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.
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.
Christmas is over. The generator is back in its proper place aboard the boat. Larry is testing and retesting and verifying everything about it. When we leave St. Marys, it will be a long time before we are in a convenient place to get help if we need it.
It is time to make that big step – crossing the Gulf Stream and arriving in the Bahamas.
Are we ready? I doubt it. We have tried to get ready, but we have never done anything quite like this before. I used to go around thinking I was prepared to stay out for three months, but as we plan ahead to this adventure, I have learned how little I knew. We have been blessed with friends who have done it, and they have shared their experience with us. We are trying to make sense of it all.
Food. When I sat down with calendar pages for three months and imagined how we would eat three meals a day for that whole time, it proved more challenging than I realized. I tried several different ways to put it all together, but I am convinced that all I have is my best guess. We bought food twice, because I could not bring myself to buy that much the first time out. We bought supplies. We bought things, just in case. Now the boat is a maze of items counted and stacked, uncounted and still in bags, inventoried and put away. I keep telling myself there is room for everything, but I’m still convincing myself that I can cram in one more thing here, one more there.
Money. We have cash for the trip, but like any other trip, I am sure it will cost more than we plan. And we understand that, in the Bahamas, cash is king. Do we need to get more? hmmmmm.
Weather. The Gulf Stream is a great river within the ocean. It goes north with such energy that we are told it is very, very important to plan to cruise when the wind and wave reports are right. The force of the current combined with a wind in the opposite direction is reputed to create conditions no sane person wants to fight. So we scrutinize the reports and the forecasts and pick the brain of experienced cruisers. But sometime, we have to get going.
Thinking. Thinking. I wonder how the original polar explorers ever did it. For that matter, how did Columbus do it? He had much less information than we have. No charts. No idea how far he had to go. Nobody to tell him what it would be like where he actually landed, so all his expectations were completely in error. Yet he departed, he arrived, he returned. Surely we can do the same with charts, radio and all kinds of friendly advice.
When we swooshed across the Francis Drake Channel in February, 1995, on our first sailing adventure, we knew we wanted more of it. It is now upon us, and it looks a little different from this side. We worked hard, we dreamed intently, and we persevered. Here we go. Hurray!
6/29/09
Aboard No Boundaries
I know that by the time you read this post, it will be long past the date of departure. I am just trying to keep the timeline straight. Keep reading, please, and come back every day or two for updates.
Ever since May 1, we have worked and worked on the boat with one goal in mind: to get out of Chesapeake Bay and go north. It has been much harder to achieve than we imagined on May 1. I have chronicled for you some of our adventures, but I have left out a lot of the tedium. Let’s face it. A woman standing in front of a pile of lines, bags, buckets and assorted paraphernalia struggling to figure out how to fit them into an impossibly small space does not present compelling drama. Anyone who ever tried to help a teenager clean his room has already been there, and it was not fun.
However, today we have put a lot of those tasks behind us. The ones that remain look manageable, and it even looks as if we might be done in a day or two. We are starting to say, “Maybe tomorrow, or at least the next day.”
Yesterday we came back to Baltimore for a few supplies and to visit with friends one more time. The fuel dock was our first stop, and we had expected that with the fuel would come a free pumpout. That is an advertised benefit we count on. However, as sailing luck would have it, what we expected was not exactly what we got. The fuel dock attendant told us that the pumpout machine was broken and the parts were on order. AAaaaggghhh!
The solution was to go somewhere else and pay for the service. We decided to go the Baltimore Marine Center, located right beside the anchorage where we wanted to spend the night. The wind was blowing very hard toward their dock as we arrived, and we cruised past it once to assess the situation. Unlike the dock where we had bought fuel, BMC does not have fenders along the whole length of the dock. They have four fenders at each pump and nothing for long stretches in between. You had better get it right when you dock there.
We circled a second time trying to get a good feel for the approach. Then we turned to face that dock a third time, thinking we had it well planned. However, as we approached the fenders, but probably ten feet before the first one, a gust of wind threw us forcefully against the unguarded wood of the dock. There was a sickening screech. Then we arrived at the fender and we were certainly close enough for me to jump off and try to tie down the boat.
Unfortunately, the same wind that had slammed us into the dock had now taken it into its head to shove us away. I wrapped the spring line around a cleat and dug my feet in, figuratively speaking. Larry briefly put the engine in reverse to fight back at the wind. Then ever so slowly the boat responded to our direction and sank gently against the four fenders. I cleated the spring line, grabbed the stern line as Larry threw it and cleated it quickly before running to the bow to catch that line and cleat it down. We had arrived.
