A Sail of Two Idiots (50 page)

The bimini (cockpit cover) wasn't keeping out rain anymore, so we resealed it with a spray-on sealant, which worked wonders. The old plastic zippers still leaked though.

I repainted our now faded white fuel caps back to their original bright red to freshen things up. Little tasks count too!

The heads (toilets) started giving us trouble. We fixed the one we used all the time (caulking a crack in the lid and using parts in our toilet parts kit, but we never did figure out why the suction was failing in the other toilet (we had replaced everything).

More leaks developed in the freshwater tanks—on both sides.

The original portion of our anchor chain became so rusty that we had to replace it—a rather costly fix.

We went through our last LED anchor-light bulb for the masthead before we found one that worked.

We had to rerope our trampoline, repair a small tear, and replace a few of the clamps holding it on.

We put new telltales on our mainsail and did some more repairs to the genoa (at the top, of course). We broke several sewing needles during this process.

I repainted the boat-name lettering.

Our carbon monoxide detector went completely crazy, insisting we had a fire when we didn't, so we took out the batteries and tossed the thing (no, the reset button didn't work).

This is a very abbreviated list. I also made bigger
For Sale
signs.

Jacumba
was getting cheap. Although the What Broke? list may make it seem as though someone should pay
us
for the boat, remember that all these are normal repairs! Anything that broke we fixed. It's called maintenance. Anyone who had seen our boat, from brokers to surveyors to other boaters, commented on Jacumba's great condition. It was in great condition because we were fixing all those things!

Even though our latest survey had priced the boat at $190,000US (more than we paid for it), we would have been happy with $175,000 (less than we paid for it). The price was now down to $150,000 (after negotiations). We just wanted to cover the remaining loan and maybe have a couple thousand extra to survive on. We were not greedy.

The worst part was that hurricane season was approaching. What to do? Should I sail back to Grenada or even up to Florida for the season (either alone or with a friend)? But if I took the boat, where would Michael live? The haulout on St. Kitts was a big no—not safe, no facilities, and too expensive. The marina was incredibly expensive, near a loud downtown, and wasn't safe during hurricanes. We decided to take our chances and hope our luck held.

One day, someone interested in our boat sailed right up to me on a catamaran that his friend had just bought on St. Martin. They literally tied up to
Jacumba
(that's called rafting) and raved about her … but then gave me a “but.”

While we waited for more boat interest, we had a few experiences we could have done without. About 2 a.m. one morning (remember LESSON 13, Be afraid?), I heard a large splash in the front of the boat. I lay there for a minute thinking that maybe a pelican or a booby was fishing, but at 2 a.m.? Okay, maybe a wind had
come up and yanked our bridle out of the water. I peeked out the hatch and saw a boat about 60 feet from us that had not been there when we went to bed. Uh-oh. They were either jerks or our boat had started moving. It would be the latter.

We weren't facing into the wind, which was a sure sign that something was wrong. So I stood there a moment trying to get my bearings, and after about five minutes we were no longer anywhere near the other boat. We were nowhere near the rocky shore either, thank goodness. Just for kicks, I turned on our GPS and confirmed that even the overhead satellite could see that we had left the anchorage. (Involuntary float number one.)

I went below and got Michael up and we went to the bow to see what could have happened. The anchor chain and anchor were no longer attached to us. We weren't sure yet if a chain link had given way or the rope/chain connection (the splice) had detached. Whatever, we needed to get reattached to something. So I started the engines and motored back to a place where I remembered that two new moorings had been installed by Michael's employer. It was so dark that we couldn't see a thing until we almost ran over one of the mooring balls.