HITTING THE BAR

We hit the sandspit on our way out of the harbor at something over 5 knots and went hard aground. A moment before, the bottom had risen suddenly from 10ft to now visible sand in the wave troughs just ahead of us. The sandspit lay off the northeast corner of a small island at the entrance to the Minho River in Portugal. Modest Atlantic swells were working around the island and running into each other from opposing directions, creating 3ft breaking seas that were hitting our Malo 46, Nada at the bow and stern. It was too rough to launch the dinghy and set a kedge anchor.

I knew we had deeper water to port, so I put the helm hard over and throttled up to bring our head around, watching the engine gauges intently as sand began to plug the cooling system and the temperature crept inexorably upward. We were turning as each wave broke against , momentarily lifting us. We were clearly moving at least a little, plus we still had an hour or so of incoming tide with a favorable current coming across the sandspit, so I was reasonably confident that as long as the engine did not violently overheat we could eventually power off. As with all Malos, a is exceptionally strongly built, so I was not worried about the hull; however, I was not at all sure about the rudder— I could feel it