Not So Fun Passage
We stayed a couple of days in Culebra in the Spanish Virgin Islands before heading over to San Juan, Puerto Rico. When we came south last year, we hugged the west and south coasts of Puerto Rico, as the north coast is no fun for folks heading to the Caribbean. But this time we wanted to head toward the Florida Keys, and the north coast is the fastest way there. We had a nice couple of days anchored outside the pleasure boat marina in San Juan, meeting up with some old friends from Trinidad, and meeting new ones. They were all heading for San Salvador in the Bahamas (the island held to be most likely the one where Columbus landed in 1492), about 600 miles and 3-5 days away (depending on boat speed). We took another look at the weather in Key West and the temps and decided maybe we'd waited a bit too long to do the Florida Keys this year, and made the snap decision to head to San Salvador with the other cruisers.
We did have to get our mainsail repaired. Not sure we mentioned it in a previous journal, but we (I) managed to tear the foot of the mainsail when unfurling it. Inattention and I pulled too hard on the outhaul without unfurling enough and the foot tore for about 2 feet. We found a sailmaker in San Juan who did a very nice repair on the sail. Nice guy and superb customer service - Armstrong Sails.
We left San Juan Sunday morning, May 4, about 8AM. We quickly passed the other 2 boats that had left a bit earlier than we had, as we were longer than they and therefore faster. We had a nice wind from abaft the beam (behind us), so we hoisted the main and were on our way. The wind was far enough behind us to use the downwind pole and go "wing and wing". That means the mainsail was let out to port and we used our downwind pole to push the genoa out over the starboard side. Like 2 wings to either side of the boat and the wind coming from behind to push us along. We were doing 7 1/2 knots consistently and life was good, especially once the seas abated by Monday morning. The first 24 hours weren't particularly pleasant, though, with a fair bit of rolling side-to-side.
This was planned to be our first multiple day passage and we had expected it to take us 3-4 days to do the 600 miles from San Juan to San Salvador. We were doing just fine for the first 48 hours and then it all went to hell in a big hurry.
Tuesday morning we were both up around 9AM and the wind had moved around such that we needed to jibe the boat, that is, turn the boat and change the sails so that the wind was coming from the port quarter instead of the starboard quarter. We jibed the mainsail easily. We decided to furl the genoa and then pole it out to port. But somehow, in the process of rolling it up we managed to get it hopelessly wrapped around the forestay, with a couple of big hunks of sail catching the wind and flopping and flapping and booming as we sailed along.
You'll recall we'd had problems furling the jib in the Virgins and had had to replace the primary jib halyard after kinking the wire rope part of it. We figure this was just a continuation of the same problems we'd had and that we'd only fixed the symptom by replacing the halyard and that we hadn't fixed the fundamental problem, whatever it was. At any rate, here we had this horrendous wrap in the jib midway between San Juan and San Salvador.
Luckily we were only 35 miles north of Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands, so we made the decision to turn south, anchor, and attend to the jib. We started the engine and started to roll up the mainsail. The wind was out of the southeast and too much on the nose to sail. Recall that our mainsail rolls up into the mast (in-mast roller furling). When I pushed the button that runs the motor that rolls up the sail the motor went round and round, but the sail didn't move. I took a winch handle and went up to the mast to roll it up manually (we'd had to do this once before in Martinique), but that didn't turn the sail, either. We dropped the main, managing to break one of the battens as we did so, but we did get it down and folded up on deck.
At this point I think we'd both had enough of this cruising life and were considering packing it in. Unfortunately we didn't have much choice and had to continue.
It took all day to motor the 35 miles. At first we were only making 2 1/2 knots as we were heading nearly directly into the wind and the jib had enough sail out to impede our progress. It wasn't a very pleasant trip to Grand Turk. We arrived just before sunset and anchored almost exactly in the spot where we'd anchored when we'd last been there last year. We'd made a few half-hearted attempts to clear the wrap in the jib on the way down, and another couple once we anchored. We did manage to reduce the amount of sail that was flapping in the breeze, though, and left it until morning. We were really tired after 2 1/2 days on passage. We both wondered what would it have been like if this had happened 2 1/2 days into a passage across the Atlantic
Ocean? Not fun to contemplate.
