Houston We Have a Problem

Houston, we have a problem

We spent as much time as we could in Cabo, but it was time to move on so that we could get to La Paz in time for Christmas and our first visitor. Sierra, one of our daughters, was coming to spend the holidays with us. I was so excited as I had greatly underestimated how much I would miss family when we sailed away and embarked on this odyssey. La Paz was 150 miles away so just over 24 hours of sailing to get there. We checked and rechecked the weather and wind. It looked like we were actually going to get to sail. We were finally going to have wind right at 20 knots which is perfect for us. It was out of the North so we would be doing some tacking which meant more than 150 miles but at least we would be able to sail and not have to motor the entire way. We need a little more wind because we are so heavy. Fifteen to twenty knots of wind move us well and once the sails are trimmed then the ride is pretty comfortable.
The day dawned bright and clear, but no wind there in the bay. We cruised in to the fuel dock and filled up our fuel tanks, dumped garbage and took off. The winds were light at first but built quickly across the morning and into the afternoon. We hit 20 knots and they continued to build. We went ahead and put a reef in the mainsail as it is so hard to reef in high winds or darkness and it looked like the winds were going to keep building. In addition to the north wind which was coming at us from the direction we needed to go in, the Sea of Cortez was also flowing out, so we were fighting wind and current, so much for being excited to see wind in the forecast. What we thought was going to be a good sail was turning into a beat. Sailboats are unable to sail directly into the wind, so we were tacking and making very slow progress. The waves were not big but they were piled on top of each other, so we were constantly getting slammed by waves. As the wind and current continued to build, we were unable to make decent forward progress and were forced to turn on the engine. Even with engine and sails we were only making 3 miles an hour of forward northerly progress and we still had over 100 miles to go. This was shaping up to be a grueling passage as this wind pattern was predicted to last for 3 days. We continued through my shift and at 1800 I turned the helm over to Dave. I was exhausted from battling the wind and waves and trying to keep the boat moving north. We don’t have autopilot or a wind vane, so we hand steer every mile. In heavy weather it requires constant upper body and core effort to hold the wheel and maintain a direction. I had tried going closer to shore and then out away from shore to see if the conditions were different in shallow or deep water but there was no relief. I headed down and crawled into bed only to find water pouring into our bed and the lockers. The heat and dryness of the desert had caused the teak to dehydrate and shrink leading to leaks everywhere. The bedding was soaked and I no longer had any dry clothes. The seas were confused making the ride very lumpy. The winds were sustained at 24 knots and still building. The ride was getting more and more uncomfortable as we were getting slammed by waves every couple seconds. I had no sooner found a semi dry spot to curl up in to try to get some rest when the engine started to sound rough and Dave reported that we seemed to be losing power. We were only making 1-2 miles of forward progress with engine and the mainsail. We had pulled the headsail earlier because the winds were continuing to build and with only one reef in the mainsail, we had a lot of sail area out there.
By 1830 things had continued to deteriorate and Dave hollered that he needed me at the helm. I no sooner got to the helm then the engine died. I took the helm but with just the reefed main and no engine, I had no steerage and was going backwards fast. Dave was down in the lazarette working with the fuel filters. I had to put out more sail, I had to deploy the genny. I have a love hate relationship with our headsail, the genny. Mostly I hate her because she is so temperamental and when she notices me at the helm she does everything in her power to make my life miserable. A typical experience with the genny up and me at the helm usually results in me yelling obscenities at her such that would shock my children. Our genny does fine if she is getting the glory and you are paying attention to her. If a big swell rolls through that she doesn’t like then she flops around, if the wind shifts… oh here let me flop and throw myself and make a nuisance of myself or the best is when I get distracted by something cool in the water like whales or dolphins and she notices that I am no longer paying attention to her, she will flop around and look for things up on the front of the boat to wrap her lines around so someone has to go forward and untangle them. Once untangled, she will billow out with a smug little snap and function perfectly until the next time. The mainsail just plods along making adjustments but not the genny she voices her displeasure at any lapse and demands your constant attention so the genny and I do not get along. I yelled down to Dave that I was putting out the genny because we had no steerage and by this time the winds were sustained at 29 knots. The genny is a light wind sail but she is on a roller furling and can be easily reefed. Dave looked up and me and blinked his eyes a couple times because he knows my relationship with this sail. I