I go for a swim in the marina

We couldn’t get a consensus on whose fault it was; the guys sided with me and the women sided with Wendy. It didn’t really matter anyway, I was going to be the one swimming in the marina.

I had taken our dinghy out to try to find the local marine salvage yard. I tried to find it by walking around, but I had only been there by water and had no luck on foot. I took my phone with me in the dinghy and used Google maps to show my location. Now I knew where the salvage yard was located and how to get there walking. On the way back to our boat the engine died. I figured, no big deal, restarted it and continued on my way for about fifty feet before it died again. Over and over I would restart the engine only to have to die more and more quickly. Finally, I gave up and started rowing. As I approached the marina, Barry saw me, hopped in his dinghy and come out to push be the rest of the way back to our boat.

It took a couple of days before I had time to work on the engine. I was afraid that I was going to need to take the carburetor off and clean it all out. Since it had run just fine all summer and fall I tried the easy was first; I sprayed the carb with carb cleaner. It took a few tries, but eventually, it seemed to work. I took the dinghy out for a test drive and the engine died again. This time when I got it restarted it stayed running while I motored back to the marina.

Later that day I asked Wendy if she wanted to go for a ride and explore the inlet where our marina is located. There are a couple of miles of canals back in here and we had not seen most of the area. I figured that would be a good way to really test the engine to make sure it was running as it should. Since we were going to be out for a while and motoring at about 2 mph we brought along a couple of beers and a bottle opener in our little softside cooler.

We explored the area, saw lots of nice houses and some nice condos. We also saw something that seems to be common in the Bahamas, especially around here. We saw several properties that were nearly complete and abandoned. We also saw some properties that looked lived in and it was as if the owners had just walked away leaving everything behind. Like a row of townhouses where there were lawn chairs and kids toys in the yard. Weird.

As we motored around we each finished our first beer and opened a second. Here is where things began to fall apart. I opened both beers then put the bottle opener back into the side pocket of the cooler, but I didn’t zip the pocket back up. 

When we finished our tour we cleaned out the dinghy and while I tied the dinghy up, Wendy emptied the contents of the cooler. After pulling out the two empties, she dumped the remaining ice water over the side of the boat into the water. She then went down into the galley to throw away the bottle caps and put the bottle opener away. Unfortunately, those things were no longer in the cooler. We looked around and finally decided that the caps and opener had gone overboard with the melted ice. She blamed me for not zipping the zipper back after using the opener, I blamed her for not emptying everything before dumping the melted ice. Either way, the bottle opener was at the bottom of the marina.

At the back of our boat the water is no more than 12 feet deep at high tide, less than 10 feet at low tide. Diving in to get the bottle opener would be trivial, if it were actually down there. The tide was high and we couldn’t quite see the bottom, so we decided to wait.

Now, I’ve mentioned before that swimming in a marina is not a good idea. There are bathrooms in the marina, so that you don’t need to use the one on your boat. Boats have holding tanks to hold waste, so it doesn’t have to be flushed directly into the water. In theory, there should not be any waste going into the water in a marina. Of course, that’s only in theory. While most people around here will go up to the marina bathrooms if they are going to need to sit for a while, many will flush liquid waste directly overboard. While I haven’t seen it here, I have seen people flush solid waste overboard in a marina which is pretty disgusting.

Low tide eventually came around and we could clearly see the bottle opener at the bottom of the marina. I tried to reach it with a boat hook, but 8 feet was too short. The only way to get it back was to go for a swim. It’s just a bottle opener. It has no sentimental value, it’s nothing special. It does lay completely flat, so it takes up little room. It has a long handle on it that makes it very easy to open bottles and it doesn’t corrode. While it was cheap, I just really like this bottle opener.

 Nothing special

Night was falling, so while I dug out my fins and mask, Wendy got my towel and soap. I jumped in the water, swam around to the other side of the boat and dove down to retrieve the opener. Nothing to it, it was easy and I got the opener back. I climbed out of the water, grabbed my towel/soap and headed straight for the marina restrooms to take a good, long, hot, soapy shower.

That time our boat got stuck under the dock

Last night was an interesting night. When we arrived at the marina on Tuesday we were directed to a very small slip. It would probably be a good fit for a boat about two feet narrower and six or seven feet shorter. To say that is it a tight fit is an understatement. The tide swings about three feet in this marina and it is difficult to get enough fenders around the boat to keep us off of pilings and off of the dock.

Well, last night we went to bed around 10pm and at 1:30am I woke up needing to head to the bathroom. I stepped out of bed and fell into the wall because the boat was leaning over. If we were sailing that would be typical, but in a marina that shouldn’t happen. It only took a second to realize what was going on. The starboard side of the boat must have gotten stuck under the dock. I was hoping I would be able to just push it out from under the dock and everything would be ok. That’s not how it worked out.

