{"id":1927,"date":"2021-05-24T15:37:18","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T20:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/?p=1927"},"modified":"2024-05-02T20:09:10","modified_gmt":"2024-05-03T01:09:10","slug":"another-year-another-hurricane-season-escape","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/?p=1927","title":{"rendered":"Another year, another hurricane season escape!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>On April 4th, with the 2021 hurricane season approaching, my wife and I left Dallas for Freeport, Grand Bahamas to join our Super Maramu which was sitting there on the hard. We had to transport quite a large amount of different supplies – both for the boat as well as personal. This immediately put us on a collision course with the DFW TSA agents.<\/p>\n

First of all, they did not like my EcoBlast! It’s a reusable air horn required for Panama Canal passage that works off pressurized air. It’s not an aerosol can of any kind as it’s normally empty until it’s loaded with compressed air using a hand pump or compressor. No amount of explanation or showing its manual would convince TSA that it’s empty and not a bomb! I had to go back to the check-in counter and check another<\/em> piece of luggage – this time my backpack – just to get this air horn checked in too!<\/p>\n

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Once we returned to the TSA security line, we were back to more problems. For personal supplies, we had gotten ourselves quite a large supply of medications, both Rx and over-the-counter. The sophisticated TSA equipment determined that our generic MiraLax – lax being a key word here(!) – was an explosive.  I tried to explain to them that my wife never uses it in amounts to be considered ‘explosive’! We had to wait until the local TSA agents contacted a higher up – in Washington, DC most likely – to decide what to do with it. Finally, we were told it was OK to transport the ‘explosive’ laxative on the plane. Surprise, surprise!<\/p>\n

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Bradford Marine Boatyard and Marina offices in Freeport, Grand Bahama.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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We got to Freeport in the early afternoon, picked up our Hertz rental and went straight to the Bradford Boat Yard<\/a> to get our boat launched so we could move right onto it. Once this was done, we docked at a wet slip at Bradford’s, got shore power and started to get ready to leave as soon as possible. However, it was not to be. While in Annnapolis, MD at the end of 2020, I discovered one of the fridge\/freezers was not working. I thought it just needed a new RPM regulator, but it turned out to be busted all together. I didn’t realize until later that I needed a new compressor along with its evaporator.<\/p>\n

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I ordered a new Frigoboat compressor from the mainland US which took about 10 days to arrive. By then, I had figured out that due to the switch to a more eco-friendly refrigerant, I’d need a new evaporator as well! Another 10 days, another wait!<\/p>\n

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First, I installed the compressor, which required some modifications as it was not an exact drop-in for the broken one.<\/p>\n

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Once the replacement evaporator came in, I installed it, switched it on and ran a temperature check. It was working alright – as expected!<\/p>\n

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Fridge and freezer temperatures were reached! Great!<\/p>\n

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Now, we could stock up our freezer and fridge before we sailed off to Panama. Freeport had a pretty good supply of groceries brought in from the mainland US. That made it pricey but most of the staples we were familiar with were still available.<\/p>\n

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Whenever we did not feel like cooking, we enjoyed eating from Sire’s nearby, a two restaurant local chain serving excellent Caribbean fare. It is both a sit-down and take-out place, and we took advantage of both. Our favorite by far was Cracked Conch served with sides of rice & peas, baked mac & cheese and fried plantains!<\/p>\n

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Our other go-to on no-cooking nights was Domino’s pizza delivery!<\/p>\n

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Sands<\/a> is a local brewery – only a short ride from the Bradford yard – and it makes pretty decent beers, both lager and stout styles.<\/p>\n

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With our most important repair done, we were ready to sail out, but sure enough, I discovered more things to fix before we could leave! Alas, boat life!<\/p>\n

The first thing that needed my immediate attention was the extreme wear of the eye at the end of our steering cables. Those eyes attach the steering cables to the rudder yoke. While looking for some of the pieces of teakwood that I store under the stern cabin berth, I noticed an excessive amount of brass metal shavings. After closer investigation, it turned out that they were from those cable ending parts. Once I had disassembled them, I could see just how bad the extreme wear on them was. They were at the point of breaking off!<\/p>\n

