So I working on Part 4 of our Bahamian adventures but in the interim, here is a bit of what I have been up to.
I have been visiting my sister and her husband over on the Gulf Coast of Florida. They have a lovely rental villa with screened in pool on a canal in Rotonda West, north of Fort Myers, south of Sarasota.
This subdivision is very quiet. It’s not a party place. Rather, it’s a laid back area where folks can chill out and relax . We spend our days reading, swimming and watching the wildlife such as wading birds of all kinds chasing minnows along the canal, smallish gators stalking said wading birds (no luck yet as far as I can tell), turtles sunning themselves, birds singing and so on. Haven’t seen any armadillos yet or feral hogs but they are around.
It’s been generally sunny, hot and super windy most days with the winds starting out from the East but most afternoons, the wind changes direction (180°) and the clouds blow in so that it can actually feel too cool on the beach and the waves build up in the Gulf making it too rough to swim! So bizarre.
There hasn’t been much rain at all. In fact there are many, many brush fires burning across the state of Florida…100+! The strong winds haven’t helped and folks here can’t wait for the rainy season to start around June…I can’t say I blame them.
View from in my sister’s rental villa
5′ Gator at end of canal
Sunset over the preserve at end of Boundary Rd
Sanctuary
Hibiscus
On the Dock
Golf cart trail Pine Valley GC
The villa from a tee block in Pine Valley GC
Gator?
Big gator print!
Smallish Golf Course Gator
Can you spot the baby Gator?
about 14″ long
Rental Villa
Great Egret
Gator in our canal
former wilderness has been dredged in the preserve
They say that “cruising is doing boat maintenance in beautiful places”. This adage seems to be true. In Part 2 of our ongoing tale, you learned that two days into our cruise homeward, we had hit some rocks or a reef very hard causing some serious concern. As well, you learned that in preparing for our passage from Eleuthera to the Exumas islands, the winds had kicked up so much that we could not sail or even motor comfortably to the places in the southern Exumas that we had hoped to see. Rather, we ended up at the north end of the island chain. Further explanation about not being able to sail to our original destination of Staniel Cay is below. Time was flying by and we knew that with this leaky boat we wouldn’t have a chance to see the swimming pigs at Big Majors Spot or to swim with the nurse sharks at Compass Cay (cay is pronounced “key”, same as quay as in Queen’s Quay in Toronto) or to spend days sailing the shallow waters of the Exuma Bank. Not on this trip.
Thus we blew in to beautiful South-West Allan Cay, part of a small group of cays which are home to endangered Rock Iguanas (Click Here for more info on these iguanas).
We anchored in about 4′ of water just off of a beautiful sandy beach lined with palms trees and interesting rock formations. We set our Rocna 33 Lb anchor and then set our second anchor, the 22 Lb Bruce as the winds were supposed to build with gusts up to 60 knots. Jim always has an eye for how high the land surrounding the anchorage is because higher land usually will give you more protection from the winds. As the island was relatively low, he thought we ought to deploy the Bruce too though all of the load was on the Rocna. The anchorage was fairly tight with a sandy bottom and beach to the south but rocks to the east and west, not to mention the two monohulls we had anchored in front of.
Once we were all confident that the anchors had set, I swam over to the monohulls to ask if they were OK with us having anchored ahead of them. After all , they had gotten there first! We were well clear of their anchors and we all had plenty of swinging room but I just wanted them to be comfortable with us there. They were two couples buddy-boating together. The fellow from our nearest neighbour said if he could anchor in 3′ of water like we did, he’d do it too! They were fine where we were and he explained that we were using a Rocna like they were except that theirs was a 45 Lb. All was fine and dandy and we settled in for the night.
So…about the “technically we are sinking?” bit. Jim always tells me that a trimaran can’t sink. I guess it’s true as most have lots of watertight compartments in the hulls so if one is breached, the others will help hold the boat up. There is no lead-weighted keel like monohulls have and the pontoons (called “amas”) help balance the whole boat like training wheels on a kid’s bike. Plus two of our trimarans are made of foam covered in fibreglass and epoxy resin. So that material floats. All of this is true. But after we had hit the rock or the reef back on Eleuthera, there was more water coming in than I was sure we could be comfortable bailing. You see, we were sponging up the water into a pail every hour. When I stood at the stove in the galley I was standing in about a half inch of water. The galley floor, just aft of where you crawl into the v-berth, was continually wet. The water seemed to be coming from the underside of the main cabin floor via the settee storage compartments and maybe from under the v-berth where the water tanks were. It was too much to hope that the freshwater tank was leaking. It was not. We were taking on sea water, no question.
Jim and Paul agreed that it wasn’t bad enough to haul the boat out but it was bad enough that we should make for home more expediently than we had planned. The almost constant sponging was tiring though. Getting up during the night was exhausting. We all took turns but it was frustrating. Crew morale was getting low.
Before we left Lighthouse Beach on February 15, the guys put their heads together while I had a nap after breakfast and a swim where I tried to video the damage on the underside. I awoke to the two of them grinning like fools and high-fiving each other!! They may have even been pouring celebratory drinks! Was I dreaming? Had they found a lost stick of underwater putty and fixed the leak? No putty, but here’s what happened while I was asleep…Jim figured we needed a pump to get rid of the water as it collected under the floor of the head next to the galley. Why was the water entering the galley floor anyhow? It was flowing out of a small round access hatch at floor level. This hatch allowed access to the bilge pump for the shower under the head floor. Bilge Pump?? Of course, the bilge pump!! They put the round cover on the access hatch, then rigged up a way for the water collecting under the head to get sucked up by the bilge pump. I think there was some disconnecting and reconnecting of hoses somehow to make all of that work. They also installed a small stick of the foam we had brought along for repairs into the shower drain. This foam stick, which I nicknamed “Bob”, would bob up when the water level was getting high indicating that it was time to pump out the bilge. GENIUS!! It turned out that we would only have to pump out the boat about every 3 hours, maybe 4 using the handle just above the toilet in the head. We still took turns waking up in the night to do that but it meant that all of us slept better. Morale quickly went back up again….until the tack let go on the jib later that day during our windy passage from Eleuthera to the Exuma islands!!!
