2011-12-24 Boring dramas and Christmas wishes

First of all – Christmas greetings to everyone from us in the Bahamas. We hope you are all having/about to have a great Christmas.

So Mary had given the good side of our trip across the stream but there’s another side too!! Always more than one side to a story!

Engine controls don’t control

As we were leaving Pelican Marina to our “staging” anchorage before our trip over, we decided to fill the tanks with diesel. So off to the fuel dock. Simple enough? Of course, it is! Done this any number of times by now.  Except if halfway there you find the controls to your starboard engine are stuck. Only forward and neutral on the shift selector and minimal on the throttle!!! This makes for extremely difficult manoeuvring! Add to that the one dock hand is quite inexperienced and instead of wrapping the bow line around a cleat he tries to hold 21000 lbs of boat near the dock with the wind blowing us away, and me unable to manoeuver. Anyway, got tied on without any further mishap but now my mind goes into overdrive on the diagnostics as to what the problem was.

Suffice it to say that a simple screw in the one control cable had worked itself loose and jammed the 2 controls – took about an hour to find and fix.

Gulf Stream doesn’t play ball!

The trip across the Gulf stream was different. Having read all the books and reports and after discussion with other boaties I had plotted my course to take into account the northward push of the Gulf Stream. 5 hours crossing the Gulf stream that is moving north will take you 10 mile north of your intended destination if you don’t compensate for the drift. So essentially, I followed a compass course with a heading some degrees south of Bimini, trusting the Stream to work its magic and push us north onto our intended destination.

Well, the Gulf stream decided to take a holiday and didn’t play ball. Halfway across, I had to alter course to the north as the famed Gulf stream had not had any effect on us. After arriving at Bimini, I talked to another boater who had also just crossed and had a similar experience. Expect the unexpected!!!

Indeed, expect the unexpected!! See what happened next!

My puppy is sick!

As we were maneuvering into the marina at Bimini, my starboard engine suddenly lost power, once again leaving me with a resultant loss of maneuverability at a critical time. Then it died!!!!

Result: blown around into the end of a pier, unable to turn into the slip, do a 360 degree turn and with a nasty crosswind manage to get into slip. VERY inelegantly!!!

So anyway, I figured the bouncing around during the crossing had stirred up some old gunk from the bottom of the fuel tanks and clogged the fuel filters. This is a common theme with older boats that have only ever been used in calm conditions.

Of course, the hope is that it is not something more serious that will require an engineer to fix or parts to be ordered in. There is, in fact, a sail boat here that is waiting for some engine part to be flown in from the USA.

So, early I was up changing the fuel filters. Must say, to my untrained eye, they didn’t look too bad!! Then had to wait for a decent hour to fire up my two puppies and for the moment of truth. (didn’t want to wake the whole marina at 7am, you know!!)

So fired up Apollo, the port (good) engine – no problem – just grumbled to life. Now for Zeus, the starboard engine. Turn on the ignition key, press the start button. The motor spins over and instantly sparks to life, spits out some unburnt dirty fuel and settles down to a healthy growl. My puppies are well and healthy!! Now I can relax properly.

A relaxing day! Christmas Eve!