Nothing Good Ever Happens at Night

Thursday, October 20th – We leave Kia Island around noon to make an overnight passage outside the Great Sea Reef to Fiji’s Yasawa Islands.  Winds are light which makes sailing frustrating, but this is quickly forgotten when the stillness is interrupted by the zing of the fishing reel and the cry of “Fish On!”  Flashing those amazing iridescent colors, a dorado or Mahi-mahi jumps at least 7 times.  What a beauty!  We were lucky that conditions were so calm, for it takes us 50 minutes to tire out the fish before we can land it.

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It is late afternoon before we have the fish cleaned and in the refrigerator.  By the time the boat is cleaned of fish guts and gore, both of us feel we are owed a swim call.  With winds and sea so calm, we turn off the engine and drift.  Swimming out in the middle of the deep, dark ocean has never been the First Mate’s favorite thing to do, but she must admit that it is really refreshing.  Relieved that no unsavory creatures have risen from the depths while she was in the water, The First Mate climbs onto our small rear step to complete her bathing.  “Bottle overboard!”  The Captain quickly turns on the engine and executes a 360° turn to retrieve one of the First Mate’s toiletry bottles. The Captain cannot believe he is doing this to save a stupid overboard bottle, but we have said that we needed to practice a man-over-board maneuver occasionally. Better to practice on a bottle than a real person!

Wind is so light that it is impossible to keep the sail from flopping.  The Captain even goes so far as to consider taking down the sails, but with winds forecast to be stronger, he decides to persevere.  We motor-sail as best we can, and our patience soon pays off.  Within an hour of sunset, winds are up to 7 kts, and we can turn off the engine.  An hour later, the wind is up to 12 to 15 kts, and we are able to make decent speed sailing downwind.  Just before midnight, the wind is up to 17 to 20 kts, and with the potential for further increase, we decide to put in a reef.  Thus, in the dark of night, a time we do not like to be doing this, we are out and up reefing the mainsail.  Good ole Mother Nature pulled a fast one on us!  Within a mere 6 hours after a dead-still sunset, we are barreling along with 20+ knots of wind.  This wasn’t shown on the GRIB charts, but then, as The First Mate has discovered, GRIB charts never tell the truth anyway.  The wind rises to 22 knots by the middle of the night but drops to a fairly steady 15 knots by the time the sun rises.

Friday, October 21st – We had spent the night sailing about 8nm outside the reef to avoid any depth issues, but as we began to approach Equsuikuro Passage, the sea gets shallower.  Our charts show hazards in the area but, as usual, provide very limited depth information.  With an easterly heading into the sun, visibility is poor.  We cross a spot where the bottom quickly rises by 60 feet and decide to creep cautiously forward under motor.  The Captain is back to doing his bow watch/chart check dance.  He’s up on the bow scanning the waters while she steers slowly ahead.  He runs down to the Nav Station to check the charts while she puts the engine in neutral to idle.   The constant vigilance is wearing on both of us.  A nasty reef in the middle of the passage has to be avoided.  An hour passes before we finally clear through the passage and can now turn north toward Sawa-i-lau Island.

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To our left in the distance is the village of Nabukeru.  It looks to be fairly large with a band of buildings running along a white sand beach.  We are eager to set about exploring, but we are tired and hungry.  One-night passages are always exhausting because one just doesn’t have time to get into the rhythm of a passage schedule.  One has only had about 4 – 5 hours of light sleep and should legitimately need a bit more.  Onboard Avante, we decide to have a late breakfast followed by a well-deserved nap.  Then we’ll explore.

Good decision.  In fact, a great decision!  The wind continues to build, and by late afternoon, it is blowing between 20 to 30 knots.  The First Mate thinks, “This is going to be one of those nights.”  She never sleeps well at anchor when it’s blowing 20+ knots out there.  The islands and reefs around us are looking less beautiful and much more menacing.  Those jagged rocks are definitely turning into monsters and dragons.  The Captain, however, has great faith in our new New Zealand-made Rocna anchor and the heavier chain he installed.  He knows, too, that it is well set, but for additional insurance, he lets out some extra scope.  The wind is howling in the rigging and the boat is bouncing around, but we are securely anchored and safe.  As afternoon goes into evening, snug on our boat, we get ready for a nice dinner, a bottle of wine, and a good night’s sleep.

