The good news first.
The new engine is in the boat. The crane arrived Friday morning and gently placed all 1100 pounds of new Perkins engine in the boat. The new engine is the same model as the old one, a truly new engine, part of the factory inventory of Perkins engine at the time it went out of business. One would expect that this engine is a mirror image of the old one, but as any boat owner knows, it doesn’t pay to have expectations.
The boat is in the water. We splashed in mid-afternoon on Friday and the towboat folks delivered us back to the dock nearby. There are still parts and pieces to be attached to the engine and a few issues to resolve before anyone tries to turn it on. Still, we remain hopeful that everything will be done sometime Tuesday.
Now, the bad news.
The last task to be done before the boat was put back in the water was the attachment of the zinc at the propeller. Larry keeps a supply of them aboard, and he took one out of his stock for this purpose. He has never had any problem with the fit in the past, but this time the zinc did not fit. The discrepancy in the dimensions is so small that it certainly looks as if it should work, but it doesn’t.
The diesel mechanic thought he knew where one could be bought that would fit, so Larry dutifully went there and bought one. However, when the mechanic tried to use it, this one did not fit either.
In other words, this is a very normal boat project. The tiniest thing, the thing you would assume could not possibly be a problem, is a problem.
In order to get the boat in the water, the mechanic had the zinc machined to a slightly smaller dimension. He was able to fit the zinc, and we were able to put the boat back in the water.
It seems almost as if all is well, but there is this nagging concern – if neither of the zincs purchased, supposedly to the same dimensions that have worked on this boat for 25 years, will work, what happens in the future? The big question is: What changed?
Tomorrow the diesel mechanic will be back, and he and Larry will work together. I hope that when the day is over, we know the answers to all our questions. I could use some more good news!
This post is part 8 of 8. If you have missed previous posts, you might want to scroll down and read them first.
Our reason for making this passage was our need for a good diesel mechanic to help us get our engine going again. We were very fortunate that the marina where the towboat captain left us had such a person. He worked with Larry for several days, and they finally concluded that the best course of action was to replace the engine.
Replacement was not a simple choice. New engine. Rebuilt engine. Rebuild our engine. Same model. Different model. What to do?
Perkins made the engine that could not be repaired, and Perkins went out of business several years ago. We could not hope, therefore, to contact Perkins and obtain a new engine. A new model built by some other company would have a different footprint, and might require a lot of other new parts. It would almost certainly weigh less than our engine, which was built 25 years ago. Development of diesel engines has included a conscious effort to reduce the weight, but we were concerned that the difference might change the way our boat moved.
To rebuild our engine or to buy a rebuilt Perkins of the same model was one option. We quickly concluded that we did not want to spend the time that might be required to rebuild ours. We mulled the issues associated with buying one already rebuilt.
Then Larry discovered some good news. He found a company that had bought all the engines Perkins had in inventory at the time they went out of business. This company had in stock a brand new engine exactly like the one we have. Its footprint would be identical to ours. It would be new instead of rebuilt. And the price was right.
It seemed simple enough to order this engine, and it was. That was the simple part. Then the fun began.
The vendor for the engine did not want to accept a credit card for the purchase of the engine, even though our credit card had plenty of credit to cover the cost. The vendor insisted on either a wire transfer or a cashier’s check in payment. Larry put the cash to cover the purchase in his bank account.
From that point forward it was a square dance with a lot of do-si-do. Our bank refused to do a wire transfer unless Larry appeared in person at a branch, but they have no branches in Florida. A bank just a block from the marina was perfectly willing to make a wire transfer if Larry opened an account with them, and they would accept a debit card to withdraw that money from his faraway bank to fund the new local account, but Larry had no debit card. I had a debit card, but I didn’t have the money. When we got past those hurdles, we found that the local bank would take any amount of money withdrawn on my debit card, but the faraway bank would not permit all the money to be withdrawn on a single day. It was a wild ride, a lot like crossing the Gulf Stream, but in the end, the wire transfer reached the vendor and the vendor promised to ship the engine.
We arrived in Florida the morning of Friday, April 30. Today is Tuesday, May 18. We are well into our third week since arriving with the purpose of solving our diesel engine problem. Last Friday, the new engine was delivered to the marine service company that will remove our old engine and install the new one. We know it is here, because we stopped by to see it for ourselves yesterday. Yesterday our boat was hauled out of the water and set up on jacks in the boatyard where there is room for a crane to come alongside to do the heavy lifting. Today the diesel mechanic is due to start working with us. By this time next week, we should have a new engine and be ready for some new adventures. Whew!
So – our passage home began with the question: what could possibly go wrong? In fact, just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Still, by the grace of God, we are home safe in the USA and our old engine will soon be replaced with a brand new engine that ought to be good for another 25 years. So—even though everything went wrong, everything is now going right.
Anybody want to go sailing with us?
This post is part 7 of 8. If you missed earlier ones, you might want to scroll down and read them.
