In the morning at high tide we spent another two hours pushing, heaving, pulling Hermione a good two metres (7ft) in the back and perhaps just under a metre (3.5ft) at the bow closer to the sea.
With waters now almost perfectly calm and flat, there no longer were those big rollers and breakers that had previously assisted us with our work by at least for a few seconds here and there flooding the area around and below the hull. As a result, this high tide, despite being four inches higher than the previous one, seemed altogether lower and very lacklustre. It was shocking to see how a complicit sea hid almost every last one of those devious boulders under its seemingly peaceful surface.
Without our cheerful, energetic, always bantering and actively motivating skipper, who always works at least as hard as the next guy, on top of his skipper duties and all the one-man-jobs he covers, the disappointment of the failure to launch Hermione yet again could easily have led to a foul mood amongst us common rowers. However, we all enjoyed a big expedition ration breakfast together. There were lots of laughs and everyone was kidding around.
Some of us then had an extended nap, simply enjoyed the warm autumn sun, collected more driftwood for the log fire or fiddled about on the internet.
At around 2pm, with the low tide, we started digging. We excavated as much of the mud, sand, pebbles, and over vast stretches 80% compressed seaweed on the boat’s seaward side. We made sure that the deepest section, a canal, if you will, ran right alongside the hull. The hope was, that with the incoming tide, this section would fill with water quickly and start to soften and carry away the ground under Hermione’s hull, getting her floating again.
We worked hard for at least four hours. At times we used our bare hands, at other times Karts’ spade, driftwood sticks, and oars. After three hours we had reached a sufficient depths for substantial parts of the canal to start flooding, despite high tide still being hours away.
We had some more expedition rations for dinner, and from around 8:30pm we were putting logs of driftwood under the edge of the hull again on the land bound side, lifting the sticks in unison, then heaving the boat by rhythmically moving our levers up and down for 20 seconds. Then resting for a minute. Then heaving again. Every 5th or 6th time, Leven tightened the ropes on the stern anchor rope (3x) pulley system and ratchet on the strap that he had attached to the bow and to a large half-submerged boulder in the water, perhaps 10 metres (35ft) from the boat. This was partially to make more progress in its own right, i.e. to move Hermione closer to the sea, and in equal measure to ensure that any progress made was not going to be made ineffective again.
We didn’t quite manage to launch the boat back into the sea. But we had made very good progress. At least another 3.5m at the stern and another 1m at the bow closer to the deeper waters. We all have a good feeling that tomorrow morning we might finally be successful and become seabound again after five nights on land here at Cape Hope, following our emergency beaching last week.