had to get some ability to steer as we were being driven by the wind and waves. We had been on a starboard tack before the engine died so we were headed away from land and out to sea. Our boat tends to weather helm and she had very quickly done so without the engine power to overcome the weather which meant we were healed to 40 degrees, our decks were underwater, and I was standing on the cockpit combing to try and remain upright. I eased about a quarter of the genny out. Since we didn’t know at that time what happened to the engine, I wanted to bring her to a port tack and head towards land. It took several tries to bring her around because I couldn’t get enough speed built up to take us through a tack. She would stall in irons and I would have to move everything back over starboard and try again but finally I was able to get her on a port tack and head towards land but unfortunately backwards too. The wind and current on a port tack was driving us south, away from La Paz, away from Christmas with my daughter. Dave worked on the engine for 2 hours, by now I had been at the helm for 6 hours. We had water in the fuel, lots of water. He took the helm for an hour to give me a break and then I took it back, so he could sleep and work more on the engine. The conditions continued to deteriorate. We could no longer tack to turn we had to jibe. I had heard and read horror stories of accidental jibes, so it never really occurred to me that you might want to deliberately complete this maneuver. I had never completed a jibe and certainly not in these conditions. I was terrified but it worked well. On the starboard tack we could make 1 mile an hour of north progress, on the port tack we could mostly hold our position but were unable to move north. News on the engine front did not bode well. Dave changed all of the fuel filters including the one on the engine and we had water encroachment all the way to the engine. Dave had bad news, he felt like the lift pump had failed. We were not going to have an engine any time soon. We focused on sailing the boat for the next 12 hours and made 3 miles of progress north. We were both exhausted, we each had only 3 hours of sleep since the engine went down. We finally made the decision to turn around. We had only one place to go, we had to go back to Cabo as it was the only place we could anchor under sail, another new experience. We turned around and continued to battle winds and current. It was just a different battle. Now instead of getting hit from the front or the side, we were getting slammed by waves hitting us just off center of the stern of the boat. When that happens, the wave pushes you sideways and then the sails take a direct hit from the wind. If you take big winds direct then it pushes you over and it takes a lot of muscle on the wheel to bring the boat back around. This went on for hours. We knew we needed some wind to make it back to Cabo and we needed some wind to set our anchor, but we had been battling now for nearly 36 hours. There is a big difference between some wind and a lot of wind. We could see Lands’ End, so close yet so far. We were 6 miles out and in the blink of an eye the winds went from 20 knots to 2 knots and then to 0. We spent the next 6 hours ghosting along at 0-2 knots. Dave went and laid down, I spent the time bonding with my favorite sail in the dark. She is a light wind sail, but I was only catching puffs of wind here and there and never from the same side of the boat, so I was having to manually move the genny from side to side to catch whatever happened to be moving across the water. The puffs were too light for the wind to move the sail so I had to go forward and gather the sail up and move her from side to side around the rigging.
Dave got up and we re-evaluated our situation. We were not moving fast enough to set the anchor and we knew that we only had one shot at setting our anchor. If we missed setting it then we would ground on the beach in front of the resorts and be in a whole lot of trouble. Dave lowered the dinghy and tied it to the side of the boat. We call our dinghy Puff. It has a 3.3 HP engine and we are a 13-ton boat. It wasn’t much but just maybe it could provide enough thrust to set the anchor. There wasn’t even a breath of wind this deep in the bay. We pulled the genny and hoped our little dinghy motor would be able sustain such a large load. We chose our spot and missed our first pass, Puff, I am so sorry, one more time. We had to circle through and take a second shot. Second time through we dropped the anchor and Dave raced back to cut the dinghy motor, then back forward to play out more rode. My eyes were glued to the screen watching depth and speed, waiting for the anchor chain to tighten and have Magic Dragon pull around and stop moving towards shore. Usually I bear down on the throttle for several minutes to truly set the anchor. This night we had only physics, only the direction of movement and the weight of the boat, was it going to be enough? We started in 24 feet of water, around 16 feet, the stern of the boat started to come around and our speed dropped to 0. We were set for calm conditions, was it doing to be enough to hold us off shore if the wind piped up or when the Pacific swell wrapped around Lands End? At this point only time would tell. At least for now we were in a semi protected anchorage and had access to some services. It was the best we could do under our current circumstances. I had to get some sleep as my brain was no longer processing well.
