When the engine failed

For all that I praise Dave for his skills as a captain, there was one area of his personality that drove me crazy. It is hard to describe, but he always assumed the boat was ready to sail whenever the winds were fair, regardless of what was breaking or falling apart on the boat. This was coupled with the fact that he tended to invite too many people along, his motto being “the more, the merrier,” and when the cockpit overflowed, deck space became fair game. Most of the guests knew nothing about sailing beyond not tossing beer bottle caps overboard. No surprise then that preventable chaos followed.

One boat in particular that he had brought down to Grenada, a CSY 41, was no jewel; actually, it was more or less a piece of junk. Even on the delivery voyage from the U.S. east coast to Grenada, systems failed one after another. By the time the boat was tied up at Prickly Bay, the to‑do list was substantial, key systems needed work to make the boat seaworthy. I suspect Dave quietly downgraded these problems on his mental checklist. This meant that every time we went sailing, something was bound to fail. One disastrous sail still remains imprinted in my mind as the day trip from hell.

It started when some of Dave’s invitees turned up unannounced with house guests. Originally, he had invited five people, and somehow, we ended up with twelve. They spread out across the deck once the cockpit filled.

Everyone was in fine spirits as we cast off the deck lines.

Right away, one of the fellows in the marina came sprinting down the dock and shouted that there was no water coming out of the exhaust. Dave instantly hit the kill switch. Then he went to raise the mainsail, which had automatic reefing, but it jammed. He switched to the jib, and thankfully, that worked; we were then able to sail out of the bay.

While he and everyone else enjoyed the fair winds for a few hours, I could only worry about how we would get back to the dock without an engine. At some point in the afternoon, I asked Dave about this. He calmly said he was thinking of picking up one of the floating buoys in the bay.

This made sense. A handful of boats had fixed anchors in the bay, each marked with a small floating buoy. As we re-entered the bay, I stood at the bow, on the lookout for an empty anchorage. I found one deep in the bay, almost near the beachfront. Dave tacked towards it. He executed a crisp jibe, slowed the boat just enough for me to hook the buoy, and I exhaled… until the line went slack. The buoy was a dummy, a placeholder left by someone else. Our moment of relief turned to alarm.

With the keel scraping bottom and the wind dying, Dave said we would sail back to the dock. Risky, yes, but we had no choice. About fifty metres from the dock, the wind died completely, and the boat stopped moving. After a few expletives, I climbed over the bow rail and jumped into the water with a bowline. I swam and towed the boat to the dock. Not the most dignified entry.

Once we were safely tied up, Dave went below to see what was wrong with the engine. He came back on deck almost immediately with a face mask on and carrying a hammer. He jumped overboard, stayed underwater while we heard dull hammering. He came up for air once or twice more, then climbed on board and went down below to check the engine again. He came back to the cockpit sans mask and with a cool beer in hand.

He looked over at me and explained that the propeller shaft had slipped out, and we had been taking on water. He asked me whether I could pump out the bilge. Grudgingly, I went below and then proceeded to furiously pump the water and my anger away.

Years later, I told this story to some visiting guests, describing the day trip from hell. Dave laughed in all the appropriate spots but admitted he had completely forgotten the details. In our relationship, I had an elephant memory, he a goldfish’s. It made things interesting.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash