Always think about what Mama says.

Cabo Rojo lies at the south-western tip of the rectangular landmass of Puerto Rico. 

Cabo Rojo, Puerto Rico

As we came around the point, heading first south-east, and now east, the wind intensified from around 10-12 kts to more than 20. We were motoring, the short distance we were going from Bahia Sucia to Parguera didn’t seem to justify a beat with sails into the waves. Waves that now were around 5 feet, with the occasional bigger one. 

The red cliffs of the cape towered above us, the grey lighthouse that sat above it giving emphasis to the waves that crashed against the large rocks below. Seabirds hung motionless in the wind and spray, before plunging into the sea every so often. Mostly, their attempts failed, but every now and then there would be success, and the victor became the hunted as others attempted to steal away the catch. They reminded me of politicians at work.

“Hey, wanna take some picture?” I asked Lizzy.

“It’s so hazy,” she said as she appeared from the saloon with the camera.

“It’s the dust, it comes from Africa.”

“But Africa’s…”

“Thousands of klicks away, I know. They can even see it on the satellite pictures. Amazing, isn’t it?”

Lizzy shivered as she leaned from the cockpit to get the best angle. “Don’t you think we’re too close?”

She had a point, but the wind was blowing us more down the coast than onto it. And after all, dNAT is a catamaran. It has two engines. Insurance for if bad things happen.

“Naah, we’ll be fine.” 

Lizzy didn’t reply. She took the camera back to the saloon.

I’m a nervous sailor. I thought some more about what she had said. While we did have dual engines, our main sail was out of order, as we needed to replace the main halyard that had broken only a few days ago on our crossing to Puerto Rico from the Turks and Caicos. We had jury-rigged a substitute with the spinnaker halyard, but it did not seem proper to use it for this small trip. 

Our destination was Paguera, or more specifically, Bahia Fosforescente, one of few bioluminescent bays in the world. Puerto Rico has no less than three, but only this one allows swimming. Besides, the two others lie further east than we wanted to go before crossing the Caribbean ocean to Curaçao, where we hope to spend the hurricane season. We’d also heard of dinghy thefts at Vieques, one of the other bioluminescent bays, and of a strange reluctance of the police to do something about it. All hearsay, but still.

The seas were rough, and that, combined with the wind, made our progress east slow, we were averaging a scant 3 - 4 kts over the ground, our GPS declared disdainfully.  We had planned to stay off the coast, avoiding the need to keep a lookout for reefs, but this made me think again.

I examined the chart on our chart plotter at the helm, then our backup charts on our iPad.

“Seems like we can cut between these two reefs,” I pointed my new plan out to Lizzy. “At least we won’t have the waves to worry about.”

If you haven’t experienced it before, you will be impressed the first time you boat from the open sea to behind a reef. Most of the wave action stops, and despite a strong wind, you can anchor fairly comfortably in the lee. 

“Do we have enough room?” Lizzy tilted her head one way, then the other. She took off her sunglasses and peered at the screen. Technology has not figured out a way to make LCD panels not darken with some angles of polarizing lenses yet.

“I checked the depths on both charts, and they agree. There is a channel here, see?”

Lizzy said nothing.

Once we were behind the reef, our groundspeed increased substantially. When you’re enjoying the slowest form of transport known to man, even a few knots makes a big difference.

By the time we were out from behind the protection of the reef, we were only half a dozen or so miles from Parguera. We were much closer than we wanted to be to the coast now, and I swung us out toward the sea for a while, before swinging back.

“Another hour, and we should be there,” I glanced at Lizzy. “Have you thought about what we’re doing for supper?”

It was then that the shrill bone-piercing electronic squeal of an alarm sounded. We have many alarms, and it took me about 10 seconds to find it.

“It’s the port engine!” I reached out and punched the panel, first the STOP, and then the OFF buttons.

I checked that the autopilot was engaged and swung down from where I had been perched at the helm. 

“I dunno, maybe the belt?” I said to Lizzy’s question.

On our recent eventful passage from the Turks and Caicos the belt on the starboard engine broke. This wasn’t a particularly logical thought, but the stressed mind will grasp at the mental straws it finds.

While Lizzy stood guard, I undid the guardrails and raised the cover to the engine, then handed her the insulated boards that cover the engine, and muffle the noise.

The belt was fine. There was also water in the raw water strainer.

That was when another alarm sounded. 

I jumped up from the transom steps and rushed to the helm. The autopilot was claiming attention this time. As I looked up, I saw the issue. We were heading toward shore!

Think of a shopping cart. If you push at only one corner, it will turn in the opposite direction. Catamarans are like shopping carts. The wind was blowing from our front right corner. The engine was pushing from our rear right corner. Add the waves, and the autopilot was unable to keep us going where we wanted.

I took over, steering manually. Even with the helm full over, we only swung so far back, but no further. 

This was a problem, and I needed to solve it quickly. I turned dNAT to port, spun her around. It was alarming how close the reefs we had just left were. We were once again headed in the right direction. But not for long. A wave slapped the starboard hull, and swung us to port, beyond the ability of the rudder to bring us back. After several more pirouettes,  more reminiscent of overindulgence in the fruits of the vine than ballet, we managed to scrape ourselves away from danger. 

I thought to turn try the motor again. 

“Remember all those beds of seaweed,” I said to Lizzy. “I wonder if it blocked the intake? Maybe that was just a temporary thing.” 

The seas here have big carpets of floating yellow seaweed. They are everywhere. They snag fishing lines. Slow your progress when you sail into them. Just a general nuisance.

