The Hard Way Back to a Sailing Life
By Kathleen Jones
First Mate on the s/v Déjà Vu
More than a dozen years ago, my husband and I traded a sailboat mortgage for a home mortgage. As we walked off the dock and away form our Peterson 44, Ursa Major, for the last time, all of the best memories of living aboard in the Caribbean and South America with our young family came rushing forward. Somehow, the not-so-great memories of rough passages, sleepless nights, vomiting children and clogged heads didn’t figure in my reverie. We said we’d have another boat some day, but for now we would enjoy the pleasure of our new home on the coast of Maine.
Fast forward to the present. After years without a jib to trim, we had paid our dues on land – raised two kids, worked hard and just felt downright entitled to a life of leisure. With a daughter in college and son in high school, we began dreaming again of sailing away – this time to the South Pacific. But first we would have to begin the long road back to becoming competent sailors again.
My husband, George, had sold his medical practice and could taste the freedoms inherent in the cruising lifestyle. We put our home on the market and began a coast-to-coast search for the perfect bluewater passage-maker. Our previous live-aboard and bareboat charter experiences made it easy to prepare our wish list for the next boat. The one the ultimately met our specifications was a cutter rigged, center cockpit Stevens 47 designed by Sparkman & Stephens. She was soundly built and well fitted-out for serious cruising. Below deck she was handsomely finished and commodious with three private cabins and an open salon/galley layout that even claustrophobes could love.
On our inaugural summer passage aboard newly renamed Déjà Vu, we had an easy offshore run in light air from Ft. Lauderdale to Charleston, South Carolina. She handled well under sail, made good time and the heads didn’t break. But for a brief squall, the weather was not much of a factor. Reassured that we had chosen the right boat, we began to feel comfortable again with our nautical skills and were eager to spend more time on board the following spring.
Throughout the frigid winter months in Maine, while Déjà vu sat on the hard in Charleston, George and I honed our rusty navigation and weather prediction skills at weekend seminars. In anticipation of three glorious weeks of vacation, we excitedly perused charts of the Bahamas. We devoured our monthly Seven Seas Cruising Association bulletins and, of course, ordered a myriad of parts, books and other nautical paraphernalia we suddenly couldn’t live without. During the coldest, darkest months of the year, George woke up every morning at five-thirty to study for his HAM radio license.
It was with a certain amount of cautious self-confidence that we began our long-awaited adventure in April. Our plan was to sail Déjà Vu from Charleston to West Palm Beach, where we would drop off one set of guests and pick up another – our fifteen year old son and his good friend – before departing for the Abacos in the Bahamas. We had no idea how true the expression “expect the unexpected” was about to become – an odyssey of mistakes, miscalculations and happenstance awaited us.
On the morning of our departure from Charleston, George checked the engine oil and was astonished to find a lumpy, gray, curd-like substance where there should have been pure oil. After a quick taste, the marine diesel mechanic diagnosed fresh water in the system but couldn’t find the source. Two oil changes, water pressure tests and a day later, we were on our way. We never did find the source of the water but were willing to accept the word of the mechanic that we were good to go. Once offshore, we settled in with our friends on board and headed to West Palm Beach. That extra day in Charleston had cost us a leisurely stop along the northern coast of Florida but our guests were seasoned sailors and didn’t complain.
During the midnight watch on the second night, as we were motor/sailing well off shore, the engine quite – not with a bank but a whimper. My first thought was that we had never resolved the original problem. A very sleepy George realized that he had misread the fuel gauge. Thinking that we had more fuel than we really had, he had not opened the valve which would have transferred fuel to the main tank. With a sigh of resignation, he spent the next two hours bleeding our Ford-Lehman engine. We wrote off this oversight to our lack of familiarity with our new boat’s fuel storage system and resumed our passage.
After a brief stay in West Palm Beach, we planned to cross the Gulf Stream to the Little Bahama Bank, receive our cruising permit at Spanish Cay and head to Green Turtle Cay – our ultimate Bahamian destination. With only one week of vacation for our newly arrived teenagers, we were anxious to get there, inflate the kayaks and try out our new snorkeling gear. Tranquil, warm, azure waters awaited us – of that we were certain. But nature defies deadlines and, once again, we were delayed another day and a half until the winds shifted from the north to the south.
When we finally arrived at Spanish Cay, after a surprisingly uneventful passage, we made the decision to anchor just north of the marina in about ten feet of water over a bottom of sand and grass. We saw no reason to spend almost $100 a night tied up to a breezeless dock, surrounded by a bunch of partying power boaters. After setting the anchor, I snorkeled along the chain and found our sixty-six pound Bruce buried snugly.
The following day we zip-locked our passports in a dry bag and endured a wet dinghy ride to the customs office at Spanish Cay Marina, only to be told that we needed to bring Déjà Vu to a slip before we could get our Bahamas cruising permit. The customs office was closing for the day and we would have to wait until the next morning to check in. We were running out of vacation time but were ever hopeful that we would still spend at least two days at Green Turtle Cay.
The next morning all hell broke loose as a surprisingly malevolent squall came barreling through the anchorage with thirty-five knot gusts and a wind shift to the west. As lightning flashed around us we retreated below deck. While George downloaded the daily weather fax (as if we needed a second opinion), I asked questions about what would happen if we were struck by lightning, with the chilling awareness that our sixty-five foot mast was probably the highest point for miles around. I told the boys, as calmly as I could, not to touch anything that remotely resembled metal.