Dinner finished, dishes done, and before heading to bed, The Captain decides to restock the refrigerator with a few more of the cans of beer he has stored below the floor boards.  He lifts up the floor board and is shocked to see water inches below the floor.  Avante’s bilge is full of water!  What in heaven’s name has happened?  Obviously, the automatic bilge bump is not working.  He dashes to turn it on manually.  It should have automatically sprung into action when water reached a certain level.  Automatic is clearly not working, but will the backup manual mode work?  He holds down the manual switch and tells The First Mate to run outside and see whether water is being pumped out of the boat.  The First Mate runs outside, but she can see nothing.  What did he expect her to see?  It’s pitch black outside, and Avante’s dark blue hull looks pitch black.  The hole that the bilge water is supposed to be exiting is about the size of a half-dollar.  The wind is blowing a gale, and waves are slapping the side of the boat.  Any water coming out that little hole is going to be blown against the side of the boat unseen.  She sees nothing and reports back to The Captain that she cannot see water or anything out there!  By now, The Captain has been holding the bilge pump switch down for several minutes, but the water level does not appear to be going down.  The First Mate now takes over holding the bilge pump switch in the manual position while The Captain goes to manually operate the hand bilge bump.

Several thoughts are running through The First Mate’s mind.  Avante could be sinking, but we’re not far from land.  She can swim.  Should we head for shallower water?  If so, which direction would we head?  Definitely not straight ahead toward those little islands.  Definitely not right toward those monster rocks.  Towards the village?  Where’s the sand bottom out there?  We don’t want reef.  Back home we might think about putting out a call to the Coast Guard if we were really sinking.  But this is Fiji, and there is no such thing.  Our location is nowhere near as remote as the places we have been for the last two weeks, but one is still very much on one’s own here.  There might be someone that could help us though.  A very large private motor yacht had pulled into the bay earlier this afternoon complete with a compliment of 5 or 6 crew.  (She had counted.)  A boat like that has to have a larger pump.  Would they launch their motorboat (It’s bigger than a mere dinghy) at night, in these conditions, to help us out?

We have been running two bilge pumps for quite a while now, but there is no apparent change in the water level.  Of course, with the water sloshing around as Avante bounces and rocks, it is hard to tell anything about water level.  A good sign, though is that the water level does not appear to be getting any higher.  It just does not appear to be going any lower.  The First Mate could not verify that the main bilge pump was working. What if that pump has failed?  If so, it’s going to take more than the hand pump to get all this water out.  Where is the water coming from and how fast is it entering the boat?  At this point, we do not know the answer to either of those questions.  The Captain had done a quick check but had not found an obvious leak.  What to do? 

The Captain has an idea.  He has a spare wash down pump.  It’s not a large pump, but it definitely will be faster than the hand pump.  By this point, we still have not seen the water level move downward, and The Captain is really concerned that the electric bilge pump may not be working at all.  If that is the case, the First Mate does not need to hold the switch in the manual position.  He sets The First Mate to bailing out the bilge by filling one of those large orange buckets from Home Depot and then lifting the bucket up and into the sink to drain.  Quick as she can she fills and empties the orange bucket, getting a couple of gallons each time.  First Mate thus gainfully employed, The Captain quickly digs around in the port aft cabin, which we call “Bill’s World”, to find the pump and anything else he thinks he will need.  He connects a hose to each side of the pump and runs a wire from the pump to a 12 volt socket. With fingers crossed, he turns on the power.  The pump hums into action and a satisfying burst of water gushes out the hose into the galley sink emptying the bilge at a rate of 4 gallons a minute. We’re in business! 

Hold on.  Not quite so quick.  We wait impatiently for the water level in the bilge to drop.  The wait is painful and frightening.   Nothing seems to be happening even though we see the water flowing out the hose and going down the galley sink drain.  Are we taking on water that fast?  What is going on?  When The Captains’s spare pump had roared into action, the First Mate had gladly put down the orange bucket.  However, since this spare pump is not dropping the water level quickly, maybe the electric bilge pump really was working after all.  We still do not know. She goes back to holding down the manual switch.  Finally, after what seems like an eternity, we begin to see the water lever drop.  When one considers the bowl-shaped hull of Avante, one can realize the enormity of the amount of water we had onboard.  Sailing, we would have looked and felt like a wallowing whale!  Naturally, it was going to take a while for all but a very large pump to make a dent.  Once the water level starts to fall, it continues steadily and slowly to do so.  We’re not going to sink!

