This is why I'm Captain Chaos

Monday, April 7th, 2008 Marina Bas du Fort, Port Pietre, Guadeloupe

10:46 PM

Well as usual it’s been a long week filled with several cool experiences coupled with the general chaos that seems to be accompanying Brian and I on our voyage through the islands. Where to start? From the time of my last blog (sorry if the tone was too sentimental, after talking to everyone on the phone I was thinking about everyone a lot and thought I would write it down, I’m sure the rum and coke contributed to the nostalgia, thanks to everyone who wrote and I know you are behind me and if you think that was bitching Nick just wait until you read this post) we have been pretty much getting our asses kicked at every turn. The plan was to sail to Nevis, an island that is part of St Kitts and hang out for one day there. We set sail early and arrived in the early afternoon. During the quick trip over I noticed that a critical piece of hardware that just happens to hold the boom down was broken and the stress of the mainsail flying in the wind was very close to completely breaking. I dropped the sail right away and we had to motor in the last few miles. When we got to Nevis, we anchored up near a quiet little beach, Brian figured out how we could fix the hardware so I drilled out the rivets on the piece and we cruised into town on the dinghy to search for some parts. After a nice mile walk we got to the Nevis equivalent of a Home Depot and picked up essentials. This island is very small and really only settled in the area we were in. Everything was pretty much shutting down early so we headed back to fix the boom. It seems appropriate to remind you here that it pretty much POURED rain most of the day so it was fun laying on the arch way drilling and riveting the boom in the rain, good times. I was really stoked that we left St Kitts in such great weather, I suppose I forgot to mention that during the sail we had wind in excess of 35 knots and gusts well over 40, anyone have an idea how that piece started failing? Buuuuuttttt…………since we are on a tight schedule, we push on, rain, sleet, snow, all that.

We cleared customs the following morning and were off for Montserrat, about 35 miles to the southeast of Nevis. What should have taken us about 6-8 hours max to sail on this boat, ended up taking over 14 by the time we dropped anchor. We got absolutely hammered. 15 foot+ swells, 35+ knots of wind and squall after squall of torrential rain. The wind instrument recorded a gust of wind at 46.6 knots in one of the squalls. The sky was black all day and it was almost impossible to see when the rain was driving in through the cockpit. It was the first pass that I actually got out my foul weather gear and all of my safety equipment. Early on in the run, I noticed that some bolts were coming out of some hardware (fairlead blocks for the jib) that basically holds the rope that we tighten or loosen the tension for the jib sail with. Not exactly a good thing. Since we are SOOOOO well stocked on board with spares (notice the sarcasm, I’m laying it pretty thick because I swear this dude has some grudge against having spare anything) I had to dismantle the hardware from the same piece on the port side to use on the starboard side. Keep in mind, I was doing this in heavy rain, crazy wind and the boat bucking wildly in the swells. It’s real fun working on things with one hand because I’m holding on for dear life with the other one. After getting that rigged up, I found a small anchorage on the chart that looked like it was pretty well protected and we could wait out the weather. We got in to that spot around 11 at night, having left St Kitts at 9 AM. Much to my dismay, I let Brian take the wheel of the boat while I sat on the front and used a spotlight to look for hazards. Of course, as with most things, the light barely had a charge so it didn’t last very long. It was late and he was tired so regardless of the countless small buoys that were floating around the area he wanted to drop the anchor. I took the helm back and after dragging the anchor through this minefield of moorings for a good ten minutes, I told him to bring it up and I motored to another spot that according to the chart and the DEPTHFINDER (a device that is fairly straightforward and simple but for some reason I’m not quite sure that Brian actually believes it when it warns us that there is only a couple of feet between the keel and the bottom) looked like a safe place. After he dropped the anchor down, it set well and I let out the appropriate amount of chain. I won’t go into great depth here about our huge lack of good ground tackle here but it’s pretty inadequate, we have 150 feet of chain, that’s it. I finally marked the anchor chain the other day after a debacle in which he assured me there was 100 feet of chain out (when I marked it I found that we had less than 40 feet out in over 20 feet of water) so that particular night I made sure we had 150 feet out in the heavy winds. The next day we decided not to go check in to Montserrat and I did some chores around the boat and relaxed when that was done. He was anxious to move on and with good reason this time. Our house batteries, which power pretty much everything including neat little things like the auto pilot, GPS, radar, windlass, and other important items, were constantly showing a warning light that the batteries required charging. We ran the motors for several hours attempting to get a charge but it simply wouldn’t hold. Why not just use the generator? Hmmm, great question. Something I asked back in the Bahamas but was told that the motors provided plenty of charge. Yeah, right. We have a huge bank of batteries that are brand new but we have really been using a lot of power. We attempted to use the generator in Montserrat but couldn’t get it started. Oh hooray, another problem. What else could go wrong right? I planned to troubleshoot the generator but was assured it was a solenoid that was out again so I abandoned my idea of trying to keep it simple. So we talked and decided to try and make Guadeloupe the next morning which would require leaving that night (Thursday). I got the boat sea ready and went hunting with the spear for a bit. No luck hunting, didn’t feel like shooting the huge puffer fish or eels I saw, so I headed back out. When I got back he was his normal ADD self and wanted to leave right then. Perfect, let’s go.

