We had a fantastic sail yesterday: wind on the beam that started at around 9:00 am and kept up all day and into the wee hours. We were able to make 5.5 to 6 knots almost the whole time. The seas had calmed, which was why we had waited the extra day in Mahon and all was just great.
By nightfall we were in sight of the Del Toro lighthouse on the southern most island of Sardinia. The weather forecast for the next two days looked good, so we decided to keep pressing on for Sicily. I went to bed at midnight as Maggie started her watch. Overnight we take 3 hour turns on watch. At three a.m., I awoke to the sound of sails, ropes, and deck hardware flogging as the breeze died and we wallowed in the slight swell. No problem; we started the engine to continue on under power. I figured that was the price to pay for the terrific sail the day before. But there was a bigger price to pay.
Maggie let me go back to sleep because she was feeling wide awake, so I did. An hour later, I heard a sound that the boat doesn't normally make. It's difficult to describe the feeling when that happens. When you live on a boat, especially at sea, you are very tuned in to all the sounds that it makes. It is a virtual symphony of noises. Creaks, squeaks, rattles, knocks and groans just from the hull and rig. Then there are the sounds the engine makes. An unusual sound always means trouble, so when you hear one you heart skips a beat and your mind starts racing trying to figure out what is wrong.
Abnormal engine noises are the worst because a) they will be expensive to fix b) we need our engine to maneuver close to land or get to a dock to be able to fix any problem. We were about 50 miles from Cagliari, so we could sail to it if we had to, but that depends on the wind. Uncertainties were abounding and so was the commercial vessel traffic in the dark of 4 a.m. and my adrenalin was pumping. The sound was a rhythmic knocking sound so I figured it might be a rope around the propeller, but I would have to wait a few hours until daylight to swim under the boat to check it. In the meantime, I did some further diagnosis of the engine. It wasn't overheating and sounded fine running in neutral. In forward gear there was a strange vibration to the whole boat and the knocking sound. Then I tried reverse to see what would happen. The engine stopped dead. Oh oh.
In neutral, the engine started, so at least it wasn't seized. I could not turn the shaft by hand at first, but slowly worked it to move a little, so I felt that the transmission was not seized either. So far, so good - it had to be something wrapped around the prop. We have Spurs line cutters that have worked for us when we picked up some rope in Culatra, Portugal, so I could not understand what it might be, but I feared a huge ball of melted plastic rope that I would have to saw off the shaft with my scuba gear on. I only had 45 minutes of air since I used a third of my tank adjusting the propeller pitch and never got it refilled.
By now, the sun had dawned and I got ready to snorkel under the boat to assess the situation. As soon as I positioned the dinghy, which we tow, behind the mothership, I saw a 1 inch thick piece of polypropylene rope floating and leading to the propeller. The fishermen use this stuff on their big nets and when they repair them they simply throw overboard whatever was cut away. This piece was about 5 feet long. Luckily, I was able to just untangle it to clear it away while holding my breath - no cutting.
Greatly relieved at not having to do any sawing under a boat heaving in a swell, there was only one more thing to do and that was to check that the power train was not damaged in any way. I started up the engine and apprehensively put it into gear and .......it worked.
We were ecstatic. While it was unlucky to have the rope tangle the prop in the first place, there were so many things that went right that we gratefully acknowledged afterwards. I even said to Maggie that it almost seems worth having the problem in the first place just to feel so good about successfully fixing it. But perhaps that is taking things a little too far. Now we are powering underway to Sicily again and things are back to our version of normal.
Branko
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