THE VOYAGE BEGINS

During the run-up to setting off on our global circumnavigation, one thought dominated – were my stability calculations correct? Why? Because we were carrying an extra 17,000 litres of diesel on deck in 14 reinforced plastic tanks on the aft deck and foredeck. Thankfully, Astra is a very heavily built icebreaker, designed to break through 1m-thick ice. She is so stiff that, like a metronome, she is weighted right at the bottom. She rolls one way, then the other and then stops upright. As a search and rescue vessel, she was designed to be self-righting and I had updated our ship stability programme to ensure we could carry the extra weight on deck. I even had the stability software company double check the calculations for me and confirm that we were safe for sea. The extra weight meant the water level came up to our loadline (Plimsoll) mark and our wee 24m motor boat was now displacing 185 tonnes but given that the company I run is a specialist maritime publisher, we literally wrote the book on stability.

However, I had never stopped to think about manoeuvring around a marina with all this additional weight. As we eased out of our departure berth in Lanzarote fully laden for the very first time, it was immediately apparent that she handled completely differently.

The problem was I now had to make a 90° turn to starboard in order to exit the marina. I set the helm a firm 20° to starboard and, wait for it, nothing happened! I