Getting Sailing Yacht Rose Rambler off the beach and back in the water after the beaching incident…

If you haven’t yet read about how this happened, take a look at the previous post to get up to speed.

After a few minutes of sitting at a table at the restaurant of the Hotel Marina right in front of the beach where Rose Rambler had come to rest on her side and just taking in a few deep breathes, and let my mind catch up from what just happened. 

One thing that is impossible to do is to sit still and wait for things to happen, so I got up to go check on the boat. 

Within minutes, members of the Mezzo Magic team and just about every person I knew in Port Soller began descending to the beach to lend a helping hand. 

The response was indescribably phenomenal and incredibly humbling, especially when you are in a state of complete defeat and helplessness. Interestingly enough, the shock hadn’t even hit yet, I was still in go go go mode, probably still running on adrenaline. 

A massive crowd began to cultivate along the walkway above the beach, as you just can imagine, phones out to the max, filming and taking pictures, understandably since it’s probably not something the average land-dwelling tourist sees every day that’s for sure, so I’m glad I provided that little bit of extra entertainment to their holiday… haha 😂

While this was going on everyone came together to figure out a plan of operation to get her off the beach as safely and smoothly as possible. 

Thankfully there is a substantial amount of key experience amongst the legends that make up the Mezzo Magic team and others, and once the plan was hatched, we went to work right away. We very much had to because, after a quick update on the weather, it looked like we were going to get some swell coming into the bay in a couple of hours, so time was critical and very much of the essence, there was literally no time to waste. 

We managed to acquire a long 100m tow rope normally used to tow boats and secured that to one of the cleats (a strong securing point on the boat when tying up to a dock) on the back of the boat. The other end of it was attached to a motor yacht waiting out in the bay to help pull her off. 

We then detached the main halyard that pulls up the mainsail from the sail and attached that to a dinghy on the beach and had people sit in it to provide extra weight. The reason for this was to tilt the top of the mast which would lift the keel and the rudder off the ground to cause less damage to those parts and she would slide more smoothly on the side of her belly, as she slid off the beach and back into the water where she would naturally right herself and float upright. 

With other dinghies in the water ready at the ready to assist, we were now ready to go, it was go time, the moment of truth!

I radioed the captain of the motor yacht and advised them to start slowly getting some tension on the tow line. When you have 11 tons of yacht lying on the beach its not simply a case of pulling it off in one go since this will probably rip things apart, it needs to be done very slowly, inch by inch allowing the tension to do all the work.

 As I stood in the cockpit since I needed to steer Rose Rambler when she floated and righted herself, I could hear a sort of knocking sounds as the line tightened up under the tension and immense strain, it was a stressful “grinding teeth” few moments as I was bracing myself for a piece of the back of the boat to rip right off, but thankfully that didn’t happen, slowly the back of the boat began to swing around so that the back was facing directly out to sea, moments felt like minutes but you could feel she was beginning to slide, and then suddenly whoosh! 

She just slid straight off in one go, one swoop, straight off the beach and into the water quickly becoming upright as the entire crowd cheered! Success! We’d got her back in the water. 

The only thing we got wrong which you’ll see in the video of the operation which I’ll post once I’ve edited it, is that we didn’t quite give the main halyard enough slack or length, so as Rose Rambler slid back in the water and became fully upright, the dinghy became airborne and flew towards the boat which was quite comical when you see it, so I had to quickly scurry up to the mast to quickly let more line out and let it down into the water. Once that was complete, we detached the main tow line and with the help of a few dinghies acting as tugboats, we took Rose Rambler into the marina and tied her up safely at the fishing dock. 

After a quick dive down by Rodrigo from Soller SUP for a quick inspection to check underneath just in case we needed to get her an emergency lift out, he confirmed that thankfully there didn’t seem to be anything obvious to worry about, she’s certainly a tough old girl that’s for sure.

A massive thanks to everyone in the Mezzo Magic Sailing Port Soller Charters family, Catamaran Mallorca, Soller SUP and everyone that got stuck right in and came together to perform an incredibly smooth and successful operation in one of my darkest hours of need. Aswell as Bonnie Lass Charters for the use of the equipment, you are all absolute champions, and I am so incredibly thankful to you all. (Please do me a favour and check each one of them out and give them a like or a follow).

What a day that was, a day I’ll never forget for as long as I live. But on the bright side, that is certainly something you don’t get to experience every day that’s for sure. At least I’m one of the few people who can say they’ve parked a 35-foot sailing yacht on the beach, but also not to forget the incredible amount of valuable knowledge that was learnt with pulling a boat off the beach. Hopefully, knowledge that I can eventually use to help someone else in their hour of need if that time ever comes.

But yeah, what a day… I remember it was about 7 pm that evening when I finally just sank into the couch and just catch up and decompress after running at 19000rpm all day, but it was at this point when it was finally all over, but that’s where the pressure of the day finally reached the brim, and just like that, everything released, I cracked… 

…and I broke into a thousand little pieces.

😎🙌⛵️

Photo: Sailing Yacht Rose Rambler lying on the beach in Port Soller, Mallorca after running aground during a storm.
Location: Repic Beach, Port Soller, Mallorca.

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