When we last left the story, the sailboat had made its way into the Turks & Caicos and the crew had been chilling for a few days. Before we get into that, let's have a few more photos:
Another angle of lassoing the shark:
Making sure the shark was actually dead by driving a spike into its brain:
Our high tech alarm system to alert us when a fish was on the line, since we didn't have a clicker on the reel:
Fishing at sunset:
Sailing at sunset:
What happens when you don't bring a fish on the boat fast enough:
That's a barracuda that had its guts ripped out by something else while it was still on the line and before we reeled him in. They don't normally look that skinny.
We spent a few days biking and Jeeping around the island. The Jeep we rented had at least three holes in the floor through which you could see the road. On St Thomas, we call vehicles like this "island cars". Most of the island was fairly desolate, here's what the main road looks like:
We saw a pretty cool capsized boat in one of the coves:
No clue how long it had been there. We considered snorkeling it, but decided against as the current was fairly strong there. The color of the hull and the rust was a nice contrast to the color of the water. That boat is about 80-100ft long.
We made our way down to Pirate's Cove on the southwest side of the island, where we walked around in the cove while infinite tiny fish swam all around our legs. There had to have been at least 5,000 fish there just swimming around. Whenever a big fish would show up, all the tiny fish would immediately swim toward us and hide around our legs. There were so many that they were swimming into our legs and you could feel the water change direction.
After we finished exploring T&C, the captain flew back to NYC and the three remaining crew sailed out of Provo for the Dominican Republic. We got a somewhat late start, heading northwest from the top central part of the island out around West Caicos.
As there were now three of us, we altered the watch shifts. We decided to each do two 4-hour shifts. I had the 0400-0800 and 1600-2000 shifts. After my shift ended at 2000 somewhere south of West Caicos, I headed off for a nice rest in the salon berth. We had recovered nicely from our late start, and were making good time with the mainsail and jib up.
That's right about when things started going wrong. At 2100, I was woken up to a bunch of yelling by the owner who was up in the cockpit on watch. I ran up to the cockpit and quickly saw what he was yelling about - the mainsail had ripped in half. Yes, ripped in half. The jib was still out on the inner forestay, but the main had a horizontal tear all the way from the leech (rear side of the sail) to the luff (front of the sail where it is up against the mast). There was maybe a foot or so of untorn sail near the luff.
We quickly started to drop the main, and luckily the tear was right under a reef line, so we secured the main at its first reef point. A reef is something you do to a sail to reduce the size of the sail by only exposing part of it to the wind. For a main, this usually means dropping the sail somewhat, and tying the slack part of the sail down to the boom. This reduces the size of the sail, which reduces the power of the wind acting on the boat, which means you are less likely to capsize or damage the boat under heavy weather conditions.
After we secured the main to the first reef point (if you think of the mainsail as a big triangle, imagine it shrinking to a smaller triangle - that's the net result of reefing), we had a short discussion about what happened to cause the tear, and decided to defer the discussion to the next morning. We decided to continue sailing on to the DR using the jib and the reefed main, as we also had the engine for backup if needed. We were sailing a very close haul, just barely off the direction of the wind (40-45 degrees), and wanted to maintain course and speed as best we could. I went back to sleep at this point.
Right around 0030, I was woken up by a very loud sound, followed by lots of yelling. I again ran up into the cockpit and looked forward to see that the inner forestay (with the jib attached and out) was swinging around the starboard side of the boat, banging the rolling furler against the lifelines, stanchions, and side of the hull. The forestay is a steel cable that comes from the top of the mast down to the bow of the boat, and in our case, has a sail wrapped around it. I didn't understand what I was seeing at first, it took me a moment to register what had happened. The chain plate attaching the forestay at the bow had snapped, and with the tension on the forestay from it still being attached to the top of the mast, as well as the wind in the jib, the bottom of the forestay had swung out over the starboard side of the boat.
This was a much trickier one to deal with. With the main ripped in half, we weren't that concerned with anything other than lowering it and maybe getting smacked with the sail. With the forestay ripped free and swinging around, it was a lot more dangerous both to us and to the boat. We had to secure the forestay quickly in order to reduce damage to the boat, but the forestay was whipping around in the wind and getting hit by the furler would not be good. The winds were probably about 20kt at this point, and of course it was pitch black.
We were able to grab the starboard jib sheet (a rope that you use to control the jib) and tighten it down to a cleat, which reduced the movement of the forestay to a range of about 6-8 feet. The owner then grabbed the furler and immediately lashed it to a mid-deck cleat and around a stanchion. Once it was somewhat more secure, we dropped the sail and lashed everything down around the stanchion and the lifelines. It ended up looking like this:
Not pretty, I know.
