The Voyage of Spectacle

By Christmas morning, we were a mere 30 miles from the Sandbore Channel entrance to Provo.  It had been a very long and exhausting 36 hours, but spirits were up because we clearly were to be within towing distance during daylight hours.  The wind was even cooperating a little bit, backing to ENE to allow us to sail a bit more directly.

Erik sat at the wheel, and Melissa scoured whatever source material we had, looking for potential contacts in Provo who could help us arrange a tow.  After all, this is all we needed – a simple tow, just like if your car had a dead battery or a flat tire.

I phoned my mother back after about 90 minutes.  She reported that she had been completely unable to reach anyone in Turks & Caicos.  She had called all four marinas at least five times each.  She had tried TACRA (the Turks and Caicos Rescue Association).  We had her call diesel mechanics, restaurants, just about anyone with a listed telephone number in our Turks & Caicos Cruising Guide.  Nothing.  Nada.  Not one person answered the phone.

I suppose this stands to reason.  After all, it was Christmas morning.

So, she tried the cops.  Nothing.

She tried the hospital.  Nothing.

OK, I realize it is Christmas, but no emergency services?

Meanwhile, the sailing conditions continued to improve.  We were making fantastic headway, right on course for the channel entrance.

I made another call to my mother.  Still no luck.  By now, I was feeling pretty guilty for having not only failed to get Erik home in time for Christmas but then monopolizing Christmas morning by requiring dozens of frantic calls to Turks & Caicos.

By about one o’clock, we were 15 miles from the channel entrance.  I pulled out the sat phone to call my mom, and I noticed that the LCD display, although lit up, wasn’t displaying any text.  You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.  Now the sat phone is on the fritz?

Fortunately, the phone still worked.  I reached my mom, who said she’d gotten a number for a “Mr. Lowe” who “worked with the Marine Police” and “they apparently do the towing.”  She must have just gotten the number, because she hadn’t yet called him.

Ultimately, this information proved correct.  As I came to learn, Mr. Lowe indeed worked with the Marine Police and they indeed do the towing.  She gave me the number and I called Mr. Lowe.

“Hello?” said a very groggy voice on the other end of the line.  I apparently had awakened Mr. Lowe from a deep slumber.

“Is this Mr. Lowe?”

“Yes. Who’s this?”

“My name is Andrew Heger.  I am the captain of a sailing vessel called Spectacle that is approaching the entrance to Sandbore Channel.  We have no engine and no electricity and need a tow.”

“How did you get this number?” asked a still groggy and highly incredulous Mr. Lowe.

“I got it from my mother.”  I answered, truthfully.  “Listen, we really need a tow.  We’ll be at the Sandbore Channel entrance at 4:00.  Can you come get us?”

Another 2-3 minutes of disjointed conversation ensued.  It wasn’t that I couldn’t understand his accent, and it wasn’t that he couldn’t understand mine.  He was still half-asleep and, having eventually met this gentleman, I can say that he’s decidedly not the sharpest knife in the drawer.  But, through the confusion, I was able to secure a firm commitment from Mr. Lowe to come meet as at a particular set of GPS coordinates at 4:00 p.m. and tow us in.

Fantastic!  Problem solved!  Minor rejoicing ensued, along with discussion of Christmas dinner ashore, etc.  We called my mom, who seemed relieved, and we set about getting ourselves the 15 miles we had left to sail.  Thankfully, the wind kept cooperating, Erik did a great job driving the boat, and we were within 4 miles by 3:00.  I placed another call to Mr. Lowe, who confirmed the coordinates and said they’d be there to tow us. 

We pulled up to the coordinates right at 3:50 p.m. – even ten minutes to spare!  Out came the binoculars, and we searched the horizon for signs of a boat. 

4:10. 

4:20.

4:30.

Nothing.

I called Mr. Lowe back. “We’re right here at the coordinates waiting for you,” I said.

Pause.

Sighing.

With audible discomfort in his voice, Mr. Lowe said, “Um, yeah … uh … we’re not coming.”

“What do you mean you’re not coming?  We talked three hours ago and you said you were coming, and we talked 30 minutes ago and you said you were coming. You’re not coming?!?!?!”

“Um … yeah … uhhhh … something has come up.”  You could almost hear his wife in the background saying, “You’re not going out there on Christmas.”

“Why don’t you just motor over to West Caicos, drop an anchor, and we’ll come and get you in the morning?” he offered.

“Have you been listening to me?  WE DON’T HAVE A MOTOR.  If we had one, we wouldn’t be calling you.  We don’t have electricity either, so there’s no electric windlass – dropping anchor is going to be pretty tricky.  We also don’t have a chart of West Caicos or a depth sounder.”

Silence.

Pause.

“Something has come up.”

“You are really not coming?!?!”

“We’re really not coming. Why don’t you go anchor behind West Caicos?”

“By the time we get to West Caicos, it’ll be dark.  I’m not going over to West Caicos.”

Then the line went dead.  I called my mother, “Well, apparently Mr. Lowe isn’t coming.”

“What?”

“Yep, he’s not coming.  I don’t really know what to …”

The line went dead again.  The sat phone powered down.  We were out of battery.  And, without a radio, we had no way to communicate. 

