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.
We have had some interesting experiences in the Bahamas. Winds and currents do strange things sometimes. We have seen some spectacular sights at Warderick Wells, Cambridge Cay and Big Majors Spot.
When we arrived in the mooring area at Cambridge Cay, the winds were about 10 or 12 knots, much more subdued than in the previous dozen days, so it was pretty easy to pick up our mooring. We noticed right away that both the mooring and its pennant were heavily marked with blue paint that matches our bottom paint. We knew exactly how that happened. It is all about winds and currents.
Before we came to the Bahamas we read about the navigation and anchoring challenges here. Winds and currents here have different characteristics than we were accustomed to in Chesapeake Bay. In the descriptions of many Bahamas anchorages, there are notes about extreme currents and the recommendation to deploy two anchors. That comment sounds relatively simple, but the solutions are not simple at all. The problems associated with the currents and winds lead many, many boaters to prefer moorings or marinas to the hazards associated with anchoring. Those hazards lead to issues with the anchor rode similar to the mooring problems that produced the markings we saw on our mooring ball and pennant at Cambridge Cay.
The differences between high and low tide in the Bahamas will normally be somewhere between 2 and 3 feet. To those of us who have cruised in New England, that difference sounds small. In Maine, tides of 12 feet are not uncommon, and the intrepid cruisers who venture as far east as West Quoddy Point will learn to deal with tides at or near 20 feet. Tales of the tides in Bay of Fundy will give anyone pause. We have cruised as far east as Schoodic Point in Maine, and we found that we could adjust easily to the greater tidal range. It was a simple matter to calculate the greater scope required, but we found no other significant challenge associated with the tides in Maine.
The lesser range of the Bahamas tides fools the novice cruiser at first. We saw the chart markings that said “strong current,” but we had no idea what that actually meant. We were prepared for the current to be strong, but we did not realize how it would affect us until we experienced it.
How did that mooring and pennant come to be so severely marked with bottom paint?
When we picked up our mooring at Warderick Wells, it must have been slack tide, although at the time we were not sensitive to tidal timings as we have become in the days since. Larry eased up to the mooring, I picked it up, we pulled the eye of the pennant over our forward cleat, and we were secure. As Larry always does, he rigged lines that basically create a harness through the eye of the pennant around the bow of the boat. Then we settled in.
I don’t remember noticing when the flood tide current began to pick up, although I could hear the water rippling past our hull. However, after I went up on deck, I observed that the bow of the boat had ridden up past the mooring ball. Later, I heard the ball banging against the hull from time to time. As the days passed and the fronts passed, I saw that ball move all over the place, or rather, I observed that we moved relative to the ball. The ball sometimes slid under the boat and popped up on the other side.
That’s not all. After the first front passed, I saw that the lines of the harness were twisted twice around the pennant. After a second front passed, the twists were completely undone. And then there was the dinghy. After the second front passed, I discovered that our dinghy painter had been tied in a tight knot by the wind. I didn’t think it was even possible for that to happen. It makes me think back to a time that I thought we had made some mistake in tying up our dinghy. We woke up after a front had passed in the night to discover that the dinghy was attached to the boat by only one tie. We always tie it up twice with quite a bit of line between the ties, but on that occasion the tie nearest the dinghy was undone by the wind. After seeing that the wind could create a knot last week, I am prepared to believe that it could untie one just as easily.
The way our boat moves with tides and currents is due to the keel. We have a full keel, and as we watched the other boats moored at Warderick Wells, we could easily discern which ones had full keels. They moved with the mooring the same way we did. When we discovered that we had run up on the pennant, we could look around and see at least a half dozen other boats doing the same thing. A full keel is much more influenced by the currents than the winds, and that behavior prevails despite really strong winds. If we had the aft cockpit curtains open, it was not uncommon for us to have winds blowing in the aft of the cockpit, because the current was forcing our keel to point opposite to the wind. The moorings expect the boat to be moved by the wind, and when we moved with the current opposite to the wind, we ran up on the pennant and received strong breezes through the aft opening to the cockpit.
So we know exactly how our mooring and pennant at Cambridge Cay came to be more blue than white. As the keel is pushed by current in the opposite direction of the wind, the keel rubs against the pennant and the ball, leaving behind a residue of blue bottom paint.
We have learned to be very attentive to the tides here. We faithfully write down the times for tides in Nassau every day. The tides in any given location may be before or after the Nassau tides, but a day of observation will give you the relationship. We assume that the tides are within an hour of Nassau for rough planning. We need that timing because the tidal currents are so strong. They are often as much as 4 knots, and in many places a speed of 6 knots will be common. Many anchorages are affected so dramatically that boats must deploy two anchors if anybody is to be able to sleep at night.
