The engine coughed, then spluttered, then died, and I had a brief moment to reflect on chaos theory, which notes that ‘the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state’.

In fact, no I didn’t. I was too busy trying to get the sails back up, figure out which buoy we were going to attempt to stem, and how we were going to avoid the rapidly narrowing (and exhilaratingly rocky) banks of the River Dart as they closed in on us on either side.

Fortunately I had a phenomenal crew – much more hairy bummed than me – who basically took charge, and swiftly had their erstwhile skipper standing on the bow holding a mooring line and pointing optimistically at things, whilst they got on with the business in hand.

Unruffled, contented and in full control… and then the engine packed in. Photo: Monty Halls

Sailing, as it turns out, involves a great many moving parts. I’m not just talking about the pistons, pumps, and plotters, I’m also referring to the tides, the weather, and the gloriously eclectic bunch of human beings involved.

But there’s another truly compelling element at play here, in those tiny nondescript events, ones that initiate slightly larger events further down the line. These occasionally lead to clammy-palmed moments as you face impending doom, epitomised by my ashen-faced progress in the mouth of the Dart.

Matthew Syed noted in his excellent book Black Box Thinking that: ‘Complexity + Time = Failure.’ This is an expression that I’d suggest directly applies to sailing. Give anything that’s quite complicated a bit of time to go wrong and inevitably, at some undetermined point, it will.

So, why had I ended up standing on the bow of Sobek as we inched towards a buoy in the river, at the mercy of a fickle breeze that danced and sighed within the constraints of the banks? Well, it’s quite simple really, it’s because a leaf fell out of a tree in Plymouth several weeks earlier.

The sun sets over the River Dart, and another misadventure for Monty and family. Photo: Monty Halls

This is the butterfly effect in all its fiendish glory. Sobek had been on the hard standing in Plymouth since December, plump-bottomed and foursquare on wooden struts. Said leaf had, one blustery winter day, trembled and twisted itself off a nearby branch, and fluttered its way into the cockpit. Over time, it had broken down into bits of leafy detritus, and settled over the cockpit drains.

The new owner of Sobek (i.e. me) was still giddy with it all, and was extremely busy wedging the term ‘my yacht’ into pretty much any conversation he was having at the time. As such he had not considered that slightly bunged up cockpit drains would be a problem. We were on dry land after all.

And so he stepped over the job day after day, classing it as one of those ‘I’ll get round to it’ slightly onerous tasks beneath a man who had just purchased new overalls and a shiny new toolbox. And so the butterfly’s wings twitched.

Article continues below…

‘I celebrate easy, simple (and often bad) sailing’ – Monty Halls

There are many folk who have stepped onto Sobek and made an immediate (although entirely understandable) mistake. They have assumed…

Monty Halls on the trials and tribulations of sailing

Now, before you horny-palmed ocean conquerors give a rum-laden snort of derision, I’ve just emerged triumphant from my Day Skipper…

Yacht fuel fail

There was a great deal of rain over this period, and – with the bunged up drains and all – the cockpit filled with a respectable amount of water. I love this boat, genuinely and sincerely, but there’s the odd design fault. One of these is that the fuel filler cap sits right in the well of that self same cockpit, and now found itself under four inches of fresh water for days on end.

By now the butterfly was having a high old time, flapping its wings like there was no tomorrow. Fresh water seeped into the tank, with the amount being just enough that I could – a couple of months later – run the engine for a few hours, with the pre-filter working its little socks off, before it gave up in disgust at the mouth of the River Dart and stubbornly refused to start.

A vigilant Luna on butterfly spotting duties. Photo: Monty Halls

And so the cycle was gloriously complete, and the butterfly settled back down feeling rather pleased with itself.

What other twitches and trembles of its wings are happening right now I don’t know, but there’ll definitely be something. What I do know, as I continue to clamber up my vertiginous learning curve, is that’s something else to add to the list – watch out for butterflies. The devious little gits.

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