Tom Cunliffe

Years ago when I was still naïve in the ways of yacht chartering, I was sailing north from Grenada towards Bequia in the Caribbean in a hired 45ft yacht of French extraction. The trade winds were in full cry and the current was pouring downhill towards Panama as it loves to do. We’d cleared the lee of the island and although the swells were giving us a dusting, we were revelling in the impossibly blue sea, the sparkling spray and the occasional flying fish bursting out from under the bows. The blowsy bareboat wasn’t making too bad a fist of things so we forgave the half-rolled genoa for its awful shape until we hit the broken seas off the Kick-’em Jenny sunken volcano. Leeway was becoming a major factor, so we brought her up close-hauled. It was then that things went to the bad.