Tuesday, February 14, 2012 To Great Harbor (where the cruise ships play)

Sunrise!

Happy Valentine’s Day! I don’t get candy or flowers today, but I do get sea birds to travel along with us for a bit, flying fish, and beautiful sunrises and sunsets! A wonderful trade-off (smiling).

We let go of the dock lines at 6am and I was surprised to see that Wind Quest was still at the dock. [We later found out that they’d had engine problems so were hanging back to have things checked out.] Leaving the channel, we were close to low tide (but it was rising) and the lowest we saw was 7’3” in the channel. The winds and currents kept trying to push me out of the safety markers as we left so I had to keep crabbing back in but once out – no problem. It was choppy out but we had a beautiful sunrise.

At 7:00am I discovered the microphone up top doesn’t work. I guess Wind Quest had been trying to hail us and I never heard them. Azaya told them we were having radio problems (thank you Azaya) and it might take us a while to call them or respond back.

We had choppy and confused seas during the morning and around 10:00am our flag halyard came down into the water with our radar reflector. Dang… Luckily it was still connected to the boat so I was able to retrieve the Bahamas flag and our radar reflector.

The white caps were pretty sitting atop sapphire colored waters and we motor sailed under aqua skies filled with mare’s tails and puffy cumulus clouds.

At 1:00pm our new wireless antenna came undone from its mounting in the spreaders and landed on deck and at 3:00pm I noticed that the remaining mount was swinging madly and beating itself on the shroud lines. So Wayne had to go rescue that. I hope our wireless setup still works. It was working pretty good up until now…

The day just seems a jinx for Kolibrie. We pulled into Great Harbor and dropped anchor at 6pm (65.2 miles total) in 8.5 ft of water. No problem there. We were looking forward to cutting the engine and getting some peace and quiet with some dinner. Problem was, the engine didn’t want to shut off. So with the waning light, I held a flashlight and Wayne undid the control panel and tried to short out the cutoff switch. Nope. The little engine just wouldn’t shut off. So Wayne opened the engine compartment, removed the air filter and tried to smother the engine with a wadded up towel. Nope. Didn’t work… After fiddling with it for 45 minutes and with sweat dripping off of Wayne (hot engine) we hailed Azaya… Did you try using a heavy plastic bag? A towel won’t work. You have to cut the air flow completely off… Okay… that didn’t work. Wayne got the plunger out. It got stuck to the air intake and wouldn’t come off without a terrific fight. The engine was still on. Azaya – there should be a kill switch… Can’t find it.

Finally Axel & Mary got their dinghy down and Axel came over to help us out.

After examining the situation Axel found where the lever (kill switch to me) was. Strange place to put the kill switch (on the side of the engine hidden behind another part – so out of sight). We also discovered what the string that lies on top of the engine is for… pulling the kill switch… So I learned a couple new things about our engine today and the engine was finally off at 7:30pm – an hour and a half after anchoring. I radioed Mary Clare to tell her that we love her husband! Peace and quiet has now descended on the anchorage. She probably also loves that Axel could help us so she could get some peace and quiet (laughing) – sending mental hugs their way.