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12 of the boats decided to head for Sharm Lui anchorage - about 70 miles south - as Lo had said it was one of the few reef anchorages we could enter at night and we knew it would be sundown before we arrived. We plotted the course into our Garmin chart plotter and set off in quite light northerlies, resulting in us having to motor sail all the way as we are a heavy boat and needed stronger winds to get to the anchorage under sail alone before nightfall.
Mistral was in front and we were following with Full Flight just behind us. We had plotted the waypoint for the entrance
from the Red Sea Pilot into our chart plotter and were right on course when we suddenly stopped dead and heard the
sickening scrape of coral against the hull. I think we then panicked and reversed off too quickly and hit the rudder.
By this time the sun had just gone down and it was coming dusk so we maneuvered slowly and very carefully entered the bay
and anchored successfully. Two of the boats following us, who arrived in the dark, also touched the reef but fortunately
only sustained minor scratches.
The next morning Antony dived under the boat and found that, not only had we suffered some minor damage to the hull, we had also seriously damaged the rudder and there was a crack across it. We thought that this was the end of the rally for us as we couldn't go on with this damage and didn't think we would be able to effect a repair without the boat being lifted out of the water.
But we had reckoned without the resourcefulness and camaraderie of the Vasco da Gamma sailors, and with the ingenuity of Tony on Full Flight who after seeing photos of the rudder kindly taken by Graham on Eeyore, and plans of the rudder we had emailed from Nauticat to Jamie on Esper - had soon designed and welded 2 repair plates - thanks to to kind donations from all the boats in the anchorage. Everyone helped - from those who gave us pieces of metal towards the plates, those who donated tools and spare parts, the fantastic efforts of the divers - Graham and Nigel from Eeyore, Dan from Still Dreaming, Marco from Easy and Free and Robbie from Rhum Do, to Suzie and Debbie from Eeyore and Astrid from Storm Dodger who organised coffee mornings for the ladies to those who just gave us moral support every day and to Tony from Full Flight - who we have re-named " Mr Marvel" - without whose skills none of it would have been possible.
What was also fantastic was that all the other 11 boats agreed to remain in the anchorage with us until the repair was finished. and after 4 days of hard work, 2 plates had been successfully bolted onto the rudder and a temporary repair effected.
The following day we had a party on board Divanty for all the other boats to thank them for all their help. I think that although it was a very bad thing that happened to us, the week spent in the anchorage brought everyone together and helped us all to get to know each other better and hopefully our experience will mean that other boaters on the Rally will take extra care when negotiating these tricky reef anchorages.
So what went wrong? It was a mixture of lots of things, but one thing we have learned is that our GPS was set up in decimals and not decimal minutes ( dd.mm.mmm. ) and that small difference meant that our waypoint was in the wrong place!! which means the difference between getting through the reef and hitting it!
Now, from Egypt it's off to India and the hope that somewhere on route we will be able to have the boat lifted out and a permanent repair executed.
So till then - THANKS AGAIN EVERYONE!
Antony and Davina Hellewell from s/y Divanty.