That scratch is repairable, and I always say that an unmarked boat hasn’t had any adventures. We have had a few, and both we and the boat have some marks to prove it. May it always be so.
Tomorrow, or the next day, we head north. If we have any more adventures, we will be sure to let you know when we connect with cyberworld again.
We are finally moving forward again. If you keep track of us, and I hope you don’t spend a lot of effort at it, you will remember that we left Harborview on May 1. We spent a week in the boatyard for bottom paint and new lifelines. We spend three weeks after that continuing to work through a lot of junk on the deck, fine-tuning some of Larry’s installations, and cleaning the boat. We spent some time at Rock Creek, made a trip back to Baltimore for groceries and departed again for the Bay.
We have bounced around a lot, and today we are in the marina only a few hundred feet from where we started. It sounds as if we are going nowhere, but in fact, we have made a lot of progress. If you had seen us on May 1 and then looked us over today, even the least nautical person would notice that this boat looks a lot more shipshape. That is the point of it all. Progress every day toward the goal. We are retired, after all, so we don’t have the sense of urgency that drives high-tech projects. We want to go cruising, but we are taking time along the way to enjoy the process.
Today we had the joy of attending worship at Christ Church again, since we are here. After seven Sundays away, it was wonderful to be there. That sanctuary inspires worship and sets us on the right course. It was also great to see our friends. Some thought we had finished our cruising and were returning for good. They could hardly take in the idea that seven weeks were devoted to getting ready and the real trip is still ahead.
We, too, get a little discouraged sometimes, but we will not stop working. It really is amazing the way each new task begins with a new problem. We are back in Harborview now simply because the people who sold us our life raft also sold us a bracket that didn’t fit the raft. Is that not weird? But we have learned that this is boat life. It is just the way it is.
In fact, we don’t have the worst of it, or we haven’t had the worst of it yet. I am reading Joshua Slocum’s book “Sailing Alone Around The World”, and I just read about a day on which he was hit by a huge wave. He noticed the wave building as it roared toward him. He dropped all sail and climbed into the rigging. He left the deck! I could not imagine why, but then the wave hit. He said that for several minutes he could not see the deck. Yet after the wave roared on, the boat shook itself and then continued to sail on. He climbed down out of the rigging to the deck.
So far, we have never had such an experience, and I hope we won’t. Joshua Slocum had no way of predicting weather at all, so he could not have known when storms were building until they were too close for him to run away. We plan to use all the weather information at our disposal to avoid known storms. Most people we know who take advantage of the information manage to avoid the kind of drama Joshua Slocum faced daily.
Tomorrow we will leave Harborview with a plan to continue cruising in the Bay while we store the rest of our gear. We look for that work to be finished within ten days. Please do not count the hours. We aren’t that good with schedules. However, if we are done in ten days, it means we should be headed out of the Bay by July 1. Stay tuned for further developments. The good ship No Boundaries will soon be on the move again.
Aboard No Boundaries
June 10, 09
Planning is one of my best things. I have been a planner for as long as I can remember. I make lists, put notes on calendars, estimate time to goal, and measure my progress. Even though I am retired and cruising, I can’t help myself. Before I start my day, I always go over my lists – little tasks that need doing, projects I want to work on, meal plans. I am constantly revising and editing my plans to accommodate our cruise plans. Some people think I just can’t let go of being a consultant, but the real explanation is that much of my success as a consultant was the result of this quirk of my personality.
Planning is a good life skill, I think. Because I plan, I accomplish some things that would be ignored or forgotten otherwise. Maybe those things don’t matter to other people, but they matter to me. It makes me very happy to cross something off today’s list. It makes me happy to see that I am more than half done with a project. It is exciting to think during the day about my meal plans and how I can make the meals more flavorful or colorful or whatever.
However, as good and valuable as planning is, sometimes flexibility is the better skill. Every once in a while, reality throws a party that simply blows away all the prior planning in the world. When reality slaps you in the face, whining, “but I had a plan” will not help.
Last night, reality slapped us in the face with a summer thunderstorm. We cruised from the Tidewater Marine Service Center in Port Covington about 11AM bound for Lankford Creek on the Eastern Shore. We had heard that there might be some thunderstorms late in the day, but none of the weather reports we heard referenced that area.