The tack is the area of the foot of the sail that attaches to the boat. In this case, the tack was on the jib, the small sail at the front of the boat. It is this sail that allows a sailboat to sail upwind, to drive closer to the direction that wind is coming from…in essence, to sail in a slightly straighter line toward a destination upwind than tacking back and forth on an angle to claw one’s way upwind. Picture a triangular sail: the top of the triangle is the head, where the sail is hauled up toward the top of the mast with a line (or is on a stiff furling foil like ours so it can be rolled up around the foil rather than dropped into a bag on the deck); the front part of the foot of the triangle is the tack where the sail is attached to the bow of the boat; and the aft part of the sail which is the clew, where the controlling lines are attached allowing the sail to swing out to one side or other of the front of the boat. The jib is a crucial component of a sailboat and we were on the brink of losing ours!
When we originally unrolled and inspected the sails, the jib was very moldy. It was in sorry shape after sitting rolled up on land for almost 10 months. It had a clear UV cover on it but who knows how effective those are after a while. So none of us were really surprised when the tack blew out. We didn’t have a spare jib so the guys chose to partially furl up the sail so that there was less force on the foil. They didn’t want the furling system to break as that could mean that the mast would fall down!!! The part that let go was a round eye on a few sturdy straps that are sewn onto the tack of the sail and which is where the sail is actually attached to the boat.
We were able to partially furl the jib to prevent it from completely pulling out of the foil and keep sailing but this was another reason why we couldn’t sail toward the southern or central Exumas since the boat would no longer point well to windward. We were forced to sail off the wind, away from our original destination, and so we landed at SW Allan Cay.
The weather proved to be a little unsettled and we knew we could not leave the protection of the anchorage for a day or two. So Paul, bless his heart, took on the task of sewing the straps and the eye back onto the tack of the jib. Picture yourself trying to push a regular sewing needle through several thicknesses of seatbelt strapping. Plus, the needle seems a bit dull. And you don’t have proper UV thread either!! This is what Paul dealt with. I gave him whatever needles I had in my little sewing kit. Jim gave him some dental floss for thread (it’s really, really strong) and he got to work. Paul must have the patience of a saint as he continued to fight with the strapping ALL DAY. I’m not kidding when I say all day. He did take a break for lunch though! At one point he started to use pliers to push the needle which was dipped in dish detergent through the layers of strapping and sail. I know that his hands were cramping up, I think two of the needles broke and somewhere near the end of the repair, we found some whipping twine (strong thread-like line) which would have worked great for the job. When it was all over, we rejoiced. More rum drinks to celebrate! One of our neighbours came by in his dinghy and heard about the sail repair. He said “Hey, I’ve got a sewing machine aboard if you need it!” We just looked at each other and died laughing. Of course he has a sewing machine aboard: a strong one for stitching canvas, sailcloth, you name it. We have a proper sail repair kit…back in London. Poor Paul. What a hero.
While he was sewing and Jim was cleaning our old head pump, I used our down time to do some laundry in rain water which we had collected in a 5 gallon bucket. Freshwater is a precious thing and finding ways to collect it while on a boat is just smart. Once the sun comes out, clothes dry quickly and spirits rise as well.
As Jim said, each day we accomplished something: whether that was getting the Stereo to work, learning to enjoy one’s time down below during a rainstorm, or doing laundry in a bucket. But we did miss our family and friends and I was glad that I had the means to share some of our experiences via this blog with them.
But what about the frog that I referred to in the title? Ah yes, the tree frog. Paul’s little friend. Back at our rental house in Rock Sound, Paul had spotted a tiny tree frong clinging to one of the exterior door frames. He thought it was super cute. The next day the frog was inside, in the room where Paul was sleeping! Hmmmm….I suspect the poor little thing bonded with his big human buddy (I refer to the frog as a “he” but who really knows except those with a lot of letters after their names). Paul carefully took him outside and we thought that that was it! Sometime during the first few days of sailing, maybe at Lighthouse Beach, Paul spotted the frog (it had to be the same one right?) on the transom or back end of the boat!! A tiny stowaway. Paul gently put him overboard knowing that they can swim and the shore wasn’t too far away. But the frog frantically swam back to the boat and hopped aboard. Well, we were OK with a small fourth crew member coming along as long as he ate his fill of bugs like noseeums. We weren’t sure where he ended up while we cruised along and hoped that he jumped ship on his own at SW Allan Cay as we had no sightings of him until much later on! But this too is a tale for another day.
Enjoys the pictures and videos below of our time at SW Allan Cay in the middle of February.
Soon you will learn about more of our creature friends and the devastation caused by Hurricane Matthew in the Rest of the Story Part 4: “Paying for Water” or “I think we just hit 13 knots!”
