Watch your six

We’ve been bopping around the islands surrounding Eleuthera for the last couple of weeks. Maybe it has only been a week? I have no concept of time anymore. I think it’s May?

Anyway, we decided to move east a bit to check out a new place that promised some good snorkeling. Unfortunately, the water was full of jellyfish, so swimming was out. It was pretty, but the kids (and dog) would rather swim, so we decided to move back to where we were before (Meeks Patch).

That’s when things started to go south.

Generally, when you want to move, you pull up your anchor. There’s a powerful motor (called a windlass) up front that pulls the hundreds of pounds of chain and anchor up for you. Except that today, it didn’t pull. Nada. C’mon, why is everything always broken!? Oh, right. It’s a boat.

So, I did what most people do in a situation like this. I hit it with a club… and it actually worked! I’m so smart.

Excellent. So we moved back to Meeks, and all was well. Except that the winds started kicking up and we were swinging around a bit too much. Meredith put on her snorkel gear to check out the anchor, and determined that we need to let out more chain.

Cool. At least I fixed the windlass, right? Wrong. We have to pull up the anchor a bit to let the pressure off before we can lower more chain, but the windlass decided that my hitting it with a club wasn’t a permanent fix. Oh well. Maybe the chain we have out is enough after all? We call it good enough and give up the effort.

We chill on the boat and mess around for a bit. I spend a little time on YouTube and figure out that if I tighten a certain part of the windlass, it may just work.

It does! I love you YouTube! I’m so smart.

“Mere, I got it working! Let’s let that anchor out”

The newly fixed windlass works like a champ. (I’m so proud of myself). We pull up the chain a bit to let off the pressure, and then switch the engines to reverse to let out more chain.

That’s when things started to go south.

Steering got a little funky and wouldn’t respond. Then I couldn’t shift between forward and reverse anymore (this is necessary to keep the boat wiggling in the right direction).

Then I heard the call over channel 16. Remember channel 16?

“Spoondrifer to Twig”

Gah! don’t call me now! I’m in the middle of something super stressful! But, you get a call on 16, and you need to answer.

“Um. This is Twig. Over”

“You’re backing over your SUPs”

shit.

“That would explain it. Thanks. Over”

shit.

Looks like today is going to be one big huge teaching moment. We shut the engines down, grab our snorkels and jump in water.

It wasn’t as bad as I thought.

During our “chill out time”, we had put two SUPs (Stand Up Paddleboards) into the water behind the boat to play on. The ropes holding them to the boat were now completely wrapped around one of the propellers. The SUPs themselves were pointing up out of the water at about 45 degrees, one on top of the other, with their tips right up against the prop. The nicer of the two, the one that actually doesn’t (didn’t) leak air, is completely shredded across its nose.

I’m sorry. I lied to you. It was absolutely as bad as I thought.

We spent the next hour or so bobbing up and down out of the water, diving down, untangling the rope bit by bit. Our neighbor from Spoondrifter came over and lent a hand. When it was all done, the lines were shredded, one SUP was a total loss, and we had to cross our fingers that we didn’t totally destroy our saildrive (transmission) in the process.

We’re able to get everything going again and let out the extra chain we planned on. The boat didn’t seem as responsive, but time will tell if that was my imagination or if we damaged it.

sigh.

We were just letting a few feet of chain out, right? We were so naive. Well, lesson learned. Check your six (look behind you). Even for a small move, always go through the departure checklist.

Oh well. Life is full of lessons. Now we know.

That’s when things started going south.

Then the freezer quit working. Back on land, that sucks. You run the risk of losing all your ice cream, and that really sucks. On a boat, it means losing all of your meat (and the ice for your drinks). And you can’t just go to the store and get more. Unless I go ashore and hog tie one of those morsels on Pig Beach.

The error code on the freezer said that we didn’t have enough power going to it. Whatever that means. We fiddled with the wires hoping that we could trick it into working again. No go. We’re out of ideas, and exhausted. There’s a backup power source we can hook up if it doesn’t start behaving. So, we went to bed and hoped for the best.

At 4am, I got up to check a funny noise (aren’t you supposed to sleep well on boats?). That noise turned out to be a clothes hanger banging against the wall to the rhythm of the wind. Thats when I noticed that the water pump was running continuously. That usually happens when a tank is empty, but nobody has been using water for hours, so no tank should have emptied. I check it out, and the tank is indeed empty. I guess I didn’t fix that leak after all.

While I’m up, I check on the freezer and it’s still not working, so I plugged it into the backup source. In the morning, it’s a bit cooler, but not quite cold enough. I’ll take a look at that later.

That was a day for the books, but we came out of it just fine. We’re down one SUP, but other than that, no big deal. I’ll figure out the freezer. I’ll try again at fixing the water tank leak, and hire a pro back in the states if I can’t get it fixed. I now know how to adjust a windlass.

It’s a beautiful chill day here in the Bahamas, and we’re mostly hanging out being lazy on the back of the boat. The kiddos played legos all morning, and now Greyson is fixing to go for a swim. I’m sure that Zulu (dog) will join him. Tomorrow we’re going to head over to Egg Island to snorkel, spearfish, and chill on the over water swings for Mother’s Day.

You can’t have the sweet without the sour right?