Crossing the Gulf Stream is not a trivial undertaking. Most people with sailboats still make this crossing under power. The Gulf Stream is a rough ride, and it is quite powerful. It seems to be the rule that whatever the weather is on either side of the stream, it is more powerful in the stream. Winds are stronger. Waves are higher. Turbulence is greater. It is, after all, a river within an ocean.
Without an engine, we knew that we had to be very careful. The Gulf Stream might carry us where we did not want to go unless we planned wisely. Our destination was the Lake Worth Inlet, because we felt that we knew enough about that area to find the help we needed for our engine. We knew we could not transit that inlet under sail, but as BoatUS members, we knew we could call TowBoat US for help.
As morning dawned on Thursday, April 29, we sipped our coffee with little conversation. We had a lot to talk about, but first we needed to get our heads clear. The first cup of coffee each morning had acquired a value out of all proportion to its normal image. Somehow, as soon as we had coffee in hand, it was as if the slate had been wiped clean, and the new day before us was a pristine opportunity for success. We sipped our coffee and allowed our minds to roam.
With very little wind at the beginning of the day, Larry decided that maybe he could finally look for the obstruction that had blocked the generator’s cooling water. We were far from Great Isaac and the only ships we had seen were on the other side of the channel. I took the helm and Larry went below. Happily, he quickly found the clog. Then he replaced the water pump. Finally, he coaxed an hour of charge out of the generator.
It was like a miracle. The batteries were charged to a level that would allow us to run our e-charting for the last two or three hours as we approached Florida. We could turn on the VHF radio whenever we wished. We felt that we had hit the jackpot.
Larry asked, “What do you think? Should we go now or wait a while?” The wind was only 7-8 knots. It was predicted to be 10 knots during the day, but we could not guess when it would increase. Yet I really did not want to sit in that channel waiting and waiting. It seemed as if we ought to use the available wind to move closer to the Gulf Stream. Maybe it would increase soon, or maybe we would need to wait somewhere before we actually hit the Stream. We concluded that waiting was not our wish, and off we went.
Happily, the wind began to rise very soon. It is hard to say exactly when we arrived at the Gulf Stream, but by the time we became aware that the roughness and the current indicated we were there, the wind was running about 15-20 knots.
I don’t think I will ever think that a Gulf Stream crossing is delightful. That water is rough. It gave us a thorough shaking, even though it was a different kind of roughness than storm waves. I guess it is what I think riding rapids might be.
There was another oddity. By sunset the wind was 20-25 knots from the southeast. We reduced sail, because that much wind combined with the rough water was taking a toll on us. It was hard work to maintain our course. Still, that much wind was definitely going to take us toward our destination. However, we frequently observed that the wind suddenly dropped to nothing. Zero. Or 5 knots. It was almost scary. Then, just as suddenly, it would zoom up to 15 or 20 knots again. We hung on and kept moving west.
My first sign that we were drawing near to Florida came at sunset. We had watched sunsets daily in the Bahamas as an evening ritual. We ate dinner in the cockpit and watched the sun go down. We had even seen the green flash a time or two. Often someone nearby would sound the conch horn at sunset. After the sun fell below the horizon it would grow dark in the west and the stars would come out.
Not this time. The sun went down, but the glow remained. It took me a while to realize that the glow was not the remnants of the sunset. The glow was Florida. How wonderful! We were actually getting there.
The last couple of hours were a bit of a shock. Larry had planned our course very well, but we both thought that the Gulf Stream wall was 11 or 12 miles from the coast. We thought we had a buffer zone between the Stream and the coastline where we could make a northward adjustment to get to Lake Worth. We learned that evening that the Gulf Stream is less than 3 miles from the Lake Worth Inlet. We had thought we were across and were ready to make our way to the inlet only the Stream was still carrying us north. When we called TowBoat US we were already past Lake Worth Inlet. We were steering southwest, but under reduced sail, we had not enough power to fight the current. Our track was northwest. It was the Great Isaac syndrome all over again.
Nevertheless, the towboat soon found us and pulled alongside. We tried to turn into the wind to drop our sail, but we could not get there. Eventually, we just pulled the sail out of the track and wrapped it up on the boom. The towboat captain said we drifted three miles north while we were getting our sails down.
I am always in awe of those guys. They are so calm and professional in all that they do. After the towing harness was attached to our bow, the towboat moved ahead and paid out some line in an attempt to give us a smoother ride. Compared to our crossing, I guess it was smoother, but we were still in the Stream and going against the current. It was pretty rough. We didn’t care. It was all in the hands of the towboat captain and we could relax. Larry steered to keep our boat following the towboat, but that was simple compared the adventure behind us.
The captain towed us to a dock at the Riviera Beach Marine Center. We tied up to that dock at 0545 on April 30, 2010. Our journey was over, just 2 hours and 15 minutes short of 6 full days after we started. We were home again, safe and sound.
