Offshore to Palm Beach, FL
currently in: Lake Worth, Palm Beach, FL

Actually, we've been here for a few days, as you know if you've been checking our position reports.  You might notice that's some 300 miles from our previous location; although we really should have updated our position every day, we don't generally use the single-sideband radio - how we do the ham email and position reporting - while we're underway.  Which is where we were from Tuesday morning through about two in the afternoon on Thursday: sailing down the coast about ten miles offshore.

Well, we tried to sail, but for about the first 24 hours we had to listen to the drone of the engine as there just wasn't enough wind.  A few times we hopefully hoisted sail and turned off the motor...only to see our speed drop, from six knots to five, to four, to three, to two...which is where we start to lose steerage and are basically just drifting with the current.  (I can walk faster than two knots.  I can walk backwards faster than two knots.  Admittedly, not on the ocean.)  At which point we gave up, and turned on the motor again.

We did manage to sail for a couple of hours that first night, though, which incidentally provided a good opportunity for our new AIS system to make itself useful.  Our course led us across the approaches to many busy ports, and at first it was just an interesting novelty to see the little blue triangles sprout across our electronic charts, each with the name, speed, course, and other information of the ship it represented.  Shortly before we put up the sails again for what turned out to be a good two-hour run before the wind died down, I noticed the lights of a ship behind us, between us and the coast; I could see its red port light, which meant it was heading in our direction.  The AIS display told us its name - the Herm Kiepe - its speed - 18 knots, about three times as fast as we were moving - and its course - right towards us.  Well, more or less; its estimated closest point of approach (CPA) was half a mile, plenty of room.  But then we put up our sails, and our speed dropped from about 6.5 to 4.5 knots.  That was fine by us, and would still put us in Palm Beach in daylight the next day if we maintained that speed...but when we checked the chart display, the CPA for the Herm Kiepe had dropped to almost zero: a collision course!

Nervously we watched it.  According to the AIS, the time of CPA would be twenty minutes, so we gave it a little time; because the ship was overtaking us, by the rules of the road it, not us, was supposed to alter course if necessary, and we were supposed to "stand on" - although of course the ultimate rule of the road is to not be stupid, and get out of the way if you have to!  But it kept coming, and it occurred to me that the crew of the ship were probably checking their instruments only every 10 or 15 minutes, which is basically what we do as well.  Whoever was on watch had probably seen the stern light of our boat (and our blip on the radar), set a course to pass half a mile behind us, and then gone off to do something else.  And then we go and mess everything up by slowing down.

So with ten minutes to go, I called the Herm Kiepe on the VHF radio.  An accented male voice answered right away.  "This is the sailboat off your port bow," I said.  "Our instruments show you on a collision course."

"I see you.  We'll change course immediately," he said, and sure enough, the pattern of lights behind us shifted, and when I went below I could see the ship had angled more steeply, and would pass a mile away.  What a relief! 

Of course, the AIS was only part of the toolbox that showed us we were in danger, and helped get us out of it.  But the information it presents is a lot clearer than trying to discern whether a radar blip is on a constant bearing line, I got it well before I could see both port and starboard lights on the ship (a clear indication of imminent collision), and it's nice to be able to hail a ship by name instead of just giving your latitude and longitude and hoping the guy on the other end bothers to match them up with his.

It wasn't until about noon Wednesday that the wind finally filled in to more than 7 knots (or so we are guessing; our wind instrument is flaky and it looks like we won't be able to fix it this trip) and we were able to sail for nearly the rest of the passage.  How much nicer it is to be able to turn off the engine; sailing isn't silent, but it's a lot quieter than motoring, and the motion is easier, and there's no lingering tang of diesel in the air.  (Early in the trip, I was feeling slightly seasick, which is an embarrassing admission considering how light the conditions were.  The swell from the east - long, rolling waves - was considerable, though, and I think the smell of our exhaust, occasionally wafting back into the cockpit, was part of it.  I felt a lot better each time we cut the engine and put up the sails, and after the first day I was fine.)

As we approached the Lake Worth inlet late Thursday morning, the wind got lighter and shifted a bit, so the motor went back on.  (Eventually, anyway.  I was on watch while Britt slept, so I messed with the sails, gave up, put the motor on and took the jib down, then felt that I had been too hasty and put the jib back up and turned the motor off, messed around again, then gave up for good.)  We motorsailed for a couple of hours, then our last leg angled us toward the coast, and Britt said, "We could sail again."  I looked at the chart.  "It's only half an hour to the inlet," I said.  "I'm too tired and frustrated from messing with the sails earlier, but if you want to, go ahead."

And then the engine weighed in by abruptly stopping.

This wasn't a cause for panic.  We have two big fuel tanks, and right now they're filled with two-year-old diesel, so they foul the filters frequently.  Usually when this happens, the engine "faints" rather than cuts out entirely - it loses RPM for a few seconds, then returns to full - and that cues us in to switch tanks.  That is, assuming that we hadn't already been keeping an eye on the pressure gauge Britt installed with the filtration system - when the needle is past vertical, deep in the red zone, it's time to swap tanks and replace the filter.  Which we had just done the previous morning, while motoring, so it surprised us that the filter was already fouled.  But we swapped to the second tank, and I turned the key...and the engine wouldn't start.

Okay, cause for concern, anyway, if not panic.  We still had the mainsail up - we usually keep it up when we're motoring in open water, just to steady the boat - and the wind was blowing us toward shore, so the first order of business was to hoist the jib and then tack, so I could sail back north, toward open water, while Britt diagnosed the problem.  He thought it might be the primary fuel filter, the fine filter on the engine that picks up the gunk the tank filters miss, so he changed that filter while worked through the angles in my head and decided that it would be easy enough to enter the inlet under sail, and we could anchor in the little anchorage just south of there while we figured out what to do next. 

Then Britt popped his head out of the engine and announced, "I think we just ran out of diesel in tank #1!"  There was plenty of diesel in tank #2, but the fuel line had gone dry, so the engine wasn't catching.  I gave over steering to Bob (our autopilot) and helped Britt pre-bleed the lines for the second tank, and then we restarted the engine with no problem at all. 

Normally, we keep track of our engine hours as a proxy for fuel usage - we burn about one gallon per hour - but we hadn't done a very good job this time.  Part of it was that we used our heater a lot for our first couple of weeks, and because the furnace cycles on and off depending on the thermostat, it's hard to track how much diesel it burns.  But now that we're in warmer climes, we're not running the heater, so we ought to be able to stay on top of things from here on out.

Lake Worth is a large anchorage, a good place to hang out while waiting for weather to go in whatever direction.  Lots of boats here, and every day a few more filter in and a few slip away.  As we both have job-work to do as well as the various boat projects we need to finish, we'll be here at least until Tuesday, and perhaps longer.

(passage stats: 53 hours, ~20 sailing 33 motoring or motorsailing, 300 miles, avg speed 5.6 kts)

- posted by S/V Windom @ 3/31/2007 [link]