We finally got a marginal weather window on March 24th, and jumped on it to begin easting to Turks and Caicos. We had a flight to catch from there so we really couldn’t keep waiting. The first day out was not fantastic with a lot of wind on the nose, but we were only heading a few miles to the top of Long island. We arrived to find some fellow Nova Scotians at the anchorage. We had met Guen and Chris very briefly a few weeks before in Staniel Cay. They invited us over for dinner and we had a great time chatting and playing crib for hours.
The next morning we set off to make our way to Crooked Island which had a slightly better wind angle. We were able to motor sail for most of the day, but the waves were big and we took a lot of them on the nose. At one point I went down to the forward head and could hear an unusual banging noise. When I came up and told the captain he went to investigate, he found that the anchor had found a way to fall out of its cradle and was dangling off the bow. I quickly turned the boat around so the waves were coming from behind us and he went forward to secure it. It only took a few minutes and we only had minor damage, but it was not a fun few minutes to say the least.
As the day turned to night I took over the helm while Douglas tried to get some rest. I was watching the other boats on AIS and noticed that a container ship was heading in our direction. I did a rough calculation and determined that we would pass about a mile or so ahead of them. I called them to make sure they could see us on radar and told them that I thought we would pass about a mile ahead… then the wind died down. At this point I should have turned on the motor, but instead I recalculated and called them back to say that we would actually be passing about a half mile ahead…. Then the wind died down again and I cranked up the motor. Yet, by the time we encountered them we were only about a quarter mile ahead of their bow, just when Douglas had come up to check on things. It is pretty scary to see one of those things passing so close! I admit that I made a mistake and I should have slowed down and passed behind them. Lesson learned! We made it into Crooked Island at about 11PM.
We spent a few days pretty much all alone there waiting for the weather to improve. We decided to head into shore for a walk on the beach. At one point we looked back and noticed that our dinghy was getting close to the water line. We headed back and when we got about 100 feet away from it a big wave came in and grabbed it. Douglas is a pretty good swimmer so he ran towards it and started swimming after it. At first it was funny and I was videoing, but everytime he would almost reach it, the wind would pull it away. It started to get really scary; he was about ¼ of a mile from shore, and it looked to me like he was struggling to stay afloat. There was no one there to help. I was terrified, but I noticed a house with a large dingy in front of it further down the beach and I started running as fast as I could. I found a guy there named Jeremy. We ran with the dinghy to the water as fast as we could, and there was Douglas back at the shore thankfully! Jeremy then took me to get the dinghy which was now about a mile offshore. It was the most terrifying thing that has ever happened to us sailing, and I will forever be grateful for Jeremy from Alabama!
The weather really wasn’t going to get great any day soon, so we decided to push on to Turks. Originally we decided to do one push and get there in about a day and a half. We set out across the top of Crooked island and it was very lumpy. After some hours Douglas realized that our shaft had stopped dripping and was starting to overheat. He did an adjustment and started monitoring it every 15 minutes. The problem kept coming back. As we rounded the corner of the island to go south we started getting clobbered by large confused waves and the shaft once again started to overheat. As Doug was adjusting it again, I turned the boat around and started sailing downwind to get to Acklins bay nearby. We just turned the motor on to get through the barrier reef and gratefully dropped anchor.
While in Acklins, Douglas changed the packing gland to try to fix the issue. This procedure makes water pour into the boat and makes the bilge pump run constantly. It was the middle of nowhere and I was scared as heck. I called my friend Pat and she distracted me while that all when on for about a half hour. I half jokingly decided that if the bilge pump failed I would just drive the boat onto the beach instead of letting it sink in that remote place! Doug got everything back together and the water stopped pouring into the boat, but I was still worried about how much further we had to go to get to Turks yet.
We decided to set up an emergency bilge kit system and came up with a plan that if the shaft started overheating he would loosen the nut all the way and let the water pour in. Which is a better alternative than allowing the shaft to overheat and possibly damaging it or worse case breaking it. We set off early in the morning trusting in the plan! The weather was much better this time around and as we rounded the corner the waves were much better than the previous attempt. We continued along all day, arriving at the west bank of turks at about midnight. After several failed attempts to radio the Port authorities to inform them of our arrival we set our anchor alarms and went to sleep. About 7 hours later we woke up to use the bathroom. I checked my anchor alarm, only to realize that it had turned off during the night. I asked Doug to check his, and he discovered that his phone was dead. We looked out the window and luckily we were still there! Whew!