Finally, the water level gets low enough that the jerry-rigged pump is sucking mostly air.  By now it is also apparent that the electric bilge pump is working just fine when The First Mate holds the manual switch.  Time for The Captain to find the leak.  It appears that water is flowing in from the aft end of the boat, so he heads for the engine compartment.  He soon finds that water is coming in at our prop shaft seal.  The Captain has never had to touch this critical part of the boat and is not even sure how it works.  There is a black rubber bellows around the prop shaft that is secured at each end with two hose clamps.  He moves the bellows and water starts coming in faster.  That is a very scary feeling!  He tries tightening the hose clamps.  The two at the aft end are secure.  Not so at the forward end.  One clamp does not seem to be doing much, and the other one snaps in half when it is tightened.  There is the problem!  This hose clamp had cracked and was no longer holding tightly.  It is quickly removed and the second hose clamp slid forward and tightened.  The water flowing into the boat slows to a weep.  The Captain breathes a sigh of relief, then goes to find a spare hose clamp to replace the cracked one.

Three long hours later, the bilge is drained, and the leak has been found and stopped.  We still do not know why the bilge pump did not switch on automatically, but that can wait for tomorrow.  We are both exhausted.  Outside the wind is still howling at 20 to 30 knots, and Avante is still bouncing around — not exactly the image one conjures up of being anchored off a sandy South Pacific island with palm fronds swaying.  The Captain leaves the floor board out so that he can easily monitor the level of water in the bilge and cautions the First Mate not to accidentally step in the hole if she gets up at night.  We wash up and head wearily to bed.

Saturday, October 22nd – As The First Mate expected, it was one of those nights.  Exhausted and spent, she laid there trying to sleep.  The wind sounds like a freight train.  She can hear it coming in from somewhere out there in the dark.  The churning, whooshing noise builds, growing louder, coming closer, until it slams into the boat.  She feels tossed about like a leaf on a branch rather than on an 18-ton boat at the end of a strong anchor. The groaning and roaring in the rigging is horrible. 

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When The First Mate awakens the next morning, the generator is running, and she can hear The Captain working on something in the bilge.  Does she dare ask him to stop work to make her a morning cappuccino?  As she ponders this vital question, she hears the generator stop.  Immediately, she hears a cry of anguish from The Captain followed by several expletives indicating extreme unhappiness.  Forget the cappuccino.  She dashes out of bed to learn what now is the problem.

The Captain had been partway through troubleshooting the bilge pump when the generator suddenly shut down after running nicely for one hour.  Generators do occasionally do this as a way of getting attention.  “Attend to me, NOW,” they are saying.  Dropping what he was doing, The Captain sets about “checking the usual suspects” to get the generator running again.  He quickly discovers that this is an entirely new generator problem. 

In the span of less than 24 hours, we have been hit by three serious problems.  Until now, this trip has been relatively free of any boat maintenance issues.  Sure, the unreliable outboard, The Dingbat, has been been giving us fits, but that’s the nature of the beast.  Other than that, The Captain had not had to spend a lot of time fixing things on the boat.  There’s an old adage:  “cruising is working on your boat in exotic locations”.  We thought we had escaped it for a while, but it has finally caught up with us and given us a good bite!

Outside, the wind is still howling away at 20 to 30 knots, and the weather forecast that we download using our satellite phone indicates that it will stay this way for several days.  Nothing has changed about our reluctance to take the dinghy ashore, and we sure do not want to head out anywhere on Avante.  The shallower reefs are well-defined by the wind-blown waves dashing into them, but the reefs lurking at the depths of Avante’s keel are impossible to see in these conditions.  It looks like we will be sitting right here for the next few days, and looking at the positive side of things as one must, this will give The Captain plenty of time to work on our overload of things gone or going wrong. 

