July 21 - July 27

The Bahamas - Part II

"The Adventure Only Begins When Something Goes Wrong" - Bob Bitchin

After spending almost a week in Fort Lauderdale repairing the refrigeration, we were ready to return back to the Bahamas. On Tuesday, July 24, we slipped the lines at 4:00 am to cross the Straits of Florida towards Grand Bahama Island. The early start was to catch high tide at Indian Cay, near West End Point. The channel to enter into the Little Bahama Bank is very shallow, so we needed to arrive there about 2:00 pm. Arriving there on time, we crossed into the Bank with no problems. With the very clear water in the Bahamas, it looked like we were in about 2 to3 feet of depth all the time, but the sounder verified that we had at least a foot under the keel. Nonetheless, it felt like sailing in a swimming pool rather than in an ocean.

Because of the lack of wind, we had motored all the way from Florida and once on the Bank, the wind still didn't show up. I checked the oil in the diesel and I was concerned to find that the engine was about 2 quarts low. Everything seemed fine, however, so I added oil and we kept going towards Mangrove Cay, about 25 miles away and our destination for that evening's anchorage. Mangrove Cay is deserted, but is is a popular stopping place for cruisers who are traveling to the Abacos. When we got there, we found a spot and I went forward to drop the anchor. Returning back to the cockpit, I was horrified to see a large oil slick along the starboard side of the boat. In a moment, I figured that the oil was coming out through the engine exhaust and I shouted to Terri to turn off the engine.

For those of you who are not mechanically inclined, this much oil coming out of your engine's exhaust is Very Bad! I found out the oil cooler had sprung a leak, which was where the oil was coming from. I was able to re-plumb the system to run the oil through the transmission cooler, but the real problem now was water in the engine's oil system. Normally, you can get most of the water out by changing the oil several times, but that requires a lot of fresh oil. The 3 gallons of oil that we had on the boat wasn't going to cut it.

The next day, we realized the only solution was to go back to the West End. There was a marina there with a fuel dock, and we thought it was possible that they may sell oil. So we got into the dinghy for the 25 mile trip to go back to the West End that we had come through the previous day (we were out of radio range to call them). We knew it was a long trip, so we also added an extra full gas can, just in case. The water was like glass and we flew through the water, getting to the marina in about an hour and a half.

When we walked into the fuel dock's office and inquired about diesel oil, the man pulled one gallon of oil from underneath the counter. We explained that we needed much more than one gallon since we had had a problem with the motor on our sail boat.

"So where is your boat?", he asked.
"The boat is at Mangrove Cay.", we replied.
"So how did you get here?", he asked.
"On our dinghy, the one at the dock here."

The man's eyes opened as wide is they could while his jaw dropped almost on the counter. "You came from Mangrove Cay on that dinghy?!? You must be crazy!". They finally found 9 gallons of oil for us to buy, but that was after everyone working in the marina came through the office to laugh at the crazy gringos and their little dinghy from Mangrove Cay.

Of course, there was no thought of them having a replacement oil cooler for a 30 year old Perkins engine. Luckily, Terri's mom was flying into Marsh Harbor in 2 days, so I was hoping to have her pick the part up in Houston before she left. After an hour of phoning back and forth, we were done and the part was coming with her mom. In the meantime, it has started rain very hard.

The beautiful water-as-glass from the morning had been replaced with 2-3 foot chop. The trip back has horrible and it took almost 2.5 hours before we finally got back to the boat. When we approached the anchorage, we saw an Irwin 54 (a newer version of Kiva) anchored near us. We would have loved to have stopped to chat but we very wet, our butts were sore from the 2.5 hour bucking bronco ride, and I had about four to five hours of work ahead of us to do five oil changes.

Finally, around 10 pm and five oil changes, the oil came out fairly clear. We were exhausted from the day and we needed to get up early for two reasons. First, we had lost a whole day that should have gotten us closer to Marsh Harbor, so now the distance was quite far. Second, since I was using the transmission cooler for the oil cooler, I had no transmission cooler so we would need to keep our speed down to avoid overheating the transmission.

We left the next morning at day break. About an hour after we left, we got a call from the Irwin 54 (Major Attraction) that we hadn't talked to the previous day. They had seen us coming back from the direction of West End and were wondering where we came from?? They couldn't image that we were actually coming from there on a dinghy. Terri explained what had happened the previous day and in fact we did go back and forth with the dinghy to West End. She also told them that we needed an early start to get to Marsh Harbor by Friday. Since Major Attraction had taken several days to do that same distance from Marsh Harbor, all he could say was "Are you nuts?".

Well, I was beginning to think so too.

Kiva is dwarfed by the enormous megayachts at the Las Olas City Marina in Fort Lauderdale.

It rained a "little" while we were unpacking the provisions from the taxi.

The Sea of Glass (aka Little Bahama Bank)

Sailing on the Sea of Abacos