The alarm went off at 5:30.
I was already awake.
There’s a particular kind of excitement that comes before departure day. You’ve checked the weather twelve times. The route is planned. Water tanks are full. Food’s onboard. The marina bill has been paid.
All that’s left is leaving.
The forecast looked decent. Light easterlies early, building later. Nothing dramatic. We wanted to get moving before the heat arrived and before the traffic in the bay picked up.
Liam appeared from below looking like a man who’d slept inside a tumble dryer.
“Coffee?”
“Already on.”
He nodded approvingly.
Five minutes later he was standing in the cockpit staring at the instrument panel.
“That’s odd.”
I hate those words on a boat.
“What?”
He pointed.
The battery monitor was showing a number that made absolutely no sense.
We’d been on shore power all week.
The batteries should have been full.
Instead they looked tired.
Not dead. Not catastrophic.
Just wrong.
We disconnected from shore power and watched the numbers.
They dropped immediately.
Neither of us said anything for a moment.
Then Liam sighed.
“That’s not ideal.”
A phrase he uses whenever something is very much not ideal.
We started checking connections.
Then fuses.
Then chargers.
Then connections again because that’s what boat owners do when they’ve run out of ideas.
The sun came up over Cádiz.
Other boats started leaving.
One French yacht slipped quietly from the pontoon and headed towards the harbour entrance.
I watched it disappear.
Liam watched it disappear too.
“That’s meant to be us.”
“Helpful.”
“Just saying.”
By seven o’clock we’d managed to convince ourselves it was either a faulty charger, a bad battery, a loose connection or something significantly more expensive.
Not exactly a breakthrough.
The chandlery didn’t open until nine.
Of course it didn’t.
Nothing useful ever opens when a boat decides to misbehave.
So we waited.
Made more coffee.
Walked another lap around the marina.
Read labels on products we weren’t going to buy.
A man cleaning his yacht nearby asked how things were going.
I made the mistake of telling him.
Ten minutes later we’d received three completely different diagnoses and one recommendation involving a multimeter that apparently cost more than our first car.
By nine-thirty we were carrying a small cardboard box back to the boat containing a replacement component that the man in the chandlery assured us was definitely the problem.
“Definitely?”
“Probably.”
I appreciated his honesty.
Back aboard, Liam fitted the new part while I held tools and offered occasional observations that added no value whatsoever.
Half an hour later we switched everything back on.
Nothing exploded.
Always encouraging.
The monitor flickered.
Paused.
Then slowly climbed.
We both stared at it.
Another minute passed.
Then another.
The numbers kept rising.
Liam grinned.
“There we go.”
“That’s it?”
“Looks like it.”
We celebrated by immediately arguing about whether we should still leave that afternoon.
The original plan was gone.
The easy weather window was gone.
The relaxed departure was definitely gone.
Now we had options.
Leave late.
Wait until tomorrow.
Stay another day.
Neither of us wanted another day.
Cádiz had been good to us but boats have a habit of becoming comfortable. Comfortable can quietly turn into permanent if you’re not careful.
By lunchtime we were finally casting off.
Not at dawn.
Not according to plan.
But moving.
The marina shrank behind us.
The cathedral slowly faded into the haze.
Ahead, the coast stretched east.
The batteries behaved.
The engine sounded happy.
For now.
Which, in boating terms, is about as much certainty as anyone gets.
