WildChild was allowed one free night on the wall at the Jolly Harbour marina then I had paid for one day out on a mooring ball. After that the plan was to go anchor out and be free again, to ease the money hemorrhage. Last I had told you about all the engine repairs I had to do but finally got the engine running well again so it felt like a great victory.
The next day we needed to provision up for months off the grid. My friend Barry has a car and was willing to drive us to and back from the Epicurian food store, not that it was a long walk but that we would need to carry a lot of weight in groceries. His help was wonderfully appreciated. We ended up buying about $1200usd worth of groceries in 3 different trips. Another thing I had to check was the canned goods that were left on the boat. Although generally canned goods can easily store for 6-12 months the temperature inside the boat while I was gone was in access of 50 degrees C, how well does canned food store at such a high temp was the question. I tested a bunch of cans and they all seemed fine.
The whole day provisioning kept us busy and before we knew it the day was done. I needed to go and pay for a second night on the wall of the boat yard. Launch day was last Thursday, provisioning was Friday, and now Saturday we were going to do an oil change on the engine and change the fuel filter. Although, as you know, WildChild is a sailboat owned by a purist who does not like to motor, I maybe only use a single tank of fuel a year. We were also close to their fuel dock and we unloaded all WildChild’s spare fuel cans and walked them over and got them filled.
What interests me is the lovely sun protection covers I made for all of my Jerry cans when I left Canada, which cost more than the cans, have all deteriorated away into nothingness. Two years in the tropical sun seems to be intense and cause a lot of damage. Most of my cans are naked now and will just take the sun UV damage. I had heard another sailor say to use pillow cases as sun covers. Great idea if I can find some big enough I will try it.
Another little issue to take care of was to fill the emergency water cans on the deck. My plan for this annoyed Alex a little bit. He was all in favour of just filling them with the nearby hose but I refused. I need the cleanest purest RO water in there that I can get. I wanted them filled only with RO water from the store. This meant we had to bring the Jerry cans to the store in Barry’s SUV and go inside and buy a blue bottle at a time, bring it out to the parking lot, empty it into one of my blue Jerry water cans, and repeat the process. This extra care took about 45 minutes and annoyed Alex, he saw no reason for it.
I defend it this way. We have a lovely life raft on our front deck we hope to never need to use. It is what is called a “less than 24 hour” life raft. It has no food or water in it. My survival plan is…. “IF” we ever do need to abandon the boat, we get into the life raft, bring those water cans in with us and the grab the ditch bag full of food and supplies from down below. If the water in those cans was from an impure source, and sitting in the hot sun for months the water could grow algae and populate itself with organic life that would be bad for us. It could kill us. The purer the original water source, the cleaner the water, the less the remaining organics in it (hopefully down to zero) the better the water preserves while on deck for the next year, the more safe and drinkable it is when it is eventually needed.
Again a small detail that could compound into trouble later. Captains really do get good and forecasting the string of causality out here because we all know little things, tiny details, can quickly add up to disaster out here. You have to think your way thru everything on the Ocean.
Engine Troubles Again
The provisioning went off great with Barry’s help. Alex and I were so grateful we did not have to carry all that stuff over to the boatyard. Thank you so much Barry.
The next morning we just had a little routine maintenance on the engine before we went out to the mooring ball. I hate doing engine work because it is so dirty. My nails were already wrecked from the mechanic work I had done yesterday and I do know enough about engines to know that routine maintenance goes a long way to keeping my 40 year old engine happy. An oil change is not hard and I have like a dozen spare oil filters onboard. It was dirty work but it went well, Alex was my assistant and together as a team we “got er done”.
The next little detail before we leave was just to change the fuel filter. I have done this once before, a year ago, and felt it should be done again. It is a big concern out here in the tropics that algae grows in diesel fuel sitting in your fuel tank in the heat. It is a well known and big problem down here in the constant heat. I always use fuel conditioner, which acts as an algaecide, in my fuel all the time. I am very cautions about this. I even put the stuff in my Jerry cans on deck. I had conditioned my fuel tank before I left, but again all that diesel was sitting in the hot tank for the last 6 months, I cannot be sure if it does / or does not …. have algae growing in it. So to be safe I wanted to change my fuel filter.
Generally this is no big deal and relatively easy to do. It is mounted right up front with easy access to it. Much like an oil filter, it just unscrews, drop it out, fill the new one with fuel, and screw it up and in place. The issue you have to be careful for is to bleed out any air that might be trapped at the top.
All went smoothly enough. I got the old one off with my special filter wrench and checked the quality of the fuel in it, it seemed clean with no problems. I filled the new one with the new fuel from a Jerry can on deck, and screwed it up into place. Easy peasy. Then I open the air bleed screw and tried to pour a little extra fuel in there to fill er to the top. Then I finger tightened the screw and we started the engine again.
The engine fired up and I ran it at high RPM’s for a minute as my mechanic friends have taught me to do, to run out any air bubbles that may have gotten into the system, push them thru.
