The other part of the story

It’s interesting to me to see how much of a response positive blog posts get when compared to ones which are not quite so drama-free. When I described our last passage, I intentionally left out any of the “excitement.” Here is a recap of the key systems issues that we dealt with while underway, and after we made landfall.

1. When One Love is under sail, we keep the engines in neutral (as recommended by the manufacturer) so the props spin on their own as we move through the water. This spinning creates a whirring sound which, depending on our speed through the water, is quite noticeable in the aft cabins. When it was time for the first night watch, both Rebecca and I noted that the sound coming from the non-running port engine area, right by our cabin, was noticeably different than usual. In addition to the whirring that we’d become accustomed to, there was also a significant groaning sound. As it was then dark, there was little that could be done about it. We made the decision to only run the starboard engine when power was required. My thought was that perhaps we’d picked up an old fisherman’s line and when we finally got around to diving on it, after anchoring in Grenada using only one engine, we found that the prop and the rudder had a significant amount of Sargasso weed around them. This was easily removed once the boat was stopped and the strange noise disappeared. Three cheers for an easy fix!

The source of the strange noise and vibration.

2. Just before dark on the second night, we found ourselves surrounded by a series of dark thunderstorm clouds. We had already been traveling with one reef in the main but given the wind speed that we were seeing and the potential for even higher gusts, we decided to put both a second reef in the main and one in the genoa. When I awoke to take the third watch at 3:00 AM, I noted that the genoa reef had been removed. As the clouds had abated and the wind had decreased, that made sense. It was only when the skies became lighter that I noticed the broken furling line. The reef had not intentionally been taken out; rather the furling line holding the sail partially rolled in had broken letting the rest of the sail out. That was not a problem weather wise at that time so I just let it be. I did however clip into the jacklines to go forward to secure the loose line so that it couldn’t fall overboard. When it came time to bring the sail in for good, I tied the two ends of the line together and furled it in as usual. That line will now have to be replaced. Prior to this occurring, I had noted some chafe areas on that line. I just never considered it to be a highly loaded line so I didn’t stress about it. Under normal usage it’s not that loaded but when holding a reef in, it obviously is!

3. On the Leopard 4600 catamaran, there are placards that warn against running the generator when underway. I assume this has something to do with the location of the gen set’s raw water intake. When we needed to charge the ship’s batteries while we were underway, instead of using the generator we simply ran the starboard engine (the one that was not making the strange sound). We ran that engine on several occasions to keep our speed up anyway. After we arrived in Grenada and secured our spot on the dock at Port Louis Marina, we tried to turn on our gen set as we normally would. Unfortunately, it would not start. 🙁

As luck would have it, we arrived in Grenada just in time for carnival to start. While the carnival can be great fun, it is not a time to try to get any work done; the stores all close and the tradespeople take time off. I spent considerable time trying to get the generator running myself, making several phone calls to our friend Mike from Palm Tree Marine who was coaching me on what to do. When I later ran into Mike at the hash on Saturday evening (of course we had to go to the hash), I recounted all that I had done, including my lack of success. Obviously feeling sorry for me, he offered to drop by the next day to take a quick peek at it. He made it clear that if it was not a quick fix, it would have to wait until after carnival because he wasn’t working.

True to his word, Mike showed up the next day and I’m sorry to say, it was not a quick fix. It took at least a couple of hours before he was able to bring the generator back to life. What was wrong with it? My layman’s description… there was a broken wire in the gen set’s junction box leading to a relay. I actually found that broken wire myself but was unsure exactly how to reconnect it. Repeatedly attempting to start the engine with that broken wire may have allowed some salt water to flow back into the engine, lowering the compression. Mike had to employ some mechanical magic to get it going, even after he reconnected the broken wire. I’m happy to report that all is well on One Love right now, largely thanks to Mike at Palm Tree Marine. It definitely pays to have friends!

The view we had while participating in Saturday’s moonlight hash. We began the hash at sea level, running along the beach, and then climbed to this point.