... the cleat on the piling, and of course he was singlehanding and so did not have nearly enough hands. Full marks to Dick who had his priorities perfect as he left the tiller and dove for the bow to fend off before Blue Mist could thoroughly crunch The Nutshell lying next to her. With Hans (see arm above) holding Blue Mist's bow away from The Nutshell, Dick was finally able to go aft and untangle himself. Hans then pushed the bow out, and ...

With spectators off both the bow and the stern, I was really eager to do a model departure. Hans was to give us a hearty push straight aft and let me steer The Nutshell straight back until we had cleared the final set of pilings. Then, still going backwards, I planned to do a right-angle turn, haul in the sails, and sail away as if there was nothing to it. Hans did indeed give us a good push straight aft as he stepped aboard, and things went according to plan - for about two seconds. I came as close to screaming as I did all cruise long when Hans reached out and killed our aft momentum by grabbing the second post, presumably to make sure we did not touch it. By the time, Hans tried to re-start us, I was backing the main, but it was too late and we hit the final piling with our starboard side about three feet forward of the transom. By continuing to back the main, I at least got us to pivot around that final post fairly smartly, and we were soon ...  

It was a most enjoyable close reach out of Tangier's harbour. Apologies for my sloppy picture taking here: I inadvertently turned the camera's dial past "P" (program, fully automatic) to "A" (aperture priority, which fixes the aperture in mid-range, and on a sunny day leaves the camera's shortest exposure time not short enough, causing all the pictures to be over-exposed to a greater or lesser degree). In the next few pics, we were lucky they were not washed out even more. - click here to see full-size pic

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