A Passage of Contrast

By Thursday PM theWe left Norfolk on Wed the 19th passing through the entrance to the Bay at 6 pm. The weather reports that I had been downloading for the last week indicated some good sailing winds for our trip south. There were some 25-35 knot winds on the 21st, but the Lady likes 25 knots. Our course once we crossed the Gulf Stream was 160 deg. I was getting updates on the SSB twice daily. These grib files are small and do not give the whole picture like the larger files I DL when we have internet. weather reports indicated 35 + knot to our SE. I decided to sail east to miss the worst of this weather. The temperature was still in the 40's and a 3 hr watch was a cold 3 hrs. Dennis would layer up and sit his whole 9-12 watch up top. He was not going to miss anything, this being his first offshore passage. I had the 12-3 and Joyce finished up the dark hours with the 3-6. During the day we all pitched in. Dennis reported hearing water running while forword in his berth. Yep the bilge pump light woud come on every 20 min or so. I'm pretty sure that the sea on the bowthruster was damaged by that crab pot we snagged in Norfok. Not a bad leak, but not fun this far from shore. By Friday noon the winds were at Force 8... 40 + knots. I put the autopilot on VANE, this is where we set the sails to a specific anngle to the wind. If the wind changes direction the boat follows with a course change... following the wind. Sailing in gusting winds over 40 knots is hard work for the autopilot. Around dinner time the pilot says enough and quits....sounds like the gearbox went kaput. When we ordered the Lady H back in 2000 there was an option for a 2nd autopilot drive for $3000. Sounds like a lot of money...but 300 miles off shore in a 40 plus knot gale with 800+ miles to St Martin...it was a bargain ... hand steering for the next 8-10 days was not what I signed up for. I switched to the back-up drive and we sailed on. I turned on the SSB to get an update on the weather. This is pretty cool stuff. You go into this software, drag a box on the chart thd sent this off the Sailmail. 5 min later you get a reply which has this small "grib" file. I then load that file into my MaxSea charting software and it shows the wind, waves and pressure for the area you are sailing in right on the chart. Well I push the transmit button and bam...the SSB goes down. By this time the winds ore force 9... 48+ knots. I had the sails reefed down to a hankie on the jenny and mizzen...but the main was jammed with more sail out than I wanted. I would have had to motor up into the wind to fix...that was not happening in this wind. By 8pm the winds were howling...force 9-10. The back up autopilot was screaming....I decided to "heave to". This is where you let the boat find its comfort spot into the wind. We were no longer sailing. They say every boat s different on how they react when left on their own. The lady settled into an easterly course at about 2-3 knots 30 deg off the wind. The boat was fairly comfortable...not much heeling. The Force 10 gusts sounded like a frieght train. Dennis was in his bunk forward, Joyce and I in the aft cabin. Every 5 min or so a wave would crash onto the deck just to keep things interesting. By 2pm the worst had passed. The winds were shifting to the north so I put us back on a easterly course. We were all up by daylight. The waves were HUGE. The wind continued to shift to the NW, pushing us to a course north of east....you got it...we want to go south. All day Friday we were on a starboard tack..wind coming over the starboard rail. We needed to jibe, turn the stern of the boat through the wind to put us back on a southerly course. The winds were still force 8 with some 9's. Jibing was not something I wanted to do in these waves....I warmed up the engine, we harnessed Dennis in and teathered him the the jackline...a line running down the deck that one attaches himself to so one is not washed overboard when up on deck. Denny went forward and moved the preventers( a block and tackle used to keep the boom from moving) to the starboard side. With Denny back in the cockpit, I studied these "Perfect Storm" waves until the right moment when I shoved the trottle forward and powered the bow through the wind and on to a port tack. We put some sail out and were soon sailing south at 6-9 knots surfing down these huge waves . Saturday and Sunday were un eventful...except the bilge pump light every 20 min and when Joyce complains of her Dive books were wet...we lifted the bunk to get access to the rudder...well water is sloshing about. We inspected the rudder post stuffing box and could see water seeping in...not fast ...but still coming in. We attempted to tighten this using a oil filter wrench on this 3 1/2 inch nut. Slowed it some, but still dripping. We need a much bigger wrench than I have aboard. Now we have water in the boat from the bow and stern. Still 700 miles to go. For those of you that don't know Dennis, he is a smoker...and through all of this Dennis does not miss a nictoine fix. How he was able to get a cigarette lit in 53 knots of wind I don't know. We are now into the routine of watchkeeping. The days are going quickly. Monday, the winds were still in the 30's...a fast sail. Tue the waves were down enough to start fishing. We had new lures but could not find the crimpers to make up the rig. We used the green machine Wes had given us back in Baltimore. All day...no bites. Joyce finally found my crimper where he had hidden it after a wave threw her off the bunk into my tackle box....you ought to see that bruise. I rigged up one of our Mahi Mahi Jets we got at the boat show. They leave a trail of bubbles when towed through the water. An hour later zing out goes the line. We stopped the boat and Dennis lands a small Mahi Mahi. Fresh fish for dinner. Wed we have the line out again...zing...another Mahi Mahi...Joyce is like a surgeon when cleaning these things. We had 2 great sailing days...I was starting to think of a 200 mile day...damn...should never do that...Thursday AM no wind. Joyce started the stinkpot and we mortored on. Late in the afternoon Joyce notices a surge in the engine sounds. We stop...check everything, cycle the breakers on the inverters...almost sounded like the altenator was dragging the engine down. Started everything up and all sounded fine. We motored on. Late Thursday afternoon, the zing gets everyones attention. While Joyce and Denny stopped the boat, I grabbed the pole and watched the line jump off the reel. Then the swordfish jumped a few times shaking the lure from his mouth. Talk about a rush...my hands were still shaking when I reeled in the 200+ yds of line minus our swordfish dinner. We motored on. Early Friday morning our surging engine sound came back. Denny and I went through the same procdedure as the day before. When I put the boat back in gear...no "clunk" My 1st thought was of my Brit friend Phil who had lost a prop on his trip down 4 yrs ago. I checked the transmission fluid level....not a drop... now where had that fluid gone??? Not a drop to be seen in the engine room or bildge. I dug through the locker and found 1 3/4 qts of ATF. We added those...clunk and motored on. An hour later we started to see some wind from the east. We were starting to see the tradewinds kick in. The rest of Friday and Saturday we sailed on toward St Martin. Where did that ATF go? I got out my leak dection kit and added some to the transmission. If one follows the hoses, one can see that Amel has installed a transmission cooler into the engine cooling system. This is a heat exchanger where the hot ATF is cirulated thru a copper pipe with cold sea water cooling the copper tubing. Let us go back a few years when the Lady was newer. When you use the main engine, the hot engine antifreeze is pumped through the hot water heater to make hot water. My problem was that the engine coolant was coming out of the coolant expansion tank. Where was ths water coming from....well it turns out that there was a small hole in the hot water tank line that carried the engines antifreeze. Since the freshwater is always under 30 psi pressure, it was forcing freshwater into the engines coolant system diluting the antifreeze. New waterheater fixed that under warranty. Back to the present....could this heat exchanger be the problem? We have been sailing thru Saturday. Chartplotter puts our eta at 3:30 am or so....will we have engine power when we get there? More in the next blog