Unexcused Absences

November 28 to December 5, 2015. Sunday morning it was time for more boat projects. Dave generously loaned me his car, and I spent several hours at Sailorman, a new- and used-boat-gear emporium; absolute heaven. Aisle after aisle of mostly used boating gear, very similar to Bacon Sails in Annapolis, but much bigger.

I had to re-wire the battery charger, as the previous installation used wire that was too small for the current being carried, so I made up half a dozen heavy-duty cables at the store. They had all the gear; wire, crimp lugs, and crimp tools. We also bought some used fishing gear (game-fish sized rod and reel, net, and gaff). While we are aware that there is an activity called “fishing,” we really don’t know much more about it than that. So rather than starting small and working our way up, we’re going to try to catch a 20-30 pound Mahi right out of the gate. Wish us luck.

“Miss Adventure” at Dave and Jackie’s dock

The Gulf Stream is not just words on a map. It is an enormous river of water flowing north up the US east coast at almost 4 knots, in places. The surface can be placid, like a pond, or it can be a washing machine, with large, breaking waves. From everything we had read, it is not something to be taken lightly. Our original plan was to park Miss Adventure in Ft Lauderdale for the holidays, fly home, then return in late December to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas. But Lauderdale, the self-proclaimed “Yachting Capital of the World,” also proved to be the “Relieve Boaters of Their Money” capital of the world.

The “Phoenix II” parked near Los Olas

We actually had a great offer from Dave and Jackie to stay at their dock for the month, but by this time we had looked into prices in the Bahamas and decided that if the weather cooperated we would attempt a crossing; marina fees in Grand Bahama were surprisingly affordable, unlike in the rest of the Bahamas. Plus they have an international airport not far from the coast, so getting home would be simple and easy.

Monday I had a golf outing arranged with Rose and Richard and his brother Alan at the Ft Lauderdale Country Club (thank you Richard!), so of course it rained. We delayed our start a couple hours until a big band of rain passed, then made it through seven holes before the golf- and rain-gods ganged up on us. Everyone’s game pretty much fell apart halfway through the first nine, so I think we were all secretly relieved that a deluge stopped us from attempting a second nine. And to think it all started off so well for me, finishing the first three holes at one over par.

Anchorage near Port Everglades, Lauderdale

The weather was looking decent for a crossing on Wednesday, so Tuesday we did a final round of errands, and I topped off the oil in both engines (more on this later), and we enjoyed a final lunch with Dave and Jackie, and then mid afternoon we said goodbye and moved the boat to an anchorage not far from the Port Everglades Inlet, to give us an easy exit in the morning. After we anchored I noticed a small oil slick behind the boat, but Miss Adventure had brought us over a thousand miles from Deltaville, so I didn’t think much of it.

The 17th Street Bridge at dawn

Five A.M. came pretty early Wednesday. We had the anchor up by 6 A.M. as the first light was breaking in the east, and were headed out into the Atlantic as the sun came up. Very soon we were in the Gulf Stream, getting swept north at 2+ knots. You can’t tell by looking around the boat, because the water, the waves, and the boat are all caught in the stream, so everything looks normal. But while our compass was telling us our heading was 122 degrees (approximately east-southeast), the GPS reported our actual course over the ground as due east. I knew this would be the case, and planned our route accordingly, but it was still disconcerting to see how much we were side-slipping north.

Sunrise over the Gulf Stream

The seas were a little lumpier than the forecast predicted, so the “light south-east wind and calm seas” were more like 12-15 knots from the south-east and 3-4 foot waves. Nothing terrible, but hour after hour of rolling made me wish I had installed seat belts in the flybridge. But all was well, and the Great Isaac Lighthouse (marking the north-west tip of the Great Bahama Bank) appeared on the horizon right where it should have.

The Great Isaac Lighthouse (abandoned)

Plan A was to anchor on the Banks (an enormous 15-foot-deep sand bar) for the night, but the waves were a little big to be anchoring, and I was just starting to ponder the options for Plan B when an angry buzzer and red light lit up on the dashboard. I scanned the instruments and discovered that the starboard engine oil pressure was 20 psi (it should be at 60). Argh.