Here is the rule: Tides flood toward the banks and ebb away from the banks. I think that the problem must originate in the vast expanses of the banks coupled with the way the bottom drops dramatically elsewhere. The east side of Eleuthera Island, for example, faces the Atlantic with a rocky shore and huge coral outcroppings. The rocks extend a short distance toward the ocean, and then there is nothing. The depth goes from 100 feet to 1000 feet almost in the blink of an eye. On the western side of the island, in the bight between Current Island and Powell Point, is a huge bank. That bank extends several miles from the island toward Exuma Sound, but at Powell Point, the bottom drops out again. I speculate that the difference between the shallow banks and the deep channels is at the root of the strong tidal currents.
Whatever the reason, they are not to be trifled with. Prudent mariners respect their power. A current of just 4 knots coupled with winds over 20 knots, or colliding with winds over 20 knots, can create a hazard that can push a big boat onto rocks or reefs. Everyone is advised to have a spotter in shallow water to watch for hazards, but in tight quarters, the winds and currents can fool you.
North of the anchorage on the west side of Big Major Spot is a tiny cut that separates Big Major from Fowl Cay, a Sandals property. This little cut is probably lest than 50 feet across, and it must be 15 feet deep. On the south side, the water is quite deep in a protected pool. On the north side, the channel through the cut is bounded on the east by a very shallow bank that extends along the northern shore of Big Majors. It is a microcosm that dramatically displays the big challenge across the Bahamas.
A few days ago Larry and I decided to circumnavigate Big Majors Spot. We headed north toward this tiny cut. As we approached, it was flood tide. Water was rushing through this cut at a pace so furious that the incoming water could hardly be contained. On one side whirlpools swirled and dipped noticeably in the center of circulation. On another side a confluence of opposing currents created raging cascades. We picked up speed and hurried through, hoping not to be shoved backward. On the north side I looked eastward across the shallow banks. There I saw water rushing furiously across the bank downhill toward the deep water of the cut. There was almost a waterfall into the channel.
Today we tried to navigate that cut in the opposite direction. We should have been prepared, but even our prior experience during a flood tide was no preparation for today’s ebb. The last time the tidal ranges were in a more normal range – a difference between 2 and 3 feet between high and low tide. Today the low low tide was more than 4 feet lower than the high high tide. We approached from the north during the second hour of ebb. It was a roaring torrent, and despite gunning the outboard to its highest possible speed, we were pushed off course. The only way to avoid being shoved against the rocks was to turn around and let the water take us back where we came from.
We saw some other frightful, but terrifyingly fascinating sights on this trip. As we traversed the channel between Big Major and Little Major, we could see through the cuts both to the north and south of Little Major. It was enough to take your breath away. We have heard warnings not to attempt these cuts on an ebb with wind or wave from the east, but until you see it, you don’t know. In this case, a superhigh tide was ebbing at a ferocious pace into Exuma Sound against a long period northeast swell of about 8 feet. We looked through those cuts and saw huge waves break across the entrance. Some roared against the rocks surrounding the cuts creating huge breaking waves between the rocks. Under no circumstances would I have attempted to go in or out those cuts under these circumstances.
We happened to have another couple with us today as we contemplated how we would deal with the fact that we could not navigate our tiny cut, the one obstacle that separated us from our boats safe in the anchorage on the other side of the cut. Our new friend Irina looked at me and smiled, saying, “C’est l’aventure!” That’s what cruising is: an adventure. You plan with all your intellect, and you deal with what happens anyway. Sometimes you get what you don’t want, but you get through somehow. It is all about adventure!
Friday, January 22
When we left Port Lucaya, we warned all our readers that it would be a while before we had internet again. We were right. However, I did not think it would be as long as it has actually been. This is a learning experience for all of us. My expectations for the interval were probably shorter than yours. We had a plan that didn’t turn out, and that is likely to be a pattern with us now. We are into a cruising experience that does not lend itself to schedules or multi-tasking or productivity planning.
The most important variable every day is the weather. We are very faithful to listen at 6:30AM every day to Chris Parker, the resident meteorologist for the Bahamas and the Caribbean. We try to hear some other broadcasts as well, but we make it a point not to miss his. The weather forecast guides our preparations. If we are at anchor, we evaluate our setting for its value as shelter for the winds predicted that day. If we are planning to cruise, we study the forecast for a good opportunity to reach our destination without bad weather, big winds or ugly seas.
I describe this process, because it is important to help you understand our past few days.
