Saturday Nov/11
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Friday night while warm and calm brought a lot of activity. Late in the day after we ?published the Friday blog update we listened to the fleet chatter discussing a sick ?crewmember aboard another vessel. We heard their position and knew they were close ?but we could not see them. By the middle of the day we heard a Coast Guard C 130 pilot ?speaking with the boat. The C130 is a fixed wing plane that comes out in front of the ?rescue chopper to access the situation. Finally we saw the C-130 but not the chopper but ?we heard over the radio that the coast guard hoisted the guy off the deck of the sailboat.
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Then at midnight Alan and I were on watch and we heard another vessel, L?? Attitude that ?was in our area radioing for assistance. They had some how contaminated their fuel with ?water and their engine shut down, no engine means no power for the batteries which ?means no radios or lights to warn commercial traffic you?? re out here at night. You could ?hear the tension in his voice a cool calm ?I need help�. We plotted a course to him and ?kept moving in his direction. Alan had bought 9, (5) gallon jugs of diesel but we really ?needed it for us because we were burning fuel keeping our batteries charged. More about ?this issue later. Fortunately when we called L?? Attitude at 3:00 AM to update positions he ?advised us that he had been able to clean his fuel. Thank God!
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Prior to leaving we had much discussion about bringing extra fuel. Some of the most ?experienced Carib1500 sailors thought we would not need extra fuel but we felt we ?needed to be to be on the side of safety. We had 53 gallons in our tank and we knew we ?burned 1 gallon an hour to charge our batteries, which we thought we would do twice a ?day. In addition when there is no wind we motor and burn 1.2 per hour.. We have been ?keeping track of our engine hours to monitor our fuel. Our initial calculation was we had ?enough to make the trip if we got favorable winds. Oops, what we didn?? t plan for was ?that The Four C?? s normally sailed Long Island Sound and those numbers were for the ?Long Island Sound day sailing. What we immediately noticed that when we were sailing ?we used up more of battery power then we expected. We have meters on the boat that tell ?us battery remaining, consumption of battery, and charge rate. It turns out that all the new ?equipment we installed for the trip was eating up our batteries. Especially the computer, ?radar and autopilot. So instead of have too charge twice a day we where charging every ?two hours. The bottom line is that we had to turn off the radar whenever we could, the ?computer remains off except to send email and download weather maps, fortunately we ?have not needed radar much because we have had a full moon and 12 miles of visibility. ?Unfortunately we have used considerably more fuel then planned and we will have to use ?the emergency 45 gallons.
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On Saturday the new day started off with a bang, and I mean a bang, at about 8:30 AM ?Alan had the helm and we heard something hit the hull and then the propeller and shaft ?started vibrating violently. We shut the engine down and Jason volunteered to but on the ?mask, snorkel and fins and go under the boat. Good thing he volunteered because if he ?had not we would still be sitting there. In any case Jason went over the side and under the ?boat and found a massive hunk of nylon rope used on large fishing trawlers wrapped ?around our prop and shaft. A couple of dives and he had extracted the rope. We had some ?great photos but I lost the entire photo file trying to transfer them so we will have to send ?photos of the rope which we kept so that no other boat hits it. But the entire crew has it ?hats off to Jason!!
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At 2:00 Doug got hit on his fishing line and landed a 20 Mahi Mahi, yup, flippers cousin. ?Doug cleaned it and tonight with wasbi we dine like kings.
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The mood of the crew is great and everybody continues to settle in. Alan is going through ?a bit of withdrawal of spending money. So every now and again we charge him for ?something and pretend to run his credit card, it settles him right down.
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The entire crew sends a special shout out of thanks to Jared�.. the tunes he programmed ?into the IPOD are great and everybody thinks they have a full head of hair again, weigh ??180 and are cute.
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I didn?? t get a chance to send this before dinner, so here is the dinner update. We had ?enough Mahi Mahi fillet to serve two helpings to everybody, Doug cooked the Mahi in ?butter, white wine sauce, which he made. It has to best the best piece of fish I have ever ?tasted. It culminated a great end to an exciting day.
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The crew of The Four C?? s