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CRASH LANDING
05 January 2008 06:05
We made it to the Bahamas! It was the most difficult passage we have had in years, and I guess we should be glad to be alive and afloat. The gory details.
Any time you make changes, or even do routine maintenance to a boat, you can expect things to go wrong. Which is why we spent the first night at anchor in Ft Lauderdale, five miles down river from Marina Bay, the marina we chose to do the add ons we couldn’t do in Turkey. We still wanted to be within reach of our technicians if there were surprises with the new generator working, or the new Garmin touch screen chartplotter, or the new Sat dish for the TV, the new house batteries, and especially no surprises with the main engine, which we still think of as new after seven years, since a lot of things were messed with doing yearly maintenance. Naturally there were problems with some, the difficulty with the new satellite dish being cured by following the old adage, when all else fails, read the instructions. Help with the chartplotter came through a phone call to Garmin, but a better instruction book is sure in order, since I do read the instructions, and too much is left out.
The generator was the main issue. The starting battery, which was old, didn't show its age while we were constantly being charged at the dock, but it sure showed up, once we cut the cord. When Dave pushed the start switch, instead of instant response, he got nothing, until he released his finger, and then it fired up. He figured the battery; it was overloaded with the big load from the starter, but in the microsecond after that load was removed, it still followed orders. Having good contacts helped us get a new 8D battery aboard without leaving the anchorage. All done in the blink of an eye, so we could get down to Miami that day, since the Gulf Stream had settled from the last strong cold front, and was expected to be good also the following day. All went well, a good trial run, (which I strongly believe in when you've been laid up for a number of months,) except the forecast changed dramatically, with a rapidly developing Low predicted to influence us in the next thirty six hours. We need two good days to get to Chub Cay, where we usually clear customs in the Bahamas, spending the first night in the middle of the Bahama Bank. We set off, on Thursday, since that seemed the best chance to get across the Gulf Stream without the really big seas predicted to develop starting Friday into Saturday and Sunday. It was a lumpy crossing, nothing dangerous, but the kind of conditions that keep me in my helm seat and not moving about. Because of the unpredictability of when the winds were supposed to pick up from the SW, we anchored near Gun Cay, which would give us some shelter, and we could always go into the marina at Cat Cay if it was nasty the next day. The night was quiet and calm, too bad we didn't press on and anchor on the banks, because it left a long run for the next day's passage to Chub Cay, where we must go into the marina to clear customs. That night Dave found the pump in our center storage area on the swim platform, which is supposed to work automatically, would only run manually, so he did a couple of hours work doing what he thought would fix it up.
Next day looked good for crossing the Bank, although the weather system was already affecting Florida's west coast when we left in the dark, trying to get a few hours extra time to compensate for the short days, and hoping to stay ahead of the system. So after the creeping around the shallow areas just off Gun, in the dark, relying on our chartplotter and waypoints from the chart book, I put the pedal to the medal and took off. About an hour later, the back bilge alarm went off,and when I saw the water looking like it was poring in under our bunk, I turned around and started a slow creep back to Cat Cay. Dave went to work on the problem; every compartment under the swim platform was full of water and poring into an unsealed hole where the pump wires had been run from the back, into the boat. Whether Anker Marine in Turkey thought the system was so bullet proof, or whether they just forgot to seal the hole, we'll never know, but the effect was a lot of salt water poring into the boat from the stern running forward to the bilge pump, which sent us the alarm but was not pumping, or not pumping fast enough. Dave tore everything apart, found the source of the water and slowed it down to a small trickle ,got the pump running, and told me I was free to go on, but at a slightly reduced speed. So I turned around and we headed once more to Chub, watching the storms developing with the XM weather program on the chart plotter, but noticing , with our eye on the horizon behind and on the plotter that they kept moving north and east, and dissipating. I began to relax about the weather, since our winds also stayed moderate, but I knew a big switch in direction and strength was coming and I prayed it wouldn't come with blinding rain as we exited the banks into the deep water by NW Channel Light. Every hour I had my blood pressure jolt as the bilge alarm would go off again, but it seemed to stay ahead of the water with about twenty seconds of pumping, so I relaxed about an imminent sinking.
There's more, there's worse, like Barry from YBR said after his passage from hell between Florida and the Bahamas last month, “When things go wrong, they really go wrong.” The wind did pick up as we entered the deep, going from the Bank to Chub, but nothing the boat couldn't handle easily. By the time we entered the now well marked passageway into the marina, everything seemed under control, but a lot of wind from the stern and a rising tide made for very swift movement forward, faster than I wanted to go, for Dave to have time to get dock lines and fenders handy. I put the boat in idle, but we still seemed to be going too fast, so I put her in reverse, as we headed down the fairway to our docking spot. I commented to Dave about how much current we seemed to have because we were still going too fast for my liking, even in reverse. As we headed into the slip Dave told me to slow it down hard. I gave it full reverse, and the boat leaped forward! At this point I knew something was terribly wrong. There was nothing we could do but turn off the engine, and brace for the inevitable, a crash into the dock. You can't imagine the horror of it, we were going at what seemed like top speed, with boats, and people in front of us, and nothing to stop us but a floating concrete dock.
We didn't get thrown, we didn't drive right through the dock, just up on top of it, doing a fair bit of damage to the dock and our new paint job. The serious blow to our boat was under the water, but nothing showed on the inside. Dave discovered the problem immediately, the keeper on the Morris cable was not engaged, and the cable jumped out of the hold down, which kept the transmission from changing gears, leaving us locked in forward. The more power I gave, the faster forward we moved, even with the lever in reverse. It was an instant fix, and he put the boat in reverse to drive it back off the dock. I was going to go for a walk, after two days at sea, but realized I had to just sit down and relax, and cool off. We didn't go out to dinner, just had a couple of stiff drinks and some nibbles, and a good night's sleep.
Today while I cleaned up inside and washed the salt water off the outside, Dave cleared customs and has been working on the hole, and pumps, including the head pump and cleaning up the inside of the bilge from the salt water. A check on the outside of the bow shows paint scraped away, and seems to prove again, when it comes to a battle with concrete and steel, steel wins every time. It has turned beautiful and I am going for my walk to the beach, and probably tomorrow we will push on to Nassau or beyond.
BEV AND DAVE FEIGES
cloverleaf@cloverleaf.com
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