A Sail of Two Idiots

by Renee Petrillo

  Holiday over, we shopped till we dropped. Having seen the prices for goods on St. Kitts, we bought everything we thought we’d ever need. Even if we sailed off to Puerto Rico or possibly Turks and Caicos, at least we would be well stocked. You name it and we bought it, from food to bathroom supplies, from fake (soy) meat to boat parts. Of course we bought and ate lots of French bread and cheese, but that wouldn’t last long. We definitely made the trip worth it.

  Our return sail was wet and wild but fun. The winds and waves were high but at a good angle off our beam, so Jacumba kept moving. Waves were coming off our bow so consistently that we wore our rain gear the whole time. Also, the plastic wind/rain screen shielding the helm was continuously covered in salt water, so I had to keep sticking my head out to the side and hope I had good timing to avoid getting doused.

  All we had to do now was check back into St. Kitts and unload. And wait.

  Landlubbers Again

  40

  You’re Hired, We’re Home (Sort of)

  We didn’t have to wait for long, because guess what? As soon as we got back, Michael was offered the job with the developer! After waiting almost five months, he finally got word that the job was his. He received the call on a Friday and they wanted him to start on Monday. Wow! Wow! Wow!

  The best part of Michael’s job as landscape project manager, besides the salary and the relief, was the car that came with it. Finally, we had wheels! Michael also received a computer and a Blackberry. Talk about Mr. Professional.

  At the risk of sounding like a girl … what was Michael going to wear? He’d need some work clothes. Considering the limited shopping on St. Kitts, Michael lucked out with a store downtown, even finding a pair of work boots. He was all set to go.

  Back On Board

  Despite the new job and income, we decided to move back on board Jacumba. It would be easier to maintain her, and we’d be able to save some money by not paying two “rents.”

  Reverse course! Groceries we just unloaded, reload (in rain and on a half-deflated dinghy). Deflated dinghy, you ask? Yep, a splintered plank from the wood dock had punched a huge hole in the dinghy’s bow (we did have the stern anchor out, but it must have dislodged). I kid you not when I say that we pretended we didn’t notice and finished the routine. Screw it. We just sat on the inflated side and did what we needed to do.

  Once everything was loaded back on Jacumba, we motored down to White House Bay and were excited to see Merengue anchored there. More gin and tonics! Another domino match—Jim “wins” the dunce cap! Tours around the island with Michael’s company vehicle! Fun! But why did Jim and Wendy always have to leave? Boo!

  I guess it was for the best, since Michael had to go to work (!). Our new location was perfect for him, because there was a new (plastic!) dock, a place to park his car, and a short (10 minute) drive to the company’s work-site trailer.

  I, on the other hand, was pretty isolated. There wasn’t anything near this bay. I used the kayak for transportation and climbed the hills for exercise. I mooched off the nearby sales office’s Internet service and worked on the boat.

  We had mixed feelings about being back on Jacumba, but we did appreciate the privacy and quiet. We also enjoyed the bioluminescent marine creatures that surrounded us during the new moon. Every once in a while we took another sail to Nevis with new friends. I don’t think we ever had a bad sail over there.

  Despite our attempt at balance, some of the thrill was gone. We had a boat to sail and explore with, but we didn’t have as much time to do that anymore. With more work than fun (a little too much like the northern Bahamas), crabbiness was setting in. Michael went to the office; I did all the chores (demolding, bottom scrubbing, metal cleaning, defrosting, belt changing, patching/pumping the dinghy). Of course, I couldn’t do it all, which meant that on Michael’s time off from his job, he got to work on the boat. We also had to drive all the way downtown to do laundry every weekend. We were starting to get burned out.

  A navigation instrument cover mysteriously disappeared, but a little snorkeling around the boat found it!

  Lines holding up the lazyjacks (a system of lines that guide the mainsail down into the sail cover on the boom) were getting frazzled, so a trip halfway up the mast was necessary to tape them to stop the fraying.