For the second time on the trip, I felt pretty crestfallen.  Just like with the engine, everything seemed solved and then the rug was pulled out from under us.  Having run on the adrenaline provided by a promised pickup, we all just sort of collapsed. 

At this point, we had hove to (heaved to? hoven to?) in order to (mostly) stop the boat to wait for the pickup.  This is when I committed Schoolboy Error #4.

Schoolboy Error #4: Your in-boom furling system doesn’t work when you are hove to.

Non-sailors won’t understand this, and many sailors who have never used in-boom furling won’t understand this either.  To put it simply, our in-boom furling system, which is more than a little bit precious and finicky but is an absolute dream when working well, requires you to be in a particular position to the wind, a position in which the boat really isn’t moving: in irons.  We had the boat in the one other position in which it really isn’t moving: hove to.  There is one very big difference between these.  In irons, there’s no wind in the mainsail.  Hove to, there’s plenty of wind in it.  In my frazzled state, I mistook our sitting still for a good time to furl up the main.  Nice one, Einstein.  I ended up dislodging one batten, breaking another one entirely and getting the bolt-rope of the mainsail caught up in the slide. 

So, add that to the list of frustrations.  I was hoping to reduce the mainsail to the point that the effects of the wind and current (both pushing us out to sea from the channel entrance) would be minimized and we’d be able to better hold our position at the channel entrance until the morning.  We managed to sort out the battens, but now it was dark (and blowing a bit), and I really didn’t want to crawl around on the foredeck any more trying to fix this debacle. 

After an hour or so, we got our wits about us, relaxed (the motion of the boat while hove to is quite pleasant by comparison to what we had been through the previous four days), and decided to celebrate Christmas.  We sang some carols and opened some gifts.  We offered Erik an all-expenses-paid return trip to Spectacle somewhere with conditions that are more agreeable and downwind sailing.  Erik gave us a very humorous fish-billy.  Melissa got some little gold turtle earrings from me.  All of this took about an hour and ten minutes.

Before we sat down to Christmas, we had taken our position using the hand-held GPS.  Afterwards, we took our position again.  I realize that what I’m about to say sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone, but it’s the honest truth.  During the 70 minutes we had been enjoying Christmas while hove to, the boat had drifted 5.8 miles to the west – directly away from the channel entrance.  This was not a clerical error.  It’s hard to explain, but it definitely happened.  To be sure, there was a lot of unfavorable wind and a lot of unfavorable current, but 5.8 miles is a long way to drift when you’re trying to sit still.

About this time, another sailboat was passing by, the first boat of any kind that we had seen in almost 36 hours.  We managed to hail him and, through a series of convoluted shouts and signals, indicate that we were in need of a tow.  He said that he was heading into Provo and would alert the authorities.  By the time we were done talking with him, we were roughly eight miles west of the rendezvous point, well on our way toward Little Inagua Island.

We had hoped to sort of sit out the night waiting for a morning tow, but it was clear that we need to keep sailing just to keep our position, so off we went.

We couldn’t just turn east and sail back to the channel entrance.  We needed to beat back against the easterly wind.  We set out on a NE course, with the intention of eventually tacking to a SSE course to get us back to the channel entrance.  We sailed the NE course for a few hours and then hove to again, intending to sail SSE back to the channel entrance at first light.

After a little more push from the wind and current, this meant that, at first light, we were about 15 miles NNW of the channel entrance.  We proceeded to set a course for the channel entrance.  Almost immediately, the wind shifted drastically … I don’t kid … to SSE – exactly where we were trying to go.  So, again, we were forced to beat upwind.

About 10:00 a.m., a low-flying plane spotted us.  It zoomed overhead, banked around, buzzed us again, banked around, and buzzed us a half-dozen more times.  There was never any doubt that this plane was out looking for us.

“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.

Unfortunately, there was a problem.  In the course of the discussions my mother had with the authorities, she told them that we were a white boat with blue trim (which is correct).  The TCI authorities managed to write this down as a “blue boat.”  They decided that we weren’t the boat they were looking for.  You’d think the flares would get the message across.  I guess not.

So, as we slogged away into the wind, we were confident that, at any minute, a boat would appear to tow us in.  No such luck.  Because of the wind shift, by the time we reached the same coordinates as the previous day, it was about 2:00.  We were sitting less than five miles from one of the two major channel entrances to Provo and we hadn’t seen a boat all day.

At this point, I’d had enough.  We still had plenty of daylight, we had a decent chart of the channel, and our sails worked (I’d fixed the snag).  Let’s just get into this channel, dump the anchor (maybe two) and wait in a conspicuous location, I thought.

“Let’s just go in and dump the anchor in the channel,” I said.

Erik and Melissa appeared to agree.

We began sailing in.  About three miles from the channel entrance, the wind completely died.  After a few minutes, the boat was moving less than 0.1 knots.

You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought.

We just sat there watching the sun slowly sink down to the horizon.  It looked pretty unlikely that we’d be getting in on the 26th.

For the exciting conclusion to “Tale of the Twin Fiascoes,” read on to Episode V here.