with a rough sea and headwinds into
which the boat was under-powered.
Thankfully the ports of call were
furnished with fantastic restaurants and
hotels and the crew stayed in Rio for
two weeks to recover before pressing
on!
From Bahia Salvador they ventured
to Fortaleza where at 60 feet in width,
'Cheyenne' was too big to enter the
marina. 'I didn't think you were that
big!' exclaimed the dock master
who had chosen to disbelieve his
ears regarding the specified boat
dimensions. Desperate for fuel,
'Cheyenne's' only option was to anchor
in the commercial ship basin, some 800
meters from the dock. From there, the
long and laborious process of refuelling
was begun, by pumping diesel from 50
litre fuel drums sitting in the bottom of
an 18 ft open fishing boat! Twenty-five
knots plus was gusting through the
harbour when the crew were suddenly Shot taken from Sugar Loaf Mountain, we'd placed the boom well forward to give us
forced to cut the anchor line. A cruise
more weight forward
ship that was manoeuvring between
‘Cheyenne’ and the dock had lost all
Ironically in Trinidad, a dockside space was available beside the travel lift, yet within
power and was drifting broadside onto
five minutes of being alongside, Cheyenne was hit by an out-of-control Taiwanese
Cheyenne. With the tanks only half
fishing boat that was desperately trying to get onto the travel lift after she had
filled, no anchor and nowhere to come
become holed beneath the waterline! Luckily, the impacted area was a sacrificial
alongside, there was no alternative but
section of the transom and so Cheyenne was structurally fine.
to head back out to sea. A course was
set and fingers tightly crossed in the
From one near disaster to another, the plan now was to buy the biggest anchor
hope of making the next 2,000 miles
available in Trinidad and make a run for the Panama Canal! Only a ten day lay-over
to Trinidad! Their motoring speed was
in Manzanillo, half way up the Mexican coast now stood in their way and soon
quickly reduced to 6 knots, running
the boat and crew were afforded a weather window past the Gulf of Tiwanapec.
one engine only and with 25 knots of
After 9,000 miles of adventure under engine, the boat and its four man crew finally
following wind they barely made it to
arrived in San Diego on the 17th December 2005!
Chaguarmas on fumes!
By August 2006 the project was rolling
again and Mark began the process
of negotiation with potential yards.
The purpose of the refit was never
publicized, nor has the project been
since.
When Steve Fossett's friendly rival,
adventurer Richard Branson, began
Virgin Galactic, the first space tourism
enterprise, Fossett decided to initiate
his own far-flung campaign: to seize the
record for the first person to reach the
bottom of the ocean at its lowest point,
in the Mariana Trench. Some 11,000
feet deeper than Everest is high, the
Mariana Trench is situated 250 nautical
miles south of Guam near Japan,
37,000 feet below sea level. With this in
mind, a custom one-man submersible
Tago and myself testing transferring fuel. " Steve used Tago on his gliding projects
was built. 'Cheyenne's' role in the
in Argentina, he had an amazing ability to overcome the massive array of paperwork
project? To be a transport platform and
that South America seems to generate,he eventually completed the 9,000 mile
docking station for the submarine!
passage with us, he became aninvaluable Crew member " not bad for someone had
never been to sea before in his life!!!"
»
OCTOBER 2009 : MULTIHULL REVIEW 33
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