Everything was good to go. (or so I thought)
Mooring Troubles
About an hour later we released WildChild from the wall and began to motor out to the mooring ball 300 meters away. The engine was purring like a kitten. The release from the wall went smoothly with my inexperienced crew and soon we were on course headed out… when I realized…. I had no throttle… no power…. !
SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH THE ENGINE…!
Uh -oh…. I suddenly get a bad feeling.
The engine is running, but only at idle. I have no extra power. No throttle control. I am now suddenly in a narrow channel in a crowded place with little engine control. I cannot stop here to try to figure out what is wrong, THERE IS NO PAUSE BUTTON ON A BOAT. Usually the emergency thing to do would be just to drop the hook if I suddenly lost the engine or throw up the sails. My sails are not rigged and my crew has no idea how to drop the hook. Even if we suddenly lose the engine and I try to drop the hook right here… I cannot stay here in the middle of the busy little channel…. this would be a terrible place to anchor.
I pray to mother that the engine just keep working please just for a few more minutes.
Slowly we putter out towards the mooring field. Slowly in light winds and on calm water we keep moving forward.
My crew has never caught a mooring before. I still have to run up and explain it to him. I tell Auto to just hold course please and I run forward to the bow to quickly explain to Alex what we expect to find at the mooring ball, explain what the pennant is and how to grab it with the boat hook and just get it quickly up on the cleat, then don’t worry I will run up to help you. I explain how at the helm I cannot see the ball once we get close to it so I need him to give me steering directions and distance information.
I run back to the helm and we make our approach.
Alex does great guiding me in. He gives clear instructions but as we get close his communication ceases as his young male brain focuses on looking for this pennant thing I told him about. I had WildChild in neutral slowly cruising up and when I guessed we were close I out her in reverse to give her a little kick stop with backwards thrust but I had no throttle power to do this with.
I see Alex reaching down with his hands over the toe rail trying to grab the pennant with his bare hands. I had told him to use the boat hook that I had placed beside him. In the moment though, his brain did not know what a boat hook was, despite me telling him twice already. When things started happening his brain did not connect the word “boat hook” to the metal pole beside him with the little hook on the end.
We missed the mooring. It was too late before I even got up there.
Like a bunch of idiots I had to run back to the helm and steer hard over to come around and we had to pray the engine kept running long enough to try again. I needed to line up again for a second attempt.
I am trying to be soft and gentle with Alex but I need to shout at him up on the bow so he can hear me while I am steering at the helm.
“Alex… boat hook… BOAT HOOK… what do you think the boat hook is…? look down beside you on the deck…. see that pole beside you…. I need you to use that please to try and grab the rope this time…. do not try to just bend down and grab it with your hands please… that is unsafe and unlikely to succeed….”
Now he understands.
The second attempt at mooring also failed. Alex got so focused he stopped calling back distance to me and by the time I guessed we were close to it, and shot the engine into reverse (without any throttle to stop with) we began overshooting the ball. Alex was almost amidships with the boat hook and pennant in hand by the time I got up there to help.
He had grabbed the pennant line at the ball instead of hooking the loop on the end and he was trying to slowly walk his hands up the thick slimy barnacle covered rope towards the eye loop at the end. The problems was that WildChild’s momentum was not killed, we were still slowly drifting forward. I grabbed on to the rope tight for a moment to try to slow us down and give Alex time to get to the eye loop so we could run it up to the bow. I was wearing my fingerless sailing gloves.
In one tiny second when the weight of the boat came onto the rope in my hands it just slipped right thru my clenched hands and zip… just like that… those little razor sharp barnacles growing on the rope in that slime cut thru all my finger tips and I had to drop the rope.
We failed again. I was making a lot of mistakes like an amateur.
I am sure the line of boomer homes lining the shore was full of spectators just laughing at us and shaking their heads.
I ran back to the helm and brought her hard about again. I was going to pray the engine would hold out to bring us around for a third attempt when I noticed the light wind had changed direction. I decided to let the boat drift sideways slowly towards the mooring this time from 100 degrees away from our first two approaches. I had little engine control anyway.
The third time, with the two of us working as a team, we got the single line heavy slimy thick with growth pennant onto a bow cleat. I waited until WildChild settled in before I began trying to figure out a good way to secure us to their single loop. Alex watched and I explained what I was doing for him.
Boat secured (finally) we could kill the engine and go try to tackle that problem now too.
Long story short…. MY BAD I screwed up. This was my mistake to own. It took a while to figure out but eventually I discovered that the air bleed screw on top of the fuel filter, that I had only finger tightened, and forgot to wrench tighten, had a crappy old completely fucked copper washer on it that prevented it from sitting right in the hole. Usually finger tightening would be fine if you were mating two smooth surfaces together. The fucked up washer however prevented that from happening so the fuel filter was actively sucking in air. The fuel filter was only half full of fuel when I removed it. So this time I completely filled the fuel filter using an eye dropper and wrench set the air bleed screw without the copper washer.