Wednesday morning we were up bright and early and found that the main had not furled because the rod that connects the electric furling motor to the spool inside the mast had sheared completely through! How this happened, we haven't a clue. It may have been damaged when we tore the mainsail, as that would have put substantial torque on the spool. But it's an inch-thick aluminum extrusion, and it's still not clear how we managed to break it so badly.
We then turned our attention to clearing the wrap. We pulled and pulled with the winches, putting way too much strain on the forestay. We thought we'd break the jib sheets or do some other major damage, but we just couldn't unwind the sail. Finally, we found where the jib sheets attached to the sail (the knots were buried under multiple layers of sailcloth, tightly rolled up around the forestay), and managed to cut them away. That allowed us to unroll the sail and drop it onto the deck. Maryann probably had suggested this exact strategy the day before, but apparently the idea got lost in translation.
Once we got the jib dropped on deck and folded away we found that we had indeed damaged the aluminum extrusion that the jib connects to and around which the sail is rolled up when it's furled. We bent it and bent the slot that holds the sail as it's hoisted. OK, we can motor to San Salvador; it's only 300 miles away and we've done nearly that much mileage previously.
One of our pre-departure checklist items is to check the bilge to make sure both the primary and the backup bilge pump are working and the high-water alarm is functional. When we looked in the bilge it was black with crud and *neither* bilge pump was working! At this point I really was ready to leave the boat forever, but we'd never be able to find someone to move it somewhere it could be sold!
We hadn't been quite diligent enough in the past couple of months keeping the bilge clean. The bilge collects everything and anything that falls into the bottom of the boat and also collects any oil or diesel or refrigerant or any other liquid. Our bilge was a mess. We knew that our rudder stock was still leaking badly - in fact we have the new packing material to fix it, but were waiting until we could get a packing extraction tool on back order (it's kind of like a long corkscrew and apparently is really necessary to get the old packing material out). The leak through the packing was probably filling the bilge every 20 or 30 minutes. We'd had some diesel spill into the bilge when replacing the fuel filters on the generator recently. We also know we have a tiny leak in our refrigerator refrigerant lines as we've had to have the refrigerant topped off twice now since we had the new compressor installed last November. Anyway, all of this, plus bits and pieces of crud and some dissolved tubing had all contributed to a truly foul bilge.
We spent the next few hours cleaning it. We had to remove the switches, the primary pump, the intake for the secondary pump, and scrub, scrub, scrub. The filter that keeps crud out of the secondary pump was cracked, causing it to suck air. It was also completely clogged. Replacing the filter and cleaning the rest of it all got it working again. The primary bilge pump had crud in it's intake and cleaning it got it working again. Repeated draining and scrubbing and we finally had everything back together and working again. But by then it was too late to leave, so we stayed a second night in Grand Turk.
Thursday morning we left Grand Turk, resuming our course for San Salvador. As we were doing our departure checks we found that the AIS was no longer functioning. This is the VHF radio receiver that detects the radio signal put out by large ships (mandated by the Coast Guard a couple of years back for all boats larger than 300 tons). This was a major blow, as we rely on it to show us what shipping traffic is around us. And somewhere along the way our radar had gone kaput, so we would be relying on visuals for detecting ship traffic.
We ran all day Thursday and into Friday when we decided that with the winds having come around to the west and due to come out of the northwest that we should probably give San Salvador a pass. There are no protected anchorages on the island from northwest winds that would have allowed us to check in with customs and immigration. So we altered course for between Rum Cay (where we had been last year for a few days) and Conception Island and on into the Exuma Sound, on the way to Nassau.
Saturday morning, around 2:30AM in the middle of Exuma Sound, pitch black, and no moon, I was on watch when I felt a nasty thump. Oh shit, the boat hit something! A quick check of the bilge and interior spaces of the boat didn't reveal anything amiss, but damn, we now have a nasty vibration that's especially bad right above where the prop is! I found that if I slowed the boat to 5 knots, the vibration became almost unnoticeable. You know, words can hardly describe the feeling of knowing you've hit something in the absolute pitch black of 2:30AM and that something's not right with the boat and you've got another 4 hours or so before sunrise. It's not a fun feeling.
