A Sail of Two Idiots (18 page)

I was so going to enjoy turning on two engines, gliding backward out of the canal, triumphantly motoring back into the harbor, and dropping our new, heavier anchor. But that's not what happened. I turned the key and one of the engines wouldn't start. Are you kidding me?

Before my mini-hissy fit turned into a full-blown meltdown (what was wrong
now
?!), we had the line handlers pull us back out of the canal, and then we maneuvered toward the dock on the one working engine and tied ourselves off so we could troubleshoot. It sounded as though one of the engine starter batteries was dead, so we called out on the VHF to see if anyone had a battery charger.

Several people responded, and we gave our battery to one of them overnight and crossed our fingers. I suppose we should have crossed our toes, too, because the recharge didn't work. Boo. We limped back into the harbor on the working engine and anchored (anchoring was free; the dock was not). Between the sea grass, broken alternator bracket, missing propeller, and now whatever this problem was, I got better at steering on one engine than on two.

It turned out that the engines weren't our only problem. We still had issues charging the house batteries, and one of our wind generators—which was used to generate electricity—had blown up (we had bought a new one but it still needed to be installed). As if that weren't enough, we were getting electric shocks if we happened to be wet and then grabbed onto a metal bar in the rear of the boat. It was a slight zap, nothing hair-raising, but still … Michael tracked some of it, I tracked some, and finally we had an electrician come on board and track some more.

The electrician came on board several times, in fact, and caused one tiny electrical fire before finally tracing the problem to two different shorts. One was in the solar panels (which is why they weren't working), and the other was in wires related to the wind generators. We also discovered that the wires throughout the boat were secured with tight plastic tie wraps, so we couldn't just pull out the offending wires and refeed them. Oh, and we saw that some (undersize) wires that started out red had been spliced during repairs—not with the same red wire but with black! Or vice versa. Or maybe an occasional yellow splice. Speaking of idiots …

Tracing these things was an exercise in frustration and led to the electrician later attaching the wrong wire to a wrong wire and burning out our remaining wind-generator circuit board. Sigh. Add it to the list!

Let's see. We couldn't figure out what was wrong with our engine, we blew another wind generator, we discovered a third leaky window on yet another rainy day, everything was moldy, and the expensive paint I had just used on the interior wasn't holding up to all the cleaning and humidity. Both Michael and I were about at the end of our ropes. Where exactly was the fun part? As fast as things were being fixed, they were breaking again. Or
new
things were breaking. What a piece of …

Boaters told us stories that made our problems look like peanuts, but that didn't make us feel any better. All it did was make us realize all the things that could still go wrong. We had already blown through $30,000 of our limited sailing fund on boat stuff alone and hadn't really gone anywhere after almost five months!

Yep. We were in serious need of another pep talk. You probably are too (please put down that Prozac). Here's what we eventually concluded. Although it was true that we put a lot of work into
Jacumba
, most people do this during a shakedown cruise. That's what our trip until now really was. And all the money we'd spent, the bad weather, and our lack of experience/handiness simply made things more taxing. I hesitated putting all this in the book, lest you throw it in the fireplace and go buy a plane ticket instead. You didn't, did you? You might want to wipe off those ash smudges and keep reading.

The few sailors who had actually been south of the Bahamas told us that we should keep moving, that we hadn't seen anything yet, and that the best was yet to come. Their advice? Get the heck out of where we were.

Once again, we decided that we would not sink—I mean sell—the boat. We took deep breaths and knew that once we sailed somewhere warmer and sunnier, our outlook would improve. Sure we still had things to fix, but we'd be a lot less crabby if we weren't also contending with never-ending weather systems. Okay then … time to start provisioning.

We decided to get the critical systems working and install the more minor stuff elsewhere. We now had a new/larger alternator, new three-pulley block for the mainsheet, new propeller, new larger chartplotter, new wind generator, new heavier anchor, new bigger wireless antenna (for Internet), and newly painted bottom. The final hold up was awaiting the arrival of a new circuit board for the newly fried wind generator.

While we waited for that part, we traced the latest engine failure to a blown fuse. Why had it blown? Because of the larger alternator we had just installed. A new friend, Dave, on a nearby catamaran (who was waiting for a new $6,000 transmission: B.O.A.T.—Bring Out Another Thousand), helped us fix this problem and got the last of our electrical stuff working too. We also replaced the regulator on our propane tank when we were warned of a leak by the voice in our carbon monoxide detector.

Before we knew it, the part for the wind generator was on board. OMG! This was it. We were finally going to head south. We were so ready. First we'd stage ourselves at Little Harbour, located farther south on the very long Great Abaco Island. Then we'd head out of the cut (our first since The Whale—Mommy!) to the central Exumas—still in the Bahamas but farther south. That meant warmth, right?

On our way to Little Harbour, about 25 miles away, we giddily took a little detour to Hope Town, not only to break up the trip but to say good-bye to anyone we knew there. Not wanting to delay, we then excitedly headed for Little Harbour. Someplace new!

