A Sail of Two Idiots (10 page)

Or not. The freshwater tanks suddenly started sucking air. Incredibly, most boats (at least older ones) have no way of monitoring the freshwater level in the tanks. It's almost impossible to do so in a catamaran, particularly this one. We used the same water tanks for drinking and washing. We had a filter on our kitchen sink to allow us to drink worry-free.

Okay, fine, we were out of water. We went to turn on the electric watermaker for the first time to “make” some (it converts salt water to fresh) and found that it didn't work. Evidently all the pistons were shot because no one had “pickled” the system before taking it out of use. It would cost so much to fix that we decided to leave it broken.

We had a rainwater catchment system—two rain gutters that ran down the outside of the salon (living area) directly into our water tanks. This would work beautifully—when it rained. We needed water
now
, and a lot of it.

Just as with the fueling, the easiest method would have been taking the boat to the docks and using a water hose, but our inexperience kept rearing its ugly little head. That left filling six 5-gallon jerry cans with water and dinghying back and forth until we reached our 185-gallon capacity. Oy.

Motor to dock, fill cans, load into dinghy, haul onto boat, empty into tanks, toss empty containers back into dinghy, motor back. Do it again … and again … and again … Our aching backs. Let's fill the dinghy gas tank again while we're there too, shall we?

Once done, we turned on the faucets and were rewarded with … nothing. Just the constant whirring of our electric water pump, which was supposed to be bringing water to the faucets. Frickin' Frackin'. We speed-dialed Stephen and were told we had an air pocket in the system. No problem. All we had to do was turn on all the faucets for a while … and release all that hard earned water?!

Anything else? Why, yes, of course, there was lots more. We owned a boat now.

A constant source of consternation for us and amusement for you will be learning how to track your energy usage, or amp hours. I have to get a little technical here, but stick with me—it's important.

Some things work on 12 volts (remember car cigarette lighters?), such as your lights, electric anchor windlass (it brings your anchor up and down), navigation electronics, bilge pump (it sucks water out of your boat if you spring a leak), anchor light, refrigeration, and VHF/radio.

You'll likely want some things that work only on 110 or 220 volts, such as your laptop, hair dryer, and blender. Although you can get 12-volt versions of these, we found that those products lacked oomph.

For 110- and 220-volt appliances, you'll need an inverter. It converts the voltage as needed when you plug your gadgets into the boat's electrical sockets. An inverter is a clunky, heavy thing (kind of like a large car battery) that is usually located near your house batteries. Your house batteries (basically the same as those in your car or golf cart) store any energy you collect via solar panel, wind generator, or alternator (a device that makes energy when you run your engines). We had six house batteries (interconnected to combine their capacities), two solar panels, two wind generators, and two alternators.

Note: Inverters are notoriously hard on rechargeable batteries (such as laptop batteries, digital cameras, handheld VHFs, and rechargeable spotlights). Voltage fluctuates, which shortens the life of the battery. So have a few extra rechargeable batteries on hand, too, or use a generator set (genset) instead.

So let's recap: You'll need something (or several somethings) to power all your electronic must-haves (you
absolutely
must have them, right?). You'll need things like a solar panel, a wind generator, an alternator, and/or a genset. The trick is to know how much energy/amps you're using regularly and then match your energy-making doodads to keep up with that usage.

If you know you're going to want a microwave, washer/dryer, TV, several laptops, ice maker, and so on, you'll need to think about how to power those items before you leave the dock. We didn't do that.

If you understood anything I said above, you might be wondering how we knew how much energy we had used and still had left over. Well, this is where some of our daily entertainment came in. We spent countless hours turning things on and then watching the battery monitor display (located in the navigation center) show the number of amps being used. A hair dryer used an amazing amount of electricity and was retired immediately. That same display told us when our batteries were low and even when they were too high (yes, you can overcharge your batteries, which is why you need a controller/regulator). We spent an inordinate amount of time talking to other boaters about their amperage use and bragging about who had the better power-generating/saving systems. You will too; trust me.

Okay, so enough of that technical stuff. Let's get to the point. There was one. We hadn't had wind in a while to allow our wind generators to charge our house batteries, so we had been running the engines (with an alternator on each) in neutral for an hour every day to do the job. We did have two solar panels, but they were tiny. It turned out they weren't working either, but we didn't know that yet.

According to the battery monitoring display, something wasn't right. The batteries didn't appear to be charging. Off to get an electronic amp/voltage meter reader (which we should have had anyway). That gadget gave us the bad news that there was something wrong with one of the alternators. So we raced around trying to find someone to rebuild the alternator for us. Found him. Done. Whew.

You have to be wondering how two inexperienced people like us were figuring out all this. Well, we called fellow Island Spirit owners Stephen and Estelle—a lot. We were also thankful for all the boat equipment-specific manuals and notes left on board by prior owners. They were quite dog-eared by the end of our travels.