  The mainsail cover itself continued to disintegrate in the sun.

  The engines needed the usual maintenance (oil changes and alternator belt changes).

  Our lifeline covers (plastic sheathing protecting the underlying wire) were becoming brittle and falling apart, so we removed them (and then added the chore of derusting the metal lifelines to our metal derusting list).

  The mooring pickup pole had to be replaced after a little accident.

  The electrical socket next to the freezer got wet from condensation and fried itself.

  No amount of patchwork would fix the dinghy hole. After about a month of constant pumping just to use it, we ended up buying a new inflatable dinghy. To save money we downsized from a 12-foot to a 10-foot dinghy, with fiberglass bottom, oars, and seat included. A local boatbuilder brought it in duty-free for us ($2,500 including brokerage costs). What a relief to see that new dinghy arrive after weeks of pumping up the broken one though.

  The dinghy’s outboard engine started acting up. We replaced the spark plugs, cleaned the carburetor, changed the fuel, and then put out an SOS to our blog readers. Several diagnosed it correctly; we had a spun propeller hub and had to get a new propeller.

  Another rope clutch broke (for over $200 they sure were made cheaply). We put an older one back on.

  The bimini (cockpit cover) wasn’t keeping out rain anymore, so we resealed it with a spray-on sealant, which worked wonders. The old plastic zippers still leaked though.

  I repainted our now faded white fuel caps back to their original bright red to freshen things up. Little tasks count too!

  The heads (toilets) started giving us trouble. We fixed the one we used all the time (caulking a crack in the lid and using parts in our toilet parts kit, but we never did figure out why the suction was failing in the other toilet (we had replaced everything).

  More leaks developed in the freshwater tanks—on both sides.

  The original portion of our anchor chain became so rusty that we had to replace it—a rather costly fix.

  We went through our last LED anchor-light bulb for the masthead before we found one that worked.

  We had to rerope our trampoline, repair a small tear, and replace a few of the clamps holding it on.

  We put new telltales on our mainsail and did some more repairs to the genoa (at the top, of course). We broke several sewing needles during this process.

  I repainted the boat-name lettering.

  Our carbon monoxide detector went completely crazy, insisting we had a fire when we didn’t, so we took out the batteries and tossed the thing (no, the reset button didn’t work).

  This is a very abbreviated list. I also made bigger For Sale signs.

  41

  Sell, Sell, Sell!

  Jacumba was getting cheap. Although the What Broke? list may make it seem as though someone should pay us for the boat, remember that all these are normal repairs! Anything that broke we fixed. It’s called maintenance. Anyone who had seen our boat, from brokers to surveyors to other boaters, commented on Jacumba’s great condition. It was in great condition because we were fixing all those things!

  Even though our latest survey had priced the boat at $190,000US (more than we paid for it), we would have been happy with $175,000 (less than we paid for it). The price was now down to $150,000 (after negotiations). We just wanted to cover the remaining loan and maybe have a couple thousand extra to survive on. We were not greedy.

  LESSON 100: KEEP IT SIMPLE Don’t spend a lot of money on boat upgrades. A boat is a depreciating item. You will not get your money back. If you want the conveniences of those extras, go for it—just don’t expect a financial return on them.

  The worst
part was that hurricane season was approaching. What to do? Should I sail back to Grenada or even up to Florida for the season (either alone or with a friend)? But if I took the boat, where would Michael live? The haulout on St. Kitts was a big no—not safe, no facilities, and too expensive. The marina was incredibly expensive, near a loud downtown, and wasn’t safe during hurricanes. We decided to take our chances and hope our luck held.

  One day, someone interested in our boat sailed right up to me on a catamaran that his friend had just bought on St. Martin. They literally tied up to Jacumba (that’s called rafting) and raved about her … but then gave me a “but.”

  Who’s at the Helm?

