Day 113 - Safe on a Mooring, Overheated Engine

At 4.30 AM I was up writing this blog happy that I had managed the boat well during the night. I had motored east for an hour then let the boat drift and to my dismay noted that the east wind had strengthened to over 10 knots and we were drifting west - toward the coast - and 0.7 knots. I was now just over 4 miles from the coast so retired with the plan to get up every 90 minutes for a check. To that end I started to use the chart plotter more effectively than before. I set its alarm, which is a very good one because when it goes off it will not stop until I push the "acknowledge" button, unlike an ordinary alarm clock that gives after less than a minute. I then set its anchor alarm with a radius of 2.5 miles. This guarded against a sudden increase of wind speed pushing me to the shore faster than I had anticipated. Then I set the little hand timer for 90 minutes and went to sleep. I could even have had another alarm working for me, the "timer" alarm of the chart plotter, but figured that I had enough working for me. In any event the little hand timer woke me up every time.

At the 3 AM check I saw that the wind had dropped and now we were heading west at only 0.3 knots. At 4.30 AM we were still drifting at the slow pace but the shallows were only a mile away. The light wind was from the north and the boat was pointing toward the shore inching itself along at 0.3 knots. The wheel had been lashed with rudder amidships all night so I decided to try the rudder hard over to port. Like magic I saw the boat slowly swing to the south, gain speed to 0.7 knots, then continue the swing to settle pointing and heading to the SE at 0.5 knots. Now that we were drifting away from land I could relax! We had made a total westward drift of 2.8 knots during the night and were now only 2.3 miles from the harbor entrance with less than an hour to go until dawn.

Then I saw the flashes of lightning. I looked out and it appeared to be a nasty looking thunderstorm headed our way. I saw a couple of bolts of lightning strike toward the ground. By the time it got close I had shut everything down, thrown breakers, and thrown the main switches after heating some water for a bowl of oat meal. It was the most electrical activity that I had seen on the voyage, with almost constant flashes of lightning, though fortunately most of it seemed to be between the clouds. Then the wind came. Even under bare poles the boat heeled over to a wind that was well over 30 knots. I sat in the darkness eating my bowl of oat meal making sure that I stayed away from the mast or any other metal. An hour later it was over. The wind settled back down to 10 knots and we had moved only 1.7 miles to the SSE. I had lashed the tiller to port just in time. It was now time to have coffee then begin to prepare the boat.

The preparation took a little longer than I had expected, mostly because I had had to clear out the V berth area to get to three fenders stowed in the starboard sail locker. But by 9.15 AM the flags were up, fenders were on the sides, mooring ropes were in position, and the anchor set up at the bow. Stowage of the anchor and chain had been one of the successes of the passage. They never caused any problems with shifting or making noise. When it came time to restore the chain I simply had to pull it straight up through the hatch from the plastic milk crate directly below the hatch. When I opened the lid to the anchor well I found everything in order: the 80 meters of rope for the second anchor was still neatly coiled up and the various pieces of anchoring equipment were in place as though we were still in La Paz.

I hailed the official on VHF 16 and soon was speaking with someone whose English was better than my Spanish. I answered all of his questions and when I asked if I had permission to enter the harbor he told me to stand by. After 20 minutes of standing by I decided to make the one hour run into the harbor with the VHF radio on in case he called me. As far as I was concerned I had met the requirement of announcing my arrival. I tried several times to hail the "Argentina" yacht club on VHF 71 (not 72 as I said in the previous blog) with no success. Before entering the harbor I called them again with no response then I hailed Club Nautico, another sailing club, and they did not respond.

I wish that I had gotten a few higher resolution levels of the Google map for this area on the laptop GPS DataLogger software because then I would have known where to find the swinging footbridge. At water level it was very difficult to figure out where the openings were. I got directions from one boat then from a second and finally found the bridge. I got through it and found myself in a rabbit warren of narrow fairways and posts all over the place. Then a man told me that no new boats were allowed in the area because there was a regatta on and there were 40 visiting boats in the harbor. I asked him how long the regatta would last and he said about 10 days. I had to exit back through the swinging bridge. The operator had seen everything and understood the situation. I asked him where I could go and he pointed and used words that I didn't understand. I saw 3 yellow moorings so I said "amarillo?" and he said yes. Catching the mooring that had no rope on it was no picnic but I had to do it because by then I knew that I had a serious problem with the engine.

While asking directions from the second boat the engine alarm came on and I dismissed it as just another battery fault alarm, muted it, and continued talking. Ten minutes later I was talking with the man regarding the regatta while he fended off the bow from a boat and I dealt with my stern which was resting on a pylon. Two fellows came up and one pointed out that there was no cooling water coming out of the exhaust. I got the boat turned around and on the way through the bridge I looked at the temperature gauge and couldn't believe what I saw: it was pegged out at the far end of the red zone. I had to keep going to snag the mooring or the wind would push me into the rock wall. Fortunately it kept going with apparent problem long enough for me to secure the boat. I the shut down the engine immediately, of course.

Afterwards I had a look at the prime suspect. I uncoupled the water inlet hose from the thru-hull fitting, opened the valve, and instead of a rush of water all I got was a trickle. There was not much distance in the passage through the valve and to the water, but there was an elbow involved and try as I may I could not get any wire of any thickness to go around the corner and free the obstruction. I even got a strand of the stiff wire from one of my broken shrouds and even that wasn't good enough. I would have to go for a dive the next day armed with a screw driver. There were a lot of jellyfish in the waters outside of MdP and I'm wondering if I didn't suck one up on the way.

Naturally I'm worried about possible damage done to the engine, even though it didn't seize up. I shudder at the thought of the water pump working dry, for one thing. I wonder about other long term effects on the piston and rings. During the crisis the engine was doing very low revs which may have helped.

So instead of at a marina I was on a mooring for who knows how many days. I decided to prepare for tomorrow's venture to the Customs and Immigration officials inflating the Zodiac and getting the paddles ready It's just as well that the Zodiac survived the Horn because I would be needing it for the next few days. I'll ask Mark for advice on the incident.

My first impressions of the marine facilities here were not good. It was unprofessional for the yacht clubs to not respond to my calls (even though they claim 24 hour radio service) which forced me to come in blind into literally a trap. I didn't like the forest of wood pylons, narrow fairways, and seeming lack of organization. I didn't see any serious boats around. But this is just my first impression. I'll visit the clubs and go about my business with an open mind and after a few days I'll be able to make a decision on what to do, the option, of course, being to push on to Buenos Aires.

For now I was half way there: in a well protected harbor, secure on a mooring, and for the first time in over three month would be able to go to sleep without worrying about the boat. And I was looking forward to my visit to dry land again. I was tempted to go ashore, find an ATM, then return to the boat with some alcohol for celebration and as a circuit breaker, but decided not to take a chance on playing loose with Argentine law.

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