We left Port Lucaya early on the morning of Wednesday, January 20. Our destination was Great Harbor, a large anchorage just south of Great Stirrup Cay. If you look on Google maps for the Berry Islands in the Bahamas, the Stirrup Cays are on the northeast tip of that group of islands. We spent a couple of days there enjoying the clear water and watching cruise ship passengers play in the water.
On Friday, January 22, we headed south planning to go to Frazers Hog Cay. However, as happens sometimes, along the way we spied a little cove that looked interesting and decided to stop there first. We thought that if we didn’t like it, we could continue the next day to our original destination. This little cove is bounded by White Cay, Devils Cay. and Saddleback Cay. Here is where the devil comes in.
We studied the chart and the guide books. The entrance is narrow and bounded by rocks. One must pay close attention going in, and it is important to make a turn to starboard at the right point to get to the marked anchorage off the lovely white sand beach of White Cay. However, sometimes little islands like these do not look the same in reality as they looked in our minds when studying the chart.
We turned into the entrance, and that part worked well, Unfortunately, as we passed the rocky shoal that guards the entrance, we became disoriented and continued too far past the spot where we should have turned. Before we realized the error, we ran aground on a rocky reef. The tide was coming in, and the tidal current no doubt moved us toward the reef faster than we recognized. We attempted to use the engine to back off and then to turn around, but in the middle of our efforts the engine stopped. It refused to restart. We were in a mess.
Experienced Bahamian cruisers say, just as ICW cruisers say, that there are two kinds of cruisers: those who have gone aground, and those who lie. Experienced Bahamian cruisers are fairly nonchalant about this sort of a predicament. We were not and are not yet experienced Bahamian cruisers. We are still learning how to do it.
In the US, a situation like this is very annoying, but no big deal. You call a towboat, you pay the bill, and you move on. In the Bahamas, there are no official towboats. The Bahamian volunteer rescue service focuses on life-and-death emergencies, which our problem was not. However, we made a radio call attempting to connect with someone who could help, and thanks to the kindness and experience of Bill and Barb on S/V Duet, a catamaran anchored nearby behind Devils Cay, we received the help we needed.
Bill and Barb have been cruising the Bahamas for 34 years. They are quite humble about their experience, saying that they have already made all the mistakes, so they know how to help other people. The fact is that they give of themselves without any accounting. They are generous and kind and they go above and beyond any sort of obligation to help one’s neighbor. We think they are angels.
When Bill and Barb arrived, we had just deployed our dinghy. Larry was in the dinghy with the anchor, and I was hauling anchor chain out, loading it in the dinghy. Our plan was to set the anchor in deeper water and use it to pull ourselves off the reef. We had the theory of the process right, but we might never have succeeded without Bill and Barb.
Before they arrived, we had set all our sails, hoping to catch the wind that was blowing in the direction we wanted to go toward deep water, but every time the wind pushed us toward deep water, the current pushed us back to shallow water. We were making no progress toward deep water, and the sails were doing what sails usually do, pulling us forward. By the time they got there we had moved dangerously close to Saddleback Cay, but we were so busy trying to deploy the anchor that we had lost our focus on the effect of the sails. Bill and Barb boiled out of their dinghy and doused the sails. That stopped our crawl toward Saddleback and allowed everyone to focus on the goal of getting the boat back into deep water.
The whole situation was made much more difficult by the wind and current that buffeted us and tried to take us all where nobody wanted to go. However, we were quite fortunate that we ran aground on a rising tide. Even though the current of the rising tide was against us, when it finally turned, it worked with us. The wind was blowing in the a helpful direction, but until the tide turned, it could not give us any headway against the tidal current. After the tide turned, the wind, the current, and all our efforts were pulling the boat toward deep water.
Larry and Bill worked together to set first one anchor, then the other. Barb and I were on deck pulling the anchor rode in. That is how we caused the boat to move.
It was a time for celebration when we finally had the boat floating. We used both of our anchors to pull us into a better position, and finally we were in a location where even the swing of the boat on our primary anchor was unlikely to run on the reef again. Because we were in the path of the tidal current, however, we deployed the second anchor to assure that we were not pushed to a less desirable position. Whew!
Our location was exposed to the cove entrance, but it was a good jumping-off place for us to sail out whenever the wind was right. Since we did not have a working engine, it seemed possible that we might have to do that. We thanked Bill and Barb profusely, and they went back to their day, planning to do some diving in the time remaining.
Several times throughout the days to come, Barb and Bill checked on our well-being. It wasn’t enough that they had put their lives aside for us at the time of crisis. They continued to be concerned for us. When another boat ran aground in a different nearby location, Bill and Barb again made time to help them and followed up with them, too. Both we and the crew of the S/V Mary Rose agree that the S/V Duet has a crew of angels.
Larry and I sat quietly in the cockpit trying to collect ourselves. We were both exhausted. We could not imagine how Bill and Barb would be in the mood to go diving after wearing themselves out helping us. Larry made a few stabs at starting the engine, but it simply refused. We were in a safe place, we could take our time working on the next step, so we simply let go of the problem. It is hard to describe, but we both felt that God was very much watching over us, and we could be at peace about this situation. We had a nice dinner, we took showers, we got a good night’s sleep. A fresh new day would dawn in the morning.
Tomorrow, Day 2 will post.
Aboard No Boundaries
January 5, 2010
What do you do when you plan for a tropical winter and wind up in a deep freeze?
Our sailboat is a really good boat, and it is a comfortable, safe home for us. It has been a good home through some pretty harsh winters in Baltimore, but in Baltimore, we were tied up to a dock, running on shore power, which is not a lot different from being in a house. A boat like ours is not insulated the way a house is, but we kept warm.
We were not really sure what we would do about really cold weather when we arrived at Cumberland Island on New Years Day, but we have learned a few tricks. We keep thinking things will get better so we can visit the island, but so far, we don’t have the guts to get in the dinghy and run over there in this cold. I don’t know if we will ever get to see the island.
If we did not have a generator, our situation would be a bit more dire. We have electric space heaters designed for boats, but without electricity, they are worthless. There are propane heaters for boats, but they have their own problems, not the least being the need to store more propane than is required for cooking. Some boats even use wood-fired stoves, but we have never thought that sounded like a good idea. The electric heaters take up little space, they don’t require special ventilation, and we are going to run the generator anyway.
Our first line of attack on the cold was to dig out one of the little heaters and run it during our morning generator run. We closed the doors to the forward and aft cabins, heating only the main salon. I cooked breakfast, and all that heat was quite comfortable during the morning. Then we turned off the generator, and we turned off the heater. The temperature began to drop. We managed well until mid-afternoon. I made some hot tea, but it was still uncomfortable.
Then I remembered why we don’t use our oil lamps in the summer – they put out heat. We have three oil lamps, one in the forward, one in the main salon, and one in the aft. We lit them all, and it was amazing how they took the edge off the cold. Cooking dinner put more heat in the cabin during the early evening.
We always run the generator after dinner in order to have hot water and top off the batteries. This time it also allowed us to run our heater in the main salon, and we dug out another to heat our stateroom. We were comfortable until it was time to go to bed.
We don’t run any of our heat sources when we are asleep. The generator is under the bed, and we wouldn’t want to sleep over that noise, even though it seems pretty quiet when we are in other parts of the boat. We don’t want lamps burning when we are asleep. That doesn’t make sense. So we bundle up with two blankets and a quilt. That keeps us toasty until we get up in the morning.
The final element of our strategy is the oven. I try not to light it unless I actually need it, but I also try to plan my baking to coincide with otherwise cold times. Today I started baking cookies in late afternoon, just as the heat of the morning was dying down and the outside air was cooling as the sun goes down.
So far we are fine. They say that tonight will be the coldest so far, and then things will let up for a few days. We are trying to figure out if we have the courage to cruise out in this cold and go south far enough to get into the fifties. Can you believe that this is even a problem in Florida? Our problems seem big to us, but I am glad that I am not a farmer with orange groves. We will figure out something.
November 22, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
I have been telling you how early we get up each day. Even on the ICW, with the exception of our first day, we are getting up at 5:30AM in order to cover a lot of territory before dark. Anchoring in the dark is no fun. We want to be ready to stop around 4PM in order to be set and comfortable before the sun goes down.
Sometimes this strategy actually works.
When we were cruising this summer, we managed to adhere to this strategy with one exception: Provincetown. An assortment of issues conspired to delay our departure from Boston until noon, resulting in an arrival time in Provincetown, at the end of Cape Cod, around 8PM. We could see our destination as the sun began to set around 6PM that night, but it is a long trip around the little curl at the end of Cape Cod before you actually get into Provincetown Harbor. It was fully dark before we rounded the end of that curl. We crept into the harbor, almost running into the breakwater in the dark. We thought it would be an actual wall, but it appeared to be just a pile of rocks that stuck up a foot or two above the water. Provincetown is a very small town. There is very little light at 8PM down on the waterfront and no signs of life. The moon wasn’t much help as we anchored in deep darkness using flashlights, e-chart and grit. We didn’t do it because we love to prove ourselves; we did it because it was necessary.
We had to do the same thing in the Sassafrass River on our way back to Baltimore. We had run up Delaware Bay with the intention of transiting the C&D Canal before we stopped, because finding shelter along that monster bay is no simple task. We also were quite ready to get back home, and this was a good way to get there sooner. The result, of course, was that we entered the Sassafrass just after 2AM. Again, there was little moonlight, and again we felt our way to a successful anchorage.
