St. Augustine Refit, cont'd
When last we posted, the boat was on the hard at Oasis Boatyard in St. Augustine Florida, undergoing a refit. The details of that undertaking will be omitted here, on account of their generally soporific nature. Still, we can't resist mentioning our highly successful draft-reduction project. The numbers that came back from the naval architect indicated that we could proceed with our plan to remove the bottom third of our keel, as long as we put back a good portion of the weight we removed--in the form of lead bulbs on either side of the shortened keel. The same naval architect has a small workshop where he builds small racing sailboats and he offered to cast the necessary lead bulbs, using some lead from our keel (although the keel was once cast iron alone, a 6-inch lead extension had been added at some point). Anyway, after much turmoil, effort, laughter, misery, and education about the metallurgy of cast iron, Saros now draws 5'7" instead of 7'4" (her former draft when fully loaded) and seems to sail precisely the same as before. For the full technical story see The Saga of the Keel.We re-launched Saros and left Oasis boatyard in mid-April, moving about a half mile upriver to the dock of a local carpenter. We intended to have two carpentry projects done there. In our tiny aft cabin, we had a little vanity sink with a mirror. In two years we'd never used the sink. We did, however, need a lot more storage space for food, so we pulled out the vanity and wanted to build pantry shelves. We also hated and hoped to replace the headliner in the main cabin. (You might think we would call this the ceiling, but on a boat, the "ceiling" is what lines the walls and the thing overhead is called a "headliner." Don't spend too much time on this one.) It was covered with a soft grey felt material that 1) mildews, 2) is easily damaged, 3) attracts and holds dirt, and 4) is almost impossible to clean. The carpenter informed us that professionals call the stuff "monkey fur." There are a lot of clever little touches on our French-built boat, but we really wondered what they were thinking when they chose this material.
St. Augustine to Key West
We left St. Augustine at the end of April and continued south along the ICW, passing Cape Canaveral and stopping briefly in Stuart, Florida. From there we rented a car and buzzed down to Ft. Lauderdale to check on getting our life raft serviced. We also determined that we had a very good chance of being able to navigate the Okeechobee Waterway, which runs from Stuart to Ft. Myers via Lake Okeechobee. With our newly truncated keel, draft was no longer a concern, but there was a bridge on the Waterway that was officially 49' off the water. Our mast, as best we can measure, extends 50' 6" or so off the water. Some 10" of that is a navigation light on the top, which is more or less removable. We checked with the Corps of Engineers and determined the water level in the Waterway was such that the bridge height gave us an even 50'. And with that, we elected to proceed.When the moment of truth arrived, we stopped the boat and I went to the top of the mast and unbolted the light. I then motored the boat forward at dead slow while Erika went out in the dink to watch and take photos. The theory was that if I was about to hit, she could warn me off (or at least get some great shots). As it turned out the mast cleared the bridge, but by so little that we were both utterly convinced it was going to hit. For a long time afterwards we continued to stare behind us at the bridge in disbelief.
In due course, we arrived in Ft. Myers. The main reason for taking this route was that my maternal grandparents, and my grandmother's parents, live in Ft. Myers, and we wanted to see them before leaving the country. This route also allowed us to avoid a long sail potentially to windward along the Florida Keys. In nearby Punta Gorda, we located a carpenter willing to do the work we needed done, at a marina which offered free dockage for the duration of the job. While visiting my relatives, we pulled out my grandmother's sewing machine and I learned to sew! I made a piece of canvas we'll use to catch rain, and a big mosquito net to throw over the cockpit. Unfortunately, the machine stopped functioning while I was using it, so I wasn't able to finish the weather cloths for the cockpit. I swear it was nothing I did. In fact, I was even getting pretty good at using it when it croaked.
In mid-May, we said our goodbyes and left for a pleasant overnight passage to Key West. Along the way, we determined that the new inner forestay I'd rigged needed additional support; I'd suspected it might. As it turned out, both the deck fitting and the mast needed backup. What this meant was some custom welding for the deck support; we would also need to install running backstays. As soon as we pulled into Key West, we set to work tracking down and ordering what we needed.
Key West & Dry Tortugas
Key West was fun, despite the ongoing refit & mechanical issues. We continued our survey of public libraries of the East Coast. Key West's is quite large, has free internet, and crisp air conditioning. Key West also had a couple of places where we could get cheap, tasty lunches.
