ALeria Update 17
The darker side of cruising – return to Antigua. @ 17°00’N 61°46’W
Aloha from Antigua—again...
We thought we had said good bye to Antigua, but sometimes things don’t go as planned, especially out here. We set sail under spinnaker in light winds and a beautiful late afternoon heading for St. Martin. We had planned to do some boat upgrades there as the chandleries, engineers, and craftspeople are reputed to be among the best in the Caribbean, but we never made it. As the wind died between Antigua and Montserrat, we snuffed the spinnaker and turned on the engine to get past the foul tide in the stretch of shallow water along Antigua’s coast. The engine started fine but we could only get 1200 rpm (when 3200 is maximum output on Aleria’s two-year old Yanmar 110 hp 4JH-4HTE engine). With the current against us we were barely making 2 knots of boat speed. We thought the fuel filters might be clogged yet again, so we put into Jolly Harbour on Antigua to clear them and check it out.
As we entered the harbour, darkness was just obliterating the features including anchored boats. But we’d been able to spot and memorize approximate locations and our chart plotter still had our last track on it from a previous visit. So we were able to follow our previous route in. As we prepared to drop anchor, the engine cut out altogether. Luckily, we were able to drop anchor in just enough water abaft the boats anchored farthest out. Alex got to work checking all things fuel related. We engaged the fuel polishing system to clean any gunk out of the fuel tanks in case that was the problem, but the engine wouldn’t re-start.
In the morning, we called the local diesel mechanic, A1 Marine, and prepared to bring Aleria into their dock inside the inner harbour near the marina. We towed Aleria in with the dinghy and 5-HP engine in a side-by-side tow. Daria was at the helm, Alex at the controls of the dinghy. Daria was calling out instructions as we came in to the dock in an amazingly easy manoeuvre. The guys standing by at the dock took our lines which we had hung from the lifelines and secured us to the finger pier. Phew. Another disaster and expensive tow averted.
Carl, the owner of A1 Marine sent his mechanic Alan on board and he got right to work checking everything he could think of. He cleared all the filter housings, blew out all the hoses, pumped clean fuel through the injectors, ran the engine at idle then high revs, to no avail. Finally they said they couldn’t help us. It was down to the fuel pump which is a very complicated unit that cannot be worked on except by certified Bosch technicians or Yanmar dealers. We’d have to go back to Falmouth where MPS is the authorized Yanmar service dealer. Alex then went to go check back in with customs and immigration as we had already checked out. The woman there goes ballistic and tells Alex if we hadn’t been to another country we would have to return to Falmouth from where we checked out immediately. We were not permitted ashore at all, especially not to go to the supermarket. She called the officials at Falmouth to let them know about us illegals. Trouble was it was quarter to twelve on a Saturday and customs closes at twelve.
So, we’re a sailboat, right? We could sail to Falmouth and there seemed to be plenty of wind out there today. We get the boat ready and do another side-by-side tow with the dinghy out past the outer harbour to where the wind is favourable outside the reef. As Daria sails Aleria out, Alex gets ready to stop the dinghy engine; but the wind catches our sails full on and Aleria heels away from the dinghy, which is now suspended mid-air as Alex cuts the engine and scrambles back into Aleria. Daria steers into the wind, Alex drops the dinghy back. Phew! Another disaster averted.
We’ve got 16 knots of wind. It looks like one tack all the way down the coast and a second tack around the corner should bring us up to Falmouth. Then it would be downwind into the harbour and we’ll be able to drop anchor under sail. Naturally, it’s never that easy. The wind veers after the second tack and is now on the nose. We have to tack against a foul current and are making very little headway. Then the wind dies until we are making less than 1 knot. At this rate, it will be days before we make it in. We can drop anchor out here, just barely outside the reef, until there’s wind again. But we try the engine, just one time just in case, and she starts right up. We’re only getting 1200 rpm but by motor sailing that gives us 3 knots. We make our way painfully into the harbour. We spot a big easy hole in the anchorage. As we approach, the engine dies once again and will not restart. Daria shouts, “Drop anchor NOW.” Alex drops while we’re still moving forward because we’re getting close to a boat just ahead. The anchor catches and Aleria stops just perfectly distant and we drift backwards as the chain stretches. We set the anchor by backing the mizzen sail and tidy up the mess on deck. It’s too late to check in so we settle in for the night.
