At Enseada de Sitio Forte

[Note: This blog entry did not appear to have been published earlier, possibly due to recent technical problems with Gmail.  Here it is, from 26 July, out of order.]

At 12.30 PM I dropped anchor in 10 meters of water at Saco Maguaraquissaba, which is in the larger Enseada de Sitio Forte on the north side of Ilha Grande, after 4.1 hours of motoring, which yielded a total of 289.6 engine hours. Our posiion was 23S07.514, 044W16.629. It was a bright and sunny afternoon with the wind at less than 5 knots.

The departure from Praia de Proveta this morning was difficult though instructive. I woke up to a gentle wind from the north, which was good because I wouldn't have to worry about the beach as a lee shore. At 7 AM I got to work, figuring that we would be under way in 30 minutes. Silly me.

My plan was to raise the Swarbrick anchor first while the plow anchor continued to hold the boat in position. However, I soon saw that the rope of the Swarbrick had done one wrap around the chain of the plow anchor. Rather than raising the Swarbrick and then trying to unwind the tight chain of the clumsy anchor around the chain of the plow anchor I elected to raise the plow and unwind the rope around the simpler profile of the anchor. Raising the anchor was hard yakka, very hard yakka. I had to exert every ounce of strength to wind up the chain of the plow anchor a few feet at a time, I had fears of having snagged a disused mooring ground chain. When the plow anchor was near the surface I could see the problem. The chain of the Swarbrick was looped around the plow anchor. That meant that I was raising the 45 lb plow, its 9 meters of chain representing the drop to the bottom, plus two sides of the 15m chain of the Swarbrick. 45 lb of anchor plus up to 24 meters of 12mm chain is one heavy package to lift up.

I could not get the plow anchor on the roller with the weight of the Swarbrick's chain on it, and although I could reach the chain by lying on my chest I could not exert enough force to lift the loop off the plow anchor. I managed to lift the loop of chain off with the boat hook but when the weight of the chain was transferred to the boat hook I could not hold it and down went the boat hook. The chances of it staying hooked on the chain were slim so I accepted its loss, which I greatly regretted since it had been part of the voyage from Fremantle and had served me well. I soon had the plow anchor on the roller and got to work on shipping the Swarbrick. That was not an easy task either. Even with 4 winds of the rope around the windlass drum I had to tail hard with the left hand while cranking hard a bit at a time with the right. Eventually the end of the 15 meter chain appeared and lo and behold there was the handle of the boat hook rising up nicely. Somehow it had become snared in a twist of the chain. I gingerly raised the chain until the end of the boat hook was about 2 ft from the surface and managed to free it and put it back on board. Soon I had the chain around the gypsy and finished raising the anchor with the winch handle. I then quickly lashed the Swarbrick to the top of the Zodiac and attended to the boat, which was drifting a bit close to the fishing boats. I put the engine into reverse which backed us away from the fishing boats while the prop walk turned the boat clockwise toward the beach. I then put the engine in neutral, spun the wheel hard to get a bit more clockwise turning as the boat slowed its reverse movement, then put it into forward gear and off we were out of the anchorage. It was 8 AM and I was soaked from top to bottom in sweat. I had to use a towel to dry my hair and face.

I came to several conclusions from the exercise. First, lowering the Swarbrick anchor over the rail by hand will not work because as I lower the hook I am also holding up increasing amounts of the heavy chain. If I lower the Swarbrick into the water it will have to be over the roller. Second, deploying two anchors is to be avoided at all costs, particularly in variable winds. I can see using it in strong wind conditions to save the boat from a lee shore, but as a feel-good preventive measure I have my doubts. Looking back, had I held back on deploying the second anchor I would have seen the wind drop again before night fall and would have stayed riding with one anchor. Third, I am best off going to the trouble of finding a shallow anchorage so that I can use the plow anchor and avoid the more clumsy Swarbrick "Fisherman" style anchor.

I have to accept that this boat is not well set up for anchor work. The anchor area is narrow and with a very curved deck. Access to the rollers requires squeezing between the headstay and the pulpit. The two rollers are close to each other, meaning that side by side anchors interfere with each other. This is not a complaint but more of an observation. It is all about tradeoffs. This boat is optimized for ocean racing and not gunk holing around anchorages. In that capacity it has served me well and I am not complaining, as I have several times about comfortable beamy cruisers that are dogs to weather.