We had planned to avoid such issues when in the ICW. In the first place, the ICW anchorages are almost all quite confined. There isn’t a lot of room for error, due to the constant challenge of shoals and stumps and snags. It would be easy to get in a mess if you try to anchor when you can’t see. Yet on Saturday (11/21) we found ourselves doing it again.
We had left Buck Island Harbor about 6:45AM. We got up early as always and were ready to leave as it got light. The run down the North River was uneventful. Crossing Albemarle Sound reminded me of cruising on the Chesapeake. We passed through the Alligator River Bridge and headed for the Alligator-Pungo River Canal.
It was about 1:30PM when we saw a couple of sailboats ahead of us pull out of the channel into a tiny little spot near shore where they appeared to be anchoring. We were near the entrance to the Alligator-Pungo Canal, and I asked Larry why they would be anchoring there. It isn’t a designated anchorage, and it was not long past noon. “Maybe they don’t think they can get to the end of the canal before dark,” he said.
That was a sobering thought that I had not considered. The canal is 25 miles long. It was 1:30PM. At best we were making about 6 knots. Sunset would be 4:55PM. Whoa! Maybe we would not get to the end of this canal before dark either, and there is NO place to stop in the canal.
The longer we were in this canal, the less I liked it. The scenery is quite picturesque, even a little spooky. I love swamp landscapes, and this one was lovely. However, twenty-five miles of it was almost more than I needed. The ambience was not improved when our 8-foot depth alarm went off in the middle of the channel, supposedly in 15 feet of water. There was a thump and a scraping sound, and then nothing. The depth went back to 15 feet and we went on. It was probably a log that washed into the channel during recent heavy rains.
At the end of the canal is a fixed bridge charted at 65 feet of clearance. I didn’t look, and we didn’t thud, and we soon exited that canal. Off to the right in the upper reaches of the Pungo River is a designated anchorage where we had considered stopping. However, we had also looked for a slightly better spot a couple of miles downriver, and that is a good thing. There were already eight boats in the designated anchorage. We could certainly have found a place there, but we don’t like crowded anchorages. Every time we see a crowd of boats anchored together, it calls up images of the anchorage at Newport, RI. We don’t like that kind of close communion.
We continued downriver to a spot where we could anchor in 8 feet of water in a more sheltered location. We were just about to finish our work when another sailboat came cruising in to be our neighbor. It isn’t that we don’t like friends and neighbors, but with all that water to choose from, why did this boat want to be right next to us? Oh well. We used our flashlight and our e-chart and our grit and we got the anchor set just the way we wanted it.
We were exhausted. We had arisen before it was day, and we cruised until it wasn’t day again. We ate a simple supper and went right to bed. Boy, am I glad we are retired and don’t have to work for a living any more, getting up at the crack of dawn and working until we keel over into bed at night. I bet everyone would like to be retired and on permanent vacation like we are!
If you ever decide to cruise in a sailboat, be prepared to flex until you are tied in a knot. The fun never stops!
As many of you know, we thought we would head south last Monday after a quick check of the keel. We thought wrong. The rock we hit in Maine last summer left a signature in the form of a gouge into the fiberglass matting. There were some dings and scratches that could have been tolerated, but that deep gouge required attention.
It took a whole week to do the work. The temperature was so cool that Larry had difficulty working with the fiberglass and epoxy required for repairs, and the same problem cropped up when he was applying paint to the repaired spots. We were finally on target to leave on Monday (Monday, November 9, 2009).
We got up early and made sure we had our pre-departure tasks done before 10:30, our scheduled splash time. We cleaned out all our trash, because we can’t discard trash while under way in Chesapeake Bay. We hosed down the deck and cleaned the cockpit. We washed the cockpit curtains. We were ready when the lift arrived. The lift operator had to make a few adjustments to our radio antenna and pole on the aft deck, because the lift for splash was smaller than the lift for haul, but very soon the boat was back in the water. I breathed a sigh of relief and allowed myself to start feeling excited about our winter plans.
Larry and I climbed back into the boat. The lift operator and his helper guided our boat out of the slings, and then they told us we could start the engine. One of the things I have always enjoyed is the sound of the engine starting, because when that sound hits my ear, we will be going somewhere. Larry turned the key and pressed ’start.’ We heard a couple of feeble wheezes. He looked startled, but after fiddling with the gearshift to be sure the engine was in neutral, he pressed the button again. No doubt about it. That engine had a serious flu. Larry went below and reconfigured the battery bank in order to combine the full power of three batteries instead of just one. Sad to say, all we heard was a feeble, limping thump instead of the roar of diesel power.