Around 7AM I was out on the stern, trying to see if I could see anything and sure enough there's
something streaming back from under the stern! We stop the boat (this is in the middle of the ocean, with about 4000 feet of water between the surface and the sea floor) and I see that it's some rope that we're trailing. I strip, put on mask and fins, and jump in the water. It's 80-some degrees, but it feels icy at first. Luckily the seas had dropped to the point of almost calm, which was really nice. Kind of eerie swimming around in this intensely deep blue void. And sure enough there's some nylon 3-strand line, one piece caught where the rudder connects to the boat and another piece draped around the skeg just forward of the prop. I free both pieces, run the engine up to cruising RPMs and no vibration! We're back in business, so we resume course for the Great Bahama Bank.
Just a little after noon we spot Highbourne Cay, where we will leave Exuma Sound and its comfortable depths, and pass onto the Great Bahama Bank with its nerve-wracking shallows. The path onto the banks isn't exactly straightforward and we have a few tense moments negotiating it. It's probably too late to go across to Nassau, especially since we need good sunlight from behind to see the coral heads scattered about in the Yellow Bank, midway to Nassau. So we drop the hook off Highbourne Cay and have a good night's sleep after nearly 50 hours of continuous motoring.
Sunday morning we leave Highbourne Cay for Nassau. It's a 30-mile or so motor across the banks and spotting the coral heads is pretty easy. We're a whole lot more relaxed about the passage than when we had come from Nassau to this area a year ago January! Probably too complacent, but we sight Nassau, make a reservation for a slip in a marina, and tie up on Sunday afternoon. It's been 7 days of passage with enough thrills and chills to last a lifetime.
It's now Tuesday evening and we'll be leaving tomorrow morning for Chub Cay, about 35 miles away. We plan to anchor there overnight, then cross another part of the Great Bahama Bank to Bimini Island, where we plan to anchor Thursday night. Then Friday morning, provided the weather forecast holds, we'll head across the Gulf Stream to Fort Lauderdale. We have an appointment with a guy who's supposed to be the best rigger in south Florida. It's not going to be inexpensive to fix our rigging - we have to replace a good part of the jib roller furling and we'll have to pull the mast out of the boat and replace a good part of the in-mast roller furling as well. We'll also need new running rigging, including new jib sheets, a new outhaul, a new spinnaker halyard, repair the primary jib halyard, and god knows what else. Oh, and we'll need to have the radar checked out and repaired and get the AIS fixed as well.
Are we inept or just unlucky? Or maybe a bit of both?
We did have to get our mainsail repaired. Not sure we mentioned it in a previous journal, but we (I) managed to tear the foot of the mainsail when unfurling it. Inattention and I pulled too hard on the outhaul without unfurling enough and the foot tore for about 2 feet. We found a sailmaker in San Juan who did a very nice repair on the sail. Nice guy and superb customer service - Armstrong Sails.
We left San Juan Sunday morning, May 4, about 8AM. We quickly passed the other 2 boats that had left a bit earlier than we had, as we were longer than they and therefore faster. We had a nice wind from abaft the beam (behind us), so we hoisted the main and were on our way. The wind was far enough behind us to use the downwind pole and go "wing and wing". That means the mainsail was let out to port and we used our downwind pole to push the genoa out over the starboard side. Like 2 wings to either side of the boat and the wind coming from behind to push us along. We were doing 7 1/2 knots consistently and life was good, especially once the seas abated by Monday morning. The first 24 hours weren't particularly pleasant, though, with a fair bit of rolling side-to-side.
This was planned to be our first multiple day passage and we had expected it to take us 3-4 days to do the 600 miles from San Juan to San Salvador. We were doing just fine for the first 48 hours and then it all went to hell in a big hurry.
Tuesday morning we were both up around 9AM and the wind had moved around such that we needed to jibe the boat, that is, turn the boat and change the sails so that the wind was coming from the port quarter instead of the starboard quarter. We jibed the mainsail easily. We decided to furl the genoa and then pole it out to port. But somehow, in the process of rolling it up we managed to get it hopelessly wrapped around the forestay, with a couple of big hunks of sail catching the wind and flopping and flapping and booming as we sailed along.