P S you will notice the three flags we were flying from our lower spreaders. The highest is the Bahamian courtesy flag: fly it to show that you have cleared into the Bahamas with Customs. The second is our Fanshawe Yacht Club burgee. The third is my Women Who Sail burgee. I am part of an ever-growing closed Facebook page called the Women Who Sail. If you are a woman who sails (or boats) and want more info on joining the group, just drop me a line.
In Now For The Rest of the Story Part 1, we revealed more details about our quest to bring this poor F-31 home and see her sail again. Here are some more pictures and videos from our time in Rock Sound.
Flying over the Abacos
Steve our Pilot in the Left Seat
Supressed excitement?
Our Plane
Rock Sound International Airport
“Blue Ocean” rental house
Kitchen
South room with sofa bed
Dining Roon and Entrance
Paul’s Room
One of Paul’s friends
Supper at Sammy’s! YUM!
Master Bath
Master Bedroom
Deck with concrete wall to protect house from storm surges
One Love
Needs a scrub
View of the back of Andy’s yard
interior looking forward
interior looking aft: slide out bunk just above the step
The Head
Jim inspecting under the cockpit
Damage under the settee in the storage area
Not so Grand Cherokee
Sails going home for cleaning
Our view of Rock Sound
The Atlantic
Paul at the Glass Window Bridge
Glass Window Bridge
The Caribbean side
Narrow bridge
Intrepid crew
Literally…..
Yup, they’re slow
Where we left the exhause
Along the Queen’s Highway
Queen’s Highway heading south
Conchs
Paul’s other little buddy
So excited!
No-seeums got in here one night
Laundry day
cleaning the main sail
view of Blue Ocean from the beach
What the…?
At Andy’s place
Nighttime on the Sound
Repair materials
Gluing…
More Gluing
More materials
Working hard
Our workbench
Andy’s view
Under the cockpit
Meeting one of the ladies from a Facebook page
Bye gals!
looking north to Rock Sound from the cottage
view at the Wild Orchid
The Ocean Hole in Rock Sound
Schools of fish hang out at the Ocean Hole
French Angelfish, Blue Tangs and other fish at Ocean Hole
platform at Ocean Hole
at the Ocean Hole
Ocean Hole
trying to get the portable freezer to run
sketchy….
my, my that’s a big anchor you’ve got there Jim!
Our dinghy
Dinghy launch
Preston Albury High School
Gate in front of the High School
Launch time!
at the Ramp
Conchs at the ramp
the dock at the ramp
craning on the mast
Good job boys! Andy and Frankie.
AJ bringing down the crane!
Thanks Andy!
Go this way Jim!
Skipper’s Smiling!
The motor runs!
Anchored and dropping off the young crew
A look of pride
He’s a natural!
Anchored off of the cottage
Hi Paul
Test sail day
Paul’s little friend
Raising the main
and they’re off!
the cottage
Sunset at Rock Sound
Gino’s conch fritter stand in front of Andy’s house
Sunset on the Sound
at the Wild Orchid
Wild Orchid
Andy’s motor boat
Jim trying to shake hands with a conch
What we went through in order to launch!
The path to the Boiling Hole, Rock Sound
Church across from the Boiling Hole
The Boiling Hole
path to the Boilling Hole
The Market supermarket at Rock Sound
well-stocked Market
one of many trips from cottage to boat
Awesome sign by the Rock Sound airport on Queen’s Highway
It’s been a little while since I posted Part 1 of this story. I’ve been exploring SE Florida. Swimming, snorkeling, hitting a few golf balls, learning about equestrian sports, ogling mega yachts and generally trying to process the fact that on one single stretch of the A1A highway along the shore at Palm Beach, the value of the mansions there would solve poverty in several third world countries. This place blows my mind. But I think all of that is part of another story.
So where were we? Ah yes, I think we’d left poor Jim alone to fend our newly-launched patched up boat off of the jagged limestone shore. I don’t really know how he did it. Turns out that he wasn’t really alone…
Back at Andy’s, the crew secured the mast to the trailer and headed back to the launch ramp. The kids all rode in the back of the pick up with Paul. Once again I followed with the rental car (did I mention this Honda was a right hand drive car? I can’t tell you how many times we all got in the wrong side of the car to start driving!), and Frankie brought the crane truck.
Craning a mast onto a sailboat is nerve-wracking to be sure. This was my first time and though Jim and Paul had helped others do it before, I don’t think it was any easier for them. Jim told me later that he remembered thinking “If the hook lets go, we’re goners”! Geez. But Andy did a great job. Jim and Paul attached the shrouds (synthetic) and the jib on its furler. (Mainsail and the boom were back at the cottage for cleaning etc). As he swung the mast into place, Frankie’s teenaged buddies fended the boat off the rocks as the tide was going out exposing even sharper jagged pieces. At one point while the guys were putting the jib on, the crane’s hook slipped a little. Jim’s nightmare scenario! But Andy quickly tightened it up and held the mast up until they were done. Whew!
“One Love” was afloat with her mast up! Poor Andy looked so relieved. He told us he’d been a bit sick and quite a few of the townspeople – his friends – had said the same thing. Folks seemed worried about him and all said that he is a great guy. Even though he got through this launch, I could tell he was very, very tired.
Jim and Paul reckoned they could motor to the beach by Andy’s place to pick up the dinghy then over to anchor at the cottage a mile or so south. Jim asked if the kids would like to go for a boat ride and they all said yes!! Our first guests! Awesome. I knew they could sail it with the jib if the motor died and I could always go get them with the dinghy. Little did we know at the time that dinghy motor was … shall we say, a little finicky?
