Not Again?!

Today was supposed to a cruising boat race, but we woke to amazingly enough, no wind! The race was postponed and a VBIC (very brief informal cruise) was organized to take skiffs down to Little Harbour. We jumped at the chance to get friends from home, Ken, Terri and Noah down to see Pete's Pub, the foundry, and the caves. We mustered just outside Hope Town Harbour with several other boats, and headed south in Walkabout.

 

We still had the original three bladed prop on and all was well with no smoke, as we tore along at 23 mph. It's about 20 miles away and we were just passing the Northbar Channel that is open to the ocean, with large swells coming into the Sea of Abaco, when once again we stopped in our tracks with no propulsion! It was just like before when it felt like we were thrown into neutral. Not a good place for this happen as we were beam to the seas and rolling side to side in the waves. THANKFULLY Beach Cruiser Barry and Barb were following us with Will and Muffin (talk about a boatload of marine experience!), and they helped us out. As Dave was on the bow making a tow rope, I managed to get the bow into the oncoming waves with the little bit of forward motion I had at idle speed against an incoming tide. We had Barry tow us into the lee of Tilloo Cay, and once we were in the calm shallows of Tilloo Sandbank, we knew we could make it back to Hope Town the 12 or so miles at slow speed.

Will dropped the towline from the bridle that he had made, and they headed down to Pete's Pub to join the VBIC, while we motored at about 3 1/2 mph back along the shore to Hope Town. It was the scenic route and if we had totally lost all propulsion we would be close to land, but it still took a long time to get back. We made it though and a very perplexed Dave now has to investigate more reasons as to why we have spun yet another prop. We may have to rename the boat "Crawlabout"...or "Towabout"! Stay tuned.