The sides of the boat have lifelines that help keep people onboard in case they slip and fall. The lifelines are held up by little posts called stanchions. Last night the stanchions got caught under the dock as the tide was coming up. When I arrived on deck boat was almost as high as the dock, but the stanchions were bent all the way over and causing the boat to lean way over to the side. I tried to push the boat down to get it out from under the dock and that did nothing at all. I called down for Wendy to come up and help. As she was getting out of bed and putting on clothes I released the boom and swung it all the way out to the side. Having the boom out to the side gave us a long lever to hopefully, use to pry the boat over a little more so it could be released from under the dock. With Wendy and me hanging on the boom the pressure was slightly less on the dock, but not nearly enough to get the boat out.

We have some friends, Paul and Julia, in this marina so I ran over to their boat. Amazing they were awake! Another boat had been planning on leaving at 2am and Paul and Julia had offered to help. We got Paul, Julia and the guy from the other boat, Bob, to come over to our boat. Several of us hung from the boom while someone tried to push the boat out. No deal. The problem was that our boat has 22,000 pounds of displacement. That means it would take 22,000 lbs to push our boat under water. It also has 7,600 lbs of lead in the keel to help hold it upright while sailing. With three of us on the boom there was still far too little weight to heel the boat enough.

The tide was over an hour from reaching it's highest point. We could hear the dock creaking and popping every couple of minutes. The pressure on the stanchions and the deck was still building. Paul said, “Man, those stanchions are a total loss, but we need to get the pressure off them before they rip a hole in your boat.” Then a light bulb went on in my head. I raced down below, grabbed the hacksaw, ran back up on deck and started sawing the stanchions off. Stainless steel is tough to get a cut started, but once it gets going it moves pretty fast. The first one I had to cut almost all the way through before it gave way. The second one now had all the pressure on it. When I got about half way I asked everyone to move back. Once I was about ¾ of the way through it snapped off and the boat righted itself. I’ve never been so happy with so much damage.

As it turns out there was very little damage. The two stanchions will need to be replaced, one of the stanchion bases is bent and may be able to be straighten back out and both stanchion base will need to be re-bedded. We had already planned to re-bed the stanchion bases, so no big deal there. That just moves it up on our never ending list. There is no real damage to the hull, but for the base that was bent I’ll probably install a larger backing plate when we put it all back together. My only concern is yesterday we paid $2.50 for a regular can of lima beans. I can’t imagine what they are going to want for a pair of stainless steel stanchions.

Tomorrow our neighbors will be leaving and we’ll take over their wider slip. Wendy said we should have taken some photos last night while the boat was stuck. For some reason neither of us thought to do that. It seems cruising is an adventure even in a marina.

 

Stanchion base a little bent out of shape.

 

This should be straight.

 

 

The pieces of the wreckage.

We finally sail over to the Bahamas

Just some thoughts on our passage to the Bahamas, what we did right and what we did wrong.

The city marina in Ft Pierce is difficult to get in and out of except at slack tide. Since the time we wanted to leave Ft Pierce did not correspond with a slack tide we left the marina a day early and anchored out for the night. That also allowed us to get the boat setup for cruising, instead of being set up to be a house. To do that we took the dingy off the davits and lifted onto the forward deck, we stowed anything that could fall off a counter, we got out our life vests and tethers and we installed our jacklines. Jacklines are lines that run the length of the boat to which you can attach a tether that is then connected to your life vest/harness. This helps prevent you from falling overboard in rough seas or if you do manage to get overboard, keeps you attached to the vessel. We also bought ice before we left and filled a cooler with drinks, water and food. We kept that in the cockpit, so we wouldn't have to go down below as much.

We created a float plan before leaving and shared that plan with family. We let them know our planned route with waypoints and our expected arrival time. We set up a Spot device so that we could be tracked the whole way. The Spot turned out to be both good and bad, but I'll explain later. We watched the weather forecasts very closely in the days before we left. We relied on just general weather forecasts from Accuweather, plus NOAA marine forecasts and Passageweather to pick a good time to cross. The Gulf Stream is the largest river in the world and should only be crossed in good weather, ships have been lost by being out there in the wrong conditions and we're no ship.

Our original plan was to sail down to Palm Beach and wait there for a good time to cross. The weather forecast looked good for a Tuesday night crossing. People may wonder why cross at night? You always want to arrive at your destination during daylight hours. Entering a new harbor is tricky and entering a new harbor at night is just plain stupid and while I may be a lot of things, stupid isn't one of them. So, arriving during the day often means sailing at night. Anyway, weather forecasts change and the time for our crossing changed with the forecasts. We ended up with two choices. One was to sail straight through from Ft Pierce to the Bahamas, crossing Sunday night. The other other was to stop in Palm Beach for two days and cross on Tuesday night. Sunday night the wind in the Gulf Stream would be directly on our nose and the waves would be the same direction. That meant all night pounding into the wind and waves. Tuesday night the winds were forecast to be out of the south, so we could at least motor sail during the cross and the waves would be on our beam (perpendicular to our path). Both nights the wind would be light and the waves small. Tuesday would sounded like it would be much more comfortable, but the thing that sealed the deal was the chance of each forecast being correct. We had watched the forecasts change day to day or even morning to evening. At 12 hours away, we had a lot more confidence in Sunday night's forecast than in Tuesday nights. After Tuesday night's window the weather was going to fall apart as far as the extended forecast showed.

