L’Alliance left Barcelona on April the second 2017. After a quick stopover in Ibiza to see some friends, we set sails straight out of the Med, in a pleasant 4 days passage with fair and constant winds. Entering the Atlantic, though, we bumped into our first storm. Despite the weather forecasts showing winds up to 28kt, the wind rose up to 45 knots with gusts of more than 50. Even in those conditions, everything was going well, until we got a stupid accident which caused a quick concatenation of damages: the helm’s wheel bolt came undone > the boat gybed > the preventer snapped > the boom slammed to the other side and broke by the gooseneck > the mainsail got completely teared apart and ended up flying away…
Luckily enough, nobody got hurt, and we could keep the situation under control… after 8 hours of drifting while heaving to, repairing our gear and trying to recover some energies, we decided to start motoring to keep the bow to sea. Climbing mountains of water at the frustrating speed of 1.5kt we slowly made way to a safer area. We reached Cádiz the morning after, tired but happy that our boat and crew passed their first harsh test with flying colors. (Well, with some gear damage indeed).
To afford these repairs, we moved to the Portuguese border and we dry docked L’Alliance in the rio Guadiana for about a month, and now we are ready to set sail again, with a slightly shorter boom, a brand new mainsail and liferaft, and many small improvements for sailing safer and further…