We gave thanks to God for our safe passage, and then we went to bed. We thought we would sleep late, but I guess the habit of 2-hour shifts had become ingrained. We woke up about 8:30 starving for coffee. Our journey home had ended safely. We sipped our first cup and coffee and remembered.
This post is part 6 of 8. If you have missed previous posts, you might want to scroll down and read them first.
On this trip, with regard to our winds, it seemed always to be feast or famine. Wednesday, April 28, was famine. The winds were almost nothing. After the two back-to-back cold fronts with their tempestuous wind and wave, it was nice to have some peace, but only for a little while. We were glad the fronts were gone, but we wanted to get to Florida. We could not go there with winds less than 5 knots.
In fact, we could hardly go anywhere. We had decided to simply putter around in the channel, trying to avoid big ships and trying not to go too far east, so we would be ready to cross if the wind ever became strong enough. We were okay with holding our own. We had no idea how difficult that would become.
One of the big lessons of cruising the Bahamas is the tidal currents. We learned to write down the Nassau tides every day, and we learned to pay attention to the relationship of the local tides to the Nassau tides. We learned to care if the difference between high and low tide was small or large. All this stuff matters. In the Chesapeake, the only reason to care much about the tides was if you had a deep draft boat and you wanted to eat lunch at Rock Hall. Otherwise, we hardly cared if they were up or down. In the Bahamas, you care a lot.
For example, when we went to snorkel at the Thunderball Grotto, we planned to arrive at slack tide. However, we were a little slow getting ready that morning, and flood had already begun by the time we arrived. The flood current was strong enough that I never did get inside the grotto. We thought we might go back later, but things happened, or didn’t happen.
On another occasion, during a high high ebbing to a low low, we tried to go against the ebb in the cut between Fowl Cay and Big Majors. The current completely turned our dinghy around and sent us back where we came from.
I learned that the power of the current results from the vast amounts of water that must move between the banks and the deep water through small cuts. However, I failed to understand that even when there is not a cut, the currents are still powerful. They are spread out more, but still strong.
On this day of light airs, as we tacked back and forth across the channel, we were moving in a location approximately between Great Isaac at the edge of the banks and Freeport at the end of the Grand Bahama island. We had grown inattentive, because almost nothing was happening, until we found ourselves in a position about 5 miles from Great Isaac and prepared to tack. That is when we discovered that we might be steering north, but we were going south, and south led onto the banks.
This was a big problem. Ordinarily a sailboat in this fix would hoist the iron jib, but our iron jib was unresponsive. What to do?
We were still sailing with reefed main and the staysail, because we really didn’t want to go anywhere in a hurry, but as we watched ourselves move inexorably toward Great Isaac, we surely wanted to go somewhere else at any speed. It was uncanny. Then we remembered the tides. We were within five miles of the banks, and it was flood current. The wind was so light that it was not filling the sails. We deployed the big genoa, but it simply flapped. We steered away from the banks, but the boat continued to drift. We had no power. The water was still too deep for us to drop an anchor, but if we reached a place where the anchor would bite, how would we ever get away?
If we ever had needed wisdom it was then. We prayed together for the wisdom to see some solution. Then we returned to our analysis. We peered intently at the charts as we continued to chart our position using the handheld GPS. We were headed for Great Isaac, and no two ways about it. The sails were dead. In desperation, we tried to tack anyway, but the headsails would not begin to cross.
Then a tiny gust of wind hit the genoa, and it flapped against the forestay. Larry said, “I wonder if I can walk that thing across. And if I do, I wonder if it will make any difference.” He went forward and led the genoa past the inner stay. Another little gust caught it and it filled momentarily. We let go the port sheet for the staysail and it filled on the starboard side. Larry released the traveler for the main and moved it to starboard. The wind speed indicator reported 7 knots. Suddenly we could hear the water against the hull. On this tack somehow we were moving.
I screamed, “Look at the GPS? Where are we?” Larry looked and behold, we were moving north. We charted every 5 minutes, and we were moving ever so slowly north. At last, we were on a tack with enough energy to take us away from Great Isaac. Whew!
The rest of the day and through the night we had one objective: stay clear of Great Isaac. The moon was still big, although waning. We saw a few big ships, but none in our path. The night passed quietly, and the morning dawned. The wind was from the east at barely more than 5 knots. That was certainly not enough wind to take us across the Gulf Stream, but we did not want to waste an opportunity to go forward. We tip-toed northwest and then gibed southwest. We simply had to keep moving.
This post is part 5 of 8. If you have missed some, you may want to scroll down and read them first.
The morning dawned gloomy. We were in a position approximately southeast of Port Lucaya. All around were big, dark cumulonimbus clouds. I was making breakfast when Larry called me up into the cockpit. To the northwest we saw a huge wall of clouds, and the winds were beginning to pick up. We could see lightning and hear thunder. It looked ominous. We were about to learn what Chris Parker meant by his term “nasty.”
