings, but what we lose in things we find in one another, compassion is a shelter that never fails.

Just like that we get to say Goodbye to our team one more time ❤️ They met us on the deck to tie up and a last shot. Tomorrow we move on again.