I ran below and checked the dipstick and the engine was bone dry; 10 quarts of oil had vanished since the evening before. Where did it go? I opened up the engine room door expecting to see oil everywhere, but there was none in the bilge, and none under the engine, and we certainly hadn’t burned it since that would have caused a pall of blue smoke behind the boat. A mystery for another time; at this point we were probably 40 miles from Grand Bahama and 25 miles from Bimini, with one working engine darkness about 90 minutes away, and it was time to make a plan. I didn’t really want to go to Bimini because that was in the opposite direction of where we were ultimately headed. I figured if we had to arrive somewhere unfamiliar after dark it was better if there was deep water right up to shore, so we turned about 65 degrees to port and set a course for Port Lucaya, Grand Bahama.

Eight hours later, after dodging a surprising number of large cargo ships, we pulled in to the Port Lucaya inlet, turned to port, and dropped anchor. The Gulf Stream crossing was a bit more eventful than I had hoped, but the water temperature was about 80 degrees, the stars were out, and the lights from the resorts around us were lovely, and we at last sat down for happy hour – at about 11 pm.

The next morning we moved about 40 minutes west down the coast to Knowles Marine, a boatyard halfway between Lucaya and Freeport. Charlton Knowles met us on the dock, and he quickly confirmed our suspicion that the oil cooler had sprung an internal leak, and the pressurized oil had slowly pumped out through the sea-water cooling system. Not sure if I’d mentioned this before, but the previous owner of the Miss Adventure absolutely loved spare parts. The boat had spares for everything, including not one, but two (!) spare oil coolers. So in a couple hours I had the old one out and a new one installed.

Docked at Knowles Marine, Grand Bahama

The only problem was that it took me two days to get all the seawater out of the engine. Once I shut down the starboard motor, the sea water used the same hole that had let the oil out to flow back in to the engine. So I spent hours upon hours filling the oil pan, running the engine, draining the oil from the pan and any lines I could remove, then repeating the process. I used my entire stash of 7 gallons of engine oil. And oil costs three times in the Bahamas what it does in Ft Lauderdale. Oh well, it’s only money.

Sailing with Mary Jo and Allan

The good news is that we met some very nice folks during our 5 days on the island; our boat neighbor Mary Jo, her friend Alan, the marina owner Charlton, and their friends in Freeport, Hanna and Jimmy. We even took Mary Jo’s gorgeous 50 foot ketch for an afternoon sail one day. She taught me how to clean and chop up conch for conch salad, and also took us to a neat botanical park called Garden of the Groves.

Conch salad prep

Conch salad!

Mary Jo, Charlton, Allan, and Heather on “Miss Adventure”

Now that we are safely in the Bahamas we want to again thank our friends along the way who helped get us here; Ted and Todd, who gave us dock space and a loaner car near Annapolis back in the spring so we could work on our endless list of boat projects; my Dad, who patiently accepted (and continues to accept) car-loads of Amazon deliveries full of boat parts; our friends along the ICW, Lynn and Ron (Charleston, South Carolina), Dave and Suzanne (St Simons Island, Georgia), Jack and Susan (Vero Beach, Florida), and Richard and Rose (Fort Lauderdale, Florida) who all took yet more Amazon deliveries for us; and Dave and Jackie, who not only let us use their dock in Lauderdale but also welcomed us into their home as honored guests.

Our new friends Dave and Jackie

The volume of stuff we had to order on the way down was pretty staggering. Dave and Suzanne, in particular, had the best idea. When I called a couple days out to confirm that our orders had arrived, Dave said yes, in fact they had arrived, and he was about to put up Craigslist notices to sell our stuff and make some money. A true friend.

So now we plan to pack up Miss Adventure and fly home to DC for a few weeks, then return after Christmas and start our cruising tour of the Bahamas. I’ll post updates here once we get underway in January. And in the meantime, we hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday.

East Coast Cruise – Week 6 Numbers

• Engine Hours: 19
• Generator Hours: 0.8
• Miles Traveled: 98
• Marina Fees: $0

East Coast Cruise – Total Numbers

• Engine Hours: 184
• Generator Hours: 67.7
• Miles Traveled: 1,235
• Marina Fees: $408

“Miss Adventure” East Coast Cruise – Week 6