We had reduced sail at sunset the previous evening. We were running with one reef in the main and only the staysail forward. We could not see any real reason to change this configuration. We had been through a lot of fronts during our three-plus months in the Bahamas. We took them all at anchor or on a mooring. This would be the first one we had met at sea. We turned into the wind, hove to and hung on.
The last time we had hove to, we were enrolled in the Annapolis Sailing School. We took three days of Basic Keelboat and a week of Bareboat Cruising at the Marathon location in 1996. I don’t suppose that location is even open any longer. In fact, maybe the Annapolis Sailing School isn’t open any longer. Anyway, during the Basic Keelboat class, we learned to heave to. Our instructor told us that it is a good way to ride out big winds or get some rest in a storm. In the Northwest Providence Channel, we learned that he knew what he was talking about.
The winds hit us hard, as they always do at the beginning of a frontal passage. I usually feel that if I can manage the first assault, the rest of the ride is downhill. In this case, that ride was many hours, but having hove to at the beginning, we were ready for it. In fact, we were able to catch up on sleep by turns.
Our boat does not actually heave to very well. Maybe in the future we will devise some scheme to make it work better. Even though it heaves to at the beginning, the nature of the mechanisms that control the mainsail – the traveler and its downhaul – are too elastic to hold the hove to state forever. Eventually the wind catches the staysail and instead of hove to, we are close-hauled. However, with the main reefed and the staysail close-hauled, we make very little headway.
One of the beautiful experiences during this passage was my growing confidence in our boat. We knew when we purchased it that it had been designed for bluewater cruising. We have done some bluewater cruising. However, this was our first time to be in a storm with no engine, entirely dependent on sail, rigging and hull to keep us safe. Well, not entirely dependent on them, because throughout this whole experience we knew that God was present with us. We prayed together every day. When Larry had to do something dramatic on deck at night or in heavy seas, I prayed. As we cruised around in circles in the Northwest Providence Channel battered by storm winds, I prayed.
Some people think that miracles are the sort of things where a blind man suddenly sees or five thousand people are fed with only a bit of bread and fish. I think miracles happen when two people and a boat stretch themselves as far as they can go and God fills in the gaps. That is what happened to us.
That entire day is a blur of wind and wave. Yet never did we feel desperate. In fact, I think we felt no more at risk than we ever felt on a mooring in Warderick Wells. We stood our watches, we took naps, we ate three normal meals.
Sometimes it rained, rather fiercely at times. As we were eating lunch, we noticed a bedraggled bird hopping around on the aft deck looking for shelter. The poor thing appeared to be waterlogged. His feathers were in total disarray. He looked longingly through the closed windows into the cockpit, but we did not invite him in. We learned our lesson about hospitality to birds at Warderick Wells. He hopped up the line for the boom’s downhaul, apparently hoping to find some way past us, but no luck. The last time we saw him, he was huddling beneath the sparse shelter of a dorade.
When night fell, the wind continued. We saw few other boats, as you might expect. We saw a huge cruise ship headed into the wind, just as we were, and we recalled our pastor’s experience in a storm on a cruise to Bermuda. We chuckled, commenting that he could be glad he wasn’t on our neighbor ship (or certainly not ours!) at this particular time. Cruise ships may be immune to some of the motion, but not all. They are afloat just as we are.
It was a furious night. Yet despite the fury, it was beautiful. God makes the most magnificent waves! As the sun came up, we were able to see more clearly. The ocean is staggeringly beautiful when it roars.
As the sun climbed higher, the wind began to die. By noon, it was almost calm. We gave thanks and began to pick up the mess around the boat. We caught up on our sleep. We had a very relaxed day, and we even allowed ourselves a glass of wine with dinner. We knew not to relax too much. We didn’t even change our sails. Another front was due within 24 hours behind the first.
Just after sunset it arrived, striking us furiously to get our attention. Even though the winds were not any worse than the previous front, it seemed that the water was more turbulent. I had slept just fine during my sleep hours before, but this time I simply could not rest. It was a bumpy ride. I went up to the cockpit and stayed there until almost dawn. Larry went down to sleep at his appointed time, and I remained on watch.
By mid-morning of Wednesday, April 28, the second front was gone. The stormy weather was done. The forecasts all said that the next five days would be clear. Wednesday would be light and variable winds, Thursday would be east 5 knots building to 10, and Friday would be east at 10 knots. It was time to get ourselves poised to make the crossing whenever the winds allowed.
This year was a furious year for cold fronts. Many people spoke disparagingly of the Bahamas weather this winter. Having never been there before, I don’t know how to make a comparison. I will only say that it was quite interesting. I actually did not feel any more threatened out in the open water than I felt at a mooring or at anchor. The real problem with all these fronts is that they confine us wherever we are at the time they hit. We can’t navigate the cuts or roam around in the dinghy ogling the sights. We don’t want to snorkel in 25-knot winds. So many fronts so close together changed the character of our experience. Nevertheless, we did not have to shovel 60 inches of cold front out of the way afterward, and we still didn’t have to wear shoes. I don’t need any more cold fronts for a while, but I don’t think I would let them stop me from enjoying the Bahamas.
At dawn we were approaching New Providence. We could see a small light halo above the island, but it was not at all what I had expected of the largest town in the Bahamas. We gave both New Providence and Andros a respectful berth as we cruised north.
The seas were quite confused, and it was obvious why it had been so difficult to steer a straight course overnight. Waves came at us seemingly from all directions. It was time to choose between the Northwest Channel and the Northwest Providence Channel. The choice seemed obvious. If we had seriously confused seas already, and we had not even begun to move into the funnel of the Northwest Channel, what could we expect if we chose that option? We decided to avoid what looked like big trouble and go the other way. We never regretted that choice.
We came around the southern edge of the Berries on a tack that took us far to the east. We tacked several times that day as we moved north. We looked over at Hoffman/White/Devil area and remembered our first misadventure with the engine. As the day wore on the wind wore off. The last thing we had expected was to be becalmed, but when the wind speed indicator displays 5 or 7 or 3.4, it feels like a calm. After the serious but lovely winds overnight, we were disappointed.
We discussed anchoring in Great Harbour south of Great Stirrup Cay to wait out the weather that was expected the next day. Our information seemed confusing, and our confusion had led us to decide to take a chance on it, but as we drew near to Great Harbour, we evaluated the possibility of anchoring there. It has a wide, easy entrance, so entering and departing under sail seemed doable. The problem lay in the fact that as the predicted winds clocked around, the protection would not be consistent through all points. We talked about what we would do as the winds clocked around after the passing of the first front. Where would we go?
A bigger problem surfaced due to the lack of wind. We could not get there before dark. We could not go in after dark, and we felt that we did not want to be outside tacking back and forth all night. We decided to proceed toward Freeport.
Part of our problem in dealing with this situation was that the forecast we had recorded did not clearly explain what Chris Parker meant by “nasty” weather. We knew that we could not cross the Gulf Stream until the winds had passed through the northerly quarter and back to east or southeast. Chris had said that there would be squalls but the wind in the squalls would be light. Still, he had said it would be “nasty.” We just did not know what that meant. We would soon find out.
We continued cruising northeast toward Freeport all night. Our entire trip seemed to be an effort to sail on a course 330 or 240, and never at any time was it easy to maintain either course. We were always adjusting. We reefed down at sunset again, having learned our lesson. We do not like reducing sail at 2AM in winds gusting to 30 knots.
Part 3– Saturday, April 24, 2010
If you missed parts 1 and 2, you may want to scroll down and read them first.
At 0800 I wrote down our anchored location in the ship’s log. We went up to the aft deck and looked over the situation. We had plenty of room to turn the boat after the anchor came up. We could sail slowly between two boats behind us, then past another one. At that point we had a clear shot out to the banks and to our first waypoint at Sandy Cay.
We have always felt that God gave us each other and God gave us the dream to sail together. We give thanks every day for the beauty and the adventures God has given us in this life. As we were about to embark upon the most challenging passage in our sailing life, we knew that we needed to rely on God more than ever. No matter how skilled we might be, and no matter how well we planned, we were about to go forth on God’s huge ocean in a boat that the ocean could disassemble if it chose. We are convinced that God always wants us to use the gifts he has given us to their fullest extent, but we are likewise convinced that God wants to be with us through it all.
We bowed our heads in prayer. We read Psalm 62 as a prayer. We prayed for God’s presence and his guidance and protection for our journey. We were ready to leave, but it was not time to stop praying. On this trip we lived the truth of “pray without ceasing.” It was no time to be careless or cocky. It was time to go.
We raised the mainsail. Larry went to the bow as I took the helm. When he signaled that the anchor was up, I turned hard to port. Larry came back to the cockpit and deployed the staysail, which gave us the extra speed we needed to make the turn. Gently, slowly, gracefully, we sailed between the boats and out toward the banks. Soon we were clear and the passage was begun.
It was a gorgeous morning. The sky was clear with only wispy clouds. We looked back toward the Pig Beach for the last time. Then we looked forward. We soon came near enough to our waypoint to make the northward turn. The wind was ESE. We gibed gently and kept moving toward our goal. It felt very good.
When we reached the first marker on the Decca Channel, we continued north a bit. The channel runs due west, but we really could not stay on that straight line with our following ESE wind. We gibed about 4 times before we were far enough along the channel to head northwest toward the Tongue of the Ocean.
As we reached the central marker of the channel, we were on a northerly tack. We had hoped to miss the coral heads in that general vicinity, but we found ourselves in a small patch despite everything. Larry went forward and spotted while I steered. It seemed like a long time, but it was probably less than an hour before we were clear. It was one of the great moments of the trip. We had navigated through a large patch of coral under sail without any shouting and no scrapes, either. We were very thankful.