By the way, the kids had told me that they had heard that a big hammerhead shark had been sighted at the ramp area recently. I don’t doubt a hammerhead, or any shark for that matter, could find a few snacks there as the conch fishermen often cleaned their catch in this spot. Which leads me to another quick aside: a year ago, fishermen at the main dock in Rock Sound, pulled a big Bull Shark out of the water. By big, I mean like 10′ or so. There’s a video of it on YouTube. I’m not an advocate of mindless shark killing for fins or out of fear and I don’t know what happened to the shark, but I hope it was eaten. Bull sharks are in our oceans and in our estuaries. I don’t mind that … I value that. But I also don’t swim where the waters are murky for that reason. But I digress…
Andy, Frankie and I drove back to town. I was totally confident in Jim and Paul’s patching abilities and was sure they would make it to the beach. We had a quick look below for any gushers before they left the dock of course and none were to be seen. I could see the boat with its happy crew tooling along nicely once the kids had pointed out that they were heading for a shallow sand bar and should “go the other way mon”.
I made for the dinghy and figured “I know how to run these things. What could possibly go wrong if I take it out?” I hauled the boat into the water, and fired it up….nope, nothing. Did I squeeze the bulb on the hose? Wait… there is no hose, the gas tank is in the motor! Dumbass! I checked for gas. Full. Hmm, did I push the choke in too quickly? Yes, that must be it. Tried it again, choke out and voila! It ran. Then it died when I pushed the choke in. Dang it. Ok, I tried it again, keeping the choke out. It ran and off I went. By the time I got the Yamaha 2.5 running, the guys had anchored a couple hundred metres off of the beach and Jim had launched the inflatable paddleboard!!! What? Not to be selfish but I thought I’d be the first on it as I really like anything with paddles but no, here came my skipper sensing I was having motor troubles. What a guy! I love him. He was really good on the board too!
Of course, Jim being Jim, he tried to swamp the dinghy and thought it would be funny to hang the board off the side of it while I motored along. I was “not amused” as the poor dinghy couldn’t steer (it was not the helmswoman!!). Well, we made it to the boat and began ferrying the kids to shore. I know that I wrote in an earlier post about how one of the boys thought the water was so cold he didn’t want to get his feet wet! Maybe he just didn’t want to have a hammerhead come and try to make friends?
Our crew safely ashore, the sun was getting lower and lower so we headed for the cottage. The good thing was that it was really calm and low tide so any coral heads would be quite visible. Coral heads are hard, a bit like limestone which can be somewhat brittle but still hard. We need all of the coral in this world that we can get so hitting a coral head is not a good thing for the boat or the coral.
That night, I’d keep getting up to go look out at the boat. A half moon illuminated her hull as I kept checking that a) she was still there and b) that she was still afloat. Yes I was confident in the guys’ work but what if she hit a rock as the tide changed that they hadn’t seen? What if a gale blew up and I didn’t hear it? (yes, I know…dumb) The next day was Saturday …sea trial day. The winds were fairly calm, the water in the Sound fairly flat. Jim and Paul somehow ferried the mainsail and boom out the boat with the dinghy and away they went under sail while I carried on with provisioning, last loads of laundry etc. As far as I could tell, all was going well as she was sailing along nicely.
Writing this now, I wonder why we hadn’t thought to have Paul’s handheld VHF out with me as they had ours aboard? I guess we thought that if there were any trouble, Jim and I had our cell phones and they had the dinghy, etc. Upon reflection, maybe it was a bit cheeky? After all, the boat had been patched and we were unfamiliar with its systems. What could possibly go wrong?
The next day, Sunday, we left our wonderful rental house by the sea and got under way. The guys assured me that although there was a bit of water in the “bilge”, it seemed like the patches were solid and doing their job. The trickle of water was insignificant and could be sucked up with a sponge. Whew!!
However, they hadn’t had a chance to work on everything too thoroughly…such as the watermaker (this is a desalination system which creates freshwater from seawater), some of the non-essential electrical systems, and the head (bathroom) system. Well, how bad could that be? The fact that One Love had an enclosed marine head was a wonderful thing in my mind. While I love our 22′ Trimaran “Raise a Little Hull”, her head facilities leave a bit to be desired ….a porta potti next to the mast support in the centre of the cabin and a curtain. We love our buddy Paul who often crews with us when we race, but unfortunately for him, the head on the F-22 is next to his head when he sleeps aboard. Poor fella. Here, One Love had a marine toilet and a sink with a hand pump in a head with a door…an actual door, and walls…actual walls!! The Luxury! At least for me. I know the guys would be OK with the “bucket and chuck it” head system and I would do that if I had to…I’m no shrinking violet. But an enclosed head is quite a bonus. Call me spoiled. Jim did check the black water tank before we left and it was full to the brim! No way to pump it out ashore in Rock Sound and we certainly couldn’t pump it overboard into Andy’s yard! So we waited until we were at least 5 miles off shore to pump it overboard. The tank seemed to pump out fine.
The boat also had a two burner propane stove in the galley (kitchen). Do you know how much a 1 lb bottle of propane costs in Canada? About $5? On Eleuthera they cost $16 US for a 1 lb bottle!! We knew 1 bottle wouldn’t last long so Jim bought a portable 1 burner butane stove and several bottles for a much cheaper cost. We had 2 bottles of propane for the stove and the barbeque but decided that the butane stove would be our “go to” stove in the galley. It’s the same system we use on the 22 when we cruise so it wouldn’t be an issue.
As we headed south around Cape Eleuthera, we were happy to realize that the boat’s VHF radio seemed to be working as we could hear radio traffic on channel 16 and even got a weather channel. We weren’t really sure which electrical systems were fully-functioning so a functioning radio seemed great!
