Never Prognosticate

So the engine worked and we sailed away and lived happily ever after.

Of course not. I knew looking ahead was a bad idea.

At about 12:30, Danny got WW to flip the switch that gives power to the engine but not to the starter engine. The starter engine started. Oh terribly bad. Much pondering of a tangle of wires that, clearly, had not been reinstalled comme il faut.

I did some cooking, planning a nice Mediterranean meal for dinner: slow cooked squid, marinated zucchini, hummus and pita bread. To assist, I had dozens of flies. It became a bit of a brawl when I started cleaning the squid. I won, scrubbed the galley to within an inch of its life, then wandered off for a bit of a nap leaving a galley full of depressed flies.

WW came by and suggested it might be rum o’colock. He was right, it was 5 p.m. By now five people were either in the engine room, hanging into the engine room through the hatch, standing just outside the engine room or standing on the dock peering into the engine room. There was a lot of head scratching, mutterings and I believe I might have heard an incantation. Chicken entrails were consulted. WW said he was trying to stay away to avoid having to listen to the head scratching etc.

Eventually the team discovered that a magical electrical control box (I’m sure I have grasped the technical terminology perfectly) was out of commission. They put in a spare, only partly dead one we had from a previous encounter with this issue. The engine worked, but for full function, we’d need a perfectly alive version of this magical box which, for a miracle, Carl said he had one of at home.

Another night in Jolly Harbour. Huzzah. I discovered that spraying the sheet with bug spray was and effective and cooler approach than spraying myself then swaddling. The dinner, incidentally, was delicious.

On the morrow, Terry appeared bright and early with the magical box and installed it and the engine ran and we smiled and were happy. Danny found a water leak. Terry suggested some of our hoses were a bit beyond their best-before date. Carl approved us for departure.

At about 9, we headed over to the fuel dock and fuelled up. Then we headed out to sea with an essentially new engine. WW was alarmed to find it smoking, but that turned out to be oil and gunk that had ended up on the outside because it does. It burned off shortly. The water leak persisted, source as yet unknown, but it was going into the bilge which was where it should go if we had to have it.

It was very windy as we headed off. On our way to Jolly, going before the wind, we’d managed over 6 knots. Coming down the west coast, with a 17-20 knot wind coming off the island, we managed about 4.5 knots. Then we turned the corner at Pelican Island. Let me show you…

I really hope you can see this. Up on the left hand side is a number 1 and an arrow; that is Jolly Harbour. In the left hand bit at the bottom is a 2 and an arrow; that is Goat Head Channel which starts after you turn the corner at Pelican Island. On the right at the bottom is an arrow marked 3; that is English Harbour. The dotted line connects the two and is, more or less, the course we sailed. We rounded Pelican Island and came into Goat Head Channel which runs between the island and the extremely nasty Sandy Reef (also visible on the map).

Goat Head Channel also exists in the real world and looks like this:

The sort of dark coloured dome is Goat Head, beyond it is Curtain Point with a white building on it and the big headland at the end of the channel is Old Road Bluff. Because of the reef (not visible in the photo...sorry), we were protected from the seas, but the points and bluffs and whatnots could not really shelter us from the wind.

This is what happened when we turned the corner:

That's 29.6 knots--oh what the heck, let's call it 30--on the nose (please notice the little outline of a boat with its nose pointing directly into the wind).

At a speed sometimes topping 3 knots, we crept along the south coast to English Harbour. To add to the general frolicsome pleasure, once we rounded Old Road Bluff, the next bit of protection from the seas was Africa. This is generally considered too far to be of much use, so we did our plod through a large and urk-inducing easterly swell; WW estimates it at 9 feet.

We are back and safe. WW has sorted the water leak but now transmission fluid is oozing from somewhere and we may need to haul out to have that dealt with. Later. Much later.

It took us a number of anchoring attempts to find a spot, but we feel comfortable and secure, tucked back in amongst our friends. The seas and winds are dropping, we are going to celebrate a friend's birthday (we rescued him today when his mooring parted...he is very grateful), and all's right with the world.

For now.