  While we waited for more boat interest, we had a few experiences we could have done without. About 2 a.m. one morning (remember LESSON 13, Be afraid?), I heard a large splash in the front of the boat. I lay there for a minute thinking that maybe a pelican or a booby was fishing, but at 2 a.m.? Okay, maybe a wind had come up and yanked our bridle out of the water. I peeked out the hatch and saw a boat about 60 feet from us that had not been there when we went to bed. Uh-oh. They were either jerks or our boat had started moving. It would be the latter.

  We weren’t facing into the wind, which was a sure sign that something was wrong. So I stood there a moment trying to get my bearings, and after about five minutes we were no longer anywhere near the other boat. We were nowhere near the rocky shore either, thank goodness. Just for kicks, I turned on our GPS and confirmed that even the overhead satellite could see that we had left the anchorage. (Involuntary float number one.)

  I went below and got Michael up and we went to the bow to see what could have happened. The anchor chain and anchor were no longer attached to us. We weren’t sure yet if a chain link had given way or the rope/chain connection (the splice) had detached. Whatever, we needed to get reattached to something. So I started the engines and motored back to a place where I remembered that two new moorings had been installed by Michael’s employer. It was so dark that we couldn’t see a thing until we almost ran over one of the mooring balls.

  Because the balls didn’t have the lines needed to attach the mooring to our boat, we needed to use the dinghy to get situated. We dropped the dinghy, Michael motored around to grab a plastic loop on the mooring, and I fed him the lines so he could tie us off. This was a piece of cake. But then Michael let go of Jacumba, the dinghy motor died, and current started to take Michael out to sea. Déjà vu …

  Pros at this, thanks to our Antigua experience, I knew that I would have to get to Michael before he passed the rear of the boat. So as he was floating past, I threw him a line and pulled him in. No problem. Time to go back to bed. We didn’t even get excited about that kind of stuff anymore. We barely even had to communicate throughout the whole thing and were in bed within the hour. Was that good or bad?

  The next morning we pulled up the limp rope on the bow and confirmed that the splice where rope and chain should meet had disintegrated. Normally, we had anchor chain out and attached our bridle to that, but because we had space in the harbor, and there were weird, gusty winds in this anchorage, we put out extra rode this time, which included rope. We hadn’t used this section of our anchor tackle in a long time and should have checked it first. That kerplunk we had heard was the anchor rode and the makeshift rope bridle we had created that had dropped into the water.

  LESSON 101: INSPECT YOUR GADGETS (AND GEAR) Keep an eye on all your gear. Although we had a pretty good handle on our anchors and chain, rigging, and other boat parts, a few things fell into the category called out of sight, out of mind. That’s when maintenance lists and schedules come in handy.

  I retrieved the GPS coordinates of our original anchor spot off our chartplotter and transferred them into our handheld GPS. We planned to dinghy to that location, where Michael would dive down for the anchor chain, grab the end of it, tie on a fender, and leave it floating there. This way the location would be marked, and no one would anchor there until we could hoist our anchor and rode back up. Then after Michael came home from work, we would pull up the whole contraption and see what had happened.

  That’s exactly what we did, but not without a little dinghy drama. Every time we put Spud into neutral, it died. (We were still waiting for the new outboard propeller.) Okay, so we wouldn’t put it in neutral. We motored right where we needed to be, and Michael dove and found the end of the anchor chain, but the line to attach the fender on the surface was too thick to pass through the chain link. While he was underwater fumbling with that, I was going around in circles trying to keep the motor running. I freaked when Michael unwittingly swam too close to me, and I threw the motor into neutral so I didn’t chop off his head or foot. Of course, the engine immediately died.

  I don’t know if Michael didn’t notice or didn’t care, but he dove again while I floated away. He did manage to get the rope tied tightly around the chain link, but when he resurfaced, I was halfway out of the anchorage pulling and pulling at the engine cord. I started rowing back, thinking how incredibly stupid this all was, when a nearby boater rescued us by dinghying over to me, then towing me to Michael, and then towing both of us back to Jacumba. All this before 7 a.m.—ugh. Have a nice day, honey!

