Beach off Grand Turk Island

We were planning to take the boat back to Texas before hurricane season starts instead of spending the year dodging hurricanes from St Thomas like last year. In 2012 Mother Nature ignored the usual beginning date of hurricane season and the first one was making a ruckus on May 19th. So we had a reason to be in a bit of a hurry but also to stop and smell the roses along the way, therefore we opted for the middle of April, but as with any plan, it will change. By the time we finally had a firm date set so the folks that stated they wanted to come along could get tickets, we blew the port engine, as noted in the prior post. We were so busy getting ready, I haven't even had time to update the blog to say we got a "new to us" engine and got it installed for a total of about $2k.

Old Engine.... poor thing

Once that problem had been resolved we found out a few days before the latest departure date that our US Coast Guard documentation was expired in March. How is it that we had been in two different countries, the BVI and the US and no one had noticed? Now what? Well the US Coast Guard used my Fedex International Overnight mail service and got us a $5 renewed document in two days! Way to go! Then there was Diego's birthday party and since we didn't know if the documentation was going to get here on Friday or Monday, it was Sunday at Magens Bay. It gave us one last day this year with all of our boat friends, Diane, Kelly, Randy, Frenchie and Ms. Doggles herself, CoCo.

Frenchie and CoCo with her Doggles

With our crew of Joel Roach, son of Lori Roach, an old friend and co-worker in Utah at the IRS, on board, we finally got underway on DATE and off to Culebra, Puerto Rico. We had planned to go to Flaminco Bay and drop the anchor but we didn't want to get run off at 5 p.m. as it is a natural park and then have to find another place to stay in the dark! So being the creatures of familiarity we are, we went to Ensenanda Honda and stayed out on the little reef where we had stayed last year when we attempted our trip home. We got in one last Spanish Virgin Island snorkel and mainly saw hundreds of starfish (left the camera on the boat! Grrr!) in the stirred up waters by the reef.


Sunset from the reef

The next morning, with no wind we motored to Fajardo, Puerto Rico for a last fill up on fuel, water and ice. When we came into Puerto Del Rey Marina, we passed an old boat that looked like it should be scrap as it had no masts and was who knows how old. While Jettie and Joel hit the marine store, I got the scoop on the boat. It is the ship for the Pirates of the Caribbean 4. Suddenly it didn't look like such a piece of crap.


B4 Pirates of the Caribbean 4

Filled up and ready to get to the Turks and Caicos Islands, we had no wind to speak of. Like 1 to 2 knots. Hopefully we would not be plagued with light winds for this trip or crazy ones either! On came the motors again because we don't have time to be making a half a knot an hour if we want to get back before 2014.


We finally got the sails up and the main with one reef so we did not have to contend with doing it in the middle of the night. Then came the first storm of the trip. Jettie was on watch and woke Joel and me up with a start. "It's blowing 25 with gusts to 30, we need to get the sails down," she yelled down the stairs.

The next day we had the wind vacillating from side to side off our rear end. Now with a new crew member and the two of us without a whole lot of experience sailing down wind without a whisker pole (to hold the jib out on one side of the boat) and without a boom preventer (more like accidental jibe preventer to keep the boom from slamming over from one side of the boat to the other when then wind or the motion of the boat changes its position to the wind), I opted to just run with the motor. Just keeping the boat with the wind and waves (which gladly were coming in the same direction) behind us was considerable work at the helm. Turn right, turn right some more, wait, okay, she's coming back, wait, oh no, too far, turn left a lot, turn left some more, oh no, too far again (and that is every minute). See why I was concerned with sailing down wind? I didn't want to rip the cleat off the side of the boat or take the mast down on day two).


We put two reefs in and put up the sails and we good until a big ole storm got us. Wind, rain, lightening, waves 8 to 10 feet crashing into side of the boat. We got everything taken down when we got up to 30 knots. Speaking of 30 knots, that is what our jib sheets (lines that control the jib) looks like.

What a mess! (pic of knot)

Our course had been to go down below the Navidad, Silver and Mouchoir Banks, but with all of the weather issues and our taking some big hits to the side of the boat, our heading changed. We did not want a rouge wave to knock us over, so our plotted course was shelved and we turned our butt to the wind again. Now we were going close to the banks than out closer to Dominican Republic. We had been in water as deep as 12,000 feet so the depth finder reports only the last one that it got a response back on, which might be 150 - 175 feet deep. So when I was at watch and it suddenly started ticking off 100, 98, 96, 93, 90, 85, 80, 70, 60, 50 feet, I freaked out. OMG we are going thru the Silver Banks not around them. "Jettie, we need to talk!" (She was cranky as she hadn't been getting much rest and here I was waking her again...sorry, but it's urgent.) We looked at the chart and started seeing coral head sticking out of the water in the middle of the ocean. It's a wonder it's not called Shipwreck Bank with little islands of coral and rock breaking the surface. We hung a left back towards the Dominican Republic again to skirt all of the shallowness Silver Banks contained and kept ourselves in thousands of feet of water hoping like hell our GPS unit had us in the right place and not a mile to the right where the coral was!

Note the 12000 depth and the 42 and a half foot mark in less than a few miles!

The next morning Joel got the knots out of the poor jib sheet (why is a jib sheet a line and not a sail? It seems more like a sheet? Anyway....) and since the winds were good we wanted to sail. We got into the wind, and Jettie and Joel got the main up, the 2nd reef we put in the other day removed and just one reef as we were getting some pretty good gusts. While they were pulling it up, I noticed two rips in the back side of the sail. :( That's not good. We have the tools to patch and sew it by hand, but it is too rough to be doing that out here right now. May if it calms down. Good thing the solar panels are not on the bimini or we'd never get the sail dealt with at sea without shredding it more on the sharp corners and not being able to walk up there. So do we hang a left and go backwards to the Dominican Republic (DR) and try to get it fixed or continue on our way? Jettie opted for adventure and not turning back. So off we go. We should be close on fuel if we can't sail just with the jib. We'll have to wait til the wind changes from vacillating behind us before it will be worth fighting every minute at the helm to keep the wind in the sail.
There was a huge lightening storm off to our starboard (right) so Jettie turned us back towards DR so we could avoid having to go it. Then there was one off our rear, but the sky was clear above us. One night we even saw the beautiful Milky Way given we have no moon and little light pollution. We kept the jib rolled up and motored along in the black night watching the bio-luminescence get aggravated by the waves and the prop. They glow bright green and look like fireflies or thousands of shooting stars darting through the black water. I can be mesmerized by just watching them dance like the licking flames of a fire.

As I write this, we are adrift while Jettie tries to change the fuel filter and bleed the fuel line on the starboard engine while we roughly bounce around. Just like Russ, our fuel probably got stirred up and brought sediment from the bottom of the tank up into the the filter. I believe the term is polishing the fuel to pump it out, filter it and put it back. Not sure if that is possible in the Turks or Caicos, so we may have to do it ourselves. We can sail on the jib possibly, but getting into port with one engine is a bitch. :: sigh :: Are all trips fraught with difficulties? I'm not sure I can deal with then punishing physical needs of a passage. I'm better just hanging on a mooring ball in Christmas cove!

Time to go investigate the situation! More later along with the pics.... as soon as I have decent WIFI!