Episode I – Fiasco Autopilot

“If you had told me two years ago that I’d have a tranny-adjacent, Bahamian auto-pilot repair man who shares my name climbing around on my bed (that’s where the access to the autopilot is), I’d have suggested you get your head examined.”

At long last, the long-promised first installment of “Tale of the Twin Fiascoes” has arrived.  Given its length, we’ve posted it on a separate page, which you can find here.

Episode II — Big Wind = Not Fun

At one point, Erik was wretching over the starboard cockpit combing, and I was puking away over the port cockpit combing.  Only Melissa emerged unscathed.

Again on its own separate page, you can find Episode II of “Tale of the Twin Fiascoes” here. 

Episode III — The Thrill of Victory and the Agony of Defeat

So as we bashed upwind through the night, I thought about the apologetic phone call I was going to have to make to my mother in which I was not only going to have to explain that Erik wouldn’t be home for Christmas but that the reason for this was that the boat had no engine and was losing power.  I’m sure just having two of her sons out sailing on the open ocean already had my mother replaying  Ordinary People in her head.

For the latest in our continuing saga, check out Episode III here.

Episode IV — Christmas Really Is a Holiday in the Turks and Caicos

“Get the flares,” I told Erik.  We proceeded to shoot two flares at this plane.  We waved our arms in a distress motion.  We couldn’t possibly have been more obvious in trying to convey that we were indeed the boat for whom they were looking.

Why are we shooting flares at planes?  Read on to Episode IV, which you can find here.  

Episode V — A Retrieval With “Flare”

Of course, after firing off 5 cannon flares, 4 pistol flares, all sorts of smoke flares, self-firing parachute flares, an assortment of handheld flares, and plenty of duds — well, after all that you begin to feel like you know what you are doing.  You also get trigger happy.

For the exciting conclusion of “Tale of the Twin Fiascoes”, click here.

Happy New Year from Providenciales, Turks & Caicos!  We spent our New Year’s Eve with our new friends Selena and Dan here at the nearly excellent Coyaba restaurant and the quite chi-chi Grace Bay Club.  Selena and Dan were down here honeymooning at the Grace Bay Club from their home in St. Louis, where Selena is a law student at an excellent law school and Dan is a sales rep for an excellent golf company.  We actually spent three very fun evenings with them, and I expect they’ll be our friends long after we leave the boat.

We also spent New Years Day with Selena and Dan, this time sitting on our behinds at what passes for a sports bar here in Provo (and, by the way, it passes pretty well, all things considered) and watching the Trojans shred the heretofore ballyhooed Wolverines, followed by the eye-popping Boise St./Oklahoma Fiesta Bowl.  During the games, I realized that this was the first Trojan Rose Bowl I have missed attending in exactly 30 years – and I’m only 34 years old.

As some of you likely have heard, our passage down here from Marsh Harbour was not exactly “smooth.”  I am working on a comprehensive integrated write-up of “Fiasco Autopilot” and “Fiasco-Plus Turks & Caicos Passage.”  The passage really was a borderline Calamity, except that (a) it was never dangerous, and (b) it always was at least somewhat funny.  I promise you a full (which will mean VERY lengthy but quite entertaining) account in the next couple of days. 

For now, we are enjoying Provo, except for the third-world marina in which we are staying.  The marina is a very bumpy 20-minute drive down a dirt road from anything resembling civilization.  It has no hot water (so I haven’t shaved since Marsh Harbour) and is generally filthy, so we’re trying to finish our boat projects by around 2:00 p.m. each day before having a (cold) shower, getting dressed and heading into town (in our sweet rental Geo Tracker that is about to fall apart). 

We expect to be here for about another week before pushing off for St. Thomas.  It is unfortunate to be behind schedule already, but if there is one thing that the trip down here taught me, it is that you simply can’t use a “land” schedule for a “sea” trip.  We may have to skip an island or two that we’d previously planned on visiting, but that’s just how it goes.

On Sunday, December 17, the three of us ventured out to Great Guana Cay for a visit to the infamous Nippers and its weekly Sunday pig roast. 

As beach bars go, it’s pretty tough to top Nippers, and getting there is half the fun.  After the ferry (about 30 minutes), one follows the signs on a Candyland-like adventure — turn left at the fence, right at the graveyard (complete with picture of the grim reaper on the gate), left at the rainbow-colored bulldozer, steer clear of the poisonwood tree, up and over the hill and you are there (we managed to avoid Molasses Swamp). 

Nippers itself is a multicolored, multi-tiered, cacophony of wood planking and American tourist jackassery.  It appeared to be South Carolina day at Nippers, as evidenced by the number of sun-burned necks protruding from Clemson and University of South Carolina tanktops. 

The pig roast was pretty good (alas, the pork was already carved and in trays, so there were no porcine rotisserie displays), the “Nipper” (a frozen rum punch concoction) proved excellent, the weather was perfect, and a good time was had by all.  We took a long walk along the beautiful beach, returned for a final round, and got ready to head home.

Just as we were closing out, Erik attracted … well, let’s just call it what was … a gay stalker.  This guy tried everything – herd separation tactics, inviting the three of us to dinner, etc.  He even invited us to stay at his apartment.  This dude was PERSISTENT.  He was accompanied by one of his co-workers (reasonably intoxicated, not particularly annoying) and a fall-down, Stacey Toran-drunk Australian (there’s always at least one wherever you go) who was some sort of boat captain/crewman.

The six of us sauntered back to the ferry dock (past the graveyard, the rainbow bulldozer…) to await the last ferry of the day.  Shortly thereafter, a very distraught woman holding a very small plastic bag arrived at the dock.  As we came to learn, she was holding her friend’s fingers.  We were told that the friend was building her own house on Great Guana and was the victim of a table-saw accident. Apparently, the owner of the fingers had already been transported to Marsh Harbour, en route to Nassau, inexplicably sans digits. 

Fall-down drunk Australian sprang into action.  Apparently, he’d come over to Great Guana in some sort of small powerboat that was affiliated with the bigger boat of which he was captain/crewman.  He dashed (ok, staggered) off to retrieve his powerboat so that the fingers could be sped to Marsh Harbour. Gay Stalker, apparently in a hurry to get home, suggested that we all hop on the boat.  Needless to say, we declined – we’re not getting on a speedboat, at night, in a very tricky harbor, with a fall-down drunk Aussie driver and the gay stalker co-pilot.  Equally needless to say, the gay stalker then changed his mind and decided to wait with us, and off roared the speedboat at triple the recommended speed. Yikes.  All I could think is that it takes a true friend to hop on drunken Aussie’s speedboat to make a nighttime delivery of your severed fingers.  More Pictures 

Andy’s middle brother, Erik, arrived Tuesday, December 12, and we are so excited to have our very first Spectacle visitor!

On Thursday, after a leisurely breakfast, the three of us walked east from the Conch Inn toward the far point of Marsh Harbour, past the ferry dock and out nearly to the end of the point, past some beautiful homes and beaches.  Then we hopped on the 12:15 ferry to Hope Town, Elbow Cay (about 4 miles away and a 20 minute ride).  Six miles long and one quarter mile wide, Elbow Cay is surrounded by a huge barrier reef and has a protected natural harbor.  Hope Town is very charming with clapboard houses, white picket fences, petunia-adorned window boxes, and small winding pedestrian streets.  We wandered aimlessly for awhile, had a mediocre-bordering-on-bad lunch, and ended up at the famous lighthouse (that’s right … To The Lighthouse with Ms. Woolf).  Built in the 1830’s, the Hopetown lighthouse alleviated the treachery of navigating through the many shoals and reefs in the area, not to mention providing a fabulous view of the town and surrounding cays.  More Pictures 

After about a week, we are starting to get settled into our new boat life but, alas, we have yet to sail anywhere!  It’s a good idea to acclimate to marina life considering only about one-third of our trip is at sea anyhow.

The Abacos are located in the northeast of the Bahamian archipelago (175 miles east of Palm Beach) in a 140-mile curve around the east of Grand Bahama.  The population of the Abacos is 11,000, and Marsh Harbour (located on a north-facing cove about midway down Great Abaco) is the third largest town in the Bahamas (after Freeport and Nassau).  A popular area with sailors, the Abacos are home to about half of the 60 marinas in the Bahamas.  Many of the cays in the surrounding area were settled by Loyalists after the American Revolution.  In 1973, the Abacos launched a fairly strong, but ultimately unsuccessful, movement to remain part of Britain rather than declaring independence with the rest of the Bahamas.

