Unintended Dramas
30 July 2012
Jo
My brother Jamie, wife Mel and their eldest daughter Isabelle arrived early than expected at the marina in Kota Kinabalu, finding us only just back from the Sunday market, and still unpacking.
It was great to see them, and as the rally boats had been invited over to the K-K Yacht Club in the evening, we decided that our guests would enjoy using the lovely swimming pools at the marina, and enjoy a yachtie evening out.
The forecast for the next 3-4 days was 25- 35 knots of wind from the S.W., not deal for our guests, as we wanted to be heading northwards, and as my sister in law is a less than enthusiastic sailor, we didn't want to give her too hairy a time!
There were a couple of alternatives for anchorage, one being very close by and sheltered, and the other 25 miles on. We took the channel inside Gaya Island, which runs parallel to the town, and was well marked. The channel goes well inshore, and leaving the last port hand beacon, we could clearly see the next starboard one a mile onwards. I had instructed Giles to keep close to the land where the deep water was. However, chatting away to Jamie and seemingly through the narrow section of the channel, with a distant starboard marker to lure one onwards, we suddenly hit bottom hard.
With a sinking feeling we went hard astern, but we had at least 2 knots of tide under us, pushing us further and further onto the reef, and it became very unclear where the deep water lay.
Needless to say we were at the top of the tide. We beckoned like crazy to some local fishing boats, and quite soon we had a large fishing smack with a solid inboard engine bashing down on us in a very helpful but highly destructive way. Three of the small outboard driven fishing boats also joined in to pull, and quite soon we had a series of lines pulling us first backwards, and then forwards, frequently in simultaneously opposing directions, in a vain attempt to get off the reef. Meanwhile we were running our own engine as furiously as we could to try to assist the situation.
More and more of the smaller boats came to help, until we had no more lines to give them, and it became a game of stopping them from undoing our jib sheets or other conveniently handy lines. They did however prove useful in taking our line out to the fishing smack sparing us being used as a bumper car. This charade continued for an hour, until eventually we managed to harness the fishing smack and several of the other boats in some sort of united effort, and with all the force that everyone could muster we gradually were tugged off the luckily muddy reef.
Amidst whooping and cheering we bobbed freely on the water, what an enormous relief, and how grateful we were to our helpers. So often people will try towing for a few minutes, and then abandon us, but these people had stuck with us for an hour. Luckily I had a full wallet, and was fairly generous with my thanks to them all.
Only when we were breathing deeply again did we realise that Jim and Cheryl, yachtie friends from Odyssey 9, were watching the entire spectacle from the shore! No chance of keeping quiet about this little mishap!
Once we had got going again, we realised that in part the problem had been caused by a change in direction of the buoyage, so that the distant starboard beacon, was in fact a port one from our direction. We should have anticipated this, but it is easy to be wise after the event.
Anyway, in spite of our delay we decide to continue sailing the 25 miles on to the next anchorage. The wind was a good 25 knots from the S.W., pretty much as forecast, so we should have a quick passage.
After we had set the main and genoa comfortably goose winged, we relaxed to enjoy the sail, when it gradually dawned on us that the bilge pump seemed to be working rather frequently. There was nothing in our running aground episode that might have caused a leak, except that the engine had made some very unusual over-revving noises. Giles unscrambled the aft cabin, our visitor's berth to have a look at the prop shaft and stern tube, where it goes through the hull.
This quickly confirmed that this was the source of our leak, and water was coming in quite fast. By this time we had timed the bilge pump, and found it was running for almost 50% of the time.
Water coming into the boat that fast is a horrible feeling and although Giles duly tried to push various bits of wadding in around the weeping stern tube, it is very inaccessible, and his efforts were to no avail. Kota Kinabalu does not have a travel lift for lifting yachts out of the water, and we knew that the nearest place we could get hauled out was Kudat, 100 miles north.
The wind by this stage had picked up a bit, but we felt we had no option but to crack onwards. The bonus was that we had the wind behind us. As the day wore on, the wind increased, and we furled the genoa, and goosed winged with a heavily furled mainsail, and stay-sail, still making a comfortable 6 knots.
By midnight the seas had increased considerably, and the wind was a steady 35 knots, gusting up to 45. We furled the stay-sail completely, and reduced the mainsail to almost nothing; we were still making 5 knots on almost bare poles. Meanwhile the bilge pump was protesting at such frequent use, and we discovered that it had tripped out some time ago without us realising. Once we had hand pumped the water clear, and reinstated the bilge pump, we started hand pumping as much as we could manage to reduce the load on the system.
We had been warned that the northern tip of Borneo which we had to sail around was going to be very lumpy, and as the seas were already big, we braced ourselves for an unpleasant spell. The carrot was getting into much more sheltered conditions on the far side of the peninsular.
In the event, the seas were already big, so they seemed no worse, but it still seemed to take forever to get into more sheltered water. We had unfurled a bit more sail by now, and were feeling slightly nervous about starting the engine to help us get there, in case the rate of water ingress increased, but once we were in real shelter from the headland, we had no choice but to try it. Luckily all was well, and our pumping continued at the same rate. At 0400 we took up the kind offer from M.V. 'Rubican Star', and rang them for guidance into the Kudat anchorage just off the ship yard. It was very hard to spot anchor lights against the shore lights, particularly as a squall and heavy rain came through at the critical moment causing a complete black out.
It was with enormous relief that we dropped the anchor, and got some sleep before dawn. Poor Mel and Isabelle, who had valiantly lain down below for almost all the trip, periodically being sick were possibly more relieved than anyone. No-one even remembered to wish me a Happy Birthday!
The best birthday treat was to come, when after we had successfully been taken out of the water, and got LOTS of advice from other yachts, I had spent a day cleaning marks off the hull inflicted by all those willing boats, and Giles had begun the careful process of dissembling our stern tube, when J.I.M. arrived back from the local 'resort' whose swimming pool they had been using, and said that they would like to treat us to a night of luxury there.
Clean sheets, air conditioning and a good dinner, and a birthday cake from the resort all did an enormous amount to restore our spirits.
Another day of hard work for me and Giles, saw us having pulled out the stern tube, and stuck it safely back in position with Sicoflex, which we had bought off another of the yachts. We were lucky as it is very hard to come by in Malaysia. Poor Howard our neighbour in the yard who had been enormously helpful to us had fallen down his ladder onto concrete and broken his ankle in three places.
By the noonday siren when work stopped for 1 ½ hours, Brother Wind was back afloat, and we tentatively watched for leaks while we had our lunch. All was well, so two days after our arrival we sailed away from Kudat, and headed 25 miles north to the island of Bangii, feeling highly relieved to have put our troubles behind us.
The next few days gave Jamie, Mel and Issy a taste of island hopping, as well as some fantastically good snorkelling, particularly in Palau Lankayan, where the clear water, and bright coral, as well as wonderful fish life were quite fabulous, and gave me a chance to try out my lovely new underwater camera, a present from my children. We happily met up with another yacht from the rally, Bruce and Kerry on 'Haven', who told us that there was a chance of seeing turtles hatching as the resort regularly collects turtle eggs to protect them from predators.
Magically we watched about 150 baby hawksbill and green turtles emerge from the sand! They naturally hatch in the early evening, and were immediately taken along the beach and tipped out onto the sand, where they have a natural instinct to rush for the water, and launch themselves into the waves. It was a very special experience.