By the time we had cleared the channel it was mid-afternoon. Larry decided to run the generator and get the batteries back up to a good level. He went below. I took the helm. Pretty soon he came back up. “I guess I didn’t get the water intake as far below the water line as I thought,” he said. “The generator isn’t getting any cooling water on this tack. We have to wait until we are on the starboard side.” That news was not desirable, but neither was it devastating.
After our next gibe, Larry went below again to run the generator. Again, he quickly returned to the cockpit. “I think we have a bigger problem,” he said. “I’m going to need to look at things.” He went below and dug into the problem. Our generator is installed beneath our bed in the aft cabin. To work there, he had to fold up the bed, remove the casing of the generator and try to do this work as we were sailing. Fortunately, the wind was running 14-17 knots, and we had little turbulence. Soon he came back up with a solemn look on his face.
It turned out that the water pump had lost one of its impeller blades. That blade was obviously stuck in a hose somewhere impeding the flow of cooling water to the generator. Larry could not tell where that blade might be without pulling out all the hoses and checking each one. The sun would set within the hour. That work could not be done at that time. Who knew when he would get the opportunity?
Without knowing when we would get to recharge the batteries again, we had to take severe measures. We turned off everything non-essential, and that included the refrigerator. Our refrigerator will keep things cold for three or four days, as long as your definition of “cold” is generous. We had canned food to fall back on. We simply could not afford to run the refrigerator in this crisis. We left very few breakers on.
These five items were the only drain on our batteries until the very end of our trip. They drew the batteries down at the rate of about .1 volt per day. It is a good thing we took this action, because Larry was not able to find the blockage in the generator’s water system until the day we departed for the Gulf Stream crossing. After he found it, we ran the generator and were able to charge the batteries sufficiently to allow us to use our e-charts as we drew near to Lake Worth.
Whenever we were below decks at night, we used flashlights. The refrigerator did a pretty good job until the last day. We used the galley foot pump for water. We had a supply of ground coffee and a press pot for our morning java. We cook with propane, so we had hot meals. With all our constraints we still had everything that was truly essential.
So, this is how we sailed into the first night of our journey.
At sunset we discussed whether to reduce sail. We really wanted to avoid the necessity of a sail change in the dark. I gathered together my weather predictions. Both Chris Parker and the Tongue of the Ocean buoy predicted 15-17 knots. We had been sailing with winds at this speed all day, and we concluded that if they were to continue we did not need to change anything.
We were wrong. Our logic was right, but our information was wrong. As the evening progressed, so did the wind speed. First it was 20 knots. Then it crept up to 25 sustained. Then I saw 30 knots skim by on the wind speed indicator. That was it for me. We began to adjust things. We reduced the genoa by about half, but that was not enough. Eventually we furled it completely, leaving only the staysail deployed. We sailed for a few minutes in that configuration, but it was still extremely difficult to hold a course. The wind and wave frequently conspired to throw the boat as much as 40 degrees off course in a matter of seconds. Over and over. (When dawn came we could see how confused the seas were. Clearly, a swell from the north or northeast was countering waves generated by an east to southeast wind. It was a mess.) We reduced the main to the first batten.
With that adjustment, we gained control without losing too much speed. Both of us had grown quite weary fighting with all that sail. At that point, Larry was able to go back to sleep. Overnight the max wind speed recorded was 31.9 knots. Although we had a lot of weather yet to come, we never recorded any wind speed higher than that.
One of the things I learned to like about sailing at night instead of motoring at night is the quality of my rest. When the engine is running and I go below, the noise only gets louder. I dare not wear ear plugs to sleep. I need to be able to hear Larry call if he needs me, but with the engine running, there is so much noise and vibration that it is extremely difficult to get real rest. Under sail, after I adjusted to the pilot berth instead of my bed, I actually slept quite well. We set a kitchen timer to wake us at the end of our sleep time, and each of us had the experience of actually sleeping right through it a time or two, despite its loud beeping right beside our heads. If we make more extended passages, I certainly want to sail rather than motor if the winds are right.
I will never forget that run up the Tongue of the Ocean. It was a moonlight night, only a day or two past full. There were occasional clouds, but the sky remained generally clear. We simply flew. The sounds of wind and water were beautiful as we scooted north. This is why we have a sailboat instead of a trawler. It was wonderful. I didn’t need a diesel engine or a generator in order to enjoy that experience.
So ended the first day.
If you missed Part 1 of our return home, you might want to scroll down and read it first. This post is part 2 of 8 that describe our long sail home
Part 2 – Plan and Prepare
As we started planning to sail back to Florida, our first order of business was to identify a weather window for the trip. We needed wind, but not a gale, and we needed southerly winds for the Gulf Stream crossing. We needed a window of about 4 days. That duration was unlikely, given our experience with the passage of cold fronts during our trip, so we allowed mentally for the possibility that we would need to wait out a front somewhere, even though we continually hoped to avoid that possibility. After all, with no engine, our options for entering and leaving anchorages were severely constrained. Many, many entrances to anchorages in the Bahamas are much too tricky to maneuver under sail alone.
