"4ft of very fast moving mast pierced the deckhead"

Curses. Gartmore's dismasting upset Ollie Dewar's plans for luncheon

Skipper Josh Hall wrestles with the helm

At first light the following morning we set about constructing a 'jury-rig' with the boom - our one tangible souvenir of the dismasting. For sails we used our storm sail as a jib and the staysail/trinquette as a main (foot as luff, luff as leach). This took us the entire day and by dusk the boat was beginning to look like a yacht again - albeit a disabled one.

The new mast was, I have to say, a fantastic achievement and I am happy that all those wet school afternoons spent with the combined cadet force messing about in a muddy field with ropes, pullies, telegraph poles etc. was not an utter waste of time. The rig provided us immediately with 10 knots of boatspeed off the wind - probably four more than any of us felt comfortable with.

Having avoided sinking the boat our next priority was to get to some land as soon as possible; either Portugal or Spain. The wind proved predictably capricious. Either too strong for the tender new rig and accompanied by huge swells rolling down from storms in The Bay of Biscay, or too little breeze to power a 60ft racing yacht with the sail area of a 25ft cruiser. In both cases it came from the wrong direction and although I find it disloyal to criticise our jury-rig we were only able to sail at angles to the wind that have probably not been seen in the area since sixteenth century Portuguese sailors set off around the world in square rigged ships.

Progress was desperately slow in light airs and really uncomfortable and nerve wracking in the gales. In the sixteenth century the morale of sailors was always lifted by the increasing number of birds confirming the proximity of land, whereas we had to contend with watching the amount of floating garbage increase as we struggled towards the coast. Eventually, at dawn on the sixth day after the dismasting we arrived here in Vigo, the southernmost port on Spain's north coast.

It is extraordinary how pathetically short sailors memories are: soon after arriving in Vigo we sat in a stunning café bar in one of the town's plazas discussing and reflecting on the trip. As the third whisky scorched down, met up with the first two, introduced itself and started to mingle, the storms, squalls, smells and discomfort were forgotten and we all agreed that Ratty in The Wind in The Willows may have had a point saying 'There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats'. However, I know for certain that Ratty never got his arse kicked all over The North Atlantic.