Sea Duty

There are people in this world who belong to a tribe called “The Snowbirds”, who travel by boat up and down the east coast of the US along the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). They do this twice yearly, moving north in spring to the cooler climes and away from the hurricanes, and then south again in autumn, to escape the snows. They are, in fact, masochist nutbags. When you talk to one of them, they seem normal enough, talking about the marvels of the sea, and famous passages they have made, but don’t be fooled. You don’t understand what they must do, to what obsessive lengths they will travel, in pursuit of their “lifestyle”. And furthermore, if one ever asks you to come along as a crewmember, do not, I repeat, do not accept the offer. Back away smiling, and when at a safe distance, turn and walk quickly away. Running only excites them to give chase. Ignore letters and post cards, change your email address if necessary, engage call blocking and start screening all your calls before picking up, but don’t ever get on a boat with one of them. I had often heard the knowing tales of their serene passages, and thought I might like to do that. It is, indeed, a once in a lifetime experience, because normal people would never be stupid enough to do it twice. So let me save you some serious heartache, many bruises and scrapes, and reduce your chance of drowning, hypothermia, seasickness and skin cancer, merely by reading my cautionary tale…
As many of you know, I have a trawler boat, quite stout and spacious, but slow and serene. It goes a maximum of ten knots, (nautical miles, equal to a second of latitude on the earth’s surface), better known to you as eleven mph. For short cruises on the Chesapeake Bay, in good weather, with friends and family aboard, it is a marvelous time-and-money waster. But now imagine covering two thirds of the length of the Eastern Seaboard at that speed. I once drove to Miami from Cincinnati, about an equal distance, and after a whole 20 hours of driving at expressway speed, I felt pretty great when I saw the Florida state line. Then I kept going and going and going, and Miami was still 12 hours away. Now imagine that same trip, except you are in a big van, which is only able to go 11 mph. The speed limit is frequently posted at 6 mph, so then you have to take your time. Oh, and by the way, it has square wheels, so you are constantly being bashed about the driver’s compartment. And there is no road, just invisible hazards, sometimes marked by signs, sometimes not, so you have to go from hazard to hazard, using a compass. You are often not 100% sure of your exact location, and you have to do some plotting and planning not to run into things. This van is kind of a bitch to steer, and wanders all about, if you do not pay constant attention to your course. There are even larger vehicles, hundreds of feet long, and much faster, which would squash you and your boat like a bug on a windshield if you ever collided, and they materialize on the horizon and are upon you within 10 minutes. So you have to avoid them, while missing the many hidden hazards. Every now and then, someone throws a bucket of cold seawater on you. And oh, yes, forgot to mention, you cannot stop to pee or eat a meal. You gotta keep going, and do those things, and all other things, while being tossed about, and maintaining course. Now you are starting to understand.
We moved to Washington State from Delaware, and are finally getting around to getting the boat shipped out to us on the West Coast. This requires a journey by ship, through the Panama Canal, to Vancouver, BC. The only loading port in the East is Ft. Lauderdale, so I had to move the boat from near Annapolis to Ft. Lauderdale. I scheduled two weeks off to get this done, hoping for some reasonable weather at some point in the two weeks, to allow this to happen. I convinced a friend here to come along as mate, when my wife, who is no dummy, said she would not go. So we flew out to Baltimore, and were met by my son, who dutifully drove us to Sam’s Club for provisions, and deposited us on board. I had cold water immersion suits delivered that AM for the unthinkable outcome of a sinking, bought a new EPIRB emergency radio beacon, for the same possibility, and we were off. We spent a day stowing things, fixing last minute issues, and pulled out the next day, into the Chesapeake. The weather was fine, and we had a fair passage, and pulled up into a shallow creek for an anchorage. Next day, we pulled up the anchor, and continued on to Norfolk, past the Naval Station, and its line of huge gray warships, and into the start of the ICW. We motored along through rivers, and then perfectly straight ditches, to connect to the next river system. We entered the only lock on the system, and were lifted into the long middle portion of the waterway. Now these rivers are not rivers at all, but large, shallow bays. They were once narrow little rivers, until the ocean level rose 60 feet or so at the end of the last ice age, and these became drowned river valleys, now the Chesapeake