The Journey Continues

Okay, so things started falling apart after our last blog entry.

Shortly after posting we listened to the weather report and got bad news. The nice weather was going down hill and in a hurry. So after some discussion we decided to go around Tiger pass. Nobody wanted to be in 30 kt winds with land on both sides of us. So we sailed out a little ways, started our engines, dropped and secured our sails, and everything on deck. I thought about for a little bit and then decided that I should check the oil and antifreeze in the engines while the weather was still good. I learned that in Tucumcari, New Mexico. So I killed one engine, checked fluids, then started it back and repeated the process on the other engine. Great! Then we thought while everything is calm we ought to eat real good too. Perfect! We are so proud of ourselves we are ready for this storm. Umm NO! 7:30pm the fuel transfer pump has quit and we can’t transfer fuel to our day tank. The solenoid has gone bad. So after bypassing the solenoid we are back on track.

Around New Orleans

Winds are directly from the North the seas are rough and we can’t head into the waves and definitely don’t want to be in between them. Jen is getting sicker and the swells are only getting higher. With the sails down and the engines in neutral we run with the swells doing 5 kts in a SE direction. The auto pilot was able to steer just fine even though we had no propulsion other than the winds. It was a comfortable ride going with the wind and waves.

Seas are roughly 10-13 feet. Winds at 40kts. Jen is on the floor along with most everything that was on the cabinets, bunks, or even in some cases in cabinets. Still heading in a SE direction.

More trouble. We had a hydraulic fitting on our Port transmission break and under some miracle we were able to find the correct fitting, fix it, and had enough transmission fluid to fill it again. Once again we find ourselves at an unexpected distance from land; any land, 172 miles away from land to be exact and at this point we are thinking that Mexico sounds nice (why not already half way there).

Some Time Later. Both alternators on both engines failed, and the generator won’t start, so now we are down to wind and solar power. We have plenty of wind, but it has been overcast everyday not good if you need solar power. We start conserving power. I steer the boat as much as I can. We turn the GPS on every 4 hours and get a Lat. Long and check radar. We turned the fridges off.

We are losing power out an alarming rate. By the time we get to Panama City we had to find our first channel marker, around 4:30 am on Friday, with no GPS using only spot light and paper charts. We got to our marina around 6am only to wait until 8am for them to open. We pulled up to the fuel pier and charged our batteries before we put the boat in our slip later that day.

We like the Marina, and have already met lots of fun people. One of the couples on the dock was having a dock sale and I got a new aluminum bike with travel bags and a trailer and Jen got all new foul weather gear. We were pretty excited about both. Around the marina there is a laundry mat, a restaurant, some trinket stores, a canvas repair store, and a bar all within a 100’ of the boat. There is also a Trolley system that will take us pretty much anywhere we want to go in Panama City. We haven’t got to explore any more of the area yet, hopefully this coming week we will be able to.

My friend, Scott, took us out to eat then to his bar on Saturday night. Had a blast, there was a great band playing (Mom wanted to adopt them all). Although it was a little chilly standing outside watching them play.

Otherwise we have been cleaning, doing laundry, and working on the boat.