And The Fun NEVER Ends!!

In the last update, of January 10, Renne' and I were thoroughly enjoying our arrival in Key West.  This has been a memorable two months, in the words of my favorite comedian and Cajun Story Teller, Justin Wilson, I Gawrontee!!  It has been a whirlwind of activity.  As always, some really good, some really ugly, and some that just keep us going on and on and on with this adventure.  We both continue to marvel at the fact we would both rather be doing this than anything else in our lives.  It is just hard to think of what would entertain us as well as what we are doing now.

First things first:  We have already announced to those with tickets who are heading for St. Thomas for our wedding renewal - PUT ALL TRAVEL PLANS FOR US ON HOLD!!  We still have to notify the minister, but we are not able to leave Key West yet - I will explain that in a few minutes - Not that we do not want to get it done, nothing could be farther from the truth, but we are here in KW until we put 40 or 50 more hours on the engine!  Considering St. Thomas is 1400nm from Key West via the Bahamas, The Turks and Caico's, the Dominican Republic and all of those beautiful places all of our other cruising friends are getting to see, and at an average of 100nm per day travel.  That is 14 days of straight sailing under the very best weather conditions!  This is the beginning of the second week of March-remember the axiom,"March comes in like a Lion and out like a Lamb"?  We have had 30-40kt winds out of the east for a week.  We ain't goin' nowhere in that direction for the best of two weeks.

So why do we have to put 40-50 hours on the engine before we can leave?  Hmmmm, long story.  Back around the first week of February, just before we were to leave for the Bahamas, Renne' got called to Columbia, SC to care for her daughter, Shannon, who was back in the hospital.  That took 2-1/2 weeks!  In the meantime, my Brother-in-Law, Dave Barker (my eldest sister's husband) was here to assist in getting ready for the trip, and psyched to make a great run to Bimini and on to the Exumas.  Dave had been here about 2-1/2 weeks when Renne' left.  In that time, Dave and I had completed the installation, troubleshooting (there is always troubleshooting when it comes to MY DIY projects), and finally drinking the final results of the watermaker I have been planning to install for over a year!  Talk about a jigsaw puzzle!

So, a week or so after Renne' left, and after finishing the watermaker, as we had decided would head for Bimini ourselves and let Renne' catch up with us when she was finished with Shannon, Dave and I thought it would be great fun to sail east (again the interesting direction) to Marathon for a fun-filled weekend on the hook, kinda to get ready for the real adventure.  D and I headed out of the marina at about 1000 that Saturday morning with about 20kts of wind off our nose.  The kicker was the growing 3' waves in Hawk Channel that day, both of which were coming out of the east.  Therefore, NO SAILING!  We would motor the 38nm by water.  After an hour, making about 1.8nm, I realized we were not going to make Marathon by Sundown.  We were about to head back in, but Renne', over the phone, recommended we sail west to Key West and see the area by water.  Great Idea!  So we tacked the boat and headed west.  We set the jib and went romping off to see KW.  During the transit, the winds grew to 38kts and waves began building to 3-4 or 5 feet.  I remember thinking it would be a long trip back to Boca Chica, so our goal was to get to KW and turn around and motor back! 

We entered the main ship channel where the cruise ships depart for the east coast of the US.  My thought was to start the engine, pull into the wind shadow of the two cruise ships in port, and furl the sail and depart!  Simple!  However, upon starting the engine, and getting no response from the helm, I gave the helm to Dave and ran below to look at the engine room.  Does this sound the least bit familiar??  Remember last June as were were forced to go into Miami because of engine vibrations?  Sure enough, I opened the engine compartment and found a 4" gap between the prop-shaft coupler and the transmission coupler.  Dumbfounded, I realized this was the 2nd time in 8 months that we had suffered a prop-shaft coupler failure!  What are the odds??!?!?!

We again tacked around, and tried to head out the ship channel under sail, but the winds were too strong to get much headway, in fact we were losing way.  We actually were heading SOUTH toward Cuba!  I instantly calculated by this time the next day, we would be off the coast of Cuba trying to explain our engine failure.  That and Renne' would be pissed that she had missed this great trip!  So the better part of valor as a husband, partner, B-I-L, sailor and human being, so as to not be thrown in jail for cavorting with the enemy, we hove-to (stalled the sails).