Again a small tiny thing that I missed almost compounded into a disaster.
Tiny details matter.
Exciting news…. the engine runs fantastic now.
Race Day
We had made friends with the boat that was beside us in the yard (SV Imagine) owned by a British guy named Jon. He had invited us out to crew for him on race day, later today. Poor Alex has come out here to go sailing and now a month later still has not been able to sail. I thought this would be fun for Alex and a welcome break for me.
It was already noon by the time we finished our monkey mooring show and we were supposed to dinghy over to Jon’s house by 1pm. It was time to launch the dinghy and get the dinghy engine mounted and running again. I did properly flush the dinghy engine with fresh water before I left it so I was really hoping it would run just as amazing as it always had.
Nope….!
The engine did start up, which was a good sign, then it would quickly choke out and die. I fought with that engine for about 45 minutes but still could not get it to run reliably. Again I am probably responsible for this too. When I left I did not have time to run the built in gas tank completely empty, instead I ran it mostly to empty. There was still a little fuel left in it. I thought (wrongly) that if I just dilute that 10% of old fuel by filling the tank with 90% fresh good fuel, the engine should be okay. WRONG…!
I did find a plastic bleed screw on this engines carb bowl and bled out some green water. The engine ran for a while then got unhappy again. I bled the fuel again and got some sediment particles out, the engine ran for a bit then died. I removed cleaned and emptied the carb bowl, same thing. Eventually we were running out of time.
I called Jon…. could he maybe just swing by and pick us up? Like raft up or a drive by pickup? We were right outside his canal and in the starting area anyway. He said sure.
It did feel good to be back on the water again, sailing again. I admit it. I think two and a half years on the ocean previously had worn down my spirit. I think the 3 month break I got back home in Canada helped me to feel better. I think I can remember that I used to LOVE sailing.
This was now Alex’s first time sailing on a large sailboat. He has been day sailing before on smaller boats. I had the captains permission to film the experience for you guys (video will come out in about a year) and I had his permission to explain things to Alex and teach him things. So this would be a good learning experience for Alex.
The day was really fun. Captain Jon has a great boat and he is a good Captain, with lots of sailing experience. It confused me for a while when the Captain kept calling out for more “kicker”. What the hell is a kicker and who does he want kicked? 🙂 Well… you learn something new everyday… apparently Brits call the boomvang a kicker. I didn’t know that. British sailing slang. I know they sometimes call their jib a hudsil (poorly articulated way of pronouncing headsail) but kicker was new for me.
Elizabeth was fantastic. Her and Jon seemed to have known each other for quite a while and she has sailed on his yacht before so she knew how it was laid out. She ran the all the lines coming back beside the companionway. Captain Jon seems to like having only one person on each station. Alex and John each took a Genny sheet. It was good experience for Alex to have just a single line to worry about and Captain Jon was good at explaining what he wanted Alex to do. With any newly formed crew there was a little breaking in period but soon enough the yacht was running great.
The race was not too competitive and mostly relaxed right up until the point another boat hit us. I did not get any video of the collision but it was a stunningly shocking display of poor seamanship. I do not know this group so I do not know the name of the boat or the name of the Captain who hit us. All old men. But we will call it the bad boat and bad captain. As we were all running out of the Jolly Harbour main channel out into open water we were heading for a mark about a half mile out towards Montserrat where we would all round it to starboard and turn north. About 400 meters away the bad boat running beside us on our port side decided he wanted to get inside and cross us astern. It was an absolutely silly stupid unnecessary thing to do. The bad captain cut his turn right beside us, turned his bow right towards our midship and plowed his bow pulpit right into our stern davits and got them intertwined. In a horrifying shuddering and explosion of grindy scraping metal sounds they hit Imagines davits and twisted up their bow pulpit which was the first to give way.
The bad boat breaks free behind us as Imagine’s forward speed pulls us free and away from the idiot captain on the bad boat. Captain Jon is remarkably calm about the whole affair. I have to tell you…. if anyone ever hits or rams WildChild my response will not be calm. I would absolutely be flipping the fuck out on the moron who hits me, but Jon only says “well that was stupid” in his charming British accent.
After a lovely afternoon of sailing Captain Jon drops us back off on WildChild on her mooring all safe and sound.
The next day we brought WildChild to finally anchor out in freedom out in the Jolly Harbour entrance anchorage. This is where we sit now to complete the to-do list and continue Captain Lexi’s sailing school for Alex.
We just got the Genny up yesterday and we still have to fix the ceiling, change a deck winch out, service all the big winches (which will be a two day job I do not actually know how to do) and get the water maker restarted (which worries me a lot… very fussy device).
Alex is just itchy to get sailing and get out of here. I am in no rush. Most of the borders are still closed and to me… most of the anchorages still look the same.
Probably in about 2-3 days WildChild will begin moving again.
But I will keep you posted….
Cheers sailors…
Captain Lexi….