Just as we were circling the eastern branch of the creek, around 5PM, looking for a place to anchor, we heard a weather alarm that alarmed us. The Weather Service was reporting an imminent storm in the tidal Potomac with torrential downpours, potential for winds at 60 mph, and even hail. It was traveling up a track from the southeast. Such a track was like an arrow pointing right at us. We had to plan for the extreme likelihood that this storm would soon engulf us.
We already knew that the East Fork is a poor place to be in a big blow. On a memorable evening several years ago, we spent hours circling in the East Fork trying to find a place where the anchor would hold. In the middle of the night we gave up and picked our way through the narrow channel to the West Fork, where we also never found good holding. To hear that such winds might be in our near future in this location was extremely disconcerting.
We had the advantage this time of making our trip to the West Fork, on the other side of Cacaway Island, in daylight. Yet, as we rounded the tip of the island, hoping to find a little shelter there, we could see the clouds building up east and southeast of us. They became huge. There were the soft bulbous undersides that spawn tornadoes. Some of the formations we could see showed us tumultuous downdrafts and chaotic activity. We began to see lightning.
We made a circle around the available space for anchoring. Another sailboat was already anchored almost in the middle of the channel behind the island, leaving us plenty of room to anchor closer in. We set the anchor as the rain began to fall, and then the storm exploded. Our anchor was set as well as we could manage in the location, but it could not hold against the fury that had us in its power. The storm commenced about 6PM.
On the previous occasion when we were beset by a storm in the East Fork, the wind blew furiously from one direction for hours. It was easy to see when the anchor dragged as the bow turned away from the wind and the beam of the boat became like a sail that the wind used to push us where it would. It was, therefore, easy to figure out where we needed to find shelter in order to get some relief from the wind. Knowing what we needed did not, however, automatically produce what we needed. It was a memorable 36 hours.
This new storm, on the other hand, blew in all directions. It whirled around us, and it whirled us around. Ferocious gusts heeled us over as if we were sailing in a high wind, even though we did not have any sail deployed. It was an amazing sight to see the waves change direction so rapidly that we might have been in a huge mixing bowl. At one point, we realized that we were being dragged very close to the other boat in the cove, so Larry drove into the wind and avoided a collision. Some time after 7PM the wind fell below 10 knots and the rain subsided.
We had kept the engine running and the radio tuned to the weather station throughout. Originally, the storm was projected to end about 7:30, so we thought we might be able to reset the anchor and relax, but it was not to be. First, the weather announcers changed the projection of the storm to run through 9PM, and second, we soon discovered for ourselves that the lull was only temporary. We did reset the anchor, but that work was hardly done before the wind slammed into us again.
Again we were dragged this way and that. At one point we could see that we were being pushed very close to the island, where we would be in danger of grounding. At another point, we were pushed away from the island, whirled and tilted and shaken thoroughly. Whenever possible, Larry steered the boat where he thought we would be safest, but things changed so rapidly that it was almost impossible to guess where to point the boat or to put the pressure. We briefly grounded near the island, but the bottom is silt, the real reason it is so hard to get the anchor to hold, and another gust shook us loose. Finally the wind died down, the rain stopped, and we began to see small openings between clouds. The sun was setting in a fierce red glow, turning the storm clouds into innocent-looking little cherubs.
After 9PM, the rest of the evening was predicted to be relatively calm. Winds were not projected to exceed 15 knots. We observed that the wind fluctuated between 5 and 15 knots, but we were no longer dragging. We had survived the assault and were little the worse for wear, except for complete exhaustion.
Of course, like always, I had a meal planned for this evening. I had thought we could dine on deck and watch the sun set. Needless to say, reality swept away that plan completely. Somewhere around 8PM when things were beginning to calm a bit, I thought I might make something to eat. We finally settled for some chicken salad and cottage cheese in the cockpit still watching the radar to see if more storms were coming our way, still watching in every direction, trying to be sure that the boat was still at anchor, not dragging again. All the planning in the world was irrelevant right then. The only plan that mattered was to continue to pay attention and be ready to do what it took to save the boat and ourselves.
I like being a planner. It gives my life order and direction. I am not happy without a plan. Cruising, however, teaches me that planning is only good when predictable conditions continue. When the unpredictable, the unexpected, the unwanted, overpowers your plans, it is time to flex. It is time to use God’s precious gifts of intelligence, courage and faith to get through the storm.