A Cautionary Tale

I don’t know what to title this Blog. There are so many choices.
“THIS IS SOME OF THE MILDEST & MOST-SETTLED WEATHER THE NW CARIBBEAN HAS SEEN ALL WINTER...I urge vessels to make good use of the mild conditions, which may persist into the week of April7...as there are no strong Synoptic weather features in the process of developing in the region thru Mon7.” Chris Parker’s weather forecast
What the hell where we thinking
If you are thinking about doing something before passage do it
No matter what the weather forecast is: prepare your boat for GALE conditions and for god sweet sakes REEF! We failed to and regretted it later.

When we left through Raguana Pass in Belize it was a little bigger than expected, but hey we where going through a pass in a reef so it is usually a little rougher. We thought about turning back, but hey we are sailors.

Well as Mike Payne on Gitane told us once, “There are old sailors and there are bold sailors, but there aren’t many old & bold sailors.” Truer words have never been spoken.

Fortunately for us we were traveling in great company, S/V Up Jinks; John and Beth. It was great to have someone out there with you when the shit hits the fan. We also had the NET controller from the NW Caribbean NET for an evening SSB check in. Then there was Debi and Roy on S/V Lyric who came up at 1600, 1800, 0000 and 0600. A friendly voice in the night is more precious than you can imagine. There is someone out there who knows where you are. They can’t change your circumstances, but someone knows.

So we left with a great weather window and then a diurnal effect took over our lives. The winds were a steady 15 to 20 knots with the occasional gust to 25 or 28. That really wasn’t that bad. It was the sea state. We were told the waves would be 3-5. Great! They started out at 3-5 and then 4-6 and then it was 6-8 and I do think that occasionally we had bigger. But it really wasn’t the size it was that there was no rhyme or reason to them. Some sailors call them confused or sloppy. They were down right uncomfortable and some of them because you never knew where they were coming from were scary.

Did I mention that there was NO light? That always helps when you can’t see anything. Oh, and we are beating into the wind so you really can’t sail. Your sail is really to help stabilize the boat, but it is luffing and sounds terrible. You are sure that it is going to rip in half.

Up Jinks is a faster boat and Dragonheart tried to tack for a while (yes, Carole we still remember how) but that kept pushing us further south and that was not a good thing as we could have sail right into the island of Utila. Not a good thing to do. So Up Jinks kept getting further ahead. We still had radio contact.

Dragonheart has 6 -5gallon jerry cans lashed to a board up by the bow on the port side. This is pretty routine for most sailboats. We kept checking on them by shining a flashlight on them. All was ok until the wave crashed and pulled the board free. Now we needed to go forward and bring the cans back to the cockpit or risk losing them over the side. Michael with his harness on and secured to the boat crawled forward and pushed them back to the cockpit one at a time. This is a scary time because you know that if he goes overboard you will not be able to find him.

I had to go up to the mast to secure a loose reefing line that was in danger of going over the side and wrapping around the prop.

The chart plotter locked up and we thought we were going to be on the hand held, but we were able to do a hard shutdown and it came back on.

We almost lost Norbert, our dinghy. We got pooped by a really big wave and heard a terrible sound. Norbert was instantly filled with water and could not drain fast enough. It was too much for the davits. A shackle failed and he was dangling. While I was able to grab a line and hold on so that Michael could go and get 2 knifes so that we could cut our dinghy free. The davits where in danger of damaging the transom of the boat. Fortunately, we had a line from the bow of the dinghy tied to the main boat. We lengthened that line and then we counted to three and cut together…the dinghy was free and trailing behind us without plugs, but that was ok. Norbert would not sink or fill with water with the speed of the boat. We were able to get all lines in the cockpit and not in the prop. We just laid the knives down. We were being so tossed around that I was afraid we would fall on a knife or stab our mate by accident.

It is hard to remember all the falls and spills that we took. But we have the bruises and the sore muscles to verify that they all happened.

But I must say what was the worst was not the wind, the waves or the steel gray color of the water as dawn approached. No the worst was when we lost radio contact with Up Jinks. We had seen they go down in troughs so deep that all we could see was their mast. We knew how much we were shuddering and how it felt when we came out of a big trough and then the next big wave knocks you starboard and then the next one knocks you port. We hailed them every 15 minutes. No answer. Finally we looked for them on the radar. Michael saw a very small bleep on the screen 10 miles ahead in the general direction that they should have been in. But still no radio contact. Little did we know that on Up Jinks they were doing the same thing. We all were praying that the other boat was ok and not in serious trouble. We both were waiting for the 0600 SSB check in. Both boats called in. What a relief.

Not all of it was bad…I finally saw honest-to-god phosphoresce. It looked like green glow light a drift on the ocean. When the moon finally came up it looked like a cruise ship or a freighter. I frantically called Michael up to the helm. To me it looked like suddenly there was a very large vessel in front of us and it was headed directly to us. He came up, took a look, and stated, “ Cinders that is the moon!” Well, it appears that John was at the helm and thought the same thing and John called Beth up. We laughed about that one. I had a pod of dolphins at dawn, always a good sign, that followed and played with us for at least 30 minutes.

We had made a course change (thank you John for that option) and headed for Utila instead of Roatan. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to pull in and drop the hook. After making sure we were hooked down well we all headed into Café Mariposa for beers and dinner and then we were in bed. More to follow….