A night sail to remember….

Our plan was to get to La Rochelle to prepare for our Spain crossing. We decided on a night passage from Quiberon to La Rochelle, about 130 nautical miles, to help the kids get used to sailing at night and for Mike and I to practice shifts.

The trip started well. We left at 2 PM in light winds, had dinner underway, and the wind picked up as expected by 6 PM, giving us good speed. The sea became a bit rolly with following seas. After dinner and watching the sunset, the kids settled down below. Around 11 PM, the boat unexpectedly gybed our autopilot had failed. We thought it might be the sea conditions, so we kept a close eye on it and steered manually at times.

As it was dark, and the autopilot worsened, we decided to continue to a planned safe anchorage to wait for morning and to sort out the problem in daylight, as we had a huge wind farm to starboard of us. Nearing the anchorage, the steering became restricted, making it hard to stay on course. We decided against entering a potentially busy anchorage in the dark with limited control. Instead, we continued until daylight, hoping to reach a marina. With the autopilot and steering working only sporadically, Mike and I stayed up, keeping watch. At one point, the boat was doing donuts in the Bay of Biscay in darkness.

By 3 AM, the steering was effectively out. Mike set up the emergency tiller, and for four hours, he literally wrestled with Poseidon to keep us on course while I gave compass directions. As dawn broke, we reached the channel. The kids were up and in good spirits. We flew the Foxtrot flag to signal our restricted movement, hoping for guidance into port. We had contacted the marina, who could only tow us from the entrance, which was a narrow passage. So, we decided to anchor outside. We managed to anchor safely, much to our relief. I actually shed a tear of joy when our anchor hit the ground.

After some rest, we hoped we found the issue: an airlock in the system, and hydraulic fluid in the bilge from setting up the emergency tiller. We refilled and bled the system, and it started working again.

Thankfully, La Rochelle is close, and we're heading there to have an engineer look at the system. Fingers crossed we can get the steering back up and running ok apparently it’s kinda important on sailboat