The boatyard men pushed and pulled us over to a nearby slip where we tied up. Larry had been threatening to buy a new starter battery for a while. I guess that week on land gave the battery a good excuse to retire. That explanation is as good as any. Fortunately the boatyard includes a full-service marine supply store, and they actually had a battery we could use. This one is even more powerful. That should mean that it is not only better than a dead battery; it should also be better than the old battery when it was new. Larry brought it back to the boat, we sat there for half an hour to bring it up to full charge using shore power, and then the engine started. Yay! All looked well. Ha!
One of the casualties of our never-ending departure mode is that I keep having to top off the supplies and food I need for a three-week jaunt without stopping to shop. It took us a whole week to get away from Harborview after we thought, “Tomorrow,”, so I had shopped to replace a week’s worth of groceries right before we went to Tidewater. We were supposed to be there for only a couple of hours. After it turned into a week, I again needed to shop to make up for that week of food we had used. We left Tidewater and cruised over to the fuel dock where we were shocked to discover that the price of fuel had risen to $2.95 per gallon. We gritted our teeth and filled the tank with 80 gallons. You do the math. Then we headed for an anchorage across the street from Safeway.
Because we always expected to simply cruise, not to go shopping, we had deflated the dinghy and strapped it down on deck. We don’t drag it behind us when we know we won’t use it for a while. Therefore we had to unwrap it and inflate it and throw it back into the water before we could shop for groceries. That took a while, so we didn’t leave for the grocery store until 4:30 PM. I had a very complete list, and Larry is a good shopper, so I sent him to gather up some things while I did the picky ones. We hurried back to the boat, had a nice dinner and discussed our plans for the next day. Since we had had such a scare with the battery, we decided to run the engine a while to bring it up to full charge before we went to bed, and that is what we did. We both felt a little gunshy after that unpleasant surprise at the boatyard.
Next morning, I got up a bit before Larry, and I got everything ready to make coffee. Coffee-making requires AC for the grinder and coffeemaker, and that means the inverter. Given our battery scare, I decided not to risk turning on the inverter and using up too much power before we had to start the engine for our trip. When Larry got up, he said, “How are you?” and I said, “Coffeeless.” “Well, I guess I better turn on the engine so we can turn on the inverter,” he said. He turned the key and pushed the button, and all we heard was a click.
This can’t be! This is a brand new battery! We carefully charged it up last night! What is going on!
Larry tried any number of little tricks, but none of them worked. There we were, stopped in our tracks again. After some time for thought, Larry came up with a plan. We were anchored near a marina, less than a quarter of a mile. We would use the dinghy to push the boat to the marina, where we hoped they would let us tie up for a few hours and use their shore power to charge this battery. For the right price, of course!
You would have enjoyed the show. We tied the dinghy to one side of the boat, with any number false starts as we tried to work together despite radically different perceptions of the right way to get this task done. Then Larry climbed into the dinghy and started the outboard. I went into the cockpit and turned the wheel so we could test whether the dinghy could provide enough power to move the boat. It actually worked!
So — the next move was to tie the dock lines and fenders on the other side of the boat and call the marina. I busied myself with lines and fenders, and Larry went back into the boat. I thought he was calling the marina. Then I saw him come back up and sit down beside the starter for the diesel engine. He turned the key, he pushed the button, and miracle of miracles, the engine started.
We both heaved a sigh of relief that we would not need to use the dinghy to move the boat, but neither of us regarded this outcome as a reliable indicator that it was time to head out of town. We called Harborview and arranged to go back so Larry can figure out what really happened and fix the problem.
So here we are. Still in Baltimore. Still not headed south. And I expect that we will be here two or three days. We could be here for a week. It is hard to imagine when we will actually be moving southward. I may even need to shop for groceries again!
Well, at least I have internet, but that is another story. Before we left Harborview for the boatyard, Larry purchased an antenna and software that are supposed to connect to the networking hardware in our laptops and enhance reception of wireless signals. He asked me if I would like to try it, so I did. It didn’t work. We loaded the driver, plugged in the antenna, and nothing. You would have thought I was in a desert. So, we uninstalled the software. I went back to the laptop’s own wireless features, found wireless networks and clicked one to connect. It failed, and I have not been able to connect since. Right now I am using my Dell mini. I hope that using this little guy I can connect to Microsoft support and figure out how to recactivate my network adapters. AAAAAAaaaagggghhhhh!
All I really want is peace and connectivity and the wind in my face as I cruise south. I’m doing just fine, but boy am I flexed!
