Captain calamity

I was in Turkey and heard about Arnold, an older skipper who had a 45ft fibreglass long-keel cutter that he wanted to sail to Australia (my homeland) via Gibraltar and the Panama Canal. From the start, some things didn’t feel right, but I didn’t have much experience to fall back on, so I continued my duties and waited for our other crew, Dick from the UK and Helene from Sweden, to arrive.

Arnold was very late organising all the necessary paperwork and as a result the departure felt rather rushed, but my first truly apprehensive moment came as we left the port where the boat had been residing for quite a while. I allowed the wind to push