We became friends with an adventurous couple we had first encountered back in Atlantic City, NJ. Jerry & Trina sailed south from New York in winter on a 16-foot trimaran kayak with sails. They hadn't actually sailed the whole way to Key West--a portion of the distance they had the trimaran shipped--but their adventure, which included a month of camping in the Everglades, made ours look like we'd taken the QEII from Boston to Key West. Maybe not; the QEII would probably have arrived on time.
On what we figured would be our next to last day, we took a slip in the marina in order to do some work that required AC power (for tools). In the process of motoring back to the anchorage the next day, we realized we had a serious problem with the throttle. It could barely be moved. [For an account of our seemingly endless engine problems see The Saros Mechanical Nuisances Page.] We had a mechanic take a look at it and learned that nothing was broken, but that there was an impressive degree of corrosion where the throttle lever entered the engine block. The cause of the corrosion was actually sort of interesting. Our engine is located immediately below the galley sink. We had packed the storage space around the base of the sink with spare bottles of dish soap. Over time, several of these flimsy plastic containers had apparently developed cracks and let liquid soap escape. The soap had flowed down along the metal sink fixtures, under the sink, and on down along the sink drain hose which enters the engine compartment on its way out of the boat. Once inside the engine compartment, the soap was absorbed with great efficiency by the open-cell foam insulation lining the top and sides of the compartment. After that, all it took was a little water dribbling down the outside of the sink and the soap would come to life again, dripping willy-nilly all over the engine! The soap removed much of the anti-corrosive paint from the engine--almost as though it were designed for the purpose--and the rest is history. Fortunately, we were able to get the throttle unstuck in a couple of days with a penetrating oil spray (Blaster ®, a mechanic in a can) and we have modified our soap-storage arrangement. Not so fortunately, the soap reservoir in the engine insulation is there to stay, but at least it will remain dry as we have sealed all the leaks above it.
After two weeks in Key West, and our very first experience "clearing out" (at U.S. Customs) we sailed to the Dry Tortugas. Yes, the Dry Tortugas are U.S. territory, but you can't clear out from them. In fact, these tiny islands are worth a visit precisely because they don't offer much of anything except natural beauty. The main exception is Fort Jefferson, an enormous, round, brick fortress complete with moat, designed to be a Union fort in the Civil War. The fort was never used as such, and became a federal prison before being abandoned; in the 1960's it was designated a national park. Part of the reason it was never used is that the engineering was faulty: the freshwater cisterns cracked and allowed salt water to enter, and the cannon ports were reinforced with iron, which promptly rusted and disintegrated, and led to unsightly bulges in the surrounding brick. In spite of its decrepitude, the building, which encloses almost an entire island and has a large, grassy central courtyard, has a serene beauty and is haunting to wander through. The snorkeling at the Tortugas was also very good.
Naturally, any visit must be accompanied by an engine problem. After arriving at the Tortugas, we found two leaks in the raw water system: one from the pump itself, the other from a copper conduit running to the heat exchanger. Fast becoming something of an amateur mechanic, I took the pump apart and found the failed seal. I then flew back to Key West on one of the seaplanes that visits the Tortugas, ordered the parts, waited the couple days for them to arrive, and booked passage back to the Tortugas on one of the catamarans that ferry visitors to the island. While in Key West, I got to hang out with Jerry & Trina a lot more (which was fun) and sleep on a shell of a steel boat that belonged to a friend of theirs (which wasn't fun). I was grateful to have someplace to crash, though. The alternatives were either a little risky (the youth hostel, at $18/night) or expensive (hotel, at $60/night and up). I also took advantage of the opportunity to round out my tool collection, as it was beginning to look like the potential engine problems were infinite and we would have to be able to handle them ourselves.
Dry Tortugas to Cayman Islands
In due course, we managed to depart the Dry Tortugas for the Cayman Islands. Because it was (and is) so late in the season, we had to deal with the fact that every 5-8 days, a "tropical wave" rolls across the Caribbean Sea from east to west. These waves are low-pressure troughs, from which tropical storms and hurricanes can develop. Fortunately, most of them don't develop further, but even simple tropical waves pack major thunderstorms. We watched the weatherfax to see when a wave had passed our longitude and then left immediately following one. The idea was to get to the Caymans before the next wave, also visible on weatherfax.The early, downwind part of the passage was pleasant enough, but the wind was light and we motored often, which of course used a portion of our limited fuel. Then, in the Yucatan Straits, we began to feel the big, choppy swells from the southeast. These continued to build as we began to make our easting along the south coast of Cuba. With 17 to 25 knots from 120º (east-southeast), along with steep, 10' swell, our progress toward the Caymans (at 150º) was slow. We ended up making long tacks, sometimes motorsailing, to the south and east-northeast.