You'll recall we'd had problems furling the jib in the Virgins and had had to replace the primary jib halyard after kinking the wire rope part of it. We figure this was just a continuation of the same problems we'd had and that we'd only fixed the symptom by replacing the halyard and that we hadn't fixed the fundamental problem, whatever it was. At any rate, here we had this horrendous wrap in the jib midway between San Juan and San Salvador.
Luckily we were only 35 miles north of Grand Turk in the Turks and Caicos Islands, so we made the decision to turn south, anchor, and attend to the jib. We started the engine and started to roll up the mainsail. The wind was out of the southeast and too much on the nose to sail. Recall that our mainsail rolls up into the mast (in-mast roller furling). When I pushed the button that runs the motor that rolls up the sail the motor went round and round, but the sail didn't move. I took a winch handle and went up to the mast to roll it up manually (we'd had to do this once before in Martinique), but that didn't turn the sail, either. We dropped the main, managing to break one of the battens as we did so, but we did get it down and folded up on deck.
At this point I think we'd both had enough of this cruising life and were considering packing it in. Unfortunately we didn't have much choice and had to continue.
It took all day to motor the 35 miles. At first we were only making 2 1/2 knots as we were heading nearly directly into the wind and the jib had enough sail out to impede our progress. It wasn't a very pleasant trip to Grand Turk. We arrived just before sunset and anchored almost exactly in the spot where we'd anchored when we'd last been there last year. We'd made a few half-hearted attempts to clear the wrap in the jib on the way down, and another couple once we anchored. We did manage to reduce the amount of sail that was flapping in the breeze, though, and left it until morning. We were really tired after 2 1/2 days on passage. We both wondered what would it have been like if this had happened 2 1/2 days into a passage across the Atlantic
Ocean? Not fun to contemplate.
Wednesday morning we were up bright and early and found that the main had not furled because the rod that connects the electric furling motor to the spool inside the mast had sheared completely through! How this happened, we haven't a clue. It may have been damaged when we tore the mainsail, as that would have put substantial torque on the spool. But it's an inch-thick aluminum extrusion, and it's still not clear how we managed to break it so badly.
We then turned our attention to clearing the wrap. We pulled and pulled with the winches, putting way too much strain on the forestay. We thought we'd break the jib sheets or do some other major damage, but we just couldn't unwind the sail. Finally, we found where the jib sheets attached to the sail (the knots were buried under multiple layers of sailcloth, tightly rolled up around the forestay), and managed to cut them away. That allowed us to unroll the sail and drop it onto the deck. Maryann probably had suggested this exact strategy the day before, but apparently the idea got lost in translation.
Once we got the jib dropped on deck and folded away we found that we had indeed damaged the aluminum extrusion that the jib connects to and around which the sail is rolled up when it's furled. We bent it and bent the slot that holds the sail as it's hoisted. OK, we can motor to San Salvador; it's only 300 miles away and we've done nearly that much mileage previously.
One of our pre-departure checklist items is to check the bilge to make sure both the primary and the backup bilge pump are working and the high-water alarm is functional. When we looked in the bilge it was black with crud and *neither* bilge pump was working! At this point I really was ready to leave the boat forever, but we'd never be able to find someone to move it somewhere it could be sold!
We hadn't been quite diligent enough in the past couple of months keeping the bilge clean. The bilge collects everything and anything that falls into the bottom of the boat and also collects any oil or diesel or refrigerant or any other liquid. Our bilge was a mess. We knew that our rudder stock was still leaking badly - in fact we have the new packing material to fix it, but were waiting until we could get a packing extraction tool on back order (it's kind of like a long corkscrew and apparently is really necessary to get the old packing material out). The leak through the packing was probably filling the bilge every 20 or 30 minutes. We'd had some diesel spill into the bilge when replacing the fuel filters on the generator recently. We also know we have a tiny leak in our refrigerator refrigerant lines as we've had to have the refrigerant topped off twice now since we had the new compressor installed last November. Anyway, all of this, plus bits and pieces of crud and some dissolved tubing had all contributed to a truly foul bilge.