Although we had fairly high winds, keeping us moving at around 8 knots with a beam reach (sailing perpendicular to the wind), we had our sails reefed (shortened) like good little sailors. What a great day! We got outside the harbor entrance to our destination, dropped our sails, and started motoring between the buoys toward the harbor. About halfway inside, a disembodied voice came forth from our VHF: “You … might … want … to … go … farther …” And then we hit a sandy patch right in the middle of the buoys. Hey! Who put that there? I'm guessing that the slow-talker had been warning us, but speak faster, man! We hadn't hit it hard—only one hull was stuck—and the tide was coming in (hmmm, this felt familiar). The tide got us off in about 15 minutes, but not before our friends Estelle and Stephen on
Siyaya
, with sailing students on board no less, passed by and called us “blonkers.” No comment that they had done the same thing the week before. Once off the sand, we continued into the harbor and picked up a mooring, as required.

This is where the plan got altered a bit. The winter cold fronts weren't done with us yet, and yet another one was bearing down. By the end of the day, waves were so bad at the entrance/exit to the harbor that it became a game to watch boats trying to zip between them without getting doused, or grounded.

While we waited for the storm to pass, we wandered around the island, met a new group of people, attended a potluck, and mentally prepared for what was to come. We took the weather delay to our trip south in stride and enjoyed ourselves.

Four days later, we heard that sea conditions would remain terrible for another week. At $15 a night, we didn't want to stay on the required mooring for that long, and didn't want to sit there anyway, so we headed back the 20 miles northwest to Great Guana Cay to go to a Barefoot Man concert at Nippers instead. We were learning. When you're given lemons …

We knew we'd be in for a pretty windy trip, but we felt we could handle it. Once we got outside the protected harbor, though, we were surprised at how high the seas were. If that was inside the cut, we couldn't imagine how the ocean looked outside. We debated going back in but realized that our discomfort was not coming from wave heights but sea direction. We wanted to practice in this, so we stuck with it. We eventually became invigorated instead of scared while sailing up to 13 knots as we surfed down waves with the winds pushing at an angle from behind (a broad reach). We had turned a corner on our comfort level and experience. We were saaa-iii-liing!

Another way we knew we had turned a corner was finding a problem before it became major. On and off, black smoke was coming out of the exhaust pipe on one of the engines. We also noticed that the engine sounded a little … off. It turned out that the belts to the engine water pumps were cracked or cracking. Since those control the engine temperature, belts breaking would be bad. We fixed them (because we had spares—LESSON 16A—and because we smelled fish, LESSON 50).

We arrived at Great Guana Cay in record time (about four hours to go 30 miles) and arrived to see a full anchorage. Wow! We'd never seen so many boats packed together like that, not even in Hope Town harbor. Luckily, with our shallower draft, we could go up to what became the “catamaran section,” where we settled in.

The Barefoot Man was like a goofy Jimmy Buffet. The concert itself was a cross between Mardi Gras and spring break. Beads were being thrown, flabby women were gyrating on roofs, and an ancient woman showed us her ta tas (ew).

Even more exciting was running into almost everyone we knew from Green Turtle, most of whom we hadn't seen in months. It was great to touch base with them; in fact, we didn't pay much attention to the concert. We even extended our reunion by having a sleepover on
Jacumba
. Hey, this boating thing was fun! (LESSON 31, Fun is important!)

After such a good time with old friends, we were sad to leave, but we remembered what was to come. We were going to the Exumas! So we headed to Hope Town, Elbow Cay, for a final good-bye (again). By now we had done that route so many times that I didn't even use the chartplotter. It was nice to know the sailing grounds so well.

More reunions with friends. Another round of Bingo at Jack's. The next morning we were in the midst of our final jaunt to Little Harbour when we once again
passed Stephen and Estelle on
Siyaya
anchored off Elbow Cay's Tahiti Beach, barbecuing and relaxing with a few other boaters. Well, that looked like fun, so we anchored there too. While there, we discovered that our genny needed a hem sewn. And then we discovered that the furler that allowed us to wrap the sail when we weren't using it was stuck. Our experienced friends helped haul Michael up the 60-foot mast to get the furler released (and the sail repaired). There. What a fantastic, and much needed, week.

Finally we sailed back toward Little Harbour. This time we didn't moor inside the harbor but anchored near the cut instead. Why? Because we were leaving the next morning. We were finally going to leave the Abacos. There are those angels singing again.

T
his was almost as exciting as leaving the States for the Bahamas all those years ago. Oh, had it been only about five months? At least this time we were leaving with some clue as to what we were doing and weren't completely terrified. We were nervous, though, so we were pleased to see five other boats at the cut as well. At least we wouldn't be alone.

We were hoping that someone else had some experience going this way, so we dropped our dinghy from its davits into the sea and puttered up to everyone to get the scoop. Nope, no one had been this far south before. Drat! We ended up having a good conversation with Becky and Joe on
Half Moon
, a 40-foot monohull, and found ourselves becoming fast friends.

The next morning we all lifted anchor and then acted busy, hoping that someone else would go through the cut first. There were reefs and rocks inside this cut, but at least we didn't see any rabid whales. More importantly, the tide was on our side (LESSON 44, Go with the flow). Still, we didn't want to be the first to go through.
Half Moon
finally made the break and off we went!

The waves were 5 to 6 feet, the winds about 15 knots coming right across our beam. It couldn't have been more perfect. We averaged between 8 and 9 knots and were way ahead of the pack. Michael and I felt a little sick initially but managed to keep our breakfast down.

We enjoyed being alone, but it was nice knowing that people were behind us in case something happened. The 63-mile trip took about 7½ hours, most of it out of sight of land—a relief to me (no reefs to hit).