The Revenge of Tempest

I am writing this from Ensenada, Mexico.  It is nice and peaceful here in the marina.  Things were not so nice, however, on the way down here.  Let me begin at the beginning . . .

We left San Diego on Monday, November 30, at three pm.  We had a nice motor out of the harbor, and then put the sails up.  We sailed along nicely for a couple of hours, and then the wind went all screwy.  It didn't exactly die down, but rather was coming from all different directions.  This made it extremely difficult to set the sails.  We basically drifted along with the current (which thankfully was going south, just the way we wanted to go), with the sails slatting around all over the place.  The seas also began to act up, causing big waves that battered the boat about in a very uncomfortable way.  I do not usually get seasick, but I did this time.  This was the situation from about seven pm until about one am, at which time the wind shifted to the east and began howling at about 20-30 knots.  This would not have been so bad had it not been for the mounting waves, which were reaching 10-12 feet.  I know that when I looked at Mike standing in the cockpit at the helm, the waves were as tall as he was and even taller.  We were surfing down waves at  9 to 9.5 knots, which is faster than we are supposed to be able to go. 

This part was actually pretty exhilerating.  It would have been more fun for me had I not been so sick.  Being seasick is more than just being sick to one's stomach - it also makes one disoriented and and sleepy.   And slow on the uptake.  All I could really focus on was trying not to throw up too much.  We had to reef the sails (make them smaller) in order to handle the strong winds.  Reefing is one of those things one needs to do BEFORE one actually needs to do it.  The reason we did not do it sooner was because I was so sick I did not try to read the barometer when I logged our hourly position, because being below trying to read it made me even sicker.  That is not an excuse, believe me.  I have learned my lesson.  Had I done so, and told Mike how much  barometric activity there was, we would have known we needed to reef those sails - a skill we have not practiced - in plenty of time before it all got so wild.  So we had to struggle with the sails in a strong wind.  Very difficult and not fun.  But we got that done and thought everything was reasonably settled, except for my stomach.  Little did we know.

At about when three thirty in the morning, Mike looked down into the cabin and discovered to our horror that the floor of the cabin was covered with water.  He lifted the floorboard to discover the bilge was completely full of water.  He hollered at me that we were in danger of sinking.  I cannot tell you what I was thinking, because I wasn't.  The only reason I wasn't ABSOLUTELY TERRIFIED was twofold:  I was too sick to really process it all, and I could still see land, so I figured rescue would be possible.  Probably not true, but it was a comfort at the time.  Mike and I immediately started using the manual pumps to clear the bilge - a physically exhausting job.  I called to Mike "Shall we get on the radio?"  He hollered back "Not yet!"  So I figured at that point he must have a plan.  He was on his stomach digging around in the bilge while the boat rocked all over the place and we went completely off course.  That was the least of our worries.  Our big concern was that we could not tell where the water was coming in from.  Mike finally got the bilge pump working again, which was clogged with - you guessed it - DOG HAIR!  (Hence the title of this post - Tempest did not like us making her live on a boat and punished us for it.)

Once the pump was working again, the seas also began to calm down,  but by this time we had dropped the sails because the wind was against us and we were too tired to diddle around with the tediousness of tacking back and forth, and we also felt a need to get to safety.  We turned on the engine to make better time.  We noticed that as soon as the seas calmed down we were no longer taking on so much water, so that narrowed the possibilities as to what was going wrong.  By the time we got into the harbor, the sun was shining and there was almost no wind.  Mike docked like the champion he is, and I was never so happy and relieved in my life.  It took another two or three hours to go through customs and all that stuff, we got something to eat, and went to bed at four in the afternoon and did not get up until Wednesday morning.  I have never slept so long or so hard.

Later, we figured out the water came in through the anchor hawse pipe, which is the space where the anchor chain comes out of the bow (front pointy part) of the boat.  Because the seas were so high, hundreds of gallons of water poured through that space, and the dirty bilge caused the pump to clog and therefore short out.  We now know to plug that space!   This morning we tore the bilge open and cleaned it out.  That is one nasty, disgusting job.  But it is done, the bilge is clean, and the pump seems to be working properly.

We didn't have any idea the weather would get so bad.  We can no longer blithely assume the weatherman will be right.  I should have kept track of the barometer.  Next time, even if I am sick, I will do that first, no matter how close to throwing up I come.  We will plug the anchor hawse pipe, and will also make sure we have a spare bilge pump - just in case.  I am proud of us, because we kept our heads, I didn't cry, Mike was awesome with his mechanical skills and diagnostic ability, and we didn't need to call for help.  (I did forget one other problem - it was REALLY cold out there on top of everything else, but as soon as everything started going south, we worked up a sweat with the manual pump and the cold was not much of an issue compared to the rest of it.) 

But we are really happy to be here in Mexico.  The people are wonderful and I have been speaking Spanish like crazy.  If this keeps up, I will be fluent before I know it.  We will be here for a couple of weeks, because we want to get all the wood on the outside of the boat redone.  I love it here and don't care how long we stay.  Viva la Mexico!