More Daisy Disasters!

Bye, Bye Bocas

Wednesday 30^th November 2011

It’s 2:30am, and I can’t sleep because the rain is lashing the side of the boat, the wind is blowing about 30 35 knots, and Daisy is swinging and pulling on her anchor like an unruly dog on a leash.  My vivid imagination has kicked in and I’m just waiting for us to blow up onto the shore and be smashed to pieces, so I’m sitting here in bed writing because that’s what I do when I can’t sleep, and I’m so scared and sleepless right now. I can’t see a thing through my bedroom window, its so black here, there is no light, and I mean NO light, nothing from the land, the local indians don’t have electricity, and because of the storm there are no stars or moon, there’s nothing but dark, dark, blackness…

Bob is asleep in the master cabin, I slept in one of the front rooms tonight because I hurt my neck yesterday (another story) and was thrashing about unable to get comfortable, I didn’t want to disturb Bob’s sleep so I crept up here for the night.

We’re still in Bluefield lagoon, there’s not much here, just a couple of little Indian villages scattered around the edge of the lagoon.  It would be quite picturesque if the place wasn’t currently under siege from Mother Nature.

I keep wishing we hadn’t left the safety of Bocas marina.  But we have to get to Colon, because Bob fly’s out of Panama on Sunday, to work for a couple of weeks, then he fly’s back in to Panama with the family for Christmas, so Daisy has to be there.

This horrendous weather looks like it will be with us till the end of the week “OH joy”!  We’re only 4 hours from Bocus, so I suppose we could go back, although Bob doesn’t usually do things like that, he’s Hell bent on getting to Colon, and that’s a good 20 hours sail away.  As everyone knows I hate sailing, I don’t enjoy it much when the weather is lovely, but when it’s like this I find myself once again questioning my sanity in allowing myself to undertake another journey on Daisy, I really wasn’t cut out for this adventurous life, I’m so much more productive in a kitchen than I am on a boat.

Our trip didn’t start out too well; we left the marina after lunch on Monday, under a cerulean blue sky and bright sunshine, with 15 – 20 knots of wind, but only an hour into the leg Bob noticed our autopilot wasn’t working.  Each time he put it on Daisy would swing wildly in a circle like a drunk.  So I took the helm while Bob went below to look at the instruments, and see if he could discover the source of the problem.  I noticed the icon on the chart plotter doing strange things too, it was showing that we were turning 360 degrees.  Now everyone knows I’m a useless sailor, but even I know how to steer in a straight line. I manned the helm while Bob worked trying to sort the problem, when we approached the entrance of Bluefield Bob took over, to bring us in for the night. 

Then we had another catastrophe to add to my collection of “Fabulously Frightening, First Mate blunders”; when I dropped the anchor I had forgotten to check that the windless was tightened, (despite being reminded by Bob earlier).  I put down 150 feet of chain and as I turned to ask Bob if that was enough, the rest of the chain suddenly started flying out, I was helpless to stop it, and just had to stand and watch as all 300 feet of chain went hurtling out past my feet over the bow into the water. 

Thankfully, Bob had tied the end of the chain into the anchor locker when he fitted the new chain last month.  So, as the last of the chain left the locker, the piece of line holding it brought it to a sudden, jarring holt. I’m hugely embarrassed here to admit that this is not the first time I’ve done this, one really has to question Bob’s intelligence in wanting me on board.  

The next panic was that the line would break under the pressure, so we grabbed the snubber, and the two of us struggled leaning over the bow of the boat to attach it, we had to try and pull up enough chain so that we could get it back around the windless and tighten it up, obviously we couldn’t pull it up without moving the boat forward, Daisy was pulling hard on the anchor, it was only a matter of time before the line would break. Bob motored forward slowly while I attempted to pull up the anchor (that’s how I injured my neck) I imagine the anchor chain weighs about 1000 pounds, but in 30 feet of water I was probably trying to pull up 200 pounds in weight, by the way, math’s was my worst subject in school, so don’t judge my mathematical calculation here, just know it was bloody heavy!

Obviously I couldn’t pull it up by myself, so having moved Daisy forward enough to take the pressure off the chain Bob rushed back up to help me, (he has 3 displaced disc’s in his back, so pulling a heavy chain, not the best idea,) but there was no way I could do it alone, we struggled again to pull the damn thing up, but bit by bit, holding the line around the windless to secure it and moving the snubber forward a few inches at a time, we eventually managed to secure it, and I was able to then bring in 150 feet of chain.  I was in such a sweaty, panicky mess by this time, and not in the best of moods, but already the local Indians had started to arrive in their dug out canoe’s and were hanging onto the side of Daisy watching our struggles with obvious curiosity, we must have provided quite the entertainment.

I gave fishing line, hooks, pens and pencils.  Having stayed in this bay before I knew what the locals needed, and had brought supplies with me.

By this time it was almost dark, so I made dinner and then relaxed with a large glass of wine, while Bob poured through the manuals looking for a solution to the autopilot problem.