We weighed anchor a little after 4 and were off for Guadeloupe. 9 hours later, through 15-20 foot seas and heavy winds, we arrived at a small bay to anchor for the night and get a little sleep before we attempted our final pass (another 30 miles) to our current location. We badly needed to get to a marina and get plugged into shore power to charge the batteries, take on fuel, water and make necessary repairs but the nearest one was here. During this trip we had one of those unbelievable close calls that I still shudder to think about (don’t read this part Mom). I made some dinner for us while Brian took a turn on watch. After we ate I told him I was gonna get some sleep and for him to wake me around 8 PM and I would take over and get us to the anchorage in Anse la Barque. I headed down a little after 6 and was woken around 7 by him calling me up to check something. I wearily dragged my beat down ass out of bed and headed up to see what was going on. He asked what this was. This, was a piece of round plastic sticking about a foot through the bimini cover. I could not believe what I was looking at. In the mainsail there are things called battens. Battens are basically a long pole made of solid, heavy material (fiberglass, plastic, depends on the boat) and are sewn into the sail horizontally to help keep the shape of the sail. During his watch the wind kept increasing in intensity and he kept plowing along and at some point the pressure from the wind caused the stitching to fail and literally shot the batten out of the sail like a freaking arrow fired from a bow. Only this arrow is almost an inch thick and over 8 feet long and when it shot through the fragile canvas of the bimini top it missed Brian’s head by a little less than a foot. With no exaggeration, this projectile would have easily killed him. I wasn’t sure what stunned me more, the fact that he was almost hit or that he had no clue what that weird pole was from. I know I said it before somewhere but I have no idea how this guy has lived this long. He has a dynamite lady in his life who has been with him for 25 years and after these past few months I’m considering converting to some sort of religion so I can figure out how to nominate her for sainthood. Tish, I’ll never know how you have done it but you are truly bad ass. Anyway, back to the ass kicking. We got into Anse la Barque around 3 AM and I made sure to keep the helm this time. I slowly made progress in to the bay keeping an eye on the depth sounder and charts. Of course, he was tired and in a hurry (which is the bane of my existence at this point) so he insisted we anchor a little earlier than I liked. We did, the anchor drug and we had to try again. After fighting that spot for twenty minutes we finally got set…or so I thought. We got the bridle set, he went to bed and I marked down our GPS position so I could get up and check our drift to ensure we weren’t dragging. I was exhausted but got up an hour later to check, we hadn’t moved. Two hours later all was still good. He woke me at 7 AM, anxious to get moving as usual. I woke up and fired up the motors. As we started to weigh anchor I realized the chain was stuck. I contemplated diving down to unwrap it but tried first to finesse the boat around with the engines. I was able to get the chain loose and we continued to pull up the chain. I felt the boat lurch and went up front to see what we were hung up on. The water in this bay was beautiful and crystal clear. You could easily see the bottom, only 25 feet down. Standing on the bow I was staring at yet another sight that I could not fathom. Right below us I could clearly see our anchor and it was obvious that we had NEVER dug into the sandy bottom the night before. We had actually gotten the anchor wedged in between two huge boulders in the shallow bay. I have no idea how it held all night but it was a big bitch slap to me and a reminder that no matter what time it is at night or day, I need to get my ass in the water and dive down to check our anchor set. Better lucky than good huh? Well we got the hook up and were off for Point a Pitre and the Marina Bas du Fort. The run was approx 25 miles and should have taken around 5 hours but oh no, not on the Boogie baby. After the hook was up I went back to bed and Brian took watch. When I got up around 10 I went up to check our progress. None of the electronics were on. Nothing was on. I went below to check the breaker and it had tripped. The batteries had gotten so low that it shut everything down. We had to hand steer the entire way. Luckily we were only running along the coastline so it was easy for me to chart our progress and keep a running log (since I’m the only one who thinks that it’s semi important to know where the boat is, call me crazy guess I’m just not a fan of reefs). It was pathetic. We had no power and we had to make the marina before sundown. We managed to make it into port and I still regret giving up the helm. Brian was napping and I asked him up top so I could tie up the fenders and dock lines in preparation for arriving dockside. I showed him on the charts where we were going and went up front. When we arrived inside the marina I got the dockmaster on the radio to meet us at the entrance and guide us in. He came up and asked me in very broken English to wait for 5 minutes while he prepped our spot. Meanwhile, the wind didn’t stop blowing and Brian, being at the helm, apparently decided to have a quiet moment to himself. I told him to keep power on the engines because of the wind but as with most things I say, it pretty much fell on deaf ears. Within about 20 seconds we were blown to the west past the red markers that you are supposed to stay inside of and bam, we were grounded in the mud and rocks. Of course at this point, instead of keeping calm, panic was the first instinct and resulted in him wildly throwing both motors into forward and reverse at random intervals and of course full throttle. After ignoring me long enough, I finally took over by pretty much yelling to get the fuck out of my way and I got us to the outside to regroup. While I was running the boat out I realized that we had no power from the port side engine. Just outside the entrance to the harbor there are several moorings that you can pick up. We grabbed one and secured the boat. I geared up and dove to find out if something was wrapped around the propeller. Nope. I had him engage the prop and rev the engines but I could see that the prop was just loosely spinning with no power. After some inspection and reading some reference material it seems that the prop is out of service because of the grounding episode and the high speed shifting that stripped the hub of the prop. The good news? The boat has to be pulled out of the water to fix this. Something we weren’t planning on until Colombia. I was so pissed I could barely think. This basically means that I now have one engine until we haul the boat out. This may not seem like a big deal (it’s really not huge just more of really big pain in the ass) but if you can picture that this boat is 25 feet wide when you only use the engine on the right side of the boat it tends to make you want to head in a circle, forward or backward. I will manage but it still sucks huge rhino balls. So as mad as I was, I set the dinghy up and hauled ass to the marina. I explained our situation, we needed power badly, we didn’t even have lights and could not sit on a mooring all night. The marina staff has been great and the dockmaster stayed after (this was Saturday evening this nightmare was happening) to help us dock up. I dashed back out to the boat and got things ready to approach the marina. I brought the boat in and having the dockmaster help on our broken side, backed the boat into our current position on the dock. As soon as I had the boat tied up safely I went to my stateroom and read the rest of Angels and Demons by Dan Brown in order to calm down. Oh yeah, I read using my headlamp because at this point, we still couldn’t plug in. The spot they gave us was too far from the power hook up we needed. We don’t have European connections so we couldn’t use the one close to us. Fun stuff. Early the next morning we were up and off to find mechanics and check into customs. I got us checked in and all of our facility stuff taken care of. We walked to the mechanics and waited for quite a while wondering why they weren’t open by 8. It wasn’t for probably close to an hour as we were walking through the shopping center that someone told us it was Sunday and that nothing was open. Great. No parts or help until the next day. I took off and walked around checking things out. I found a small aquarium here that was cool and only cost 6 Euros to walk through. It has nothing on the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach but it was nice to walk through. The highlight was probably when I went into the ridiculously small men’s restroom to sit down and take care of business and half way through the lights went out. There I was, sitting on the can in the freaking dark in some random ass aquarium in Guadeloupe, home of people who only speak French and look at you like you are a retard because you only speak English. I didn’t really know what to do. I hoped the lights were motion sensors so I waved my arms but no luck. So I sat in the dark, finished up and groped my way out of there. Welcome to paradise friends.