Marsh Harbour has been an excellent place to begin our journey.  The town is just big enough to have a lot of resources and services.  For instance, the eight restaurants within walking or short cab ride distance have been consistently pretty good (Andy begins the full-fledged restaurant reviews shortly).  We visited two different grocery stores to investigate the eventual boat provisioning opportunities, and we were pleasantly surprised both in availability and affordability.  One of the two stores is a Costco-type warehouse situation where we purchased gobs of non-perishables, soda, and paper products for about $350.  And I’m talking gobs of stuff … an avalanche of pancake mix, a dozen batches of brownie mix, granola bars, a dozen boxes of mac n’ cheese, etc.  The other store is a proper grocery store with produce, butcher, deli, bakery, the whole shebang – it could be a Ralphs in Pasadena.  The decent restaurants and proper grocery stores have been quite comforting for me since I can be quite finicky about food (for those who know me well, stop snickering).

The Conch Inn Marina has been a welcome first stop as well.  The facilities are clean and well managed … also a comforting revelation for me … and of course, there’s the spectacular view.

After several days of boat projects and just getting settled, we decided to have a tourist day.  We are in the Bahamas after all and we had yet to see any good beach time. 

Treasure Cay is 30 miles northeast of Marsh Harbour on a peninsula of Great Abaco (not its own island as Cay would suggest).  Unfortunately, the scooter rental establishment denied us scooter rentals due to our lack of a motorcycle driver’s certification, so we opted for a compact car for the day.  As if the late 80’s Chevy Citation wasn’t scary enough, Bahamians drive on the left, and rather crazily and lawlessly to boot.  However, most cars are not outfitted to be drive-on-the-left cars … that is to say, the steering wheel is also on the left which makes for an incredibly difficult driving situation (i.e. imagine trying to pass the slower car in front of you on a two lane road, just checking for oncoming traffic is harrowing!).  Luckily for me (the designated driver in foreign lands), a stark reminder was plastered in full view.  It came in handy several times when the compulsion to veer right was strong!

Also luckily for me, the drive itself to Treasure Cay was terribly uninteresting (and would’ve been awful on motor scooters by the way) so I was left to concentrate on staying on the left.  We passed a huge gulag-looking school, a burning landfill that looked like it belonged somewhere like Mogadishu, and a spooky cemetary with its equally spooky adjacent shanty town.  And then voila … the paradise called Treasure Cay!

 After clearing the guard gate, we drove to the top of the peninsula through small streets lined with beautiful homes.  We parked and headed out to a beach so picturesque, it was almost corny … crystal blue water, powder white sand, not a soul besides us, late afternoon sun and billowy clouds floating by in a cool ocean breeze … okay, that’s sufficiently corny now!  More Pictures

After several long weeks of hard work and trying to anticipate every conceivable contingency, we started our adventure off with a bang … a 1 hour 10 minutes flight on an eight seater Cessna prop plane!  The good folks at Yellow Air Taxi took really good care of us to include accomodating our whopping 180 pounds of luggage! 

Andy had taken Yellow Air Taxi from Great Abaco back to Ft. Lauderdale once already, but I didn’t really know what to expect.  The cockpit is several feet away allowing passengers (particularly those nervous about flying) to fixate on the various known and unknown gauges and blinking lights.  I found myself concentrating rather heavily on fuel, oil pressure, and radar … all conveniently clustered together!  After awhile however, I was able to relax and take in some truly beautiful scenery.  More Pictures 

We’re settling in at the Conch Inn Marina in Marsh Harbour. But for a little bit of grime, Spectacle is just as I left her. This is mostly — but not entirely — good news.

You see, there is an essential boat system that has been in need of fixing since late October.  This repair has now developed into a “Setback.”  Much like a cyclonic tropical storm, it could well develop into a Bummer on its way to becoming a full-blown Fiasco.  To be honest, it is sort of heading that way.

And much like a cyclonic tropical storm, it has now reached the point where it has earned a name.  For now, we’ll call this “Setback Autopilot” (equivalent to a tropical storm).  Previously, it was merely a Situation, much like, say, a tropical depression.  As the misfortune mounts, we’ll perhaps be renaming it “Bummer Autopilot” (equivalent to a category 1 hurricane), “Fiasco Autopilot” (category 2), “Calamity Autopilot” (category 3, the level where there is no longer any residual humor or whimsy in the situation), “Cataclysm Autopilot” (category 4) or “Apocalypse Autopilot” (category 5).