Our original plan included a stop at Palm Beach and had us getting there early enough to get anchored before night. When we left to cross we had planned to leave at 10pm. Since we were going straight through we took our time getting going on Sunday morning and didn't rush sailing down the coast. The winds were light so we motor sailed south along the coast. Our speed varied from 4 knots to 6 knots. There was no point is going any faster as we didn't want to get to the Bahamas too early. We reached the Palm Beach inlet around 7:30pm, so we were still ahead of schedule and in no hurry. About that time our speed began to drop. At first I didn't pay much attention to it since the speed had varied all day. Then it dropped some more. I check the motor rpms, still the same, I checked the wind speed and direction, still the same. I checked the sails, they were set right. Everything looked good, but we had certainly slowed down. Still I wasn't concerned, we were ahead of schedule.

The plan was from Palm Beach to start to angle out towards the edge of the Gulf Stream. When we made the float plan the western edge of the Gulf Stream was 11 miles from the Lake Worth Inlet (Palm Beach), but it had changed by the time we actually got there. Now it was only 5 miles from the Lake Worth Inlet. That meant that angling out to our waypoint we would be going into the Gulf Stream and directly against the current. I still wanted to get farther south before crossing, so we changed our heading slightly. Instead of going south east we went due south. That turned out to be the wrong thing to do. The coast moves slightly west from Palm Beach south and the Gulf Stream stayed about 5 miles off the coast, so even though we went moving out the Gulf Stream was moving in. Our speed continued to drop as we moved south until at one point we were doing 2 knots. While we were not as far south as we wanted to be we were committed, so we turned east.

Looking at our track on Spot it is easy to see that the Gulf Stream was strongest close to the Florida coast. We were moving north almost as fast as we were moving east. For a while I was worried that we would end up going north of the Bahamas. Slowly as we crossed the current slacked off and we were able to move more easterly. Wendy had been worried about the Gulf Stream, but when I told here we had been in it for the last couple of hours before we made the turn she stopped worrying about that.

The waves and wind were light as we started across and even though they we right on our nose, it was a comfortable sail. We still had some things to be concerned about later that night. There is a lot of traffic in the Gulf Stream, tankers and cruise ships move along at about 20 knots and wouldn't even know if they ran over a little sailboat. They really can't turn to avoid you, so you need to avoid them. We installed an AIS (Automatic Identification System) last winter. All commercial vessels must have one aboard and recreational vessels have the option to have one aboard. An AIS transmits a signal over VHF frequencies that includes the ships name, position, heading and speed. Our chart plotter plots all of that and determines based on both boats current speed, position and heading if the two will meet. It will also tell you the closest the two boats will come to each other. This was AWESOME at night when we would see ships. We could check immediately to see how close we would get and if we needed to change direction. That was a huge weight off our minds. You can see below what it looked like out there at 2am. We're that little black boat shaped icon in the middle of the picture.

After playing real life Frogger most of the night the wind picked up and the waves grew. We've been in much worse and there was nothing that was really scary, but it did become uncomfortable. The waves were steep and we were going straight into them. That caused a lot of slamming as the front of the boat came off of one wave and ran right into the side of the next. Water never came over the bow, but it did spray the whole boat from bow to stern. That lasted about fours hours starting around 4am when both of us were getting very tired and made it impossible for either of us to get any sleep.

Upon reaching the Bahamas we turned south and the islands protected us from the waves. We had plenty of winds and flat seas. Our speed went from 4 knots to over 7 knots. The next few hours were the best part of the trip. The skies were clear, the temperature ideal, the water was bright blue, we sailed along a seemingly endless beach in nice flat seas. If sailing was like that all the time, everyone would live on a sailboat!

We had very few problems along the way. Our engine ran flawlessly, even when the boat was pounding we did not have any fuel issues. If you have dirt in the bottom of the tank the waves will stir it up and clog the fuel filter. Water in the tank will do the same thing, but no sludge or water showed up in the filter. We only used about 24 gallons of diesel running the engine for 27 hours. No problems with sails, no problems with charts, navigation or electronics. The only problem we had was that occasionally the autopilot would give up and stop working. Most of the time it was because the wind would shift too much for the autopilot to compensate. The boat would get too far off course the the autopilot would just quit.

The other thing was the Spot device. Like I said before, it was good and bad. Part of that was my fault. It was great for people tracking us to be able to see exactly where we were and that we were moving forward. The problem occurred when the Spot came unplugged. At some point I saw that it was unplugged and plugged it back in. It has batteries, so it stayed on the whole time, I checked when I plugged it back in. What I didn't check was that it was still tracking. It turns out that it stopped when it came unplugged and I didn't find out until I talked to someone who had been tracking us. That's the big gap as we sailed down along Grand Bahama. Knowing that it does that, I'll check in the future to make sure it is still transmitting. The sudden disappearance could cause some concern. You can see the gap in the tracking just before we reach the Bahamas.

All and all, a good trip. No real problems and we made it safely, if very tired, to the Bahamas. Life is pretty good sitting in the cockpit typing on my laptop and enjoying the light breeze and clear water.