Things are good. Everything I wrote is true but no worries, we are getting things done. The generator is up and running, the batteries are fully charged and tomorrow morning we have the Yanmar mechanics coming out at 9 AM so I will be spending my day down in the engine rooms again. Hopefully we can be on our way to Dominica by Friday and we will still be on schedule. Today Brian rented a car and we drove around the western island of Guadeloupe. This is the biggest island we have been on in a long time, complete with freeways, a full port and tons of commerce. The biggest problem here is the language barrier and getting Euros. Everything is crazy expensive here. There has a been a lot more that has happened in the last week but I’m tired of typing and I’m sure you are tired of reading so maybe some other time I will tell you about the moron that walked by me rapping in French (sorry, you just can’t sound cool doing that period) or the little kids who were so cool but kept laughing at MY funny accent and the fact that I couldn’t understand them.

As a sidenote, I don’t want anyone to get the wrong impression about my feelings toward Brian. The things I write are true and actually happened but we get along well. As with anything, it has been an adjustment period because we have literally become roommates over the past few months and fundamentally we are very different. I think he is a great guy but mainly what I’m trying to convey in my writing is my disbelief in the fact that he isn’t dead. That and the fact that what we are doing is not easy. It’s a ton of work and maintenance on the boat, which I find well worth the reward. Wish us luck tomorrow getting the alternators fixed and all of our systems up and running. At this point, I’m probably gonna need some crew help moving the boat around so if anyone is interested in spending a week or two crewing here and there you can e-mail me direct at oceanhuntersb@gmail.com

One last personal note, I got an e-mail from someone in Greece which means people are reading my blog from half way across the world and that in itself is very cool to me. Thank you all for reading and I hope you are still enjoying.