We headed to our first anchorage at Deep Creek. It looked like it had pretty good protection from the predicted winds and if the name was any indication, there must be a good amount of depth in the anchorage. I was hopeful, naively ignoring the fact that both our cruising guide and the charts indicated otherwise. What a dope I am sometimes! I figured the edges of the dredged channel would surely work out for a shallow draft boat. Wrong! We went aground almost immediately in the entrance to Deep Creek. (see our post called Not So Deep Creek). No worries, we backed out just fine and anchored outside of the entrance hoping the winds would stay light. They did. It was a lovely calm night. Paul always says that he sleeps better when we are anchored than when we are docked. I am still learning that skill/trust and so I often keep a close eye on where we swing in the night or if the wind comes up etc. I’m a night owl so that is ok.
We met Trevor Pinder the next day at the Deep Creek “Dock”. He said he’d be on the dock to meet us but when we dinghied into town, all we saw was a rock jetty and a lot of shallows! But there was Trevor waving at us from the jetty. I guess that is their dock. In these small settlements, it’s a bit hard to know exactly where the town is! A lot of the homes are spread along the shore but the businesses? Hard to know. Sure I could have consulted the Internet or Google Maps but where is the fun in that? Trevor had some light bulbs for us and he thought they might work. Awesome.
We decided we deserved some Ice Cream so we headed into town and asked a kid if there was a place that sold ice cream. It was completely the opposite way that we were walking. No worries. It was here in Deep Creek that we were adopted by a couple of local dogs. Especially a caramel-coloured mutt I nicknamed “Caramel” who Jim had given some water to in his hand. We weren’t sure if they were strays or what the locals call “Potcakes”. Potcake is the burnt rice on the bottom of the rice pot and this is what people often feed the strays.
I don’t know where everyone works in this little town. Maybe for Princess Cruises at Bannerman Town (their tropical “island”)? We chatted with a bunch of folks hanging out at Pinder’s Marine. One fellow had visited Canada and spoke about travelling to Ottawa and Hamilton and taking the bus to Calgary I think! He loved it and wished he could have stayed longer. It was winter. Was he crazy? The folks here, like all of those we had met so far on Eleuthera, were very nice. Very open and welcoming in a genuine way. Just down the road though was a pack of dogs there we weren’t so sure about. There was some snarling and rough housing within the pack and as it came up the road toward us at Pinder’s, the two dogs who adopted us began to growl a warning. “Caramel” moved close to his new buddy Jim and finally barked to warn the pack that we were to be left alone. And we were. Amazing. Our two canine friends stayed close to us all the way back to the jetty. It was very hard to leave them.
Southern Eleuthera is a beautiful and increasingly unpopulated part of the island as you get further from the normal tourist destinations. (Todd Vendituoli, who used to live on Eleuthera, has some videos on YouTube and Facebook about the island which feature some excellent drone footage of some of these places. Click on these Links to view his Droning around Rock Sound and his Trip to Lighthouse Beach videos).
We decided to stage for our jump to the Exuma Islands from Lighthouse Beach, the southern-most part of the island. As we approached the beautiful palm tree-lined beach with its interesting rock outcroppings, I couldn’t help but turn to the guys to express what a beautiful place this was when BAM!!! SCRAPE, BUMP, KNOCK, DRAG!! “Oh _______!” (insert whatever strong expletive you can come up with as I’m sure one of us said it.) To say that we had run aground would be a bit of a wee understatement. We hit Hard. Dammit. I had broken my own rule of never taking my eye off the water when entering an anchorage. Sloppy! I knew there were rocks in the anchorage and even a couple of sunken boats closer to the beach. How had this happened? We were just so happy to be cruising into a beautiful anchorage that we didn’t see the rocks, just under the water. Jim figured that the daggerboard hit as well as the hull…yup, on the port side where much of the recent repairs were. Crap!
So that happened. We sheepishly crept into the area where we’d chosen to anchor, dropped the hook and started to check for damage ie. water coming in. Sure enough. There was a slow but steady trickle. It was too dark to go over the side to have a look so we decided we would take turns getting up in the night every couple of hours and sponging the water off of the floor into a bucket as it was all running to just between the galley and the head. Geez.
The next day Paul and I went over the side and I filmed the new damage so Jim could have a look too. It was ugly. We hadn’t pierced both layers of the hull but the scrapes were heavy and the jagged scarring was plain ugly. Not to mention a little scary. The forward storage compartment under the V-berth had its own slow trickle just ahead of the water tanks. So what to do?
At Lighthouse Beach, we were only about 45 minutes or an hour’s drive from Rock Sound. There was a road that led right to the beach. Maybe we could call Andy and he could come and lift us out of the water again? Were the leaks really that bad? Did we have any of that waterproof putty for sealing such scrapes? Nope. We had looked around for that putty as part of our pre-launch shopping excursions but to no avail. We decided that the trickles were manageable but now it meant that our cruising itinerary would change radically. No lingering and playing in beautiful anchorages. It meant that we needed to book it back to the USA ASAP. A big bummer but we had to look after the ship as it were.
So, our plan took shape. We would try to get to Florida as fast as we could with whatever winds came our way. And boy did the winds come our way! We left Lighthouse Beach hoping to get across the Exuma Sound to Staniel Cay in the Exumas (surely we had a little time to see the swimming pigs?) But of course, the increasingly strong winds were on the nose. I think winds were in the 20 knot range or more. Thankfully, the deep waters of the Exuma Sound didn’t kick up short period chop. Rather, the waves were fairly far apart but they still built to about 4-5′, maybe more. Nasty stuff to bash into on a trimaran. So we bore off the wind and tried for Highbourne Cay almost near the top of the chain of islands. Dang. So much for the Exumas. Maybe another time right?
