I have been messing around with boats since I was a kid and with this one for the past three. Granted living aboard presents new challenges but I thought by now I might have fixed the things that were ready to break or exhausted the list of rookie mistakes. That doesn’t seem to be the case. We’ve had a week full of them. At tough moments I have asked myself if I am just bad at this, but I get over that thought and honestly don’t think so. Instead I believe that inherent to, and even the appeal of, adventure activities is that you cannot learn everything before you go.
The week started out with a toilet clog. Now they warn you about this when you first start chartering which most people do before they buy a big boat. They tell you not to put too much down and how you will need to find someone with a really skinny arm to reach way in there and how much they will charge you if they have to come out. So we have tried to do the right things by buying quickly disintegrating “boat” toilet paper and teaching the kids how to flush. In the Caribbean I even put vinegar down it like thy told me to do, although I didn’t really know why.
When the toilet pump handle wouldn’t move, we first tried waiting for morning while we filled the tubing with vinegar, hot water and some of the boat-safe holding tank treatment. I keep a piece of coated wire that had been one of the lifelines before the hurricane which often comes in handy and, once resigned to more aggressive intervention I disconnected the flexible plastic tubing which comprises our pipes and tried to ram it through. When it didn’t pass I frayed one end and turned it while pushing it into the tubing by coiling the end that was still in my hand. It was a makeshift plumbing snake. I could measure how far I twisted it through the clog and that clog was over two feet long. Poopy fluid was oozing into my hands along with calcified pieces of build-up shaped like the inside of the tube suggesting this was the culmination of a gradual process.
I was determined and was five hours into it before I gave up. I rationalized giving up on the basis that this tube was going to have to be replaced anyway and we were due in the boat yard the next day to get our new stove. I had been hoping to avoid the expense of having them do it, but I called and asked them to expect the extra job. I was probably lucky it happened now, near a yard that knows me and who were able to do it immediately. It took two of their guys over a day, but they installed all new hoses. Kate was more than a little grossed out by the project and it was good to be at a dock to clean up. All fluids in our boat flow down into our 4’ deep bilge, so you can imagine what was down there. I brought their hose right into the boat to flush the bilge by filling it and draining it with my bilge pump. I was still seeing brown floaties, on my third cycle of this so I repeated it several more times with bleach and assorted boat cleaners.
But the toilet clog wasn’t the only thing that had happened that day. As we were deciding that I would launch into the project we thought it best for Kate and kids go to the beach. It was a beautiful day and we were at a popular anchorage with only one other boat. That’s when we realized our rowing dinghy was missing. Now if you have been reading you will remember that this already happened to us once this trip so its a rookie mistake we have made twice. Kate was desperate to go to shore to dig a hole and do her business (because remember the toilet is clogged) so after dropping her off with the inflatable the kids and I started searching. I felt sick to my stomach for having lost it. I stopped by the other boat to ask what direction the wind had been blowing and he suggested we call the Stonington Harbormaster. To my incredible relief the harbor master immediately responded that Mulligan, a lobster boat, had found our “skiff” as they call them here and had it aboard. He wasn’t going to be back til early afternoon but I had a toilet to unclog anyway. When he came by my oars were even strapped down inside it. Mulligan’s captain told me he had found it two miles away drifting. He noticed the end of the painter seemed chafed and we noticed that indeed the painter was shorter, but we did not however see the rest of it still tied to the boat
After we had a couple of days at the yard we figured we were good to go Downeast. They call the coast northeast of Bar Harbor “Downeast” because it is more east than north and the prevailing winds make it downwind The book says not to expect much in the way of services for pleasure boats and that we’re on our own, but having found and addressed the plumbing situation we’re thinking our odds are pretty good. Well…we were about halfway to our destination, having a good sail, spinnaker up, wind beginning to pick up, moving along at 6 kts when I notice that the boom is no longer attached to the mast. I had not done anything different except sheet in the main as the wind shifted to be more foreword. There had been no loud sound of metal ripping. The hinge at this joint simply failed. The boom was just hanging there from the sail. I sent the kids downstairs and took down the spinnaker with Kate as that huge sail can make unpredictable things happen. We then brought Leif back up to slowly ease the main halyard, dropping the sail slowly so Kate and I could flake it. We took care to control the boom which would be allowed to move unpredictably once the sail dropped. The boom ended up resting on the canvas dodger in the back and being held up precariously by the rigid boom vang in the front. My first thought was to disconnect the vang but as I was wrestling with that I realized doing so would allow the boom to move more, potentially creating a battering ram. Leif suggested we hook up the topping the lift and I think his idea was better. The topping lift is a line from the top of the mast to the back of the boom. With it lifting the end of the boom up and a second rope from the boom to a cleat on deck, things were stable. We motored to Eastern Harbor where we picked up a mooring that said “Guest” and for which no one came out to charge us.
