Strange thing that happened

[Seeking Solace]

I thought I'd share an interesting story of what happened as I sailed and motored down the East Coast of Florida.

It was late June this year and we were headed South. Yeah, I know it's the wrong time of year. We had a window to follow and were hell bent on getting those miles under us before the school year started back up in August. We were a pretty good ways offshore as we were avoiding a rocket launch off Cape Canaveral. There was little wind and it was around 2-3 in the morning. Usually at night I'm super alert because I'm watching for that object to suddenly appear out of nowhere. I also get the creeps sailing at night. I guess it's not being able to see where the waves are coming from and how big they actually are out there.

We'd been motoring for several hours when suddenly the lights on the instrument panel began to flicker. I backed the throttle down a little and they stabilized. I slowly added more power and they began to flicker again. Great!, I thought to myself the alternator is failing. We're just inside the Gulfstream, so it's a long way back to land and the potential of a parts store. I know there isn't a spare anywhere on the boat. I'm left with little choice. I back the throttle down again and again things stabilize.

Throughout the rest of the night into the early hours of dawn the lights would flicker on and off. Sometime around six in the morning the gauges all go dead, notta, just dead. I'm in full blown panic mode at this point. I go below and check the voltage on the batteries and they're fully charged. I pull out the screw gun and begin to pull the cockpit floor up so I can get to the connections on the back of the engine. I was fairly certain that the ground wire was loose, corroded, or broken. Dozens of screws later I have the door open and I climb down into the expanse under the cockpit. I grabbed the ground wire and tugged at it. It was tight. I tried to wiggle it and it didn't even budge. Again I go down the companionway and pull apart the aft berth and check the connections on the batteries. Everything was solid. I tried switching the batteries using the selector, no change.

Back up the stairs and down into the cockpit engine compartment again. I tugged on the ground again and checked all the connections to the back of the control panel and key. Everything looked good. I checked the horizon and looked at the chart and it dawned on me that we were in the Bermuda Triangle. I was stumped. Surely it must be the alternator that has failed. Not having a spare onboard was a gamble and it looked like I had lost. I turned the key and the engine did nothing. It didn't even turn over!

The wind was still nonexistent. I'm beginning to have a meltdown in the Atlantic Ocean and I'm worried that if I can't get this fixed before nightfall I may not have any nav lights or enough battery to use the radio. I'd installed a solar panel before we left and I was starting to do the math on if it was going to be enough. I'd never intended it to run everything on the boat. Again I climbed out of the engine compartment and down into the companionway to turn off everything that wasn't necessary. I stood there at the bottom of the stair and beside the staircase was an extension pole I'd only used to scrub on the boat. It had a plastic hook on it and so I took it back up to the cockpit with me to hook that ground wire for another try. I turned the key and held it while I struggled to reach the ground wire. I lost my balance and fell down into the engine compartment, still holding the key. As I grasped to steady myself from getting hurt my hand landed on the wire harness behind the engine.

Everything lit up like Christmas! I tugged on it and it came unplugged completely and everything went dark. I pushed it back on and tried to tighten the ring coupler, but the ring was broken. I ended up putting a couple wire ties on it to hold the connector together. I cranked the boat back up and didn't have any trouble with it for the rest of the trip.

Had I not lost my balance and fallen down the access panel, I wouldn't have found the problem. Why had that plastic coupling decided to break at that time? No rough seas for the week prior and very little motoring despite beating into a South wind. It was just it's time to break.

So stranger things have happened. It was a real eye opener that when you're out there it is going to be what it is going to be. You're not always going to be able to depend on the engine, the sails, the rudder. It's a risk that you take and there may come a time when you are just going to have to accept that this is where you are at that moment in time. We did have alternator troubles later on when we were on the West Coast of Florida a week or so later. The belt decided it was done. I tightened it a couple of times, but ultimately I ended up walking miles to a parts store in Ft. Meyers to buy a new one. I had to have some oil too, so it wasn't a wasted trip.

What weird things have happened to you while offshore?

[denverd0n]

As Jim Lovell said (and Tom Hanks repeated in the movie "Apollo 13")...

"You never know what events are going to transpire to get you home.”