After a few days of this we were pretty tired and our fuel supply was running low. It was also clear that we weren't going to make the Caymans before the next tropical wave rolled across. Our first encounter with tropical thunderstorms was scary but manageable--furl the headsail, hand steer, and shoot along under triple-reefed main, as close to our course as possible. It was even a little fun, since we could really scoot for an hour or so in 30-40-knot winds. Eventually we begin to approach the Caymans: 80, 70, 60 nautical miles to go. We hoped to arrive before sunset, but we were starting to worry about the motor. At some point it had started to vary in rpm's, and to lose power. We suspected we were running out of fuel and that the problem was either air in the line or low pressure. We put our last reserve jerry can of diesel into the tank.
Just as the sun got low, a really big set of thunderstorms rolled in. One minute we were going along in 20 knots of wind, the next we were laid over 60º, the wind howling, the triple-reefed main luffing wildly as we abruptly released the sheet. Nothing like the gusts we'd felt in earlier squalls, this wind was unrelenting. The genoa track remained submerged on the leeward side and the boat refused to head up. With the boat at such a steep angle, our top hatchboard, which a moment earlier had been resting under the dodger, suddenly slid off the boat and we watched helplessly as it floated away. Erika brought up my harness and I crawled forward through the dodger to drag the mainsail down. The wind continued. Back in New England the previous June, Erika and I had been caught in a surprise gale that we learned the following day was 45 knots with 15-foot seas. This was worse--at least 50 knots, we guessed, though the waves were still the 10-13 foot swells we'd had all day. (The wind would have to go on for some timebefore the waves would significantly increase.) We thought about getting the storm trysail flying, but I wondered if the present wind was too much even for that. I also remembered that I had stupidly not rigged sheets for the damn thing, and this made getting it flying a major difficulty.
With the main down and the wheel locked the boat began to drift downwind. The engine no longer functioned. We both went below to figure out what to do next. At that point, Grand Cayman was still over 20 miles away--to windward--and not getting any closer. We would soon be out of VHF range. We could choose to drift until the weather calmed, by which time we would be out of radio range. We would then have a long upwind sail to reach Georgetown, and, without the use of the engine, would not necessarily make it. Furthermore, we hadn't seen a weatherfax in a couple of days and had no way of knowing if the weather we were experiencing was isolated or not, or if the tropical wave we had been attempting to beat had developed into something worse (tropical depression, tropical storm, hurricane). If the weather worsened, our safety would be seriously compromised by the loss of the hatchboard. In any case, we were quite taken aback by the fury of the storm as it was.
We did consider abandoning the idea of getting to Georgetown and instead heading directly to Providencia, a small, Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua, and a good resting point en route to Panama. But this would mean another five days at sea without a working engine, and still didn't address the current weather situation. We also (again, stupidly) didn't have a harbor chart for the Caymans, so we didn't know if the harbor entrance could be easily negotiated under sail alone or would require a working engine for maneuvering. This meant that even if we got to Georgetown, we would probably have to call for a tow anyway.
We decided to hail Georgetown on the VHF and at least let somebody know we were out there, and in some distress, though not in a life-threatening situation. We also wanted to see what the options for a tow were. We talked with Port Security, then Customs/Police. We learned that there were no options for a commercial tow and that Customs/Police handled anything like this. After some discussion, it was decided that although we didn't consider ourselves in imminent danger, they would prefer to tow us in.
By the time they arrived, the weather had eased considerably and I had rigged a towing bridle. As they approached, they asked us to check the decks to see if any lines were in the water. Surprise, surprise, the starboard jibsheet was indeed over the side and firmly wrapped in the prop! Looks like we'd found part of our engine problem, anyway. The tow into Georgetown was long but uneventful and the very professional and friendly Cayman police put us safely on a mooring by 5 a.m.. Exhausted, we fell into bed, only to be woken up several hours later by two formally-attired immigration officials who had made their way into our cockpit and were eager to get down to business.