Before dark we tucked away the undammaged sail (whew!) and laid the boom on the deck. In the morning we took advantage of the flood tide going our direction to continue on. We were now a slow motor boat. I do not like depending on the engine and am always thinking how I can sail out of a situation if the motor dies, so now I have all sorts of new worries, but I am excited about being Downeast and we have picked out a place to go for Leif’s birthday. I vowed to be attentive so as to avoid further mistakes. I did figure out that there was a 39’ bridge in our path and did not run into it with our 53’ mast, though that required a 3 hour detour. And while we wanted to make ourselves feel more comfortable by topping off our fuel tanks, we read that the fuel dock in Jonesport only has a depth of 3’ at low and we had dutifully bought the book which told us it was now low. So we did a few things right. But I set the autopilot to cross Chandler Bay and I snagged my first lobster pot.
The water here is peppered with colorful foam buoys attached by a long rope to lobster traps, or pots, on the ocean floor. My kids are avid collectors of these buoys after they are detached in a storm and wash ashore. They hang from our tree fort in Minneapolis. Warnings abound about getting them wrapped around the boat’s propeller. Our first summer up here we were vigilant about looking out for them, but now that I have felt hundreds of them bang their way along my hull as I motored along I have become complacent.
Of course my first snag has to occur while my primary source of propulsion is compromised.
The engine suddenly developed a rumbling tenor, though it did not stop dead like it did when I snagged the line my dinghy in the prop on one of my first charter trips. Kate confirmed that we did have a buoy following us and then could see, by leaning way over the rail, a line heading to the propeller. My attempts to go in reverse (unwind it?) did not make things better and pulling at it with a boat hook just caused the extendable pole to separate.
I resigned myself that no one else was going to solve this situation for me. As I reluctantly began to don the wet suit I carry for just such an occasion it my acceptance of what I had to do developed some momentum. I lowered my self into the water gradually. The lobsterman’s 5/16” 3-strand nylon rope created a rat’s nest around my propeller shaft and the propeller itself. It initially uncoiled easily, but then I had to cut. The wet suit was making me float up against the boat and the lightweight sailing knife that I carry in my pocket wasn’t going through it. The next dive I went down with an old rusty knife that came with the boat, one which I had just the day before offered to a guy at the yard but which he did not accept because he told me it was too good of a knife, and it plowed right through. I must have dived 20 times and my head was getting cold, like an ice cream headache from the outside. It might be good to have some type of wet suit hood. In between dives it helped to hang from a rope off the boat. I never looked down.
Back on deck I felt off balance. I later learned from a NOAA radio report that water temp in Jonesport was 58 F that day. It took a hot shower (yes, we have those on this boat), all my warmest clothes and a bowl of soup before I was feeling warm again.
We are going to stay up here for a week or so despite our challenges. There is a sense of remoteness that reminds us of northern Minnesota. There are fewer boats and many more uninhabited islands. Some of the little flat islands have just one shack built in the center. A few of the smallest are host to crowds of seals. We do not want to rush out of here due to a few difficulties. So far we are getting through them. I can think of plenty of bad scenarios. Running out of diesel would be bad and there are a few other possibilities I will also try to avoid. Hopefully nothing else will break.
