(This was written last Wednesday, March 25.)
In our last post, I wrote, “In a few days, we’ll be underway to the rest of Eleuthera and the Exumas.”
That was twelve days ago. We’re still in Eleuthera – not even halfway through.
Our first holdup was mechanical. When Hill was diving under the boat to fix another issue, he discovered that the zinc around our prop was almost completely corroded away. It’s supposed to corrode, but slowly, not to nothing in less than two months. Fortunately, Spanish Wells has good marine repair facilities, so Hill contacted a boatyard there about replacing the part. When we arrived, we identified what we thought was the correct part, and on the afternoon of Friday the 13th (cue ominous music here), motored to the boatyard for their diver to make the repair.
But it wasn’t the correct part after all, nor did the boatyard have the correct part in stock. They had to order it, which they did on Saturday and had it shipped via Fed Ex. “It should arrive on Monday or Tuesday,” they told us.
Hill and I discussed sailing out to an anchorage over the weekend for a change of scenery but decided to stay put in case the part arrived on Monday. So we checked in on Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. And Thursday. No part.
In the meantime, we got to know Spanish Wells really well. It takes about 30 minutes to tour the entire town. It has three restaurants, two grocery stores, a drive-up ice cream parlor, and the beach. We visited them all.
We dinghied around the mangrove swamps. We visited the boaters Tom and Jean who now live on the island and maintain a book swap for cruisers. We took walks. We had happy hour with our neighbors. We went swimming. We read books. We did laundry. We hung out at the marina to steal internet. We paid $5 at the grocery store for a horrible bootleg DVD of Serenity.
On Wednesday and Thursday, we devoted ourselves to boat projects. Hill tuned the rig. I marked our anchor line. Hill continued tuning the rig. I fixed the latch on the door to our cabin. Hill fixed the 12-volt outlet in the cockpit. I got out the label maker and labeled the various parts of the watermaker. Hill asked me to make a label for the emergency bilge pump. An argument ensued.
Me: “Why do I need to make a label for that? We know where it is.”
Hill: “In case someone else is using the boat and they need it.
Me: *rolls eyes* “Whatever. We’ll probably never use it anyway.”
Spanish Wells had its moments. On Thursday, as we were dinghying back to the boat, we saw three dolphins – a mama and two babies – playing in the harbor not five feet from us. We slowed down and they started playing around us – one swam right under the dinghy!
The part finally arrived on Friday and we had it installed on Friday afternoon. So we were ready to leave, just in time to go…nowhere. The weather forecast for the next five days called for 25-30 knot winds. By Friday, the harbor was full-up with boats looking for a safe place to wait out the next few days.
However, the 30 knot breeze never quite arrived. Saturday and Sunday each started with 10 knots in the morning, increasing to 20 by afternoon, and then moderating again in the evening. We decided that 20 knots was acceptable to head down to Eleuthera, but modified our original plan of stopping at an anchorage to instead sail to a protected harbor about four hours away called Hatchet Bay.
The “scariest” part of the trip would be our passage through Current Cut, a narrow slot which, as the name suggests, has a strong current caused by the tidal flow. We learned that the current was slack about 2 hours after the tide’s high or low, and we decided to go through two hours after low tide, around 2:30. Then it would be another three hours or so until we reached the harbor at Hatchet Bay.
We sailed downwind to Current Cut, then motored through the cut, which was calm as expected. We then shifted course into the wind for our motor into Hatchet Bay. The wind was about 20 knots and the seas had a 2-4 foot chop (for those of you in Chicago, it was very similar to a windy day on Lake Michigan). Since we were heading into the wind, the nose of the boat was slamming into the waves, and it wasn’t the most comfortable ride, but it wasn’t horrible either. Hill and I set the autopilot and relaxed. Our biggest complaint was how we hadn’t been smart enough to put some beers in the fridge so we could open a cold one.
After a particularly big wave, the boat’s speedometer readout suddenly disappeared. We weren’t terribly worried – our speedometer has always been a little buggy. Still, Hill went below to check the thruhole that held the speedometer and make sure it wasn’t leaking. It didn’t seem to be, so we settled back in and started speculating on what had jammed it up – a fish? seaweed? a rock?
About thirty minutes later, Hill happened to glance down into the cabin. He jumped up and yelled, “The floor is full of water!” then bounded down the stairs.
“What do I do?” I yelled down.
“Slow us down while I get out the emergency bilge pump!”
Hill set up the bilge pump and handed me the exit hose to point out the back of the boat. Then he found the hole – the speedometer had come all the way out of its thruhole – and stopped it up with a wooden plug. We were still 12 miles from Hatchet Bay (2 – 2 ½ hours) and still in 20 knots of wind. We briefly considered changing course to someplace closer, but as Hatchet Bay was the only decent harbor around we decided to continue on. We kept the autopilot on and continued working on pumping out the water, switching over to the manual bilge pump once we got the water down to an acceptable level.
We limped in to Hatchet Bay around 6:30 (about an hour before sunset) and looked for a mooring. Our charts described the anchor holding within Hatchet Bay as “feeble” and we didn’t want to have to worry about our anchor dragging on top of everything else. But, guess what! All of the mooring balls were occupied. So anchor we did. We tested it to ensure it held and set the anchor alarm as a backup. Then we spent the next three hours pulling open the storage compartments under the settee to assess the damage from the flooding. We took on 20-30 gallons of seawater before we stopped up the hole.
Everything on the starboard side was soaked. That included most of our dried and canned food. Of course, the cans were fine, but a lot of the dried food was toast, even though most of it was sealed in bags and placed inside plastic bins. (Memo to Hefty and Zip-loc: your products don’t keep out seawater).
The port side, where we keep our beer, cokes, and liquor, was barely damp. Crisis averted.
The main casualty was the collection of spare engine parts (fuel filters, oil filters, etc.) that were stored in the compartment that flooded. We were able to salvage some but the rest were destroyed. The second casualty was our book collection, which we keep under the floorboards, again sealed in zip-loc bags. In fact, I had just repacked them that morning. The books on the top survived mostly unscathed, but those on the bottom were soaked. Today, we placed them out in the sun to dry, and we’ll see which ones make it.
Fortunately, the most important things on the boat – the engine, our electronics, and our bed – did not get wet at all.
Was I terrified? No, although I did not sleep well last night, twitched at every noise, and had several dreams with variations on the theme of flooding. Instead, I was angry that I once again allowed impatience to guide us instead of waiting for easier weather. The weather wasn’t that bad, but strong winds add another layer onto a potentially dangerous situation. When will we learn?
I will say that this little escapade was the final nail in the coffin of our plan to sail to Jamaica. I’m having quite enough adventure in the Bahamas, thank you.
My favorite quotes from the evening:
Hill referring to a box of oatmeal packets that were completely soaked: “I think these might be salvageable.”
Me looking at the pile of wet books stacked under the dodger: “Are you telling me the only things I may have left to read are this boring John le Carre novel and Paradise Lost?”
