This was to be Shearwater’s first cruise. Bruce and Carol had sailed it before, but not on an overnight cruise. Bruce and Carol are experienced, tenured cruisers but to date, they’ve been ‘powerboaters’. Shearwater is a sailboat. A very capable sailboat, but one just recently purchased from Ohio with very little use over the past few years.
Bruce and I have sailed and power boated together for years. We’ve solved many boating problems together, the most notable one when we took a 21 foot bayliner to Alaska and broke a propeller between Petersburg and Juneau. Dead in the water with humpback whales surfacing all around us, and one headed right for the boat. We ended up thumping on the hull, not knowing how well those things can see. He dove mere yards from the boat and I clearly remember looking over the side as his giant body passed under our very small craft. With a little help from the last manned lighthouse in Alaska, we anchored in a quiet cove and changed the propeller. Only to find our only spare was the wrong rotation. We ended up screaming to Juneau with the engine full in reverse – and arrived on fumes with no gas to go another mile.
So a shakedown cruise on a 40’ sailboat? No problem.
Things started to go wrong when we tried to start the engine. It didn’t. Bruce coaxed it to life, then it died. Bruce switched the tank feeding the engine and mentioned that there may be a fuel problem (in retrospect a clear warning sign of what was yet to happen). The engine finally, and seemingly reliably, roared to life. All was good. For the moment.
The powercord was stowed, lines were removed, Bruce put the boat in reverse and just as I was about to jump aboard, the boat stopped moving. The tide was low – a minus 2.2 and we were firmly stuck on the bottom after moving about 3 feet. Aground. At the dock. So we waited and tried to warm the boat with clay pots (don’t ask).
Finally the flood tide began to make a difference and Shearwater did what all good boats do. They float. With no further excitement, we left the dock and headed out.
Bruce is just getting to know the boat, but in very short order he had the sail cover off and at the helm Carol headed the boat into the wind. The main was up and set immediately followed by the jib. We fell off the wind, killed the engine, and sailed.
The Passport 40 is a nice boat. It’s a very capable offshore sailboat and was very much in its element as the breeze freshened. On a single tack we crossed Rosario strait, tacked through Thatcher pass, then sailed up Lopez sound. There was another sailboat far in front of us and the competitive juices started flow. Let’s catch em. We were both towing dinghys and the boats were about the same size.
The wind started to pick up to about 15 – 20 knots. We don’t know exactly as the anemometer is on the list of ‘things not currently working’. Just off upright head I had the helm sitting on the leeward side, looking forward at the tell tails on the jib, striving for that perfect trim, and noticed with discomfort that the leeward shroud was dangling, very much disconnected from the deck.
Bruce did find the cotter pin, a very straight cotter pin, in the gunnel next to where the shroud attaches to the deck. It’s an interesting lesson where misuse of 10 cent cotter pin – probably the smallest and cheapest part of any boat, nearly caused a dismasting.
With the dinghy faithfully following behind, we rounded upright head and tacked towards Friday Harbor, another potential problem solved.
At this point, the wind started to strengthen and a few times the boat was getting overpowered. I was having fun, but with two dogs aboard, things were getting a bit complicated in the cockpit as we tacked back and forth in the channel. We didn’t have our charts in the cockpit (Bruce and I have sailed this channel scores, if not hundreds of time), but it’s nice to keep an eye on the depth meter as we approach shore, trying to make to windward in a fairly narrow channel.
The depth meter would reliably read depth then show an errant (and shallow) number seemingly just for fun. I would shoot Bruce a glance and he’d say ‘it’s old, on the list of things not currently working and will be replaced in a couple of weeks’. Then we’d both think that there may be a reef in the general area and not knowing the depth, let’s tack right now.
We were really burying the leeward rail at this point and the breeze was freshening. Bruce’s instincts were good and he casually suggested that as we were getting close to Friday Harbor, perhaps we should just pack it in and motor. I was having fun and so were Carol and Jodi, and collectively we over rode his suggestion. It was a very fine day to sail and while we were a bit over powered, things were going well (for the moment).
We tacked a few times more, then decided that enough was enough and perhaps we should motor on in. At which point we noticed that the dinghy, which we had been towing, was nowhere to be seen. The line had parted and the dinghy was gone.
We doused the main, cranked up the engine and began to retrace our steps, searching for the tender. I was at the helm, Bruce as on the bow scanning the water for the dinghy and the engines RPM’s started to fluctuate. Then silence. No engine. “Bruce”, I said, “we have another problem”.
The boat had been purchased from a sailor in his mid 80's, and the last several years the boat had seen very little use. It's probable that the diesel had been in the tanks for many years and between old fuel and sediment in the tanks, the fuel filters had sacrficed themselves and had done their job. Once they had taken all the abuse they could, they stopped the flow of fuel to the engine. Even though Bruce cleaned the filters, no more fuel could be coaxed from the tanks. There was a clog somewhere and we were a true, engineless, sailboat.
We made the call to abandon our search for the dink and again tack upwind to Friday Harbor. Flying just the jib, we tacked and tacked and tacked. Jodi was at the helm and did a great job flying the tails, driving the boat to windward. Sailing now mattered. It was our only means of propulsion.
Finally we entered Friday Harbor and began think through just how we dock a 40 foot, 8 ton boat in a crowded harbor with no engine. Fenders were put on both sides and we figured a port side landing would work best. Fortunately Leon was ashore on his boat and volunteered to give us a hand.
There was a huge, 180 foot private yacht, fresh from the yard at Delta. It was the first time the ‘Big Boss’ was aboard and here we were, no engine, and our best path to the dock meant cutting it rather close to what was probably a 25 million dollar brand spanking new mega yacht on its first cruise. This was going to be fun.
Fortunately the wind was beginning to die down and as we made our approach we furled the jib to de-power the boat and the actual landing was a bit anti-climatic. Just the way it should be.
An older fellow on a Bayliner came out to congratulate us “you just don’t see that anymore! You must be very experienced!”. Turns out it was rather high praise as this fellow, earlier in his life time, had delivered an 80 foot sailboat down the coast for Peter Fonda.
No engine, no Dinghy, and a growing list of ‘things not currently working’. But we were safe at the dock, and cold beers magically appeared. All was well. At the moment……
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