Well… WildChild is now safely anchored in Eluthra just past Egg island. We have had some adventurous times in the last few days. And it seems more adventure in front of us.
So 4 Days ago we were safely anchored in Marsh Harbor on a lovely Sunday morning. We knew that we were going to begin making our jump south the next day (Monday May 13th). It was a hot day with calm air so we decided we wanted to take WildChild around the corner and anchor off Mermaid reef and maybe do some snorkeling to get a break from the heat.
We started the engine and began to lift the anchor when Elena called me back to the cockpit… “Lexi something it wrong…”. We had an electrical fire in the engine control panel…! OH CRAP…!
There was a good 20 minutes of adrenaline filled terror as we tried to get a grasp of the situation… oh shit did we just kill our engine? The engine temp gauge read 230 degrees F and we had smoke pouring out of the engine room. It was very scary and extremely heart breaking. If we just lost our engine we have BIG problems…!
It turned out just to be the engine panel that caught fire. The voltmeter shorted out inside and melted a bunch of wires but there was no harm to the actual engine. Thank heavens. Some man who previously installed the voltmeter had it hooked up wrong and made the metal chassis of the meter body negative and bypassed the negative post of the meter itself. We had always had problems with it but flicking it always got it working again.
The good news is Captain Lexi is (among many things) a marine electrician. I got the panel rewired and a new voltmeter installed within about 3 hours… but swimming was out for the day.
The next day (Monday) I had to make the decision if we were still going to jump around south to Little Harbor to get ready for the good winds forecast to enable us to jump to Eluthra on Tuesday. I know the Captain is always supposed to act decisive and confident but it is really hard to make good decisions all the time and not make mistakes out here. I know full well how scary and how awful it can be when you make a mistake on the ocean. But I did the best I could with the wind forecasts I had and decided that all 3 grib models agreed that the Monday winds would be good to go south along the Abbaco shoreline.
WRONG…! We left Marsh Harbor around 11am on Monday and had a lovely run out thru the shipping channel into a calm ocean. Great. Then we were supposed to have beam winds from the land to the south west of us. Mom did not get that message though and we had stronger than forecast winds from the south east… our direction of travel. Grrrr…. so we ended up tacking into winds 120 degrees from the wrong direction all day and stronger than forecast.
We started out with lovely gentle winds 8-10 knots so I had made the (wrong) decision to shake the reef out of the main when we made the right turn to go south. 3 hours later we were getting pummeled by squall winds over 20 knots. I wish I had left that reef in the main. So we ended up going short and only making it to Lynyard Cay about 5 miles north of little harbor. We had to get in before dark… and yep… we had to motor the last 4 miles.
I am not sure if I have mentioned this in a blog before but Elena is super awesome and the best crew I could ever possibly hope to have on WildChild. After we had the hook set and the sun was going down Elena cooked dinner while I studied the winds to make decisions for the next days crossing. If the wind forecast was completely wrong today (all 3 models were 120 degrees wrong and 10 knots of magnitude wrong) then were we really going to have a window to cross the 65 miles to Eluthra the next day…? Did I mention how hard it is to be the captain responsible for making these decisions?
Well… after dinner we were watching TV and relaxing when at
around 10:30pm we got hit by a thunderstorm and we dragged the anchor..! yep… it happens and it is scary shit…. every time. We felt the strong winds suddenly hit WildChild and felt her kind of swing around while we were watching TV… but we knew we had born down upon the anchor pretty good and have faith in the Rockna. A minute later I checked the nearby tablet with Navionics on it to just be sure… when I saw us WAY south of where we should be. We leaped up to the helm and got the engine running and assessed the situation quickly.
There was only 1 other boat around ( a 55 foot power boat ) and we were dragging towards him…! Eek. In the dark and the rain the 2 girls in their underwear got WildChild under motor power and while Elena held the helm I ran up to get the sentinal anchor dropped and add more chain. I still say all hail Rockna because 80 feet later it did reset itself and stop our backwards dragging into the neighbour boat. We still had 1 foot of water under the keel so we were ok… but it was close to disaster. Another 80 feet and we would have hit both the boat behind us and the bottom at the same time!
We sat vigil for most of the night and the Captain got very little sleep. I was texting with my Cape Canaveral friends who were in Marsh harbor and found out that in those same storms 3 boats in Marsh harbor dragged anchor and 1 boat at Mermaid reef was lost to grounding and the crew had to abandon the boat and swim to shore…! Bad stuff really does happen out here people.
BUT… WildChild is still okay…!
The next morning (Tuesday May 14th) I awoke at 4am as scheduled to reassess the situation and see if we were going to leave for Eluthra or not…? The winds were again NOT as forecast and were coming directly from our point of travel. I let Elena sleep in and I got up again at 6am to reassess. The winds by then had started clocking around more Southy Westy, closer to matching the forecast… so I decided we would make the run for Eluthra. A very iffy decision I was nervous about all day.
We left immediately and into a relatively calm Ocean. We ran full main (as we would need the speed) and full genny. Well over the next hour or so the Ocean got kind of moody again and we quickly found ourselves just smashing and pounding into it. Beating 45 degrees to windward in 2 meter waves, in themselves not so big, but the dominant wave period was 1 boat length.
As we crested one wave our nose slammed down the backside into the bottom of the next wave. We washed the boat pretty good in the sporty sailing conditions. We were washing the genny with waves. We had waves wash completely over the dinghy on deck back to the mast. We floated 2 bumpers off the side deck. The dinghy floated up and re-positioned itself from the waves on the front deck. Yep floated the dinghy.
Captain Lexi did vomit once… Elena did start to get seasick… but she did amazing and held her tummy. Neptune did not get her breakfast. Elena just lay down for a few hours and managed to keep it together. Well.. now we know… Elena has a stronger sea stomach than Lexi. Interestingly I only vomit once then I feel totally fine. Elena was rough for a few hours.
Eventually the conditions abated and we got the fishing rod out with our new Cedar plug lure… which within an hour, we donated to some large fish that really wanted it more than we did I guess. The line snapped. Whatever took it though was big.
We reset the rod with a different lure from our friend Vincent and caught a 2 foot Baracuda an hour later. It was a pretty funny scene on deck as the 2 girls are apologizing to the fish for hurting it and begging forgiveness for causing it pain as we tried to get the hook out. We had to release the fish because like 50% of the Baracuda out here have a nasty toxin in them from the reefs called Sicquaterra (not sure how to spell it). It is not safe to eat them.
We pulled in behind Egg island Eluthra last night with about an hour of daylight to spare. We got the hook set in a lovely anchorage and today (Wednesday) we are having a day of rest.
The big question is when we will make the jump to Nassau…? Not sure yet. 2 wind models say we can make the jump tomorrow with lovely running winds… but 1 model says no. So we might jump Friday instead. They all agree Friday should be good.
Cheers Sailor Fans…
Raise a glass to the crew of WildChild and include us in your prayers please.
Captain Lexi
The tough, smart, brave, nervous, scared, uncertain, confident, unsure….