It was bound to happen someday … a serious mechanical breakdown, but did it really need to happen in the Bahamas? For a day or two prior, we thought we smelled an exhaust smell underway, but not unusual when the wind blows from behind us. I checked the engines several times with nothing seeming amiss.

Obviously, I didn’t look closely enough! It’s hard to tell how long it had been this way, but this gap opened up, allowing exhaust gases to leak out.  Not too serious … unless you know how a marine exhaust system with a lift muffler works.  Unlike a car’s exhaust, seawater gets mixed with the exhaust once it leaves the engine to keep the exhaust hoses cool.  That causes a multitude of complications, but a modern answer for most boats is the lift muffler.  Without going into extreme detail, the seawater travels downward into the muffler & is then “lifted” up & out overboard with & powered by the exhaust gases.  See where I’m going? With reduced exhaust gases, the lift muffler can’t expel the water & it backs up into the engine.  Bad?  Yes, potentially $30,00 bad.

On the left is what’s left of the old machine screws & gasket. On the right making gaskets & making flathead machine screws.

The first order of business was to eliminate the saltwater sitting in the engine cylinders & get the engine running.  Saltwater (for even a day or two) could cause severe damage.  The process is fairly straightforward – remove the fuel injectors & turn over the engine to expel the water. Wow! Expel it did!  While only a few ounces, the water shot out everywhere, even up to the ceiling.  Clean up, re-assemble, then drain the water from the lift muffler, leaving the plug out so it will drain into the bilge & not backup into the engine.  Start ‘her up – yeahh!! – she ran fine!

We can’t let the exhaust water drain into the bilge for more than a few minutes & we still have almost 300 miles before we reach the U.S.  Do we limp back on one engine?  Temporarily fixing the exhaust leak could be simple … but … no.

Success! 3 long days later, I was finally able to extract the 2 broken & 1 mangled screws from the end of the turbocharger with just 7″ of working room, only visible with a mirror.  Replacement metric screws … in the Bahamas?  Got close, but not flat head, so I turned them into flat heads with a Dremel.  No replacement gaskets? I luckily found some high temp gasket material at a gas station.

A Spanish Wells fishing boat leaving the harbor with it’s “ducklings” – they tow these small boats over a hundred miles to their lobstering grounds where they split up each day to cover a larger fishing area.

On day 5 we were finally able to depart Spanish Wells, Eleuthera, fuel up & begin our trek back to Florida.  We had originally planned on heading west to The Berrys, then crossing back, but south winds & waves made it prudent to head north to the Abacos, then across. The engine operates fine, but it looks like we’ll have a week or more delay in the Abacos for lots of windy weather on the way (again).

“The Difference between an Ordeal and an Adventure is Attitude!”  No truer words were ever spoken!

With a tongue-in-cheek byline of “Over 1 Million Lives Ruined”, hey – that includes us!  For several years, we had subscribed to Latitudes & Attitudes, a “cruiser lifestyle” magazine – much different than the scores of other boating magazines we used to read.  Rather than all flash & professionally authored fluff articles, most are written by cruisers, from weekend dreamers to weathered circumnavigators.

The demo life raft stated “BOARD HERE” – Lori was all in!

They also offered a Cruising Seminar once a year near their base in California – a weekend of learning & tales for us dreamers.  One year, in 2009, they announced a Cruising Seminar weekend right in Mystic, CT – just 20 minutes away from us, so we had to attend!  Well, it worked!  We got so pumped up with their stories & energy, we moved up our cruising plans by 2 years.  Only 2 weeks later, we signed a contract to buy our new Maine Cat catamaran.  Then, in just 14 months, we went from dreaming to departing on our own cruising adventure of 11 years & counting!

Bob Bitchin

Bob “Bitchin” is the mastermind of Latitudes & Attitudes magazine & one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet.  His “Bitchin” nickname was given to him in the 1960s by Tommy Chong, of Cheech and Chong fame.  Bitchin was the editor of Choppers and Big Bike magazines in the 1970s after working as a bodyguard for motorcycle stuntman Evel Knievel, along with living the crazy biker life. He started Biker magazine in 1974 and Tattoo magazine in 1982.  One day looking out into the harbor from a biker bar, an ancient 74-foot square-rigged topsail schooner called out to him.  After walking down to talk with the Captain to see what the deal was, he was soon crew aboard on his way to Guatemala!  “It changed my life. You can’t be high and sail”.  That first taste had him buying a few different boats & cruising to the South Pacific & back for many years – quite the switch from drugs & biker gangs.

Fast forward to 1996, after having sold his biker & tattoo magazines, he decided to publish the type of boating magazine which would have inspired him. Within just a few years, it became the largest cruising lifestyle magazine in the world.  Since then, even though 2/3 of boating magazines have folded or merged into media conglomerates, Lats & Atts continues to thrive by bashing conventional magazine wisdom, from giving away free ads to advertisers encountering tough times, to having the largest percentage of editorial content to ads, to now offering his magazine to everyone in the world as a free download!  So whether just dreaming or freezing your butt in the cold, you can download Lats & Atts here for free: Lats & Atts Magazine free download/

Read, enjoy, dream …

LORI’S TWO CENTS

In addition to fun gatherings at Cort’s, we were generously invited to dinner aboard S/V Kohina, a sister ship to Ortolan, our Maine Cat 41.  It’s an odd feeling to still feel “at home” on a MC41.

And yes, we have more music to mention!  For you non-cruisers, this may be somewhat “greek” but in the interest of time, I’m keeping it short.  In harbors where cruisers gather, a morning Net often occurs to pass along information, request assistance, welcome new arrivals… and more.

The job of moderating the Net, or Net Controller, can be shared or just one person who does it daily.  For the past few years, one of George Town’s Net Controllers has been a Canadian on sailboat Loca Lola. Ian Michael Townsend not only is great to listen to on the Net, he’s emcee’d the Variety Show event of the Cruising Regatta and is a worthy musician, especially on trumpet. Breaking news the other day was that his music video, “Here Comes the Day” is in the running for a Juno nomination in Canada.  That song, along with “I Can’t Get Outta My Head”, are both on YouTube and one or both available on Spotify, etc.  Worth a listen.