Why run with the crowd when you can run around in circles?

Monday, September 17, 2007

Back to the Sea, Sort of


Every time I think I’m finished with sailing, a few months living ashore changes my mind. Yes, it’s convenient to have unlimited hot running water at the turn of a tap. It’s nice not to have to haul a dirty smelly bag of laundry five miles down the road to wash it only to have it pour rain on your nice clean clothes on the dinghy ride back to the boat later in the day. It’s nice to sit on the front porch watching the lightening storm approach, without having to hyperventilate into a paper bag thinking about how much it’s going to cost to replace all those electronics when that one bolt lands atop your mast. It’s enjoyable sitting on the porch, knowing that in all likelihood it won’t move, nor will the neighbor’s porch drag into yours.

But after a while, seeing the same sight out the same window day in and day out, the same people coming and going at the same time, having the same drunken screaming fights every weekend, gets a little stale. Living aboard a boat, life swings with the wind and tide, and neighbors come and go almost daily. Often when underway, you change ports often enough to not even remember sometimes where you are upon awakening, especially if arriving in a new port in the dark, so it’s all a big surprise when you wake up in the morning. Geez I thought I was going into Key West, but this here is, uh oh, crap, we’re in trouble now, Cuba.

This current trip is not a pleasure cruise. We’ve been calling it the rescue attempt. The skipper tried to sail his boat to England in the spring, but a series of big messes, including but not limited to a blown engine, landed him back in the Bahamas with no choice but to leave the boat there for the time being.
The timing of getting it out has not been good.
It seemed like a good idea at the time
We are sailing, okay, trying to sail, a nearly engineless sailboat across the Gulf Stream from the Bahamas to Florida in the absolute height of hurricane season.
.
I say nearly engineless because we carried a six horsepower outboard motor on the plane as hand luggage. The guy at the airport in Ft. Lauderdale tried to give us a load of crap about it, which was just what we needed at six in the morning after driving all night to get there. But he was outvoted by the usual laid back Bahamian pilot’s attitude. “no problem, mon, load it here in the nose of da plane.” A day of labor and interesting contortions found the outboard bolted to the stern of the boat. We worked our way out of the sheltered lagoon with only two groundings, mainly because the boat wouldn’t turn quickly enough under half jammed rudder to follow the sharp curves of the channel.
Unfortunately, once out on the banks, there was one key ingredient that didn’t seem to be in the forecast for the foreseeable future: wind. Never mind, the longer we sat waiting, the more likely we were to get much more wind than we could ever use. Jokes of running to Nova Scotia in 150 knots were not so funny when listening to the reality of tropical updates. We decided to motor at less than three knots, nearly the maximum the outboard could push us, until we found a breeze. 70 miles later, we stopped for more fuel.

Nearly 80 miles after that, we found ourselves stressing about whether or not we would have enough gas to get to the next fuel stop. Our sailing had been limited to one good squall, although unfortunately that gave us a wind on the nose for several hours, before the seas transmuted back into a mirror glass finish with every detail of the bottom highly visible. No edible fish sighted, but there were lots of jellyfish, roofing tin, tires, bikes, cans, etc.

Finally, a breeze came up not long after sunset, allowing us to sail to anchor behind the island of Bimini in the middle of the night. The breeze held just long enough to get us into the harbor the next morning. We fueled up and are now ready to cross the Gulf Stream. Except that there is, you guessed it, no wind. And no way we can run that little outboard across the stream. And a low pressure system north of here that is ‘moving erratically’, and could possibly develop into something we would rather not sail into, like square waves in the gulf stream.

Who knows how long we’ll sit here waiting for wind. And who knows how strong it will be when it does finally get here.
It’s all good fun.