Once we were out of the bay and I had a second coffee in my hand I looked around and realized what a splendid day it was turning out to be. The sun was shining through a thin sheen of cloud in a generally clear sky and the sea was calm under a gentle breeze. We had an uneventful motor to the new anchorage while I saw through binoculars yet more houses and small fishing communities along the shore. As with all good cruising grounds, the distances are small. I could look across the water and see the shore of Bracui on the mainland only 12 miles away. The Town of Agras itself was only 12 miles away. As with the great cruising grounds of the Whitsundays of Australia or the San Juan and Gulf Islands of the Pacific Northwest or the island playground of the La Paz Mexico area, a movement of only a few miles would find one in a completely different anchorage with its own delights.

As I approached the bay I saw that the ship ahead reported as "unknown" type of vessel by AIS was actually a drilling rig. I was shocked because I come from a world where drilling in world class cruising grounds such as the Whitsundays or San Juans would be unthinkable. Having said that, this is Brazil, it is their country, and I respect that they manage it as they see fit.

I decided to try anchoring at this cove on the eastern side of the bay to get protection from what was then a NW breeze. The cove has a well developed and very colorful settlement along the shore, with maybe 30 houses (some of them VERY nice), several small jetties and small boats, and a large schooner moored Tahiti style against the largest jetty. I was about 90 meters to the closest point on shore and maybe two boat lengths from the line of moorings. This was all closer that I normally prefer, but I had to get this close in order to get into relatively shallow water. With with 30 meters of chain out and the gentle wind conditions I didn't expect any trouble. If I could put aside the thoughts of what MIGHT happen, I would enjoy the exquisite position that we were in.

I had trouble napping because it was so hot. At 3 PM the cabin temperature was 32.3C (90F) which I could not ascribe to residual heat from the engine because all hatches were wide open. It was time to put winter in Argentina and the chest cold behind me and venture into the water. There were a couple of jobs that I had in mind. The first thing I did was to extricate the boarding ladder and put it over the side. Then I assembled my tools: snorkel, long screw driver, wire brush, paint scraper; opened the toilet inlet and outlet valves, then went over the side. The conditions were perfect: the sea was very calm and the sun was shining onto the port side of the boat at a good angle, the side that I would be working at. The water gave that initial chill but thereafter was quite pleasant.

The first thing I did was to head (no pun intended) for the toilet thru-hull fittings with the long screw driver. I poked the screw driver into the outlet fitting, met resistance, poked harder working the screw driver around, and a small amount of that white scale that builds up inside of the hose came out. As I had suspected, enough had collected at the outlet to block it up. After poking the inlet and finding no problem I went aboard and tried the head, which now worked fine. I cleaned the bowl, put a few drops of olive oil in the water to lubricate the seals, pumped it out, and thereafter the head worked like a new one. I thought that those deposits that build up inside the hose are some sort of calcium, and I remembered reading that there is something that can be flushed through the system that will dissolve the material. I would investigate that when I got access to the internet.

Underwater I got my first view of the hull since La Paz and I must say that it was cleaner than I had expected. Perhaps the recent cruising had cleaned off the hull a bit. However, the area that I had been concerned about was as bad as I had feared. The propeller had a coating of hard and lumpy marine growth which would have interfered with the laminar flow when it was turning to drive the boat. It must have heavily degraded the performance of the propulsion and I felt lucky that we had done as well as we had. I had intended to send a diver to clean and inspect the hull before I left MdP but I allowed myself to get distracted by other things, which was a mistake that could have cost me heavily.

I began diving on the propeller with the paint scraper in hand to clean it. It was slow going because with the asthmatic reaction to my recent cold (I am still coughing up a bit of phlegm.) I had very little lung capacity and got maybe 10 seconds at the propeller with each dive. I persevered and after more than 30 minutes of work the propeller was remarkably clean. The sunlight through the clear water was of great assistance. There may be more dives. In the first such dive I'll go over the propeller with a wire brush. After that I'll clean off the propeller shaft. I found the anodes to be in reasonable condition but could use with a replacement in the next few months. (I have a spare set of anodes on board.) I felt that I had dodged a bullet with the state of the propeller and I was looking forward to better performance from the engine work in the future.

I'll probably hire a diver to clean the hull at first opportunity and may have the boat lifted out of the water for hull maintenance before my departure to Cape Town.

After a cockpit bath I tidied up the boat then settled down to enjoy the waning day in one of the most peaceful and picturesque anchorages that I had experienced to date.