Most boat manufacturers have some form of “fan” club out there, from blogs to chat groups. You might want to join one that represents your boat make. Even with their help, we were overwhelmed at times. What
had
we gotten ourselves into? It would not be the last time we asked ourselves that question.

Are we finally ready to leave Florida? Yes, as a matter of fact, we are, and we better leave before we get a bill for $18,000.

N
ovember 8, 2006: Off we go! Onto a sandbar. I kid you not. We got about 10 minutes from where we were anchored and came to a sudden halt. Oops! How incredibly embarrassing!! Didn't we have charts? Well, not exactly. Note the name of this book (instances like these are where blonde jokes come from). We had charts from the Bahamas down the Caribbean chain. Charts are expensive. We didn't want to buy charts of Florida; we were leaving Florida with no plans to come back. So we figured that once we got past Miami and into the ocean, we'd be home free. We also ASSumed that the captain would either have charts or know the area. Nope. Okay, then, we were counting on the chartplotter. Here comes another lesson.

Where was the captain, you ask? Standing right there. Although Captain Tim was a really nice guy, he didn't know the area well and he eschewed all electronics (other than his basic handheld GPS), so he didn't understand the chartplotter to help me with it. Alrighty then.

We waited a few minutes for the tide to come back in (luck was on our side here) and for a motorboat's wake to kick us off, and then we were off for real this time!

Wahoo! We had 3- to 4-foot seas with about 20 knots of wind. This would have been great except that the waves were on the nose (dead-on, in our face, right in the direction we were trying to go). Typically, when the winds are coming directly at you, so are the waves. Such conditions can be choppy and very wet. It also means you can't sail a straight line. We had a choice to tack or motorsail, and we chose to do a little of each.

Why use the engines? Well, here's a quick lesson on tacking. There are plenty of books to teach you the basics of sailing (such as
The Complete Sailor
). If you already know this stuff, read it anyway, because it explains why we didn't do it.

You go through the trouble of tacking when the winds are coming straight at you, which makes it impossible to fill the sails. To try to catch some wind, you zigzag. Some basics here: you have to sail at an angle to the wind. The exact angle depends on the design of your boat. A racing monohull can sail as close as 35 degrees off the wind; other boats, such as catamarans and some cruising mono-hulls, need to sail at a wider angle, say 50 to 60 degrees off the wind. You'll zig going about 60 degrees to the west of your destination, and then zag going about 60 degrees to the east of your destination. The trick is to zig and zag at just the right times, and with just enough forward movement (the maximum allowed before you lose the wind in your sails again) so that at some point you end up at your destination. It can add up to a lot of extra miles. You better go a lot faster when sailing off the wind than going straight into the wind (with your engines on), because you have to make up the distance you've just added by all those jags you've made.

Sometimes you don't make up that speed and, although you save fuel, you lose time. This is not a problem if you have lots of time to spare. But if you're pushing to get somewhere by nightfall or stay ahead of a storm, adding hours to a trip can be tiring, frustrating, and even dangerous.

More often than not, many of us keep our sails up, turn on our engines, and try to plow as straight as possible to our destination. This is called motorsailing. And that's what we did, because we
were
on a schedule and had lost time because of the grounding.

We also weren't sure how much speed we'd lose or gain in the Gulf Stream, a current that can hinder or help. The Gulf Stream goes north, and we wanted to go
east. Currents can run anywhere from 3 to 6 knots throughout. The only factors within your control are the smarts to wait another day if there are northerly winds (north winds and a northerly current will make for a very slow, choppy trip, not to mention dangerous if those northerly winds are much over 15 knots), and plotting a course that takes you a bit more south than you plan to go so you can ride the current back up. We didn't apply the second part (we headed northeast), but at least the winds started out in the right direction. They didn't turn on us until we had crossed the Gulf Stream, but I'm getting ahead of myself. This leads me to …

Sailing … motorsailing. Who cared? We were on our way to the Bahamas!

We were like little kids oohing and ahhing over the flying fish skimming across the water like Frisbees. We were enthralled to be surrounded by nothing but ocean. We were in awe of the fact that we had actually pulled it off. We also got a little seasick, including Shaka, mainly because of the diesel fumes blowing around us all day. It's never perfect.

We had lots of time to take it all in because our late start and the headwinds kept us from reaching our destination before nightfall. Looking back on it, I'm not sure how our trusty captain thought we'd get there during daylight hours in the best of conditions without leaving in the wee hours of the morning. This was a 98-mile crossing. Even at a respectable 7 knots, it would have taken 14 hours to reach our destination, but what did we know? I can't speak for Captain Tim.

Watching the sun set was both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. You do not sail in the Bahamas at night (very shallow, very reefy), regardless of your experience. During the evening, the winds increased to 30 knots, slowing us down further (we sure didn't tack in the dark), and the moon didn't come up to help until much later. We dropped the luffing front sail, tightened the mainsail, and relied on the engines to keep us moving.