It was a bumpy ride to be sure and I started to feed Jim anything with ginger in it. My poor sailor has been known to get seasick in certain conditions. Luckily Paul and I don’t seem to get that though Paul says he can’t go below when it’s lumpy. I don’t have a problem with that though I noticed I tend to crave salty snacks more in wavy conditions. So while Paul was happily sailing the boat (“Hey guys I think I can get her to hit 12 knots!) and Jim was uh, examining the water over the side of the boat, I was able to go below to make lunch, get drinks with electrolytes, etc.
So back to the Head for a minute. Ultimately on our first day out, the time came for the head to be christened by yours truly. Jim told me how to work the pumps and said “Go for it!”. Ok I thought, but I’m not going whole hog here. Just #1. I told myself that it might be smart not to put any paper down the system even though her former owner had told us it worked great and we could put “anything” down it!! The marine head is a Lavac Head. Folks online seemed happy with theirs. So….I was a happy gal after the head seemed to flush! Ah but my happiness was not to last. As we cruised along, in the next day or two, the head was given a more serious workout. Then while we were lumping along in the waves and stiff winds of Exuma Sound, it happened. A CLOG! Was I not feeding the crew enough roughage? Too much meat? Too much starch, not enough salad? I blamed myself and my culinary skills. The guys tut-tutted my concerns but things were looking a bit desperate as we finally got out of the very strong winds and anchored off the beach at beautiful South-West Allans Cay. (If you look at a nautical chart or Google Earth, you will see a bunch of shallows to the south of the Allans Cays and north of Highbourne Cay. There are lots of cautions for taking this route in but we did it! The visibility was ok and the tide was high enough that we could stay clear of hazards. It was very tricky but we made it through)
So Jim bravely chose to deal with the clog. For a guy who had just had a bit of “mal de mer”, I was amazed. My Hero! Well, as the title of this post indicates, the poop really did hit the fan and anything else that was in the head…sort of! The air in the head was both brown and blue as the way he was pumping the head built up a mass of air in the lines which had to go somewhere…which was up and all over the inside of the toilet and it’s lid. You see the Lavac system works by air sucking the waste down with air so the lid of the toilet kind of vacuum seals itself to the bowl. So when it all backfired, the crap exploded all over the underside of the lid, the seat! And even spewed out a bit onto the wall. Poor, poor Jim. My Hero. He came up for air after cleaning up what he could and I cleaned up what remained so he wouldn’t toss his ginger cookies.
Once his tummy settled down, he decided to change the main pump for the spare which looked as if it had barely been used. The head pump is located high on the wall of the head and when he opened it, crap literally ran down the wall. Yuck! He struggled to reach the pump mounting bolts through a couple of 3″ holes with vice grips while laying on the 2’x2′ floor upside down! The pump which Jim took out was clogged pretty solidly. No doubt the gunge inside it had hardened in the heat while the boat had been on the hard in Rock Sound. Kind of like having our own mini-geological era as the stuff in the pump had hardened to a rock-like solid. Gross. Why the explosion? We learned that one of the valves allowing water to flow in (thus completing the pumping cycle) was closed even though it looked open!! Weird. So Jim added Boat Plumber to his long list of skills. Thankfully, once the head was repaired, it worked gloriously well. We sure take “modern plumbing” for granted don’t we?
We will leave you here as we chased endangered lizards around SW Allans Cay (or rather, they actually chased us!). Did I mention that Paul brought along his pet tree frog and Jim’s gecko came along for the ride too? More on our animal friends, our new best friend – the bilge pump – and Paul’s incredible ways with a sewing needle in the next installment.
Stay tuned for Part 3: “So technically we are sinking?” or “Hope the frog can swim!”
I’m still working on more from our Bahamian adventure (Part 2 of The Rest of the Story is almost ready) but thought I’d post some pictures from the area where I’ve been staying. Some are from events such as those at the Palm Beach International Equestrian Center where I finally got to watch Ian Millar ride (though he and his horse Dixon had to withdraw) and the Palm Beach Boat Show. Though I’m in Lake Worth, my typical daily haunts range from north to Riviera Beach (John Foster Park for swimming and snorkeling) down the shore to Ocean Inlet Park near Boynton Beach and in and around Lake Worth, especially John Prince Park. Tomorrow I will explore the historic cottage homes of Lake Worth. It’s been windy and now it will become unseasonably hot! In the mid 80’s!
The idea of creating a blog about our adventures was to share those moments with our family and friends, many of whom professed to be “living vicariously” through us. It was enjoyable to write about all that happened but as you will learn, it was also prudent to withhold a few details until we returned safely so as not to cause too much worry. We call this Now For The Rest of the Story as told in several parts.
When we arrived in Rock Sound, our first look at the boat did not inspire a lot of excitement. It’s hulls were partially hidden by tall grasses from which emanated the sounds of clucking! (Paul just about stepped on a chicken which ran out from those grasses the next day). Eight months in the sun, humidity, winds and rain, not to mention the near miss of Eleuthera by Hurricane Matthew in October and the myriad of birds in the area had left the decks and the sails on the deck desperate for a wash. Jim was a little dismayed at the sorry sight. After all, we’d only seen the boat in pictures most of which had been taken months before when she looked clean and in great shape. But we hadn’t come all this way, with 400 lbs of gear and our good buddy Paul, to be put off by a little scrubbing. The more important thing to consider was the damage to the main hull which would ultimately determine how we proceeded.