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This may have been like that for a while. When I mentioned this damage to Wojtek, our Atlantic crossing crew mate, he reminded me that he had noticed some clicking sound in the helm when our autopilot acted on the rudder. This may have been the issue!<\/p>\n

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I didn’t have much luck to find any replacement so that left me with no choice but to ask the Bradford Marine yard to machine a pair out of stainless steel, which they did and quite well!<\/p>\n

Yet another problem popped up when I was working around the engine room. There, I found a sea water leak out of a reducer in the line of the generator exhaust. Once more, this was something caused by EMEK Marine, a Turkish boatyard and the most incapable yard in the world. The reducer seemed to be made from a lower quality stainless steel like 304 or worse, as it showed sea water pitting and weld damage. An appropriate 316 use of SS would have prevented that!<\/p>\n

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The never-ending story of EMEK Marine’s so called re-fit!<\/p>\n

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With those immediate problems solved (thanks to Bradford Marine), we were just waiting for a weather window to start our sail to Panama. The problem was that most of the time, the Old Bahamas Channel, a strait between Cuba and the Bahamas, gets southeast winds, which makes the passage to the Caribbean filled with constant tacking against it. This was the same wind which powered us on our sail from the Dominican Republic to the US in the spring of last year.<\/p>\n

On May 13th, we finally cast off, stopping at the Grand Bahama Yacht Club a little further west of Bradford yard to refuel and then off we sailed!<\/p>\n

At first on our southern leg, we had pretty steady and favorable winds. But once we reached the Old Bahama Channel, the promised favorable winds turned out to be just that – a promise! Most of our time reaching the Windward Passage, we had very unsteady and changeable winds. This meant no way to get any rest at night with many sail changes and boat tacks!<\/p>\n

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Big stretches of the Old Bahama Channel are covered with traffic separation schemes which give priority to any commercial vessel. This adds to the difficulty of sailing along it!<\/p>\n

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Having setup my autopilot to its wind vane mode due to these changing winds, I woke up many times at night realizing we were sailing in the wrong direction, like towards Cuba, as the autopilot was doing its work – following the wind!<\/p>\n

After more than 6 days of sailing, on May 19th at about 1 AM, we finally reached the northern entrance of the Windward Passage, a strait between the eastern end of Cuba and the western cap of the island of Hispaniola, home to Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Surprisingly and contrary to this passage’s fame of always being rough and windy, we encountered no wind and quiet seas! Over the next day, it got so bad that we had to just motor!<\/p>\n

But soon after that, the wind picked up which stirred the very messy seas that the Caribbean Sea is known for. While we had very favorable and good strength winds which propelled us towards Panama, those rough seas still gave us a pretty hard ride! In retrospect, I would consider this as our roughest passage so far! The swells here were truly nasty, rough and jerky! There were days that, despite being acclimated to sea sickness, we had no appetite to eat ANYTHING! At least, due to stiff winds, this sail from the Windward Passage to Bocas del Toro was as quick as it could be.<\/p>\nngg_shortcode_0_placeholder\n\n

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Getting closer to Panama, we encountered more rains, some of them torrential and associated with pretty severe T-storms. Those always scare me due to a possibility that lightning will hit the boat and fry its electronics at the least!<\/p>\n

Finally, on the evening of May 23rd, we anchored at the Bocas del Toro’s fourth anchorage. I hit some problems with setting my anchor properly, mainly because my chain counter stopped working.  Eventually, we got our hook to hold and retired for the night. The next day in the morning, we would need to clear into Panama!<\/p>\n

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Bocas del Toro, Panama<\/p>\n

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On April 4th, with the 2021 hurricane season approaching, my wife and I left Dallas for Freeport, Grand Bahamas to join our Super Maramu which was sitting there on the hard. We had to transport quite a large amount of… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[49,76,3,79,24,77,5,78,16,75,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1927","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atlantic-ocean","category-bahamas","category-boat","category-bocas-del-toro","category-food","category-freeport","category-maintenance","category-panama","category-places","category-the-bahamas","category-weather"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ffuJ-v5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1927"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1927\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jemmofthesea.thelaskowskis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}