The motor fired up, sweet as pie. The temperature alarm remained silent. Our boat has no dials to report a temperature, only these infuriating idiot lights to tell you AFTER something has gone wrong. 

The starboard engine was doing 2400 rpm, but I held the port side to 1600 for about 10 minutes. No change. We were once again heading in the right direction, even the autopilot was happy.

I increased the revolutions on the port engine to 2000 rpm, still no issue. I tried 2200. Still no issue.

Then the starboard engine developed a strange shaking. My first thought was the fishing line I had in the water when the problem with the overheating port engine first started. Whilst initially trying to sort things out, I had put the starboard engine into reverse, and promptly snagged the line in the propellor.

But it had been quite a while now since surrendering yet another lure to Poseidon’s grasp. Perhaps it was the seaweed? Was something caught in that? I put the drive into neutral, and raised the revolutions. No vibration. 

“I think we picked something up in that seaweed,” I said to Lizzy. “It’s wrapped around the prop. Maybe we should shut this one down? Yowzer!”

I cut back on the power to the starboard engine. And raised the revolutions of the port engine to 2400. It was about that time that the port alarm began to squeal. Again. I shut the port motor down. Again.

I raised the power on the starboard engine to 2000 revs.

Lizzy’s head was cocked. “I think it’s better?”

She was right, the shaking had noticeably improved. Perhaps it was the seaweed after all. 

“I don’t want to shut down this engine as well.” I wondered what she would think about this idea. This was a risk, but our options were thinning out like an old man’s pate.

Lizzy gave a little shudder. “Hell, no, let’s keep it going.”

By now, we were at a point where we needed to turn about 90 degrees toward land, to make our anchorage. Once we turned, things were easier, and as we approached closer to land, the seas and wind fell off considerably.

We left the port motor unused until we needed to manoeuvre to anchor, and even then, never exceeded 1600 rpm. Anchoring is a leisurely activity, we hardly noticed any lack of power.

It was only the day after the next that I screwed up the courage to dig deeper into the belly of the beast. 

I am not familiar at all with marine diesel engines, so I spent a lot of time reading and watching YouTube videos first. Many things pointed to a failed impeller for the raw water pump. Firstly, this is a common issue. And second, I had already ruled out some other common causes. But the previous owner had bragged to us what incredible maintenance he had done on the engines. From what we had seen of the boat, he seemed more of an appearances type of fellow, but still. Why would he lie about this?

An impeller is apparently routinely changed out at 1000 hours or 1 year of use, whichever comes first, I had learned. It is a disk with 12 rubber vanes that sits inside the pump housing. I hesitantly removed the cover, and after a lot of elbow grease managed to wrestle the beast out of its hiding place. The specially-designed puller to remove it? Why would there be one on board? 

But there the thing lay, next to its replacement. Instead of 12 rubber vanes, our recently-removed specimen had only 5 left. We looked at the pitiful object silently. Inside my head, the monkeys, the ones that ride on the horses that gallop around when things go south, shrieked shrilly. This meant that I’d have to …

That’s when Terry’s text arrived. I’d already sent pictures to our friends on Tangaroa, another catamaran that was in the BVIs. Terry had been patiently supporting my anxieties over the airwaves.

“OK, looks like you’ll need to clean out the heat exchanger too,” the text read.

Just what I had been thinking. The monkeys held the horses by the ears, spitting in their eyes, I’m sure. 

Turns out removing the ends of the heat exchanger is actually quite a simple affair. Inside the inlet, we found an impossible collection of chewed up rubber vane bits. How any water made its way through this mess was beyond me.

Another text. 

“Now try to put all the pieces together, make sure you have them all.”

I knew all about that too, thanks to the Internet. Lizzy had already been assigned the task. But there were  so many pieces it was not an easy thing to do. I left Lizzy to do her bit, trying to not let my impatience get in her way. In the meanwhile, I busied myself with cleaning all the calcium deposits from the ends, and ran a stiff piece of plastic-coated electrical wire through the heat-exchanger core to clean out all the small pipes that traverse it from end to end.

Finally, Lizzy came where I was losing gallons of water in the engine bay. 

“I think there’s parts from another impeller in here too,” she said. 

She was right. Not only were there bits from another impeller, they were also from an impeller that was too big! The vanes were at least 4 millimetres wider than the Kosher one. How could that even have happened? I imagined an emergency repair with what one could find, but why not correct things at the first possible opportunity?

We have found that the boating world has it’s share of charlatans out there, with scant disregard for the safety of others.

But what about me? All accidents occur in what is known as a chain. It is seldom the first link in that chain that causes the accident.

Link 1: We were lied to about the maintenance on the boat we bought,.

Link 2 : We took link one on faith from a stranger. One we had already seen to be lackadaisical with other things.

Link 3: We didn’t have enough time to finish all our tasks before we had to leave the USA, due to immigration and tax requirements.

Link 4: Even though we were using our backup means of propulsion, having lost the use of our mainsail, at least in our estimation that meant we wouldn’t raise it with the spinnaker halyard.

Link 5: I had chosen to sail close to land, and also to sail between those two close reefs. Yes, we had more than enough depth, but room to manoeuvre? 

It was only dumb luck that kept us from bigger issues.

Of course, we still had many recourses if things went wrong.

The water was shallow enough for us to drop anchor and sort things out.

We could have raised the sail if we had the time.

We could have dropped the dinghy in the water, and used it to assist, but it is doubtful the 15hp engine would help what usually takes two 40hp engines to do.

We could have headed out to sea, or even back to where we had come from.

But I had get-there-itis, and, even things it turned out peachy, it might have been different.