The next morning, Alex goes in to customs and immigration and the agent says, “You were supposed to be here yesterday!” As Alex tries to explain , quakes in his sandals and imagines being locked up without bail, the female agent who is actually on duty hears the story, walks up to Alex and says, “Are these your exit papers? Give them to me and return when you are ready to leave again.” Alex asks about the cruising permit that is about to expire. She says, “Don’t worry; we’ll take care of it when you are ready to leave.” So Alex relaxes and we get back to business. But it’s Sunday and no one works on Sunday so we wait.
We have an appointment with MPS Monday morning at 8 am. Anderson arrives at the dock promptly, Alex picks him up, and he gets to work. After three days of re-checking everything Alan had checked in Jolly Harbour and then struggling with this complicated fuel pump, Anderson was finally able to remove it from the boat. Now it had to be shipped to the States for service as only specialized shops have the machining tools required. This is a minimum ten day turnaround. If the culprit is dirty fuel, there is no warranty coverage. And we are now stuck at anchor in Antigua with no engine.
Depression, deep dark depression, sets in. “I haven’t been that depressed since 1994”, Daria says. We were heading to the British Virgin Islands, the dream cruising territory, to cruise in company with friends and meet up with our niece Alexis and her partner Andrew in St. Johns. If we have to be here at least another two weeks, chances are we won’t be able to make it there and then prepare for departure before hurricane season gets rolling. It just isn’t safe. And we had already seen most of Antigua and Barbuda – we’d been here for a month already. We were on our way home and now we are on our way to intense hassles and expenses. What a way to end the dream adventure.
Plus, we’re at anchor with no engine. What if there’s a problem and we drag? Luckily, we have a great anchor down (Quickset Ultra made in Turkey), we have the trusty Rocna and a Fortress on deck ready to deploy, and if we think about it rationally, we’ve left the boat at anchor in far worse anchorages without problems before. Our dinghy is ready to assist and we have experience . Things could be worse.
Our friends on Talulah hear via the Coconut Telegraph about our problems and return to Falmouth for moral support. We have a great fun BBQ on the beach, play on the swings and slides in the children’s playground, and talk about all the emotions cruisers go through on their travels. The Talulahs were on their way to the Pacific when they realized the boat they were on was the wrong one for them long term. So they are returning to England to sell theirs and search for a new one they can refit. They have rented their home, so they’ll live onboard or with family in the interim. Everyone has a story.
Meanwhile, it’s Race Week in Antigua, the serious round island racing series that follows on the heels of Classics Week. The start is delayed because many owners couldn’t get their crews here due to the Iceland volcano’s disruption of flights. When it gets rolling, it is quite different from Classics Week. Whereas these crews are mainly male and very aggressive, the crews of the Classics were mainly couples, families or well-mixed professional crews. The parties are louder and more boisterous this time. The music is more rap than island/reggae. The cruisers are all departing and the harbour is emptying out. There’s an election coming, and there are political rallies everywhere.
We run into Roy Boughton, the cruiser on Guiding Light who stole the show at the Classics Regatta. We wrote several articles about Roy which are going to be published. One will appear in the July issue of Classic Boat, another is slotted for Cruising World in April 2011. Roy’s British passport was due to expire in a couple of months. When he tried to have it renewed here, he realized that all British embassies throughout the islands have been closed. So his options were to return to England or go to Washington, DC. He learned from a passport control agent in London that he could renew without being there. So Roy mailed his passport to his sister, who took it in and was told he had to be there in person for his signature to be witnessed. The agent Roy spoke with had been sacked the day before. So here he is without a passport and no way to renew. He cannot leave here, so he cannot fly to London to take care of it nor can he sail to Washington or any other island. We convince Roy to have his passport sent back, leave as soon as he can and make way for European ports of call where once he enters the EU, he can continue without a passport. Then he finds out his engine has died and the parts have to be shipped from the states. He’s stuck here probably as long as we are. We are in good company.
