Be Careful What You Ask For: My “Almost” Shipwreck

I never knew was I passionate about the sea until I spent 72 days on it.  My oceanic voyage began in France on board the La Traviata, a 900 ft ship that sailed me through the Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, across the Indian Ocean to South China Sea and the journey home again.

Be careful what you asked for was a good lesson on one particular day.   I loved the ship and I loved sailing on the ship and I loved getting off the ship, in that order usually.  But when there were many days at sea, the order is reversed and paramount importance was getting off the ship.

It had taken us 10 days to sail from Malaysia, across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal and arrive at Tangiers, Morocco.  I was very excited about being there because I’d never visited Morocco and was ready for a new adventure.  Unfortunately,  because this was a newly built port,  security was high so we were not allowed to disembark.  It seemed there were many people in Africa whose sole purpose in life was to escape it by becoming a stowaway on a ship such as the La Traviata.  So, we were quarantined on the ship. Just because of this inconvenience to me, I half hoped some lost soul would find their way on board.

I woke up on our second day in Tangiers, and before any caffeine activated my daily attitude adjustment, I said, “I want a new day.”

I’d had enough of the same food, same containers, same cabin, same computer, and same world. I decided then that I would ask the chef if I could make chocolate chip cookies for everyone.   I thought this would be the something different I wanted, but was soon to discover that Life had something else planned.

The weather had turned and there were huge waves on the sea. The captain told me when we saw white on the tops of the waves, they call it “mouton,” or a sea of sheep. There were herds of them out there and even the ship was rowing and pitching in this tiny port.  It was a strange sensation to walk along the corridor when suddenly the floor moved and I was walking downhill. Then it shifted again immediately and I was walking uphill.  I’d begun to rethink testing my culinary expertise on a moving platform but I persevered though it, and after breakfast the chef gave me a brief tour of the galley and equipment.  Suddenly, we heard an emergency announcement that sounded like, “Battle Stations Everyone!”

The crew immediately ran to their maneuvering stations, and when I followed them outside, I saw that the front of the ship was no longer attached to the dock.  The bollard (the huge iron apparatus used to secure the ship to the dock) had broken loose and all five securing ropes and the bollard were dangling from the ship.  The strong winds had pulled the ship away from the dock and only the five ropes at the back of this mammoth ship secured us to shore. A huge vessel blowing freely in the wind at a port was quite a precarious situation, to say the least. There was another vessel docked next to us and a cement jetty was on two sides.

The best place to witness this emergency was the bridge, so I instantly abandoned the kitchen for my surveillance perch upstairs. I was excited to watch history in the making and see if there was anything this novice sailor could do in the way of support.  Usually, this was just making sure I stayed out of the way, but at least my heart was in the right place.

I hadn’t stepped completely on the bridge when I saw the front of the ship was dangerously close to colliding with the cement jetty.  The wind had quickly blown the ship perpendicular to the dock and we were held in place only by the five ropes in the back.

The bridge was a flurry of activity, as was the rest of the ship.  Captain Philippe and the chief mate were going back and forth from port to starboard sides, checking the proximity of the jetty and the ship. A helmsman was at the wheel, receiving orders from the captain as he was on the radio with the crews on the fore and aft decks as they monitored the relationship between the dock, jetty, and perimeter of the ship.

Normally, tug boats maneuvered a ship in and out of port along with a pilot who knew the idiosyncrasies of the harbor guiding us. The tugs were on their way to help, but there wasn’t time.  The wind was blowing stronger and the huge ship was unpredictable.  According to the crews on deck, the back of the ship was 30 feet away from the cement jetty and just six feet away from colliding with the dock.

There was no option but to get us out of the port and quickly. The captain gave the order to fire up the engines.  We had to move out of there before the ship collided with the other ship at port, the dock or the cement jetty.

In front of us was the opening in the jetty that required a highly skilled navigator using tugboats and calm seas, it seemed an impossible task for even the most expert navigator in the conditions we had.

When the engine started, the remaining five ropes broke away from the dock and we were completely on our own to navigate through this small and dangerous space back out to sea.

They dropped anchor at the front of the ship, activated the bow thruster and this caused the back of the ship to swing around so we were parallel with the opening of the jetty.  They hoisted the anchor then and when we were in position, sailed through the jetty to the open sea.

I can honestly say that this even completely alleviated my morning boredom!  I was again awed by the expertise of the captain and his crew and their navigation skills in this perilous situation.

The next few hours were spent assessing the damage, ensuring the ship was still in good working order and reviewing our next options.   We thankfully managed to escape with little damage, but the worst part of this was that we had to return to the port in Tangiers because there was still cargo to load and we had eight extra dockworkers that were on board when the bollard broke. So we got our stowaways after all!

Returning to port was another situation entirely, as the weather was still severe and we had to wait out the storm before we could navigate through the jetty and be dockside again.

So, as I surveyed the open sea once more.  It was a long night of pitching and rowing.  My least favorite time on the ship was no longer being at port being quarantined, but rather drifting out on a rough sea until we could return to port and to be quarantined.  The storm was predicted to last 24 hours before we could return so they could repair the damages and finish loading our cargo.  There were moments  when I thought I might never get off that ship.

I did end up making the cookies, however I had to make due with the ship’s galley and recreate the recipe from memory.  They certainly weren’t the best cookies I had ever made, but were definitely the most exciting, and the crew was happy to have anything special from the kitchen after a day like the one we had all endured.