Serene Georgetown Harbor
After clearing in, and receiving the doubly interesting news that the cost of a tow in the Caymans is normally $500/hour but that we would be charged nothing because of the life-threatening (their word, not ours) nature of the circumstances, I dealt with the engine. First I dove the prop to clear the line. The hull showed some small cracks around the base of the propellor strut, but the strut itself was intact and stable. Then I tried to start the motor--very bad sound. I looked at the motor. Mmm, something looked odd. Hey, the whole motor was too far back. YIKES, it wasn't connected to anything! It seems we'd sheared all our engine mounts, the little blocks of rubber that support the motor. The entire motor had slid back five inches and the coupling was up against the shaft seal. The problem was thus rather simple, though potentially disastrous. We had only to lift the 400lb motor out of the way, replace the mounts (if we could find any), put the motor back and align it with the shaft. Oh, and hope that the shaft wasn't bent.
So here we sit in the Cayman Islands. What can we say about the Caymans? They are a British Crown Colony, which means driving is done on the left and the governor is appointed by the Queen of England. The island economy appears to be built on two things: diving and financial services. There are something like 800 banks on the island, along with lots of other financially-oriented legal institutions, e.g., "captive insurance companies," whatever they are. The island has virtually no taxes, as part of its overall strategy of providing highly confidential financial services to the very rich.The diving economy relies on the amazing reefs which surround the island, and the exquisite clarity and warmth of the water. There seems to be a diving charter boat business on every corner, along with hundreds of incredibly expensive dive resort hotels. Much of the rest of the island consists of similarly expensive condos and estates for the mega-rich, presumably bankers and tycoons looking for someplace safe to hide themselves and their money from their countries' governments.
If you haven't gotten the point yet, this situation has resulted in the Caymans being the most exhorbitantly expensive place we, at least, have ever seen. (Airport cafe prices now seem quite reasonable by comparison.) We wondered at first how the working class on the island survives at all. It turns out that to some extent even the Cayman islanders (who voted to become a Crown Colony in 1962) are part of the fun. For example, foreigners who wish to run local businesses must cede a portion of the business to a Caymanian silent partner. The practical minimum wage is around $6.00 CI ($7.20 US) which is, remember, tax-free, which means the de facto minimum wage here is about $14 US/hour. Also, health insurance is by law included with employment, and the island has essentially full employment. We bumped into the driver of the minibus we usually take ($1.50 CI per person) at the fuel dock where he was fueling up his modest 36-foot sportfisherman. No wonder he was always smiling as he drove the bus. All this ignores the situation of the not insignificant numbers of Jamaicans (documented and undocumented) who do most of the scut work here.
So this place seems to be a poster child for unrestrained capitalism, which make us uneasy. We can't shake the feeling that the Caymanians have made a deal with the devil, by which they've given themselves the highest income in the Caribbean, but lost their souls. Small signs point to a disturbing lack of any concept of collective good. The public library is excrutiatingly small and lacks even a restroom, let alone internet access. Sidewalks exist here and there, but they are not continuous anywhere, which rather limits their usefulness. (We've been informed, however, that any new building projects are now required by law to include a strip of sidewalk at the edge of the property.) Everything costs money, even things that are typically gratis. Restaraunts and shops have signs indicating that the restrooms are for customers, but others can use them for $1.00CI ($1.20US). Don't even think of asking for free refills. A business next to a CI Marine Park, according to its sign, is attempting to charge for snorkeling from the nearby shoreline. It remains to be seen if, as development continues and land becomes even more scarce, housing prices everywhere will become prohibitive even for locals.
OK, progressive politics aside, the Caymanians themselves are cheery and engaging characters. All the officials, and the crew of the boat that towed us, were warm and friendly, while maintaining a reassuring professionalism. Our thanks go out especially to the captain and crew of the Cayman Protector (the boat that towed us). We've also met a couple of pairs of veteran cruisers: a Kiwi sailmaker and his Dominican (Republic of) wife & their two daughters, and a young couple from South Africa on a trimaran.
The Future
We've decided that it's just too late to expect to venture out into the Pacific this year. We'll head south to Panama as soon as we can, transit the Canal, and head up to the Pacific coast of Costa Rica. With all the repairs, and the slow progress, we're going to need a cash infusion, so we'll either work in Costa Rica or back in the U.S. for a few months, and plan to head out across the Pacific in the spring of 2000.
Bye for now!
