May 13, 2015
Always good to have a plan B
Our plan of sailing direct from Nassau to St. Augustine was rudely interrupted
by a low pressure weather system that was supposed to move off to the north
east, giving us a clear sail. Well that is not what happened – once we were in the
gulf stream off West End Bahamas the weather forecast showed that the low had
actually stalled and to make matters worse, it had developed into a tropical
storm and even gave it a name – Ana. Sailing into tropical storms is never a
good thing so despite the fact that we were having a great sail in 15 to 20
foot rolling seas, we were making 9 to 9.5 knots heading for Portugal. At this
point we also discovered that the refrigeration system had completely stopped
working and nothing I could do, would make it better. Time for plan B – we ended
up sailing to Fort Pierce, Florida to tuck into the inter coastal waterway to
get out of the weather and load up on ice, to try to save all the food in the
freezer and fridge. We ended up motoring all the way to St. Augustine, arriving
Monday morning. All the fixed bridges on the ICW are a minimum of 65 feet
clearance – well our VHF radio antenna did a great job of whacking the spiders
off the underside of almost every bridge. Our 63 foot tall mast just squeaked
under – sure got our attention!
By Monday afternoon the folks from First Mate Yacht Services were on
board to start the disassembly of the transmission from the engine to make the repairs.
Well here again a plan B is also good – there is just not enough room to work
between the engine and the prop shaft so they tried to slide the prop shaft
backwards but that didn’t work So now with everything in pieces, Ambition was
towed from the Municipal Marina to Oasis Boat Yard to get pulled out of the
water.
Well since Tuesday, things have only gone from bad to worse. Pressure
washing the boat bottom is standard practice when the boat is hauled out – but in
our case, the pressure washing washed the anti-fouling paint off the bottom
that was applied just 4 months ago …. Time to call in the paint technical rep
to figure out what has gone wrong. Now we will add a new bottom paint job to
the list of must do tasks once we figure out who is going to pay for it! We are
now on our third service company to try to figure out what to do with our
fridge system – it is now looking like a total replacement is going to be the
only solution but they can’t even come look at situation until next week.
This morning with much banging and persuasion, the prop shaft
finally gave up the fight and slide out the bottom of the boat. Now we discover
that the shaft seal, which was supposed to have been serviced in Tampa, was
just partially done – nice! So now it only makes sense to upgrade the shaft
seal with a much newer and better technology so Ambition will get a new PSS
dripless shaft seal this week and a new cutlass bearing as well, as it has
rotted out from lack of use. But at least now we can continue with the trying to get the transmission out of the boat - that will restart this afternoon.
The SSB radio was tested yet again and we have determined that I
will need to remove it from the boat and ship to the US west coast for a repair
and overhaul. Me thinks I will wait to do this later.
On a real positive note, we have some very wonderful friends that Maryse
and I met 2 years ago in the Bahamas, that live on board their motor yacht in
St. Augustine – they have taken us under their wing and helped out incredibly –
welcoming us with our own cabin on board their boat, lending us a Jeep to get
around in and overall moral and nautical support for all that is going on here –
thanks ever so much Barbara and Randy for your hospitality and support – you guys
are great!