We needed the weather window pretty soon. It was already late April. Our insurance wants us north of Florida by June 1 each year, the beginning of hurricane season. Even after we got back to Florida, we knew that it would take some time for a mechanic to determine the problem with the engine and then do the repairs. After the repairs were done, we still needed time to get north of Florida before June 1. We really could not dawdle.
We had to choose a route that gave us the least challenges to our limited maneuverability yet took us as directly as possible to our goal. We worked out a route with a decision point in the middle. We could depart Big Majors Spot, traverse the Decca Channel, and cruise up the Tongue of the Ocean. When we reached New Providence, we had to choose either the Northwest Channel or Northwest Providence Channel.
If we chose the Northwest Channel, we had to arrive at slack or flood, because we dared not risk it if the wind were east or southeast into an ebb tide. We had to navigate a fairly narrow path to the Northwest Shoal, then to Mackie Shoal and Great Isaac Light. As we viewed our weather windows, we inevitably found ourselves crossing that bank in the dark. Or anchoring out there through the night. The tidal currents on and off the banks can be very powerful, and we worried about our options passing the Hen and Chickens and Great Isaac at any time.
Our other choice was to take the Northwest Providence Channel (Route B) around the Berry Islands and completely avoid the banks and Great Isaac. It added distance but greatly reduced our risks on the banks. As will become clear later, this choice added its own risks. You can never avoid risk altogether when you embark on a sailing adventure. The trick is to be able to manage the risks you accept.
Both routes converged between Great Isaac and Freeport. From there, we had to cross the Gulf Stream without power, navigating appropriately to arrive at our destination, the Lake Worth Inlet.
We identified 4 tricky challenges along our path.
As for the weather window, our first choice failed us when the predictions were revised unfavorably for us. The next window looked like four good days if we started on Thursday, so we got ready to go, but there was never enough wind. We need 10-12 knots to move this boat. On Thursday, April 22, the wind never exceeded 7 knots. One day lost.
On Friday, April 23, the winds were predicted to be at or near 10 knots all day. In fact, they were much lower until late in the afternoon. Since our plan was to sail round the clock, it would not have been unthinkable to depart in the afternoon, but it was completely unthinkable to navigate the Decca Channel in the dark. A second day was lost.
As we waited, we continued to discuss our plans. They were complicated by the fact that not only was the diesel engine completely unavailable; the generator that we used to charge our batteries was behaving strangely. We had been running it 2-3 hours each morning and another hour or so in the evening to keep our batteries well charged. However, at the same time our diesel engine problems emerged, the generator began to behave strangely as well. Not being an electrical engineer, I can only report that Larry said it was putting out too much voltage to the inverter/charger. If it had an AC load, such as the electric coffeepot or the water heater, it could be induced to run normally for almost an hour, but eventually, even those loads were not enough to keep the voltage down and the generator had to be shut off. We could charge the batteries to some extent, but there would never be sufficient charge to run e-charts or the auto-pilot.
As we planned our watches, we expected that twice a day, Larry would be able to run the generator for about an hour, but during that time, he needed to give it his undivided attention. We would be able to have refrigeration, lights, hot water, and most of the comforts of home as long as we were careful.
Sailing without the auto-pilot was a daunting prospect, but we gritted our teeth. What choice did we have? If we stayed where we were, we would never solve our problems. We decided that we would take turns at the helm, 2 hours on, 2 hours off. Our actual schedule was a bit more flexible, but not by much. Without the auto-pilot, somebody had to be steering at all times.
Sailing without electronic charts was less daunting, but still undesirable. We sailed without them for several years, but never on such a passage as this one. Of course, we had already learned that e-charts cannot be the only resource for piloting in a place like the Bahamas. During our whole trip, we were constantly checking the e-charts, the paper charts and the guide books for all the information we could get. We had two sources for GPS information: a handheld GPS with a display about the size of a cell phone screen, and a GPS mounted on the nav station. We had the Explorer Charts for the Bahamas, which we had come to rely on heavily, perhaps even more heavily than our e-charts. (When we went to Hatchet Bay, the e-chart showed us sailing through solid rock, so we took the e-chart locations with a grain of salt in the Bahamas.) Our handheld GPS had a chart display of sorts, but you can imagine that what you could see on that little screen would be more entertaining than informative. It did, however, provide information such as speed over ground and distance traveled, etcetera, which proved very valuable to us.
The part that worried me most as we planned was sailing at night. We had cruised round the clock on several occasions, but always with the engine, the auto-pilot, and the e-charts. The person on watch at 2AM mostly needed to be sure not to collide with another ship or go off course into some other hazard. We had never sailed at night precisely because we had not felt ready to manage sails at night. However, in this case, we really had no choice. Even if there were some place to stop each night, stopping meant that it would take us a very long time to get back. Even if there were some place to go, there was no guarantee we could get in and out under sail. We had to sail round the clock. Again, we gritted our teeth and accepted that challenge.