When the forestay was finally deemed secured, we had another discussion about what to do. We were around halfway to the DR, with a reefed main, no jib, and no genoa (this had broken much earlier in the trip). We decided to fire up the engine and motorsail the rest of the way. I went to sleep again.
Somewhere around 0330, not too long before I was going to wake up for my 0400 shift, I was woken up again. No loud noises this time. No noises at all, actually, which is why I woke up. The engine had stopped and would not restart.
At this point, we were pretty much in the middle of the bottom of West Caicos and the DR, out in open water. We were now down to a reefed main as our sole method of propulsion or steering, and basically drifting through the ocean. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the other crew had left the bathroom sink running that night, so our fresh water tank was drained empty as well. Morale was not high at this moment. After some additional troubleshooting of the engine, we decided to just drift until morning, and then revisit our plan of action after we had gotten some actual sleep.
I finished out my shift, went to sleep, then woke up around 1100. The owner had been trying various things with no success, but had eliminated some possible problems from contention. A diesel engine is not particularly complicated, but none of us had any real diesel experience.
What we did have was a diesel repair manual, though. I sat down and started reading. Eventually we determined that there was some kind of clog in the fuel line somewhere in front of the fuel pump and initial fuel filter. This left a hose from the fuel filter to the tank, the tank outlet, or the tank itself as the culprit. Lucky for us, there was a second tank outlet due to the previous owner having run a generator on board. We ended up taking a second hose and running it from the second tank outlet to the fuel filter. You can see that ugly solution here, it's the black hose running along the floor:
After we re-routed the fuel line, the engine started back up and we started back on course to the DR again.
One fun interlude to that session was when the other crew member casually mentioned a ship contact that we might want to be aware of. I came up out of the cabin expecting to see a little grey dot somewhere on the horizon, but instead saw a tugboat pulling an enormous container barge the size of a huge tanker, less than .3nm away. The owner and I deferred yelling at the other crew to make immediate radio contact over the VHF, to advise the tug that we were drifting without any propulsion or steering, and that we were unable to control our course or take evasive action. Luckily the tug was listening, spoke English, and let us know he'd steer clear of us. That was probably the scariest part of the entire trip.
Not long after we had the engine running again, a pod of about a dozen or so dolphins showed up and swam alongside us for about 20 minutes. I don't have any photos but have some great short video, including one where three dolphin jump in unison right alongside the boat. This would have been awesome on its own, but coming right after we fixed the engine and after the night of hell, it was an incredible moment.
We kept motorsailing on through the afternoon and into the night. We spotted the DR sometime around dawn. This is also when we noticed the above barracuda on the line. We eventually pulled into Luperon, which is a hurricane hole on the north side of the DR. Here's a few shots of the damage from the forestay breaking:
Forestay lashed to stanchion, after ripping a lifeline off:
Forestay chainplate snapped in half:
Same shot, a little further back. The headstay is still in place:
It was nice to finally be anchored at Luperon:
Not exactly where we were, but close:
After resting at anchor for a bit, a dinghy motored up with three guys in shorts and tshirts. These were the customs guys. They didn't have uniforms or IDs, and just pulled out a blank sheet of computer paper to write down our vessel and crew information on. Much more casual than the T&C customs folks a week prior. These guys did a far more thorough inspection of the vessel, though. They looked in every nook and cranny. The DR has a bad reputation for drug smuggling, so I was somewhat expecting this.
The customs guys finished their inspection and we locked up the boat and headed to shore. We went to a little trailer that was subdivided into a bunch of tiny offices, and went through immigration, agriculture, port inspector, and something else. Eventually we were free to walk around Luperon. Not much interesting to report there, just lots of dogs, cows, and people walking around a small port town. We found a pizza place, had some pizza, and headed back to the boat.
The next day, I caught a taxi to the airport in Puerto Plata. The taxi I caught was called a gua gua. This is a private vehicle that is used as a taxi with communal passengers. The gua gua was an older Toyota Camry. There were 8 of us, including the driver. We were all pretty much sitting on each other. At one point we picked up a guy with a bag full of live chickens. The chickens were very well behaved. Just a little cluck here and there when we hit a pothole or rounded a rough corner. Cluck cluck.
From the airport, I flew back to Miami to kick off my Key West, FL -> Prudhoe Bay, AK road trip, which I am currently about a third of the way into. I'll write more about that later with some photos. Right now the plan is to fly to Hawaii after I finish the road trip, and chill there for a while. Then either back to St Thomas, or another delivery somewhere. Preferably to French Polynesia.