It took all day, but by the end of the day, the bilge pump problem had been found and fixed and a unique way to get the generator running had been jerry-rigged.  Once troubleshooting pinpointed the problem, the bilge pump turned out to be an easy fix.  It was just a badly corroded wire connection.  The Captain explains to The First Mate that our disaster of the previous night had been caused by two simple things:  a corroded wire connection that kept the bilge pump from working normally and a cracked hose clamp that had allowed water to leak into the bilge.   Avante is now 11 years old, and age is becoming an enemy.  The First Mate can relate to the age thing, but she is a bit disconcerted that these simple things, so well-hidden from view, can be the cause of such catastrophic incidences.  Avante is an extremely well-maintained cruiser;  yet one can’t check every little hidden part every single time one puts off from shore.  She shakes her head, squares her shoulders and decides that if one continues along this line of thinking one ought never to step beyond one’s very own front door!

The generator problem, however, proves much more elusive.  The engine itself appears to be just fine, but The Captain cannot get it to start from the easily accessible remote panel in the main cabin.  He finds that the engine will start from some controls located on top of the generator itself, but then it will not continue to run.  That determined, he sets about studying wiring diagrams to determine a way to by-pass the remote panel and just to use the controls on the engine.  This takes the better part of a day to do, but when done, it ends up being just a temporary fix.  At least for now it enables us to run the generator to charge our batteries. 

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Discovering a lot of seawater inside one’s boat is a beyond scary, and this was the second time that it had happened to us.  Earlier this year on our passage from New Zealand to Tonga, our sail locker had flooded when its bilge pump float switch got jammed in the off position.  (Note:  At Anchor in the Middle of the Ocean) Each time seawater had slowly begun to fill a compartment, but each time we were unaware of the problem until it had reached catastrophic proportions.  The Captain resolves that the next time we fly home to the States, we will procure and return to Avante with a bilge alarm.  It will not prevent or fix a seawater problem, but at least we will be alerted before the problem sinks the boat!

Tuesday, October 25th – Four days cooped up on Avante, and we are ready to climb the walls!  The wind is still blowing hard, though no longer gusting to 30 knots and is forecast to continue to drop.  With the sun shining brightly above, we are eager to explore.

Once the leak, the pump and the generator all got brought back in line, The Captain had turned his attention to the recalcitrant dinghy engine.  He carefully strained all our dinghy fuel several times until he was satisfied that he could no longer find any evidence of water in it.  With that done, we decide to take our chances and motor off to the village for the expected Sevusevu ritual.  We put on clothes that will dry quickly, as we know this will be a wet ride.  The First Mate carefully wraps her camera in a waterproof bag and pulls out a plastic garbage bag to protect the precious kava root bundle.  Off we go, but The Captain does not steer directly for the village.  “Where are you going?” The First Mate queries.  The Captain replies that he is staying upwind of Avante in case the outboard engine decides to quit.  That way we will be rowing downwind and at least have a chance of getting back to the boat.  When we reach shallower water, we swing left and head along the shoreline, slowly picking our way through the reefs and sandbars until we are nearer the village. 

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Our guide tells us to wait by a house while she continues on to get the chief.  She returns with a man who appeared to have been working in the fields.  He is wearing bright yellow rubber fishermen’s overalls.  He greets us warmly and invites us into the house where we sit on a woven mate.  Two other women join our group.  The Captain then offers the kava bundle and says how pleased we are to be able to visit their village.  The chief then proceeds with the ceremonial part while the others join in with appropriate hand clapping.  We are officially welcomed into Nabukeru Village and are now free to explore the area.  We sit a bit and talk about the heavy winds and the problems with our outboard motor explaining why we stayed on our boat so many days without coming into the village.

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There is a water cave not too far from where Avante is anchored that we have been eager to visit.  We can see the beach area where local women have been arriving to set up lines with brightly colored cloth, and we can see the metal staircase that leads up and into the cave.  Small tourist boats from a resort across the water come by in the morning.

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They eagerly show us details of the cave. Over here in this spot, our voices will echo back at us.  Up there is a ledge one can climb for a jump into the pool.  The First Mate declines but watches fascinated as a young man scales the wall to the ledge for his jump.  Along the side of one wall about 4 feet down is a hole one can swim through that will take one into another totally enclosed underground cave.  Take this underwater flashlight with you.  The First Mate again declines.  To her, that sounds like a leap of faith she is not yet ready to take, but The Captain goes.

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