In my preoccupation with a potential lightening strike, I neglected to notice that Déjà Vu was dragging anchor. A glance out the starboard port told me we were headed for the lee shore with alarming speed. George virtually flew into the cockpit and cranked the engine, but it was too late. In a breathless moment we were hard aground, our bow within feet of the jagged coral shore that rimmed the low-lying island.
At the helm, George kept the engine running in reverse gear in an effort to counteract the wave action that might dislodge the boat and lift us onto the rocks. Although Déjà Vu held her ground, she listed heavily to starboard as the tide ebbed. Crashing sounds came from the galley as pots and pans began flying out of their normally secure locations.
I scrambled down the companionway and alerted the boys to our peril, trying hard not to frighten them. But when they saw me filling the dry bag with whatever evacuation essentials I could find, they knew we were in trouble. I told them to be ready to abandon ship. They were remarkably calm, as if this were a scene in someone else’s disaster movie. I tried to assure them – or maybe I was really trying to reassure myself that we would be all right – eventually.
After a harrowing few minutes, drained of adrenaline, we were able to assess our situation. It appeared that we had run up on a sandy bank and that the hull was intact. Our six foot, two inch keel, lodged in the sand, was all that kept us from the rocks. George hailed Spanish Cay Marina on the VHF, explained our situation and asked for help. After what seemed like several eternities, the small, island ferryboat arrived to pull us off. We fashioned a bridle from deck lines and tossed it to them. As the ferry boat backed off, our brief moment of hope was shattered as the bridle snapped and we were suddenly helpless again. It was agreed that we would wait for the rising tide and try again.
As high tide neared, a marina employee approached along the shoreline. Although we placed little hope in his suggestion to kedge us off the sand, we threw him a spare halyard, which he wrapped once around a precarious tree. As George winched the halyard, the mast leaned, inch-by-inch, to starboard. But it was a vain effort to bring the hull over as we realized there was too little water under the hull to float us to freedom. In a final gesture of aid, he offered the marina’s powerful, circa World War II landing craft at a cost of $300. We figured it was the best $300 we could ever spend.
While we awaited the landing craft’s arrival, a sympathetic couple in a dinghy pulled alongside to offer assistance. George fashioned another bridle and our new best friends served as liaison between us and the landing craft – a hulking, gray, hard-edged relic with a lot of power and questionable maneuverability. They delivered the bridle to the mate just as the vessel came dangerously close to Déjà Vu before backing off. The captain was a pro and handled the rescue with the finesse of a man who had risen to the occasion many times before. Grateful for the assistance, we were free-floating and out of harm’s way – or so we thought.
George pulled in the bridle and I began to walk the dinghy around to the stern to prepare for the short trip to the marina and our long overdue customs check-in. Suddenly, the dinghy painter was violently wrenched out of my hand and sucked into the propeller. We were now without steering as the line wrapped itself around the propeller shaft and stopped our forward motion. Our new, inflatable dinghy was pulled against the hull and began to go under it as the line tightened. With the lee shore astern, we were being blown right back into it. It was impossible to describe the sick feeling I had when I realized that this time we might really lose the boat or at least sustain major damage – and it was my fault. George radioed to the landing craft that we needed help again as I rushed to the stern to place fenders between Déjà Vu and the new rocks – an exercise in futility that, nevertheless, made me feel useful. Our transom was now within several feet of the craggy shore. As if by some miracle, the boat grounded a second time in sand, preventing us from hitting the rocks. The landing craft’s crew grabbed the bridle and pulled us off one more. This time they didn’t let go.
With the dinghy painter still wrapped securely around the propeller shaft, we were dead in the water. George and one of the marina dockhands donned snorkeling gear and within minutes they had freed the line, but when I put the engine in gear there was no movement of the prop. A quick trip to the engine room revealed the reason – the force of the torque on the prop had cracked the aluminum adapter plate that attached the transmission to the engine. With the realization that repairs would be both time consuming and costly, our vacation in the Abacos had come to a screeching halt. Our friends in the dinghy asked if we were thinking of taking up another sport. At that point, croquet seemed quite appealing.
As we entered the marina breakwater under two, a small crowd had assembled on the dock to applaud our safe arrival. We were embarrassed but grateful. The cold Heinekens we were offered never tasted so good.
In recapitulating what went wrong that day, we were quick to blame our Bruce anchor for dragging. But, in fact, the real blame rested squarely on our shoulders. In hindsight, we had not let out enough rode for this type of anchor – a six to one length to depth ratio might have held. We had paid only a three or four to one ratio. Our previous boat had a CQR which never failed us, but we were unaware that in a wind shift, a Bruce can turn and pull up if not properly set. Before our next adventure we plan to relegate the Bruce to secondary status and spend big bucks for a 105 lb. CQR. Setting a second bow anchor would also have been the prudent thing to do and while we’re at it, we might even consider buying and anchor alarm. Security at sea is priceless.
When I thought about my major blunder with the dinghy painter, I couldn’t believe my carelessness. In the hundred of times I had safely managed a line in the past, this had never occurred. But in panic mode I was distracted and left just enough line dangling in the water to be sucked into the propeller. As for the resulting damage to the transmission, we spend five immobile days at the marina while George flew to Fr. Lauderdale, located the part and installed it, with the help of empathetic sailors.
We never made it to Green Turtle Cay. Such is the price paid for sailing with deadlines to meet. Our son and his friend were safely delivered to the mainland, via the private plane of another generous sailor, for their return flight to Maine. George and I sailed on to Ft. Lauderdale, without incident, where Déjà Vu – unscathed and ever out ticket to the South Pacific – would await our return the following winter. What we learned on this misadventure was incalculable and we were all the wiser for it.
Maybe croquet isn’t the sport for us – yet.
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