Adventures on Beannacht

  Monday 16^th February

Keli celebrating on the dock as TowBoatUS leave the scene

Not the call from Kel I was expecting. Channel 16 called my name, or rather ‘Beannacht, Beannacht, this is Keli’ and I picked up the receiver expecting an update on Kel’s progress in getting her camera repaired and a quick ‘any last requests?’ before she motored from the dinghy dock out to Beannacht at anchor in West Palm. Instead what I got was ‘Stu there’s a problem. I was just coming out of the marina and opened up the throttle when the engine jumped off the back of the dinghy, spun horizontally in the air and then sank in 15 feet of water’.

Uncontrollable stress-induced laughter. Dinghy and outboard theft is more common in Florida and so we started chaining the dinghy when ashore. I had locked the outboard onto the back of the boat, but clearly omitted to verify that it was tightly enough secured to the boat before I added the padlock. Losing our motor, either through theft of incompetence would be an absolute disaster – humour was the only option.

Shit. Emergency. $2000 at the bottom of the ocean and no chance of us getting to the Bahamas tomorrow. Both of us have felt like our time in the states has a touch of Groundhog Day about it, and were at the point of we have to get out of here. I radioed Bob, our cruising friend anchored near to hear his perfect response: ‘I hate it when that happens’. More laughter.

Bob and I motored over to pick up Kel and have a look at the crash site. We called TowBoatUS to see if our insurance policy covered motors lost at sea, and 5 minutes later they arrived and started searching the channel. After 20 minutes it became clear that they weren’t going to get it today, and we definitely weren’t leaving the US…again. They agreed to come collect us the next morning to search for it a high tide when the ocean water flowing into the inlet made the water in the channel really clear.

Keen to attempt a recovery that evening so that we could use the weather window to the Bahamas on Saturday, Bob took us out to dive on the engine ourselves. Bob actually found the motor but as he came up to get a rope to pull it to the surface he drifted in the current and we couldn’t find it before the light faded. Saturday wasn’t going to be our departure date. We said goodbye to Bob, Jill and the boys wishing them safe travels for their crossing the next day and went home to drown our sorrows.

On Saturday morning we moved to the marina to give us the potential to get spares for the engine once we got it off the bottom. TowBoat arrived at 9.30am and Kel and I went out on the boat. After 15 minutes we found the engine, dropped an anchor, and I dived on the engine to attach a rope. While we were out on the boat we got a call on the radio from a bloke at the marina, Lou, who offered to flush our sunken engine for $30 – a steal!

 

Lou did a great job and in less than 2 hours we had a fully working motor and the afternoon to ourselves and needed some relaxation. Firstly Wales vs England – we’ve caught quite a few games online so far and this was another great match (it’s always a great match when England lose). Then after rugby to Peanut Island, a protected park just inside the inlet to the ocean, to testdrive our new snorkelling gear with a little marine life geekery. We took a few photos with our amazing underwater camera:

Florida was full of socialising. In our first few days we hooked up with Mark’s friends David and Lucia and had a great time eating wonderful home cooking and catching up on a little laundry. We met some new cruising friends, the Royal family – Bob, Jill, Tom and Dan; and Andree and Tick. We had two great nights of hanging out on Antic, Andree and Tick’s boat, and winding each other up about the rugby – the English are vulnerable souls these days! On Thursday night we hooked up again with Doug and Amy, who we’d met in Oriental, and Amy cooked up a great meal at their house in West Palm. This of course should have been our last night in the US.

We enjoyed the rest of Saturday afternoon and evening, and got up at 3.30am on Sunday to make our crossing to the Bahamas. The weather forecast wasn’t perfect, but we both wanted to get going fast, so we decided to take a chance, with the option of turning round if the seas were too rough – northerly winds against the gulf stream create very difficult seas. In the end the winds were very light and we had a simple motor across to West End where we made our landfall. And so today we’re writing from the Bahamas with a working engine and big smiles on our faces.

I’ve been thinking about stress and expectation in the last few days, not least when we sunk the outboard. Every now and then I go through a day of depression where I feel like we’re not going to succeed in this whole sailing thing. It’s mostly to do with money. I haven’t done the sums in terms of what the boat actually cost us yet, but basically everything we’ve done since we left Ireland in August has cost us more money than we expected. Adding to the pressure is the exchange rate, where now our meagre pound is worth $1.40 instead of $1.92 – and when we use our credit cards we only get $1.35 – even floating on the ocean the economy still gets to us.

After a couple of meltdowns – Kel is learning to ignore me now – I’m becoming a little more philosophical, and appreciating how fortunate we are. We paid our immigration fee this morning for the Bahamas – another $300 from the kitty – and both felt relieved that for the majority of the next 4 or 5 weeks that we’re in the Bahamas we’ll be at anchor and not spending anything apart from the occasional diesel refill. It just seems that our 3-5 year dream will be more like a 3-5 month dream sometimes, but we think that we’ve already discovered and paid for the long list of $100 essentials for the boat. From here on it’s just food and water, and we’re on the lookout for work as we travel to keep the budget topped up.

At the same time as buying our snorkel gear we got a Hawaiian sling and a spear pole for fishing. We didn’t have any luck trolling a lure behind the boat on our way to the Bahamas, but we’re both really excited about diving for lobsters and spearing fish once we’ve moved on from West End.

So another night in West End to rest and prepare some meals for an overnight passage to the Berry Islands. We’ll leave tomorrow at around 4pm and get there at noon on Wednesday. The Berry’s are a deserted island chain with very little local population and I’d imagine there’ll be some naked fire dancing and freshly caught fish roasted on the grill – it’s with great relief that I can announce that this adventure has actually started!