Aboard No Boundaries
July 19, 2009
When I was a child, I loved fairy tales, whether told in poetry or prose. Often when a situation developed in a bad direction, the storyteller would say things like, “Alas, poor Jack was doomed,” or “Alack, there was no hope.” That is how we feel after our attempt to repair the clew of our genoa.
The Sailrite sewing machine we purchased as part of our preparation to cruise is advertised with language suited to the Unsinkable Molly Brown. You would almost expect it to walk on water. We thought it would enable us to fix any sail problem that beset us as we cruised. We wanted to be as self-sufficient as possible, and we considered this sewing machine to be a key element in our bag of tricks.
Sadly, even Sailrite has its limitations.
When I undertook to mend the binding on the sail’s edge, my biggest challenge was simply to keep the fabric moving. Every few stitches I needed to drag that big sail forward again. Such exercise will keep you out of the gym, I can tell you. However, as far as the sewing machine was concerned, it was a trivial challenge. It stitched along merrily with never a shudder.
When I undertook to repair a binding on the foot of the sail with several layers of cloth that encased the leech line, that too, proved no big challenge for this sewing machine. I used double-sided seam tape to hold the layers in place, and the machine easily managed all those layers.
However, when it came time to make the most important repair, the replacement of the frayed webbing at the clew, the sewing machine hit a wall.
The machine has many wonderful features to enable it to work with layers and stiffness and so forth. I could completely disengage the presser foot and force it up another fraction of an inch in order to get the stiffened clew with its reinforcements under the needle. I could then re-engage the pressure and set a tight tension that would hold the stitching. I could not do any of this alone, because I could not hold the weight and the stiffness by myself and still crank the machine. The powerful hand crank that comes with a Sailrite is a really wonderful accessory, because it gives us the flexibility to use the machine when no electric power is available, but in this situation, using the hand crank allowed more control as well. Sewing one stitch at a time, stopping after every stitch to be sure I was getting the desired result, was crucial in this challenging work.
Still, despite Larry’s help, and with his eagle eye on things, I was defeated in my effort to make this repair.
Before I asked him for help, I carefully placed my first strip of webbing and maneuvered all the pieces into the right place, gamely tried to roll that clew up to travel under the machine arm, and stitched carefully. On my third stitch, the bobbin popped out of the chase. I asked Larry to help me start over, and once everything was back in place, we pulled out the piece that covers the bobbin so Larry could see what was happening. I stitched one stitch, and all was well. I stitched one more stitch. Still good. Then I took the needle down again, and the bobbin popped out, preventing the needle from moving any further. Larry popped the bobbin back in. I stitched two more stitches before the bobbin popped out again.
It was time to ask for help. I called the Sailrite number, expecting to get someone who would tell me that I needed to make some small adjustment I had missed. Instead, after listening to my tail of woe, the support tech, actually the manager of the Annapolis store, told me I had hit the limit of the machine. It does a lot of things very well, but repair of the clew with its stiffened reinforcements covered with layers of cloth and webbing were simply beyond the capabilities of the machine. The behavior I observed was the machine telling me that it could not do what I had asked of it.
This was very discouraging news. Quantum Sails has a loft in Newport, and that is actually where we obtained the webbing I was using. Their sail maker had given me tips and advice that helped me to plan my work. But sadly, alas and alack, I could not complete my project. We could have engaged their services to make the repair instead of buying the webbing from them. At this point, it was obvious we had to go back and engage their services after all.
Larry and I shook our heads and mourned. I picked up my tools and supplies. Larry brought the machine below and put the sail away. I felt completely exhausted, as if I had run a long race, and I asked myself why I was so tired. Then I realized that it was the spiritual depletion due to my disappointment. I was thrilled and happy when I was working on my project, because I thought I could save us a lot of time and money. I didn’t like to discover that there was a limit to what I could do with that sewing machine. I really wanted it to be the equal of the huge sewing machine I saw in Quantum’s loft. Reality is sometimes extremely unpleasant. When hopes are dashed, it may be a spiritual wound, but it has physical consequences. I felt as tired as I felt after our 50-hour passage.
No point crying, however. I can sing “alas and alack” as long as I like, and it won’t change anything. Time to get moving. Time to do what it takes and go forward. As the Bible says, we must gird up our loins and hie ourselves to Quantum tomorrow. We already know that their production schedule is about over, so we devoutly hope to squeeze our order into the early part of their repair work. Enough of “alas and alack.” Time to move on.
July 2, 2009
Aboard No Boundaries
In the navigable waters in the USA, we spend a lot of our cruising time looking for markers. Usually we watch for red and green buoys. We remember the sailor’s mantra, “Red, Right, Returning,” and we get a little confused sometimes in rivers or canals, trying to remember if upstream or downstream is “Returning.”
