Friday April 20, 2012
Bill and Adair from s/v “Irish Eyes” hailed us this morning and asked if they could give us a ride to town. Fred and Bill had gone in earlier to get water and drop off trash. The girls were included in this run. We did our errands, Fred got himself a Regatta shirt, we picked up some green onions and fresh beets of the veggie truck, ran into a lot of boating friends along the way and ordered a loaf of bread to be picked up at the Town Café and ended up at Mom’s hot dog stand for a $3.00 8” hot dog. That was the deal of the day on the island. Bill and Adair joined us and we had lunch together then returned to Casa Mare’. Fred is trying to fix the freezer which we are not sure exactly what us wrong with it but it is not freezing. It’s new too! Fred is hoping it just needs a freon charge, he’s pretty good at fixing things. It is getting cold, just not freezing so we may be eating rather good this weekend if it doesn’t start freezing things up. Another thing on the to do list is get our flag off the top of the mast. It came loose on one end and made it’s way all the way to the top and tangled on something. It is courtesy to fly the country’s flag your vessel is in higher than the flag from where you are from. We need to get this thing down!
So...Fred is thinking he has the freezer fixed, time will tell. While he is in the aft cabin and things that were stored in the aft cabin needed to be moved out to do work in there and are strewn from the cockpit down to the v-berth Fred decided to do some more testosterone stuff back there. I am up in the cockpit. Watching the sloops practicing and making sure everything on my camera is set for the races, I come below and Fred says “I broke a bolt and we are sinking”. “What?” I said, thinking I really did hear him wrong. “Are you serious? We are really sinking?” “Yes, we are taking on water and sinking.” he says a bit too casually for my serenity. “Well” I said, trying act about as calm as he seemed to be, knowing panicking never helps in a sinking situation, “what can I do to help?”. “Nothing”. ‘NOTHING?’ I thought to myself. “NOTHING?” I asked. “Nothing” and he crawled back into the aft cabin. “How about the bilge pump? Should I turn that on since we are taking on water and sinking?” That seems the logical thing to do to get the water back out. “Yes, turn the bilge pump on”. (I turned the sump pump on too) I ran up to make sure it was pumping water out and came back down and asked “what were you doing to break a bolt?” He said “I was cleaning the sea strainer”. “Do I need to be worried? Should I get the passports or something? Should I be doing anything to help?” “No” came from the aft cabin so I took that to be, he has things under control. He came back out and I had to ask, if it was fixed. “Temporarily, I turned the thru hole off” he said. ‘Temporarily’ I thought, now just what could that mean? A quick calculation...11 feet wide, if she sinks we have 9 feet of water at high tide, she goes on her side and that’s 2 feet sticking out of the water, only if she is on her side. Too little space between me hanging onto the edge and the water below me. The dink and one oar. Brilliant! As I a running this emergency procedure through my mind, wondering how much time we had...ole casual Fred comes back out of the aft cabin again and said “would you mind handing me the West Marine catalogue?” “CATALOGUE” I thought. He needs to order something from a catalogue to fix this, and have it shipped to an island...an island that s not getting any shipments at all next week because of the Family Regatta? It was 4:45 on a Friday afternoon. Perfect! Then I thought, there is the ole standby...run her aground into shallow water and she won’t sink. He found the sea strainer in the catalogue, $239.00 plus shipping. All he needs to do is find a way to put another bolt on it. In the mean tine, we cannot run the engine to charge the batteries to keep this boat running. It is the sea strainer that keeps all the sea weeds and stuff out of the engine. Well...we could go to the marina and plug in. You know what...I am not going to worry about it. He is teaching me how not to panic. Darn thing probably needed replacing anyway! When I see him put his life jacket on, then I will put mine on too. In the meantime, I will just chill, as my brother Jim would tell me!
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