We had a plan. On the morning of Saturday, April 24, we listened to the weather, observed that the wind was running about 12-14 knots from the east, and everything looked right. The generator hit some kind of a glitch after half an hour, but we assumed we could make that time up later.
It was time for the Go/No Go decision.
We chose GO.
This post is Part 1 of 8 that tell the story of our return from the Bahamas. It was quite an odyssey. I will be posting the segments daily for a while, so come back for the next installment.
There is a saying that the cruising life is an opportunity to work on your boat in exotic places. We have learned the truth of this statement, but sometimes, an exotic location is not the right place to initiate repairs. We found ourselves in exactly that situation, and this blog is the story of how we dealt with it.
If a friend who owned a sailboat with all the bells and whistles said to you, “I think I will turn off everything and sail 400 miles without ever using my engine or anything else that needs electricity,” what would you think? No engine. No electronics. No auto-pilot. No refrigeration. Nothing that used electricity except bilge pump, sump pump and navigation lights. Radio off unless needed for an outbound call. What would you think? You might think this person is crazy.
We recently completed just such a trip, and it was not about mental illness. It was about necessity. Our engine would not work. Our generator would not work. We were in a foreign country and our efforts to get repair parts shipped in had hit a brick wall. Furthermore, we had no way to assure ourselves that the parts we thought we needed would actually fix our problems. For all we knew, the new parts would only allow us to see a deeper problem. It was desperation time. Larry said to me, “Do you think we could sail this boat back to Florida without an engine?” and I said, “Well, it is a sailboat after all.”
We had owned our home sweet sailboat since July of 2000, almost ten years. We had had some lovely adventures, but we had never before undertaken to sail longer than 8 hours at a stretch, and we had never before sailed after dark. We had always been able to fall back on the engine and the auto-pilot and e-charts. The trek that lay before us would have none of those things. Here is how it came to pass.
We checked in to the Bahamas on January 18 with high anticipation of the adventure of discovery. Maybe it is true that thousands of people have made the crossing and spent the winter in the islands, and maybe it had become a ho-hum trip for some, but not for us. We might have been the first people ever to conceive of such an idea. For us every new sight was like a new discovery that nobody had ever done before. We visited the Berries, Eleuthera and the northern Exumas, going as far south as Staniel Cay. We anchored at Big Majors Spot across from Staniel Cay on the 16th day of March, and we remained there for five weeks.
Along our journey to Staniel Cay, the engine occasionally failed to start on the first try, but that behavior appeared to be mostly related to the fact that it is a relatively long run from the fuel tank to the engine. Time after time, Larry was able to trick the engine demons and get us going. After we reached Staniel Cay, we remained there happily for two or three weeks. Then we thought we would like to visit nearby Black Point Settlement. We planned to do laundry and shop for groceries and see some new sights. We called the fuel dock at the yacht club to confirm that we could get to the dock and that there was actually fuel available. We buttoned down for travel, and then Larry went up to the cockpit to start the engine. Nothing. Nothing but a feeble splat.
Been there. Done that. He began to muddle about in the engine room, but unlike previous efforts, there was no response. We settled down to give him time to trouble-shoot the problem.
He tried all the usual tricks. I waited in the cockpit for the command to push the button. Every so often Larry called out, “Push the button!” Each time the engine wheezed or groaned, but it never did start. Things looked very gloomy.
The next day he worked through all the diagnostics one more time. He concluded that the starter he had hoped would finish this year’s voyage had bowed out, exit, stage left. It was finished, over, kaput.
Internet searches at Staniel Cay require an account with Exuma Wifi at the cost of $10 for 24 hours or 200 mb, whichever comes first. Accounts for longer terms are cheaper per hour or mb, but still very costly by our standards. We bought an account for a week, knowing that there would be some back and forth conversation when he ordered parts and arranged for shipping to Staniel Cay. Rather than give you that story blow by blow, I will simply say that Larry came to despair of getting the part shipped to our location. There were too many hurdles to success in that endeavor.
The biggest hurdle was his fear that even if he somehow managed to get the parts and install them, they might not solve the problem. Even with a new starter, it was possible that the engine would not start. The problem might lie deeper than that.
Thinking along that line, we quickly rejected any notion of trying to locate a diesel engine mechanic in the Bahamas. We had already received numerous warnings not to look for such services in the Bahamas. It would be a miracle if we connected with someone who was actually qualified to help.
The day came that Larry said to me, “Do you think we could just sail this boat back to Florida without an engine?” and I said, “Well, it is a sailboat, isn’t it?”
We began serious planning to take the boat back to Florida where we could work with a credentialed diesel engine mechanic in a location where parts could be shipped readily.
Come back tomorrow for Part 2.