Bay, the Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, and the Alligator River. The Alligator is about 6 feet deep, except in the channel, where it is 13-18 or so. But a little bit of wind can kick up a fierce set of waves in a hurry, as we soon realized. In the Alligator, we were only a couple of miles from shelter, when my left engine indicated no oil pressure. A diesel with no oil will turn itself into a big box of smoking scrap iron in minutes, so I went below to shut it down, but it wouldn't stop. I took it out of gear at dead idle, and continued to try to stop the engine. Finally, it stopped. But the prop kept windmilling in the flow from the other engine driving us onward, and the propeller shaft seal started to overheat, as it requires cooling water from its own running engine to lubricate it. So I had to kill the other. I went to drop the anchor, but the windlass was also a non-starter, now pegging the problem as electrical and not mechanical. No oil slick in the water, none in the drain pan, and no smoke. The oil level dipped normal. I dropped the secondary anchor by hand, on a rope rode. Just then the predicted storm ran through, with a 50 kt gust front, and then steady 35kt winds all night. I am glad we had anchored, because the lea shore just two miles away was not pretty. We were in 13 foot depths only, with the bottom shelving up to 6 feet in a half mile or so. The waves were 3-8 feet, with breakers every few minutes. I placed a cellphone call to Aric, my mechanic, to trouble shoot, and he says, "you know, we just changed the port battery, maybe a connection is bad there." A quick check revealed a dead port battery, and a barely connected negative lead, with stripped battery terminal stud. A search in the basement finally brought up a spare battery terminal, and I put it on, cinched it on good, and then powered up the generator, and the battery took a charge. Now the engine will start, the stop solenoid and other electricals will work. I went forward to the pitching, heaving bow in driving spray to recover the anchor and get the hell out of dodge. No dice. Too much wind. We weather-vaned around the anchor rode, and tangled the rode in our props, so that we were anchored by the stern, and taking huge waves over the starboard quarter (right rear). I dropped the primary anchor in a lump, in case the secondary chafed through, so we didn't blow onshore We did come up on the primary anchor and its chain, eventually, as the secondary had lost 50-plus feet of scope (its effective length of rope) by running down the length of the boat and tangling around the prop, and so the secondary anchor began dragging. I had a chain hook and shock line out on the primary, but it probably shook off in the violent rolling we were doing. Anyway, in the middle of the night, there was a crash, and the anchor pulpit pulled completely away from the bow, and ran down the chain, acting as a catenary weight. A call to Tow Boat US produced a promise of a boat and diver in the AM, but we were stuck to ride it out for the night. Dawn brought light to the chaos, but it is still blowing fairly hard, and we were stuck with awaiting our rescuers. A Tow Boat US boat arrived from three hours away, bearing a diver named Catfish, who donned a dry diving suit, a SCUBA tank, and dropped himself into the tea-colored water. We followed his bubbles from above. He buoyed our anchor, cut the rode, and untangled our props. Then we then disentangled the broken pulpit from the primary, and winched the whole mess up. I tied that on deck, raised the primary anchor and secured it, fired up the engines, and feeling no vibrations on a progressive RPM test, we motored on our way. We went to the nearest marina to consider our situation, and try to reclaim some order from the mess. After disassembling the broken platform and striking it below, I rigged up a makeshift spare anchor, so we could at least proceed with some safety, though our nose was definitely bloodied. We set out the next AM, and get to an advertised marina, but all was closed, as it was Sunday night, so we just pulled up to a fuel dock, tied up for the night, and departed Monday morning. On a routine maintenance round that AM, I checked the transmission oil, and found it looked muddy. It was now a seawater-oil emulsion, due to a leak in a heat exchanger coil in the transmission oil cooler. Seawater and transmissions are a bad combination, so I had stop and repair that immediately. I called Caterpillar Inc. by cellphone as we were underway, and they fired the parts via UPS to a marina ahead of us, in Wrightsville Beach, NC. I spent the next whole day pulling the housing from the transmission cooler, removing the old coil, scraping away ancient gaskets, sanding the faces and reassembling the unit, and then re-installing it. Then I did multiple fillings and emptyings of 30-weight oil, to remove the last of the seawater in the tranny. By this time, I had bruises all over me, and no skin on any knuckle, after hanging upside down in the bilge, and turning wrenches for an entire day. However, the repair was good, with no leaks, and clean tranny oil, finally.
