What could possibly go wrong?
Friday morning is absolutely beautiful. It looks like the weather is finally going to act like summer is coming and we are excited to head to Desolation Sound… but that wasn’t going to happen... disaster was about to strike.
First clue - before leaving Ballet Bay, we noticed a small sheen on the water so we searched for the source. We couldn’t find anything obvious, conferred with Mike, our mechanic from home, and decided it was likely overflow from the full fuel tanks and the impact of rocky water when we came in. We head out, the water is flat calm, no wind, and beautiful blue skies and sun.
We’re about 30 minutes out, just south of Powell River when the starbird engine loses power and shuts off. No alarm indications and everything on the guages are normal. I restart the engine and a minute later, it does it again. Keith starts checking the engine room while I try to start it a third time. The alarms activate and the engine is dead. Keith comes up back with bad news… there is a lot of oil in the starbird bilge. We don’t panic but are certainly stressed. I continue north on the one engine as we connect with Mike and look for help in Powell River. The marina has room for us on the end dock so we don’t have to do much maneuvering and they will be there to grab ropes. When we get close, we bring the trophy up along side and make a challenging entrance and docking experience. Note to self, the boat moves better going backwards….
After many phone calls, Mike found Gregg, a retired tug boat mechanic who agrees to come take a look and help us out. Gregg arrives about 30 minutes later and easily finds the problem. The oil sender unit cracked and released all the oil. He spends the afternoon repairing it so he can test if the engine is operable. He gets the engine running but when checking the fuel filter, he finds it is full of metal pieces. This means the engine is badly damaged and our trip is over. Gregg and Mike agree we need to head south using the one engine and we need to leave soon to take advantage of the good weather. Keith spends the evening cleaning out the bilge while we are on the dock.
With Gregg came his best friend Rob - who is retired Coast Guard. Their chemistry together was light and fun and made a bad situation easier. Rob sees the Trophy and tells Keith he can easily tow the big boat or help maneuver it if necessary. So he showed him how to set it up, just in case. We’re grateful for the knowledge but don’t expect we’ll need it.
Saturday morning, we head south to Nanaimo - it should be a 5-6 hour run. Again a beautiful day and we are so grateful as we have to cross the Georgia Strait. I set the autohelm, watch for debris and off we go. As we approach Nanaimo, we decide to anchor in Percy Cove, at the south end of Northumberland Channel, just east of Dodd Narrows. This will make it an easy hop off point and it won’t take long the next day to get over to Dodd and pass through.
For context, the wood mill is on the west side of this channel with huge tankers loading and unloading. On the east side is where they store all the logs waiting for processing. It’s a large channel but a lot going on.
As we approach Northumberland, the winds have picked up and the autohelm is starting to drift. This isn’t uncommon but it wasn’t correcting itself. I turn off the autohelm to manually steer and the wheel just spins. I call to Keith and he quickly shuts the valves off to the autohelm and repressurizes the steering system. I test the lower helm and have some control, but the wind is just to strong and is pushing us and guess what… a tanker is coming out of the channel, heading right for us.
Thank you Rob for your amazing and timely advice. We bring the Trophy along side and set it up as Rob told us and with the help of the large boat engine, we are able to move the boat out of the channel just in time. I call the Coast Guard and they dispatch a local Sea Tow company who safely gets us over to the Nanaimo Yacht Club dock for the night.
We order a pizza and try to breath. Mike is flying up the next morning to add another set of hands on the boat and help our very frayed nerves as we continue south.
Sunday morning, Mike arrives safely and we were able to get off the dock. We easily pass through Dodd Narrows with a following current at 6 knots. I’m not sure why the locals are worried, we run through Deception Pass at much worse tides…. but not typically on one engine.
We need fuel to continue our journey into LaConner. We arrive at Deer Harbor, Orcas 8 hours later and anchor for the night.
Monday morning weather isn’t as nice but doable. We head towards home port. Just as we get into the channel, the wind picks up, blowing 20-25 mph and raining. Keith takes the Trophy in ahead of us and is on the dock with our dock mate to grab the lines. Mike smoothly brings it in bow first and we are safe. Thus concludes our trip and now we start working with insurance.
We hope repairs won’t take too long and we can do the trip again later in the summer. Ahhh, the life of a boater - we all have stories to tell, we know have a big one!
You all know we love Jesus. We prayed without ceasing and knew God had his hand on us every step of the way and kept us safe. We also knew many friends and family were praying and we were so grateful.
We stood in the eye of the storm and peace came in the morning.