We spent the next few hours cleaning it. We had to remove the switches, the primary pump, the intake for the secondary pump, and scrub, scrub, scrub. The filter that keeps crud out of the secondary pump was cracked, causing it to suck air. It was also completely clogged. Replacing the filter and cleaning the rest of it all got it working again. The primary bilge pump had crud in it's intake and cleaning it got it working again. Repeated draining and scrubbing and we finally had everything back together and working again. But by then it was too late to leave, so we stayed a second night in Grand Turk.
Thursday morning we left Grand Turk, resuming our course for San Salvador. As we were doing our departure checks we found that the AIS was no longer functioning. This is the VHF radio receiver that detects the radio signal put out by large ships (mandated by the Coast Guard a couple of years back for all boats larger than 300 tons). This was a major blow, as we rely on it to show us what shipping traffic is around us. And somewhere along the way our radar had gone kaput, so we would be relying on visuals for detecting ship traffic.
We ran all day Thursday and into Friday when we decided that with the winds having come around to the west and due to come out of the northwest that we should probably give San Salvador a pass. There are no protected anchorages on the island from northwest winds that would have allowed us to check in with customs and immigration. So we altered course for between Rum Cay (where we had been last year for a few days) and Conception Island and on into the Exuma Sound, on the way to Nassau.
Saturday morning, around 2:30AM in the middle of Exuma Sound, pitch black, and no moon, I was on watch when I felt a nasty thump. Oh shit, the boat hit something! A quick check of the bilge and interior spaces of the boat didn't reveal anything amiss, but damn, we now have a nasty vibration that's especially bad right above where the prop is! I found that if I slowed the boat to 5 knots, the vibration became almost unnoticeable. You know, words can hardly describe the feeling of knowing you've hit something in the absolute pitch black of 2:30AM and that something's not right with the boat and you've got another 4 hours or so before sunrise. It's not a fun feeling.
Around 7AM I was out on the stern, trying to see if I could see anything and sure enough there's
something streaming back from under the stern! We stop the boat (this is in the middle of the ocean, with about 4000 feet of water between the surface and the sea floor) and I see that it's some rope that we're trailing. I strip, put on mask and fins, and jump in the water. It's 80-some degrees, but it feels icy at first. Luckily the seas had dropped to the point of almost calm, which was really nice. Kind of eerie swimming around in this intensely deep blue void. And sure enough there's some nylon 3-strand line, one piece caught where the rudder connects to the boat and another piece draped around the skeg just forward of the prop. I free both pieces, run the engine up to cruising RPMs and no vibration! We're back in business, so we resume course for the Great Bahama Bank.
Just a little after noon we spot Highbourne Cay, where we will leave Exuma Sound and its comfortable depths, and pass onto the Great Bahama Bank with its nerve-wracking shallows. The path onto the banks isn't exactly straightforward and we have a few tense moments negotiating it. It's probably too late to go across to Nassau, especially since we need good sunlight from behind to see the coral heads scattered about in the Yellow Bank, midway to Nassau. So we drop the hook off Highbourne Cay and have a good night's sleep after nearly 50 hours of continuous motoring.
Sunday morning we leave Highbourne Cay for Nassau. It's a 30-mile or so motor across the banks and spotting the coral heads is pretty easy. We're a whole lot more relaxed about the passage than when we had come from Nassau to this area a year ago January! Probably too complacent, but we sight Nassau, make a reservation for a slip in a marina, and tie up on Sunday afternoon. It's been 7 days of passage with enough thrills and chills to last a lifetime.
It's now Tuesday evening and we'll be leaving tomorrow morning for Chub Cay, about 35 miles away. We plan to anchor there overnight, then cross another part of the Great Bahama Bank to Bimini Island, where we plan to anchor Thursday night. Then Friday morning, provided the weather forecast holds, we'll head across the Gulf Stream to Fort Lauderdale. We have an appointment with a guy who's supposed to be the best rigger in south Florida. It's not going to be inexpensive to fix our rigging - we have to replace a good part of the jib roller furling and we'll have to pull the mast out of the boat and replace a good part of the in-mast roller furling as well. We'll also need new running rigging, including new jib sheets, a new outhaul, a new spinnaker halyard, repair the primary jib halyard, and god knows what else. Oh, and we'll need to have the radar checked out and repaired and get the AIS fixed as well.
Are we inept or just unlucky? Or maybe a bit of both?
posted by Ken at
12:39 PM |
3 Comments:
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