The next day we hauled everything out of the boat and laid it all out on tarps in the massive dirt yard behind the owner Andy’s house. Just a reminder, Andy owns a heavy lifting company so he has some pretty big trucks coming and going and thankfully, there was a lot of room to work.
Once the boat was emptied, and Paul had hacked away the grass below her, we had a look at the hull, inside and out. In our correspondence with the former owner, the hole (aft, under the transom) was described as being as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the hull. Yes there was that. But there were other obvious holes as well as some suspect areas that emerged once the guys started tapping on the hull. Many of these proved to be on the port side at, or below, the waterline. Oddly though, one or two big spots were more forward of the daggerboard case which is in front of the mast! Jim relates that when he ground those areas out, the foam core was black and stinky as if the blackwater tank had leaked into it!! Whoa! Yuck. We knew that the previous owner had had troubles with the black water tank leaking into the freshwater tank due to there being an opening above the two! That was fixed a few years ago and now the tanks are completely separate. Perhaps the stinky core was from that old episode?
I say “many” holes but there were only about 3-4 major areas of concern which were subsequently ground out and filled with foam, fibreglass and epoxy on the outside of the hull. Inside, under the port settee storage at the waterline, there appeared to be a couple more areas of concern that were like horizontal slashes which Paul also ground out and patched. Incidentally, the hull is a foam core sandwiched between inner and outer layers of fibreglass.
In previous posts, I may have mentioned how nice the folks were to us in Rock Sound. Andy took one look at Jim’s little battery drill which he was using to grind out the holes and immediately said “I’ve got a real grinder if you’d like to use it!” He hauled over an extension cord as well as a hose so we didn’t have to haul buckets of water to scrub the boat. He also offered any other tools we might need. So kind.
While the repairs were happening, we were blessed with really nice weather. It did get hot in the afternoons but as I’ve mentioned, we learned shade management quickly. There was also no rain. Thanks goodness or it would have been a mucky mess. Most of the time there were cool breezes which helped immensely. The electricity only went off once that I know of causing a short delay to some of the heavier grinding.
My job was to clean the boat, the cushions and the sails as well as to provision her and see to our comforts aboard once we were launched and underway. Back at our rental house, the sails were spread out on the beautiful deck overlooking the Sound. The mainsail was awesome. While it had lain on the deck over the past 8 months, it had had its stackpack cover on but since it was loosely flaked inside the cover, there was enough airflow to prevent much mold from growing. The jib on the other hand looked awfully moldy when we unrolled it! It has one of those clear UV covers on the luff of the sail but I think because it was furled so tightly, the mold took hold easily inside. It required a lot of scrubbing! But there were no holes and all the stitching seemed fine …or so we thought! (Yes, blatant foreshadowing)
The screecher (genoa) seemed in better condition and the stitching seemed fine. No holes, no mould. So we had three sails. No spares. No problem.
It’s a little bit tough to do repairs when under a time crunch but as we only had the rental house for a week and we had to leave enough time to sail the boat the 300 miles to Florida, there was a bit of pressure to get One Love ship shape. I had absolutely no fears that the guys would be able to repair her enough to sail her. Everything just seemed to be flowing along as we thought it might.
Finally, after three and a half days of solid work, came the day to launch One Love. Andy decided to use his own big powerboat trailer to transport our boat to the ramp. This meant repairing his own boat motor enough to launch it to free up the trailer! Wow! Andy, you’re a legend!
Unfortunately I missed him lifting our boat onto the trailer with his crane as I was doing final errands at the stores. Dang. There are four lifting rings built into the boat for that purpose. He lifted it off of its concrete block and wood stands, swung it around and over his truck, then onto the boat trailer. To prepare for this, the trailer had to be modified with a bit of planking down the centre and the floats tied open a little (ie. not tucked into the main hull as they normally are for transport) in order for them to clear the powerboat rollers. So a load which would normally be about 8′ 6″ wide or so, was now about 12′ wide! “Island Style Mon” as Andy’s buddy and employee Frankie would say.
Now you have to understand that Frankie’s phrase encompasses a world of meaning. He referred to his car as a “Bahamian Bubbler,” maybe because it had a tendency to run on, or struggle to start, or it’s timing was off, etc. A case in point was our rental Jeep…the “Not So Grand” Cherokee. Pretty much it’s entire exhaust system fell off on day two of driving on the pitted Queen’s Highway. (We saved it so they could re-attach it later). It also had at least one nut missing on each tire. Maybe there is a niche market on Eleuthera for lug nuts but as Frankie is trying to get into the tire business, I wouldn’t want to compete with him.
Andy’s boat trailer was another example of Bahamian ingenuity. I don’t think any of the tires on that big trailer matched. Half seemed a bit deflated or completely flat, but maybe that was helpful on the potholed roads? The trailer was held onto the truck at the coupler with a pair of vice grips. No lights or safety chains. But it worked! It all worked and if it didn’t work, someone would make it work. Maybe it wouldn’t be pretty, but it would work. Island Style is working with what you have! We embraced that philosophy wholeheartedly.