  When we couldn’t get the dinghy started in order to get Michael to work, our new friend returned and offered to take Michael ashore. We returned the favor by giving him a car ride to town for some parts to fix his boat problems.

  That evening we motored Jacumba over to the floating fender and hoisted the lost anchor and chain by wrapping the fender’s line on our electric anchor windlass and letting the windlass bring it all up. Once done, we motored back to the mooring.

  Not that we were happy about the involuntary drift, but it happened at a good time. During our last St. Martin trip, we had bought some new chain to replace the oldest section of our anchor rode. We kept putting off this chore because it required splicing the chain and rope on our anchor rode. Splicing is complicated, and we didn’t know how to do it, so we procrastinated. We still didn’t know how to do it, but Michael’s boss did, so now was the time to get the job done.

  Although we eventually completed the whole process—new chain link, new splice, and new markings—we decided to stay on the mooring. This way, we would keep our anchor chain nice and clean and take anchor-chain scrubbing off our chore list.

  Two nights later, Michael’s instincts kicked in and he got up when sea conditions seemed to be getting rough. It was my turn to be woken up by the words “We’re on the move.” Back to the bow at 3 a.m. Our lines were still attached to the boat, but the other ends were no longer attached to the mooring. We were about a mile out. Sigh. (Involuntary float number two.)

  We started the engines and motored the 20 minutes back to the island (we had been drifting a long time). The mooring ball was still there, but the loop that we had tied our lines to had come undone. Would we ever sleep again? Not for long!

  Ten days later, the entire mooring (including its ball, chain, and the very large screw-like thing that goes into the seabed) came detached from the sea bottom and sent us along the cliffs at 5 a.m. I had heard a clank but thought it was a nearby boat lifting anchor, so I didn’t check on it. (Remember LESSON 23, Trust your instincts.) When we awoke at 6 a.m. for me to go running and Michael to go to work, we discovered we were coasting down the shore. Very close to shore. This unplanned excursion put us just a little over a boat length from hitting a rocky cliff. (Involuntary float number three.)

  Well, looky there—a neat little cave in the side of the cliff we didn’t know existed. Is that a bird’s nest? Hey, Michael, can you push us off that wall so I can turn us around? Yikes!

  As I motored us back for the umpteenth time so we could anchor, Michael detached the worthless mooring contraption and gave it a certain kind of salute as it bobbed closer to the cliffs.

  Poor Michael. After each of these early morning incidents, he then had to go to work.

  LESSON 102: BE BALLBUSTERS We had known t
his lesson—you’ll remember Saba—but had gotten lazy. Worse, we knew that these moorings were unsafe. A snorkeling excursion had alerted Michael to a problem with the mooring screws (namely that they weren’t screwed in all the way). We then had the incident with the bad loop, and later discovered mixed metals (which cause corrosion and structural weakening). Add incorrect scope/length on the mooring contraption going to the seabed and we knew we should go back on our anchor, but we ignored our instincts simply because we didn’t want to scrub the anchor chain anymore. There are times to be lazy on a boat and times not to be. Guess which one this was?

  The boat on the other mooring wasted no time anchoring either. No idiots them! All moorings have since been removed.

  Meet Ana and Bill

  By now it was mid-August and we had gotten into a routine, which included a boat bottom scrubbing about every two weeks. If you have antifouling paint, you usually don’t have to do this (and shouldn’t), but because our paint hadn’t held up, there was lots of marine growth on the hulls. Sea creatures were also making our hulls their homes because we had become Jacumba-At-Anchor again and weren’t moving. Sailing helps keep the boat bottom clean.

  What was fun about not moving the boat, though, was that our man-made reef attracted guests: a school of squid. I can’t tell you how many generations we watched grow up and be eaten by the barracuda that also came to share the shade of our hulls. The squid were curious and would come over to wherever I was scrubbing and engulf me. Every morning they’d come out from under the boat as if to say hi and then go back under. We enjoyed their company.