So as all good Navy Sea-Stories begin:  "There we were, stranded, you just ain't gonna believe this!  This is a real NO-Shit Story!  Waves crashing over the rails, winds howling eerily, sails flapping uncontrollably, all trying their best to drive the Sailing Vessel JonNe' and it's occupants to the depths of Davy Jones Locker!  Though we were gonna DIE! 

45 minutes later we were headed back to Boca Chica in tow by TowBoat US.

Five days later, we were hauled and blocked on the hard at a local boatyard one key up from KW being inspected by the local Yanmar (engine) dealer trying to determine why we had thrown our prop-shaft a second time!!  Now I don't want to gripe too much about Marathon Boat Yard in Marathon, Fl, who installed the engine to begin with, but here is what we found!!

     The engine mounts were installed incorrectly and on the wrong sides!  They collapsed under the load and the engine dropped, putting a strain on the prop-shaft - causing the failure.

     The engine filled with water - the entire exhaust system had been installed incorrectly!  No riser pipe from the exhaust, meant not enough height between the engine and exhaust water-lift muffler!  The water-lift muffler was too small for the length of the exhaust hose (13' of 3"ID exhaust hose), the exhaust loop on the stern was too low, all allowing seawater from the following seas to enter and fill the exhaust hose and muffler, driving water into the engine!!

We are back in the slip today, $15,000 of our kids inheritance paid out for this engine repair, grateful to Mark De Jong, of Mark's Diesel Engines or Diesel Engines of the Florida Keys for the work he has done, and looking for an attorney who might take our case for not a lot of money!!

Now we have to put 40-50 hours on the engine to make sure this thing doesn't happen again!  So we might go to the Tortugas in April or up the west coast of Florida for a week.  Who knows!

We spent our first night aboard, for Renne', in six weeks.  The mechanics had to take down part of the water system, and I had to rebuild it.  I am not as young as I was even last year!  Boy was I stiff!  I have three new projects to work on: I have to replace some flooring in the aft head; and second, I have to change the location of the ventalation blower for the Generator, to make it easier to cool; and third, we have to recharge the refrigerator, or at least get it looked at.  It just seems to be working harder to cool than it should!

The last events to occur in the past two months were the wonderful friends and relatives to show up here in KW!  My cousin, George and his lady friend, Alesia were here for several days of fun; our friends Warren Gloss and his lady friend, Caroline, stopped by in their RV and spent an enjoyable week with us; and we found our cruising couple friends, Al and Sue McDonald on a mooring ball in Marathon and Jim and Linda Delaney on the hook here at Garrison Bight.  Great days with both of them, and we are envious they are in the Bahamas ahead of us.

As we really are not good at planning too far ahead of ourselves, our plan at this moment is to head for the Bahamas about the first of May with a group from here in Boca Chica.  We will spend a few weeks gunkholing then will join a few of them as we head north to the Chesapeake.  We hope this year will be the year we actually get there.  So for the moment, we want to sit and relax for a few weeks and enjoy the warm weather to come.

Renne' has a book signing this weekend at the Navy Exchange for both Saturday and Sunday.  We have had to restock her supply of both The Last Payload:  The MECS Experiment and Her newest children's book:  Nighty Night Sailboat.  She is working on the newest volume:  Nighty Night Sailboat goes to Spain, but has to finish up the illustrations.  She has two more in the works, Santa Finds Nighty Night Sailboat, which has to be finished by July, and Nighty Night Sailboat Visits Mount Vernon, George Washington's Home.

We really appreciate all of our friends here in Boca Chica for the moral support you have given us and ALL of our friends, fans, and relatives who put up with our adventures and mis-adventures.  We really love this life, and hope to continue it for some time to come.  I hope to put up some new pictures from this period in a few days.

For now, we love you all, and we need to spend some time here on the docks DRINKING!!  come join us for sundowners!!

JonNe'