It is very hard to make a living on some of the islands and just getting parts for anything broken down can be exorbitantly expensive. During our initial inventory of the boat gear, we noticed that the outboard gas tank was nowhere to be found! Kind of important as it feeds gas to our motor right? Apparently it had wandered away some time ago and with all that was going on, Andy had forgotten to tell us. We called all over Eleuthera but none were to be had. We wish we had known. Back at Watermakers Air in Ft. Lauderdale on our way over, we had been told that we couldn’t bring our own empty gas tank as it had had fuel in it before (we had thought we could use it as a secondary tank). Had we known we needed one, we would have bought a new one in Florida and brought it with us. Now there is a niche market….new outboard gas tanks!
Frankie found out about the missing tank three days before launch and said he “knew some people” and would see what he could do. Amazing! The day before we launched, he came by with the right-sized tank so the guys didn’t have to jury rig a jerry can! The fittings were not exact but the guys made them work. Wow!
On launch day, One Love slowly made her way out of the yard as Andy gingerly wound his way through the narrow back streets of Rock Sound to the “highway” (remember, the highway is like a two lane back road where I come from. In some areas there are dividing lines, in others there are none).
Folks politely tried not to point and stare. Those in cars or trucks pulled over to let that odd load by. Everyone knows Andy and they knew that we were there to buy the boat, fix her up and sail her away. We got lots of friendly smiles and waves too. It was a bit like a parade as I followed the pickup and boat. Frankie followed all of us with the crane on the big truck. No wide load permit or police escort. Island Style!
The “ramp” at the launch area was roughly hewn, most likely scraped into shape by one of Andy’s machines out of the local limestone. The tide was ebbing quickly and Andy’s big pick up truck had a tough time backing the trailer in far enough. At one point, I think it got stuck. I was on the bow and the guys were all trying to get the trailer tongue high enough to let the boat slide off. There was a jack involved under the tongue but they ended up just lifting the truck and breaking the jack! Geez. So I moved my arse to the stern of the boat and voila! She slid into the water. I quipped to Frankie that I was glad my diet hadn’t worked out!
The dock alongside the shore was perched on some very jagged limestone. We put our fenders out but the tide was really exposing the sharp edges. We left poor Jim alone to deal with that while the rest of us hustled back to Andy’s for the mast. Now here is another story. The bulbs in the lights on the mast were all blown along with matching fuses at the electric panel. One of our missions during our repair week was to scrounge up some bulbs and fuses. A tough go. No good way to Island Style that stuff. I think we cleaned out the local AID Hardware store of fuses. Wonderful folks there. No bulbs to be had. Hmm…. The guys fixed what they could and the rest would be done along the way…hopefully. We had word that Trevor Pinder, who runs a marine repair place in Deep Creek on the south end of Eleuthera might have bulbs. Cool. We planned to sail to Deep Creek upon leaving Rock Sound anyhow. I’d heard about Trevor via the Women Who Sail Facebook group so he came highly recommended.
So I don’t believe we had any lights on the mast. But I had a pretty bright inflatable solar light which we could hang from the spreaders while we were anchored plus we had a working stern light as well as red and green running lights at the bow. Pretty good.
Safety gear. We had been told that there should be some flares on the boat. Never found any and we couldn’t find any to buy nearby in any case. So we went with a few handheld flares which Jim had brought with us. The VHF radio seemed to work and miraculously, the solar panels had kept the two marine batteries nicely charged since One Love had come ashore. Our outboard and new-to-us gas tank were working too. The Garmin chart plotter didn’t work, nor did the autopilot that was tied to it but we had the excellent Explorer Chartbooks, a couple of GPS’s and a couple of devices with the Navionics App on them. So we figured we could find our way around the islands. What could possibly go wrong? (This phrase soon became our mantra!)
Stayed tuned for Part 2 “Reefs aren’t just for fish” or “The S#*t has actually hit the fan”
Ah…Spring is clearly in the air as the wee lizards strut their stuff in the South Florida sun. Below, one little fellow (?) extends a red-orange neck flap over and over. I don’t think the little lady (?) was impressed though as she turned and ambled away. Or perhaps she is being coy? So cute.
So I’m at a Polo arena in Wellington FL!! It’s a fun free competition put on by the US Polo Association. Lots of kids here. Gladiator Polo is a modified version of Polo. It’s 3 on 3 with a change of horses in between quarters (called chuckers I think) and is held on a smaller surface with less players. During half time, two tractors groom the dirt! I’m here with Debbie who is a dressage rider staying at the B and B. Now there are some kids having their own mini competition during half time. They are awesome! The ball seems weighted but squishy. The horses have thick “socks” to protect their legs but even so, there is a lot of physical contact in this game. I don’t know how the riders don’t knock each other silly with the mallets (or the horses).
Debbie and I… Not enough layers! 58F and dropping.
Below: The Kids!
Debbie and I left after the half time kids competition as it was just too cold!! But it was fun to check out something new.
On Monday I hopped in the car and went for a drive to the shore. I followed my nose and ended driving by Trump’s Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach. It’s actually a club with an outrageous initiation fee I’ve heard. It seems very pink. It’s the first picture below.
The Chinese president is to visit there next month so that ought to be interesting. Super exclusive neighborhood along that stretch of the A1A highway.
Dark clouds headed my way later in the day and the winds were very strong from the northeast, hence the surf was up: yellow flag. The purple flag means dangerous marine life nearby. The purple flag was not flying at the Lake Worth beach a bit further south (where the long pier is). By the way, the little red schoolhouse was the first school in Palm Beach in 1876. The big tree is maybe a banyan or a tree with a strangler fig on it.
It finally rained at supper time and boy does this area need rain. Freshwater is precious here these days. Maybe Florida ought to do as other areas do and look into desalination more? Not sure they do that here.
Trailer Tri Adventures 