If Not Now, Then When?

(Backdated to New Year’s)

The waters of Sapodilla Bay are excruciatingly beautiful and overnight they had quickly filled up with new sailing vessels. In addition to Restless, a beautiful schooner which was captained by a very friendly South African mechanic, Lee, and his German fiancé, Gesine, Three Amigos had also shown up again. Other than getting an anchor stuck in a coral head and having to dive on it in the morning they had a pretty uneventful crossing. Psh. The customs, $15 for entry and $15 for exiting, was very simple – except they have no VHF radio or change, so go in there prepared. After customs Lee quickly rowed over and soon our beautiful blue Perkins 4108 was in pieces. They checked the intake valve to see if it was obstructed at all. They opened up the salt water pump. They checked the exhaust manifold. They pulled off the heat exchanger and cleaned that. They checked the impeller. They really spent the whole day pulling apart the engine, while I pulled down our beautiful nautical looking vertical cleats which turned out to be a real bugger as the jib lines continuously got caught there on the crossing over. Finally, Lee asks if I had cleaned the prop and of course I said yes (because I had in Andros), but I really hadn’t done a good enough job as there was a thick chalky layer that encrusted our prop and was causing the engine to overheat.

With the engine back in working order we are free to roam about Provo. Although all of the south side marinas and anchorages are very far away from towns and your only option to get to downtown or to the north coast where all the big hotels and restaurants are is to take a cab (read: expensive), take a jitney (read: kind of sketchy), hitchhike (read: don’t forget your towel). After a nice dinner at Las Brisas we get a phone number for a reliable jitney and we explore downtown Provo, which is limited really to a few local bars, a supermarket, and marine store.

. As a New Year’s present we decide to move the boat to Caicos Marina and Shipyard in hopes we would find it easier to access the north side, which is where all of the people are (unfortunately it kind of just put us farther away). Caicos Marina has the best showers I have seen probably ever – polished, white, and hot. The power was free and I could get internet on the boat – a New Year’s miracle. $1 per foot which was also acceptable, but don’t try to do laundry here as you will spend a fortune ($10 or so per load). Here we run into Spring Song – all of the boats from Rum Cay had made it to Turks, but they had the worst time of it. Their story made my engineless passage look like a cake walk. At Plana Cays they anchored to stop and make lunch and when they were ready to leave the starter went out on their engine and then the wind came out so they had to deploy a second anchor. After much work the coast guard came and helped them retrieve one of the anchors but the 45 pound Bruce and 100 feet of chain is still sitting on the floor of the ocean west of Plana Cays. Still engineless when they came to Turks and Caicos they had to be towed in through the coral heads - this took 5 hours. Like I said – my passage was a cake walk.

Lee and Gesine, continuing to prove themselves as the nicest people ever, rented the last car in Provo and we went to provision in an ACTUAL supermarket.

It was wonderful, although, something I would probably never do as I don’t think I would drive well with left lane driving and traffic circles. We also stopped for a very nice lunch at Tiki Hut just outside of Turtle Cove, a big buck marina on the north side. It seems like all of the restaurants here are incorporated with yacht clubs or hotels, but as all the beaches are public these hotels aren’t really limited only to their patrons. For New Year’s night we have supper at Jimmy’s Dive Bar and afterwards I am off to a GIANT bonfire on the beach in front of Club Med.

Although I was worried that I would never find Eddie and Mark from Three Amigos, I soon made friends with Jasmine, a super awesome girl who really saved my New Years. We had a blast running around the bonfire, dancing, and watching the most amazing fireworks I had ever seen. Every hotel put off fireworks in succession. I eventually do find Mark and Eddie just after midnight and around 4 am hitchhike with them back to the boat – the people in Provo are so nice and we were easily home!

Day one of the new year was spent on the beaches along Grace Bay and cooking a gourmet dinner on the boat – yes I finally got to use the boats outdoor propane grill, which is splendid, by the way.

But soon we are back to work on the boat as Lee seems to find many problems with my beautiful boat. We redid the dinghy lines so that when we hoist it the stress is spread throughout the dinghy. After removing all of the cotter keys Lee showed us how to tune the rigging (tighten up the shroud lines which hold the masts from wiggling too much). Lee also helps us switch the halyards, previously we had a metal halyard for raising the main sail, which supposedly went out in the 70’s. The metal halyard was consistently snagging on itself so we switched it with the blue line halyard for the main sail. We planned to test all of our new systems with a nice little sail around the south side of Provo with Lee and Gesine.

For your appreciation – you know it’s a real supermarket when they have Boone’s Farm and Sanka. If you are ever in Provo, the Graceway Market is, by far, the best supermarket. Please note that the price of the Boone’s Farm is $10!

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.