Next we hear from our friends on Rapau, who ask up to pick up a letter at Antigua Yacht Club and mail it to them in St. Martin. It contains their new boat papers. We then learn the papers were sent five weeks ago, and because they didn’t make arrangements with AYC were probably sent back. As this happens, they provision in St. Martin and sail off to the BVI, only to realize they left their passports and current boat documents in the supermarket. So they are quarantined in Virgin Gorda until immigration can decide what to do with them. Their boat might be impounded. Meanwhile, they hear that the Elmarleens are in St. Martin and about to sail to the BVIs. They call them and explain. Tam marches into the supermarket, takes charge of the papers, they get on their boat, and sail directly to Virgin Gorda to the rescue. We haven’t heard the end of this one yet.
We call our friend from American Yacht Club, Stu Saffer, who has just built a house here. He is spending a month recharging between jobs. We’re in luck. He’s still here and invites us for a day of touring by car and boat, followed by dinner and unrestricted showers in his home. What a fabulous day we had! We skirted the entire island by car, had lunch at exclusive Cecile’s, went touring the northern bays and snorkelling off the remarkable Bird Island reefs. We swam in the freshwater pool at Stu’s amazing house with ocean views, made dinner of fresh conch fritters, tuna and corn, took two showers with hot water, and slept in a stationary bed with air conditioning. It was our first night off the boat in seven months. Alex slept like a baby, Daria tossed and turned and had nightmares when she dozed off. It was a fantastic day and we thank Stu for being such a kind host.
While stuck in Falmouth, we decided this is a perfect opportunity to start working on boat projects. We got several coats of varnish on the bright work, scraped months’ worth of heavy seaweed/shrimp/ barnacle/sponge growth off the hull using our Airline dive compressor, painted the bulkheads, and started to put order into our lives. Things started to look up. Then the water pump burned out, the hot water tank developed a leak that cannot be fixed, the blackberry battery started to fail, the handheld 2-m radio battery failed, the alternator on the generator had to be rebuilt, we notice the EPIRB battery was out of date, and our boat batteries started to give out. Did we just go through a magnetic anomaly? As we priced things here, we realized that just getting everything delivered here from St. Martin, the major hub for the islands, would cost over $1000 US for shipping. So now we know we will probably have to sail to St. Martin, about 100 miles to the northwest, before we can head northeast.
We started listening to Herb Hilgenberg, the weather router on SSB we had availed of on our previous crossings, and scouring the weather pages online and we see that the patterns have changed dramatically. There are serious lows forming across the middle of the Atlantic and Herb is sending boats along the frontal boundaries to avoid the highs and skirt the lows. Bermuda is getting the brunt of both highs and lows so we have decided to skip Bermuda when we leave and head directly from Antigua or St. Martin to the Azores. This will shave 400 miles from the trip, and perhaps will save us hundreds of miles of motoring. Then depending on what’s happening out there, we’ll decide about whether to stop in the Azores or continue straight through to Ireland via a more northerly route. We have already decided to skip Portugal and Spain as the winds are remaining consistently northerly and getting north from there will be a challenge if that continues.
As NOAA predicts a much more active hurricane season than normal, and most of the tropical depressions form just off the Windwards south of us, we need to get north of the zone on or near the official start of hurricane season around June 1. It’s just a matter of when our engine gets back in commission, and when we are able to complete sea trials to ensure that it’s in perfect working order. The ocean crossing guides all caution that you must be prepared to motor for at least 700 miles if the Bermuda or Azores highs grow to their potential. Last year, a friend had 15 knots on the beam the entire way from Bermuda to the Azores. If only we could be that lucky. We’re afraid luck isn’t with us at the moment.
In any case, we are looking forward to coming home. We miss our house, our neighbours, our family, and our friends. We miss the change of seasons. We miss beautiful Clew Bay. We are already planning our next cruise – Mediterranean, Scandinavia, Scotland, or the Black Sea – returning to Ireland periodically as our home base. We have learned a lot about this lifestyle and about ourselves. We have learned most of all that no matter how far we sail, we like having a ‘place’ to call home – and interestingly we are not at all alone in that regard. We’ll write again before departing, but for right now,
P.S. We’ll do a summary of what worked and what didn’t for all the sailors later on. But just a quick note...all the gear we replaced two years ago with new “reliable” equipment has now failed. One cruiser we met put a fishing boat Perkins diesel into his brand new 70-foot sloop because he thought it would be bullet proof. We thought the same about Yanmar, which has a reputation of total reliability and is supposed to be the only marine engine with worldwide interchangeable parts. You learn the hard way.
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