I know you think I’m crazy right? We are enjoying a lovely dinner on the deck when I ask the boys if they have ever seen a moon rainbow and Matt pets my head as Wayne says there is no such thing. Until that is I point to it and low and behold it was there in all of its glory. Amazing site to see! Our goal was to get up early to make the long sail to the saints which should have been about a 40+ hour sail. We are up, not as early as we had wanted to be, but early enough, and Wayne heads up to the bow while Matt heads to the helm (I’m in the galley cleaning). Matt seems to be having problems getting the port engine into gear and he fusses for awhile before he calls to Wayne and checks the engine. Wayne sees that something is wrong and let’s Matt step in. He immediately sees the problem and jumps up to get the hose clamp and when he returns he yells out “fire” but in a way that resembles Sweet Brown in the video so I laugh. But Wayne sees an orange glow and jumps into action to help put it out. OMG a fire on a boat is not a good thing, especially in the engine room. We get the fire out and realize that our friends at Grenada Marine who put the port engine back together did not do a good job. Although the engine room was clean it was not assembled correctly. They tied the shifter cable and throttle cable together but didn’t attach it to anything so the jostle from yesterday’s motoring either made the cable fall onto the alternator or it was just placed there or left there. The alternator did its thing and generated energy and melted the cables together so we could not shift and then caught fire. Luckily we had the spare cable on the boat and Matt and Wayne spent almost 3 hours tearing the helm apart to run the cable on the starboard helm to the port engine. I’m not a happy camper-but will wait until I calm down before I email the yard.
After that mess, we get underway, me at the helm the boys resting on and off. We had a long way to go and were starting a lot later than planned. During our attempt to get to the saints, a 6 hour journey, I was mostly at the helm through squalls, 25-30knots of wind and 3 meter swirly waves which launched our boat more times than we care to experience. Matt cooked dinner and since nobody was feeling great we decided to head to Union to get a semi decent night’s rest instead of continuing to get beat up. So we head in, which explains our crazy track if you were following us on spot (under location on this site). Luckily Matt took the helm after dinner and I crashed for 4 hours only to wake in time to drop anchor and call it a night. Being cold, wet, and not feeling so great for most of the day wears one out so we all slept like logs.
It’s great to be on a boat that handles so well in foul weather but I hate putting her to the test. Hopefully tomorrow will bring better weather, a new wind angle, and better seas.