So once again, we departed, full of hope and optimism, that we could handle whatever might come. A day in the ditch again got us a free Coast Guard inspection, which went well. Very friendly and professional, actually. We are the US Government, we are here to help… We restarted, now with our inspection certificate, and headed for Myrtle Beach, on the NC-SC border. We were proceeding slowly through some dicey shoal areas, when we suddenly lurched forward in 9 feet of water, as if grounded, and stalled the left engine. Had I hit an encroaching sand bank? Why had the depth sounders not showed anything? Not sure, but there was now vibration in the engine which was not there before, so maybe I had bent a prop or shaft. Argh. Things looked normal below, so we poked along slowly, feeling for problems. The guide book showed a marina with a large enough boatlift ahead, and I called them and secured a promise of a short haul in the morning, so I could check for damage. They pulled us up, and there was a piece of rope from a crab pot, I assume, wrapped around the shaft, and thrashing the paint off the rudder and bottom. We cut it off in no time, and hammered a ding in the edge of the prop flat, and we were off again, much relieved and ready for sea duty.
By now we had had enough of the “ditch”, so we headed out of Little River Inlet, and out to the open Atlantic. We had 500 miles ahead of us, but no speed limits, no bridges, and precious little navigating to do, except to hold a course for hours at a time. What a relief. The sea was blue, the weather forecast fair for the next 4 days, and our prospects finally started to look positive. However, we were out of cell phone range, and likely out of VHF radio range as well, at sixty miles offshore, so we were truly on our own. The smudge of smog which marked the shore receded out of sight, and we were alone on an azure sea. We watched the sun set, and took snapshots. I stood watch the first night from sundown to almost dawn. In the middle of the night, however, the autopilot began cranking the rudders hard right, initiating a circle course, and would not stop doing that. I cut the power, and we were now down to hand steering. Then I found the reason why--the port battery, which had previously failed, was failing to charge. The alternator was apparently toast, and so multiple electrical systems began to fail. Now we all know that electricity and water do not get along. A boat is just a complicated interface for facilitating that very interaction, and only evil can ever hope to happen. It is just a matter of when. You can be agnostic with respect to electricity, but you cannot remain an atheist. I don’t profess to understand electricity, but I can assure you it exists. This has been demonstrated to me on more than one occasion. Anyway, we headed more toward shore while pondering the possible solutions, but I decided to fire up the generator and charge the battery independently of the engines, and life returned to all but the autopilot. “Otto” remained on strike for the rest of the journey. We proceeded south again, after a council of war, and my first mate was game to continue on, bless his heart. So we motored on through dark to dawn, through the next day and night, watching the numbers change on the latitude indicator on the GPS, but seeing no land and no boats for more than 40 hours. At one point, we noticed the depth sounder just showed dashed lines instead of numbers. Arghhh! Had another piece of gear failed? No, not this time. Turns out it only reads to 600 feet, and we were in 3000 foot waters. We were in the deep end of the pool. We did see the lovely phosphorescent wake, unbelievable night stars, and in the daytime, we had the company of dolphins, and passed large sea turtles basking, a large hammerhead shark, and countless flying fish. The wind piped up a bit the second night, and we had a much more rock and roll ride, making walking and steering difficult, but we motored on. The first visible land in two days was Cape Canaveral, reached at 11 PM, and then we got quite close by Palm Beach, the next morning. We could again cell-phone anxious spouses, and rejoin the world. Finally, we watched the coast wheel by ever-so-slowly, and arrived at Ft. Lauderdale, at about 4 PM. We pulled in to an amazing parade of pleasure and huge commercial traffic, and found a marina. Ft. Lauderdale is a city of canals and boats, at least in part, and we enjoyed it very much. But we had work to do to get the boat buttoned up for the next leg of its trip, by large steel ship. At last, we had all the chores done, and boarded a cab for the airport, flying home about 3 times as far as we had just come in a week, in only 7 hours.
So the deed is done, and I am back, slowly shedding scabs from my knuckles, and peeling skin from my sunburned arms and legs. My wife is congratulating herself on dodging this bullet, and I am just glad my once in a lifetime experience is over. My first mate reports the one good thing to come out of it for him is that he had formerly thought of retiring onto a boat, but is now thoroughly cured of that. Smart guy...