By the way, we fully plan on revisiting the newly-devised “Spectacle-Simpson” scale when future misfortune (which is, to some degree, inevitable) occurs.  Hopefully, we’ll keep all of it at “Fiasco” or below.  Fortunately, this one is highly unlikely to get worse than that, although a full-blown Fiasco still brings 80-100 mph teeth gnashing and 12-15 feet of garment rending.

There is quite a story behind all this, but I’m going to save that until we know how it ends.  For now, the good news is that the autopilot component in question is, as of yesterday, off the boat, in a box, and on its way to Merrimack, New Hampshire, and the service department of its manufacturer, a certain prominent defense contractor whose marine instruments are of notoriously inferior quality to those of its major competitors but whose service department is supposed to be outstanding (perhaps because they get plenty of practice).  It’s not really an exaggeration to say that every single semi-important thing that has broken on the boat since we bought it has been manufactured by these folks. Let me put this another way… I fear for our troops.

Obviously, this is a fluid situation (*rim shot* — “I’ll be at the Comedy Store all next week”).  Hopefully, we’ll know a lot more on Monday or Tuesday.  No, let me rephrase that.  We had better know a lot more on Monday or Tuesday.

As I was sitting at the Rose Bowl on Saturday wondering when the USC offensive line was planning on arriving, it occurred to me that it was the day of last year’s much more enjoyable USC/UCLA game when we finally let the proverbial cat out of the bag concerning our intention to take the trip.I thought about this again today as we were talking with some nice people from Las Vegas who just returned from a charter trip (Conch Inn has a very large “The Moorings” charter dock connected to it).

One of the women mentioned that, many years ago, she and her husband had tossed around the idea of a long voyage but had never done it.  She asked us, “So what was the thought process that got you actually to go?”

I think she was expecting a complex, involved answer.  But Melissa and I answered simultaneously, “Telling people we were going to do it and then picking a date.”

“Yeah,” another member of the group chuckled. “Then you’re committed.”

Exactly. 

Once we told people the “what” and the “when,” our planning took on a different level of seriousness. Last year, at my brother’s tailgate party, we told Andy Esbenshade we were going leave to sail around the world on December 6, 2006.  It got easier from there.

I’m sitting, with girly rum drink in hand (yes, it has an umbrella), at the highly recommended Curly Tails restaurant and bar here at the Conch Inn Marina, which will be Spectacle’s home until we leave on the great adventure on (or about) December 12.  First stop … St. Thomas.

Carey Meredith (from my mother’s clinic) joined Tom and me for the trip over here from Ft. Lauderdale (remember, Melissa is at Bikram yoga teacher training back in L.A.).  We had only the loosest of schedules, intending ultimately to end up in Port Lucaya, Grand Bahama.  As you might surmise, we ended up elsewhere.

Because of the long-held superstition that a voyage begun on a Friday is sure to be an unfortunate one, we planned for a 12:01 a.m. Saturday departure from Ft. Lauderdale.  Indeed, we moved the boat down the New River from our dock just before dark and parked at the Lauderdale Marina fuel dock around 7:00 p.m. before having an extended dinner at the decidedly so-so 15th Street Fisheries restaurant as we awaited the stroke of midnight.

Felicitously, our friend John Lewis Borovicka III (father of my close friend JLB IV) happened to be arriving in South Florida that evening for a business conference.  Of course, his flight was delayed, but John’s a trooper, and at 12:20 a.m. he arrived at Lauderdale Marina.

After a somewhat speedy tour of the boat, it was time to re-christen Spectacle.  Earlier in the week, the new vinyl names were put on the boat (out with Declaire, in with Spectacle), and it seemed totally inappropriate to merely sail off without some sort of ceremony.

Declaire’s fine service to the Gibsons was duly acknowledged.  There were plenty of alcoholic offerings to Neptune, the breaking of a Champagne bottle over the bow and toasts aplenty.  Even Sherman the Merman got involved.

To be honest, we thought that John’s late arrival might keep us from making a daylight arrival at Port Lucaya, so we were a little bit antsy to get off the dock.  We ended up hurriedly departing at 12:56 a.m. so we could make the 1:00 opening of the 17th St. Causeway bridge.  Spectacle was leaving the United States for … well, quite some time.  It was sort of emotional.

