31:16.173N 077:02.447W

48 hours into our passage from the Bahamas to the States. 

Our plan had been to follow the weather and routing advice to the letter by sailing directly north before crossing the Gulf Stream and making the passage round Cape Hatteras and into Chesapeake Bay.  Unpleasant weather is forecast in the Chesapeake so the plan was to arrive ahead of it.  If we could not get sufficiently north in time then we would go to Beaufort, North Carolina and carry on north along the Intra Coastal Waterway.

We left Marsh Harbour as soon as the tide was high enough to let us out on Friday, along with two other boats Anamcara and Cloud Nine.  We spoke to them on the radio and we all had the same plan.  The other two intended to travel more quickly than us and very gradually got ahead.  We had a last call at nightfall and agreed to speak the following morning to check all was well.  Mike made contact early Saturday morning but Anamcara said they had a couple of issues and would call us back.  Not too surprised by that because when there are only two of you on board you can easily both be involved in something and so not have a free hand for the radio.

They hailed us at mid-day but couldn’t hear our response.  They tried Cloud Nine but couldn’t hear him either.  They kept trying but couldn’t hear either of us.  We tried them.  No reply. We started to think they had a problem.  We spoke to Cloud Nine and agreed we would keep trying.  We then heard Anamcara put out a call for the US Coastguard and say they had two broken shrouds (the cables that hold the mast up) and their engine had overheated.  There was no response from the USCG, not surprisingly because we are 150 miles off shore, way beyond their VHF radio range.  We knew Anamcara didn’t have a long range radio or a satellite phone so they really were isolated.  They put out another ‘all ships’ call and gave their position so we now had the key bit of information – where exactly they were.  We turned towards them, as did Cloud Nine, and estimated it would take us two hours to get there.

Mike used our satellite phone to contact the USCG and gave them all the information we had.

After about an hour Anamcara could again hear us on the radio so we were able to tell them that the USCG knew what had happened and where they were.  They said that they had tied their spare lines to the mast to try to stabilise it and were changing a shattered impeller in the engine.  Difficult tasks given that we were all rolling on a big sea.  The real threat was their yacht dismasting because there is a good chance the mast will torpedo a hole in the boat before they are able to cut the remaining wires free.  And there is some bad weather on the way.

We passed on a request for more information from the USCG and duly relayed the answer by Sat phone.  We kept up regular radio “morale boosting” contact with Anamcara.  In turn, the USCG rang us several times for updates or with further questions.  Anamcara got their engine going, turned left and headed slowly for the nearest bit of coast.  On our next radio contact we relayed that the USCG had dispatched a cutter.  We thought this was impressive and very reassuring. 

We were still 6 miles off when they were moving again and it would have taken far longer to catch them to offer assistance they didn’t need any more and we would then have been in completely the wrong place to proceed with our weather dodging strategy.  They were keen that we turned back onto our course but keep in touch as long as the VHF radio range would allow.  The USCG gave us the all clear to break off and proceed north, but asked that we keep calling Anamcara for as long as we were within radio range, as they, like us were worried that if the mast did go in the swell that they would be in dire straits with no way of contacting USCG.  We lost contact around 1800 hours.  We have their email address so we will find out what the eventual outcome is.   

Moral of the story.  If you intend to go more than 20 miles offshore you need something other than a VHF radio to communicate with.  We have both a sat phone and a long range radio which cost a lot of money but seems cheap at the price for the peace of mind and additional safety it brings.

Other than that, our first day was very rolly and uncomfortable, especially for Ross and Loren who suffered the mal de mer in spite of all the anti sea-sickness remedies.  They have bounced back though and are both great company and great crew.  Ross just got stuck in yesterday when we were helping Anamcara and filled in any gaps whether it was speaking to Anamcara on the radio or taking the helm to adjust our course.  We have Barrett the windvane steering for us again and both Ross and Loren quickly got the hang of tuning him.

We lost a few hours while helping Anamcara and are now likely to miss our weather window to get round the notorious Cape Hatteras, so have decided just to go straight to Beaufort and make the rest of the trip along the waterway.  Well worth having a look at it on Google Earth.

All for now.