The next day found us still floating and not grounded but the crew was very subdued. Several frantic texts to Sierra to let her know that we would not be in La Paz and she needed to find a way to come to us. I looked into car rentals and bus services from our end and our friends we knew would help us from La Paz once they got there. It wasn’t just a matter of getting Sierra to us, she was also bringing multiple suitcases of donations for the children of La Paz. She was coming fully loaded. Dave spent the day searching for parts. A new lift pump was not in our price range and a refurbished one was $750.00 and delivery from the US to Mexico could be anywhere from 2-6 weeks. We went from subdued to demoralized. We were in an anchorage that is not sustainable long term (if you have ever been to Cabo you will understand, if not it would be like trying to live on the strip in Vegas). Logistically trying to find parts in a party town when you don’t speak the language added to the stress of our situation. Sierra had a plan to get to us so Christmas was still going to happen which helped to brighten our moods a bit but we were still terribly overwhelmed.
Dave had a plan. He needed to complete diagnostics before buying parts and the diagnostic process was going to be very slow. We had precious little battery bank left because it got badly depleted with all our navigation equipment on at night with no engine support. He needed to use it sparingly during the day with our solar at it’s peak. The way the land sits and the currents run in the Cabo anchorage was giving us only about 3 hours of good solar charge each day. The first order of business was to get the water out of the fuel lines. He would use the electric pump to move fuel to the Racors that sit ahead of the engine and pull a couple gallons of fuel through the filters. Then we would run that through our Baja filters twice before returning the fuel to the tank and the water to a separate container. This went on for several days before there was no longer water coming through the lines. By this time Sierra had arrived. What a beautiful diversion. Dave spent mornings fishing with her then bleeding fuel lines and then we would head in to town to show her the sights. On Christmas Eve, I put a post out on Facebook in the Women Who Sail group stating our situation and wishing for a generator. Someone asked how a generator was going to help when it was the engine that was the problem. I just wanted to get a charge on the batteries so that we could try a start and I was tired of sitting in the dark, just needed a little comfort. Marissa piped up that her husband was due in Cabo that evening and had a generator we could use overnight and sure enough a few hours later a boat circled us and handed over a generator and gas which we used all night to get a hard charge on our battery bank. The next day they circled again, picked up the generator, gas, and some Christmas cookies hot from the oven to send them on their way. Once the water was out of the system, then the next step was to bleed the air. Bleeding the air on a Perkins is quite a feat that requires skill combined with contortionism and several tool donations to the bilge. The first couple bleeds went well. It was looking like the lift pump was beginning to move fuel to the engine so maybe it was just a matter of fully clearing the fuel lines of water and air. We were beginning to feel hopeful and just a bit optimistic. Life however was not done toying with us. The third bleed ended badly in a nauseating turn of events because the bleed valve twisted off and our closed system was no longer closed. Production of the Perkins 4108 ended in the 1980’s. Finding parts in the US can be a challenge much less party central Mexico. Dave read up on the part and all the recommendations said not to try to take it apart (too late, part of it was sitting in the head of his wrench). It sat on the navigation table for a day and a half taunting him. It looked to me like a Chinese puzzle about the size of a marble. Dave did more research and could not find the part anywhere and all we got was blank stares when we asked at the Marine supply stores around Cabo. Dave is a morning person and gets up several hours before I do. The next morning, he was looking a bit like the Cheshire Cat. When it became clear that we were not going to be able to purchase the broken part because it had no name or number he decided to make his own part. He found a screw in his plunder with the threads the size that he needed. Next, he had to cut it to the length he needed without ruining the threads. And then one side of the screw had to be sanded flat like the one he removed was. The first one he made didn’t work so he had to go back to the drawing board and start over. What are the chances of finding a second screw with the threads he needed? Poseidon was smiling on him because he did have a second screw and he was able to successfully repurpose the second one. As it turned out that was the easy part. The hard part came when he had to place the newly fabricated bleed valve in the correct position in its home behind the engine without dropping it into the bilge and without being able to visually see what he was doing. He managed somehow. It was unbelievable and right off the set of MacGyver. Where were the Hollywood producers when that shit was happening? More bleeding of the air from the fuel lines and finally after 10 days he was ready to try to start her. As soon as the fuel hit the engine she gave a little rumble and I knew she was going to start and sure enough she rumbled back to life. Dave had been so patient and methodical throughout this whole process and then to fabricate a piece with what he could find on the boat was really nothing short of amazing. He was savoring the rumble of that old Perkins and I was bawling like a baby. Our Magic Dragon had fire back in her belly only through Dave’s skill and perseverance. We were able to ring in the new year on a high note. We had one of our daughters with us, we celebrated mass at the oldest original building remaining in Cabo built in the 1730’s, fireworks lit up the beach and our dream was back on track.