Sometimes we argue, not about which marker we need to find, but rather about which marker we have actually found. We seek a red marker “6L” and I shout “I see it.”
“Where?” asks the captain.
“Over there,” I say, pointing.
“Where?” he asks again.
The problem is that I am standing on the port side of the aft deck while he is sitting at the helm. When I point to the silhouette I can barely distinguish as a red marker, from his perspective, my finger appears to be pointing somewhere else altogether. From our different starting points, the light and shadow on the water do not look the same. It may take two or three “sightings” before we agree that we are both looking at the marker we wanted to find.
Differences in point of view color our lives in many ways. I remember when my mother acquired a wonderful sewing machine that made fabulous embroidered designs. What fun she had with all those designs! She put arrowheads on stitched-down pleats. She decorated my clothes and my doll’s clothes with frieze lines and flowers. It was wonderful.
However, she did not want to exclude anyone. To share the joy, she made a set of colorful string ties for my brother. She made them in every color imaginable. She embroidered them with all the designs her machine could make. She stitched. She pressed. She spread them all out on the dining room table for everyone to admire. And each morning as my brother headed out for school, she looked him over and asked, “Did you forget your new string tie?” She dug in his drawer to find just the right tie for that day’s shirt. I think that my mother and my brother saw those ties from two different points of view.
Today as we transited the C&D Canal, we encountered a problem. The railroad bridge with only 45 feet of clearance was down. The top of our mast is 55 feet above the water. In my opinion we need 70 feet to feel safe, and if I were asked about it, that is what I would say. “We need 70 feet.”
The captain, however, tells it like it is. When the bridgemaster asked for our height, Larry said, “55 feet.” But then he added,”We would really like 70.” That made me nervous. The bridgemaster had already told us that men were working on the bridge, so I worried that he might not want to move that bridge one inch more than absolutely necessary.
Then the bridgemaster told us that as soon as he could see us, he would raise the bridge. That really put me in a spin. We could see that bridge right in front of us. When exactly was he going to see us? Would there even be time for the bridge to be raised high enough? I didn’t like this plan one bit. What was he waiting for?
He told us to proceed, so we did. It seemed to me that we were awfully close to that bridge when the bridgemaster came back to say that he could see us and was starting to raise the bridge. “You don’t need to stop and wait,” he said. “Just keep moving. You will have plenty of room.” Easy for him to say! He was sitting on this monster steel bridge that we could not damage if we tried. We were asked to proceed toward it as if it would simply be where it needed to be when it needed to be there. Talk about a faith challenge!
My faith was weak. We moved forward, and I saw the bridge inching up ever so slowly. Of course it was slow. How many gazillion tons does it weigh? I was standing on the back deck looking up. I kept waiting to see that bridge rise higher than the top of the mast, and it wasn’t happening. Finally I screamed. “Larry, stop! Stop! You have to stop!”
Larry slowed the engine, and I saw him try to make a sharp turn away from the bridge. “You have to stop! We’re going to hit it!” I was frantic. I could hear men’s voices shouting, “Keep going! Plenty of room! You have twenty feet.”
I kept looking at the top of the mast. There was no way we would go under that bridge. I expected to hear a horrific “Bonnnggggg!” at any moment. Again I heard the voices. “You have forty feet! Keep going!” Then amazingly, I looked up and saw the underside of the bridge. We were suddenly through it and no disaster. We waved to the men and shouted “Thank you!” They waved and shouted “You’re welcome. Happy sailing!”
I am pretty sure that I am the subject of dinner table conversation in a half dozen homes tonight where the men who were working on the bridge tell about the frenzied screaming woman who nearly created a disaster when there wasn’t one. From where they stood, they could see that we truly did have plenty of clearance. They were standing on a bridge pier almost at the level of the top of the mast. I was standing at the bottom of the mast looking up. From the deck of the boat, looking up, the top of the mast looks much more than 50 feet away. When we came to the next bridge, which is reported to have 150 feet of clearance above the water, I watched as we approached the bridge. Even there, knowing that the bridge was 150 feet above, it still appeared to me that our mast would never go under it until we were finally there.
It is a real metaphor for life. How often have you faced a situation that appeared insoluble from your perspective only to have a friend say something like, “What if you looked at it this way?” As long as I lacked the ability either to get a new perspective on the relationship of our masthead to the bridge or the ability to have some faith in the bridgemaster, I was doomed. We face a lot of situations in real life that are like that. We lock in our perspective on the problem, and we have no faith in anyone else. We stand rooted in our self-centered universe and refuse to trust anyone to help us. The next time I come to a bridge, or to a seemingly insoluble problem, I will try to trust the perspective of the folks who are in a better position to see the truth than I am.