For our normal followers you know it is not like us to miss a noon report at sea. This is our first noon report we have ever missed sending! Yesterday was so busy. One thing after another.
We had two alternator belts break during the night, one about four hours after the other, so we used the Honda EU2000 generator to attempt to retain the then existing battery charge. And this later led to us stopping the single main engine of the boat in the middle of the Gulf of Alaska with storms around us to put on the last and only spare alternator belt.
That isn’t so bad right? Except that this interrupted Justin’s dealing with the situation of around a 1000 gallons of water that flooded into the aft lazerette resultant of water coming in around the rudder packing gland. This compartment’s bilge pump had failed after it ingested zip ties, which broke its impeller. The elevated level of water combined with a busted lashing created a whirlpool of sloshing dunnage and buckets of slops. Fortunate for Justin that the malaise of water level never exceeded that of his Extra Tuff boots in the 10′ by 15′ space. Yet before Justin had turned the corner on winning this water battle via a trash pump, Wade came to him with regret to advise him of an additional misfortune, that being that there was a fire in the wheel house. Wade said – I don’t know if it is class “C” or “D” as the classification didn’t seem pertinent to me during our pre-departure safety briefing, but there is a “smoke” class fire coming from the auto pilot. Suddenly the bridge did not seem such a wonderful place to hang out, for although turning off the auto pilot solved the fire problem, hand steering became necessitated. Justin smelled of flammable chemicals fire waiting to happen after his time pumping the aft lazarette so he elected to stay clear of this smoldering electrical situation. Further investigation led to a bad connection of a wire to the auto pilot, which necessitated soldering the wire while beam to in heavy swell, this because of being unable to steer while effecting repair. However this led to another fire, but not the boat this time, rather Sara’s new pants. And maybe stating “fire” seems excessive, for Wade and Sara kept tumbling in the wheel house from the bigger seas while trying to solder the wire and keep the steering wheel from turning. But alas, after finishing the job one last roll led to the soldering iron brushing against Sara’s new thermal and waterproof pants, melting a hole in them. Unfortunately this four inch long hole was nearer the shin area instead of higher up and thus could not be considered stylish like some modern denim. Yes, things are getting really bad on a ship when a woman’s new clothes are being ruined; the coupe de grace of a bad day at sea perhaps? Yet the Mighty McClure Bay and crew persevered through and in spite of such adversities, including the physical injuries of Sara scraping her hand upon rust while dumping the “head” and Wade getting a sliver. And in the rain, of course, we managed to anchor in a bay (Sukoi Inlet) 15 miles northeast of Sitka, Alaska, yet to our delight we were greeted by a friendly otter, who seemed to care less about the rain as he swam about on his back alongside the boat.
As our blog has previously stated that we are all about the Comfort when Cruising; whether, it be on Sailing Vessel Just Drifting or our Lance Truck Camper, we attempt to travel with comfort. The “Mighty” McClure Bay is rather different, perhaps the opposite someone might say.
- The head (bathroom) on the boat is a bucket with a toilet seat on it, located in a port side locker. Due to the present danger of no rails (lifelines) the “head” was moved to the aft deck. This bucket and seat was tied to the boat to keep it from going overboard as it often tumbled during the rolling motion of our voyage. A further disappointment was when Wade attempted to rinse out the bucket from the “general” water tank of the boat (non-drinking water), for the water he ran into the bucket seemed as brown as the water of which he was trying to dispose. We did not engineer the boat, but it looks somewhat like the galley faucet is hooked up to a black or grey water tank with a substantial filter? You get the picture and what is it about poop that can make a story seem so funny to a guy? We will stick to bottled water for the ships tanks are liken to a situation of “Yellow Snow”?
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Tough job to be an engineer on this boat. Poor Justin had to run checks on all equipment every hour and pump fuel from the fuel tank to the Day tank every 4-5 hours. So he lived in the world of cat naps, mechanical issues, floods, fires, and ibuprofen to reduce the swelling aches of his body.
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The McClure Bay is a 1947 “gut” boat that has a wheel house representative of its age of build. Sara named the auto-pilot “Otto” for this trip. And poor Otto had to work so hard to turn the wheel, especially a turn to port. Wade and Sara have found their normal 8 hour watches to be a bit different because they actually had to pay attention; about five times a minute Otto would get stuck and start beeping because the wheel was too hard to turn. However, the weather and sea conditions, although a bit rolly on this boat, were generally benign for the Gulf of Alaska.
On a gut boat there is a large space to put said guts, that space being more important than crew comfort. And this fish holding space was “pressed” for the offshore trip, that meaning filled to the brim with water so that stuff will not slosh around so much in the compartment. The motion of the McClure Bay is not of a sailboat because it bobs back and forth even while going 8 to 9 knots. And speaking of “pressing”, Justin has the best sea sickness remedy analogy, “Like pressing the fish hold of the boat, be sure to keep your stomach “pressed”, that being full of food so that things are not rolling around inside your stomach.” So Sara was able to keep the contents of her stomach for the trip.
Oh, did we mention the fish we caught? Nope, and that is because that is one of the few things that did not happen. We tried, but still no fish . . so sad, we could almost cry; maybe we will? Yet as bad as we are making out this crossing of the Gulf of Alaska, the worst should now be behind us. We will be traveling the inside passage, anchoring each night to sleep, beautiful scenery, salmon begging to be caught, hot springs to visit, and hopefully the two days on the ocean will all be worth it. Now if only the rare event could happen of the sun coming out to say “Hey”.
Cheers,
Wade, Sara, and Justin
Sukoi Inlet Anchorage 57′ Mud 57$deg; 17′ 12″N, 135° 39′ 38″W