The allegedly ferocious Gulf Stream was a kitten.  The swell never got above 2 feet.  Turns out that we should have stayed and chatted longer with John — we ended up arriving at the channel entrance in Port Lucaya at 2:10 p.m. Saturday – precisely low tide.  The controlling depth (i.e. low tide depth) for the channel is 6 feet.  Our boat draws exactly 6 feet (or maybe 6-1 or 6-2, depending how full it is).  Needless to say, this is way too close to call, so we had to wait for the tide to start coming up.  We puttered around in circles and, at about 3:50 EDT, we started down the channel (at a very cautious 1.5 knots), expecting it to be 7-8 feet.  It was more like 10-11.  Apparently, we could have come in earlier and watched the UCLA / Notre Dame game, or at least the second half.  Long story short, I ended up just seeing enough to be tantalized and, then, ultimately disappointed.  Have I mentioned that if Notre Dame were playing al Qaeda, I might actually be “with the terrorists?”   When was the last time I was actually disappointed in a Bruins loss?

To say that Bahamian customs practices are a joke is almost an understatement.  We came down the channel — called the marina, called customs, docked the boat.  I spent 30 minutes trying to find the marina office (which includes the customs office) and is nowhere near where we docked the boat.  Eventually I found it, but next door to the marina office was the sports bar.  I ducked my head in — 14-13 UCLA with 9 minutes left.  I’m thrilled.

I made my first stop at immigration/customs.  It’s clear I needed to walk back to the boat to get some things (boat papers, home addresses from crew).  Yadda, yadda, yadda, I ended up walking into the aforementioned sports bar (with my papers) just as Jeff Smzqvcxrtmwdzija is celebrating in the end zone.  To be honest, I was crushed.  I have never before rooted for UCLA with all my heart and soul.

Oh, yeah, I stopped for a shower and change of clothes (in between visits to customs) along the way.  I also could have offloaded 1/2 ton of coke if that’s what I had been carrying.  Tom and Carey’s passports made it to the Customs office, but Tom and Carey never did.  Did customs ever come down to visit the boat?  Of course not.  It’s definitely not the US/Mexico border.

We set out from Port Lucaya at around 12:00 noon on Sunday, thinking we’d be going to “visit” Great Abaco, motoring once again into a direct headwind (the prevailing easterlies that Ted, Tom and me should have had when we sailed down to Key West).  We turned the corner at the southern tip of Great Abaco around 6:00 a.m.  I expected to be able to finally put the sails up (after nearly 36 hours underway since Lauderdale) as we worked our way northward up the east coast of the island.  Nope.  As if on cue, the wind backed around to — you guessed it — the north.  The sails did not go up at all.

After once again being forced to kill a little time waiting for the tides, we made it into Marsh Harbour around 4:00 p.m.  The channel here is about 5 feet deep at low tide and 9 feet at high tide.  To remind you, the boat draws 6 feet, so this is, er, “less than ideal.”  Indeed, we had a very low speed (1 mph) and soft grounding on the way in.  Apparently, this channel is as advertised.  This was far less dramatic than it sounds and lasted all of 20 seconds.  But, technically, we went aground.

Later that afternoon, we got word that a cold front was moving in from the north.  As a practical matter, this meant very high winds (around 30 knots) out of the north.  We woke up Tuesday morning intending to sail, but there is absolutely no way we could go out in those conditions.  I have no problem sailing this boat in 12 foot waves (which is what they were) and 30 knots of wind out in the open ocean.  What I have a problem with is doing that in 7 feet of water with obstacles everywhere.  Something tells me the troughs of those waves are a lot less than 9 feet off the bottom, even at high tide.  Best not to find out.  And, oh yeah, we don’t have an autopilot right now. It’s just not working at all.  Fortunately, the engine (which had been giving us trouble) seems to be 100% ok for now.

So, rather than sail around Abaco and back to Port Lucaya, we’ve decided to park Spectacle here until we leave.  We’ve had to rearrange some flights, pay some money, etc., but there really was no good reason to head back there.  Marsh Harbour is actually on the way to St. Thomas (Melissa’s and my first destination).  And double-handing the boat the wrong direction overnight in nasty conditions doesn’t sound like much of a party, especially without an autopilot.  The only downside is that Marsh Harbour doesn’t quite have the hurricane protection that Lucaya does.  I guess we’ll have to keep our fingers crossed that this already light hurricane season has begun to calm down for good.