An Engineless Bluewater Passage.

(Backdated to the end of December)

All three of the Rum Cay boats are headed to the Turks and Caicos and we all leave on this Sunday.

This is the map Bobby gave me. Upon entering I highly recommend looking at this map or hailing Bobby on VHF 16 for a guide boat in.

John and his ferro-cement boat are taking a break after his harrowing ordeal getting to Rum Cay. Spring Song, in front of us, takes the wind and goes east. We, wanting to stick to our rhumbline, decided to only use our jib and motor sail. Our autohelm, a Raymarine ST4000, had a broken belt, which quite a unique belt – so it is still broken. We are hand sailing the entire thing, which honestly isn’t that bad. Dad and I switch between two hour shifts for this day and a half passage. Our plan is to sail, sail, sail until Mayaguana – rest there and then hit it to the Turks and Caicos. Oh the best laid plans…

Around dusk during my shift I see a red flicker. Hmmm… red isn’t really a good color. Again, a red flicker in the dark and soon the red starts to last – I yell for Dad and by this point the red light is consistent. I didn’t want to believe it, but I had recognized it straight away. It was the engine warning light. Dad quickly pulls the plunger to kill the engine. We pull off the stairs to get a good look at our 50 hp Perkins 4108 engine. It is too hot to check the antifreeze, but Dad cleans the salt water intake strainer as we believe the engine is overheating. Running at 180 degrees and creeping up just seems too hot. With no engine we have no backup plan, we can’t manuvour away from other boats easily or anchor in coral areas – I mean we could technically do these things using the wind, but we have lost the safety of the engine. Dad isn’t reassuring and we are both a bit scared and confused. We start up the engine again, leaving the cover off and it is again hot, but not too hot. I sleep in the cockpit as it is too rough below to do anything other than throw up.

I am awoken to a red light in my face and a loud buzzer. Crap. I pull the plunger. This is bad. This is going to be a bad ongoing problem. We aren’t even 12 hours into our day and a half long trip. We have barely scratched the surface and now its 2 am and we need to raise the main. Of course the metal halyard is snagged. It is dark and the winds are cold. We are both tired, upset, and unsure. Once I get the halyard into the correct position the main continues to catch on the lazyjacks since we can’t point into the wind. With the job, main, and mizzen all raised we can actually catch a bit of the light wind and get a pretty good reach going to Plana Cays. During the night we attempted to use the engine again, but it would soon be past 220 degrees and continuously getting hotter. It really wasn’t a matter at this point, we had been sailing for over a day now and the winds were pushing us very nicely. Really, we were cruising at 7 knots (fast for our boat). Once we passed Plana Cays, around 4 pm, we lost our nice wind and were barely going 4 knots on our way to Mayaguana. Our great plans to anchor here were quickly dismissed as we doubted we could get the anchor back up without an engine. Instead after passing Mayaguana at 8 pm, we took the light 10 knot northerly and just kept going. We left Sunday afternoon and now it was Tuesday morning. Hand sailing the boat the entire way – we were getting very exhausted and with no charts for the Turks we were unsure of if we should go to the north side of Providenciales or the south, both were covered in coral and we would have to run the engine to get in. Of course since we are adults, at our wits end, we started arguing about it – yelling, blaming, etc. Eventually we agreed on the south side and going through customs at Sapodilla Bay. We arrive at noon and it takes us until 4 pm to slowly go through the coral banks without overheating the engine. Two days later, and many hours of sailing, we had arrived in the Turks and Caicos. We want, badly, to be off the boat. Attempts to hail customs, of course, come to no response and the beach is deserted (along with the anchorage). The beach is a slow decline with gin clear waters, just beautiful! Soon Restless a nice wood schooner pulls in and Dad quickly makes a friend, a friend who happens to be a mechanic.

For your appreciation: the next morning we clear customs which is at the government port and with no dinghy access you have to be a gymnast to get off your dinghy and to shore.