Friday, November 13, 2015

The "Storm".

The word storm is actually a little misleading. To give you some back story....Before we left San Diego the engineer was preparing me for the trip ahead as he has done this type of thing many times over the last 30+ years. His exact comment was "This ocean going voyage will be long streches of severe boredom followed by brief moments of sheer terror"! The first such moment of sheer terror (at least for me) happened at 9pm Wednesday night (oct 28). Earlier in the day while the engineer was at the helm we came across a very large debris field that had washed out to sea from the land fall of Hurricane Patricia. The engineer did a masterful job of navigating LFB in and around the debris without so much as a scratch. After a couple of hours we were clear and back up to cruising speed (8 knots). Fast forward to 9pm....It was time for my hourly engine room check. I descended the stairs, just as my first foot hit the floor outside the engine room door a horrific noise and vibration right under my foot occurred. It sounded like the boat was coming apart right under me! Needless to say the "Fight or Flight" instinct took over! Yes you guessed it...the flight response was chosen and I flew up the stairs on all fours...I am sure the sound of that was probably much worse that the actual event that caused it! As soon as I made it to the top of the stairs and around the corner to the stairs leading to the pilot house I heard alarms going off and the only voice I hear is the Captain's..."Oh Shit"! I don't know about you but that is not something I ever want to hear from the pilot of the airplane i am riding in, or from the train conductor, the bus driver, or the ship captain! Needless to say my "Pucker Factor" was maxed out!
The next thing I know the engineer has rushed up to the pilot house, talked with the captain and is now going down the stairs to the engine room. He started opening cabinets outside the engine room looking for the access panels to the stabilizers. Turns out we hit something that knocked the port side stabilizer off line. He found the access panels and checked both stabilzers for leaks....none..Whew! While he was doing this the Captain pulled the manual and read up on the stabilizers. Turns out that they are very well designed. The fail safe engineered into the system calls for the hydraulics to disengage from the stabilizer fin if they encounter any undue stress. It had worked precisley as designed! Further more the manual calls for the stabilizer system to be shut off for a few minutes after this happens and then restarted. This was completed and when the system was restarted the the stabilizers rengaged....again just as designed! It took a while for all (meaning me) to return to a more relaxed state! My First moment of sheer terror on this trip! Hopefully my last! The only other somewhat unusual activity that night was the rough seas. We went most of the night with very large forward/aft rolling waves. It made sleeping in my forward birth impossible. After about an hour of feeling the bed drop off below me and then come back up to slap me around, I decided my best bet for any sleep was to try the couch in the salon off the galley. This worked much better but still was rough. We pulled into our current marina the next afternoon (Thursday, Oct 29) around 3pm. We filled up on fuel and docked the boat. Everybody was worn out so it was an early night. The next morning we took LFB out of the marina to a point about a mile off the beach so that the Captain could dive on the stabilizers to inspect them for damage. I know some of you are going to ask "Why not dive on it in the marina?" Well the marina has a river that flows into it from the northeast. There are signs everywhere warning that you are not to go into the water at the marina because of crocodiles! Enough said! So the captian dove on the stabilizers and immediately saw that the port side stabilizer fin had sustained a lot of damage.
So back to the marina we went. Turns out there is a boat yard at the marina that was extremely capable of completing this repair in a timely professional manner. LFB was hauled out by noon and the repairs were completed and the boat was back in its slip on Monday.
The voyage was scheduled to have a 2 week hiatus in November due to previous commitments for the Captain so I guess we are lucky that if this was going to happen, it happened now. I am sure the Owner's wallet doesn't feel so lucky! Love you Bro! All for now....Will post pictures of what I did while the boat is sitting later. Until next time enjoy the pictures of the latest marina. Cheers!

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