After the third failed attempt at fabrication of a new propeller from available materials, I relented on my self-sufficiency fantasies. We opted instead to pull the rip cord and deploy the strategy called Phone the Land of Internet Searchable Plenty.
The lone, sad remaining propeller blade, getting fitted for a fiberglass mold during one of my attempts at underway repair back in February. I maintain that my error was not in making a replacement fiberglass blade, but in not making TWO.
Harmony found a prop shop in Florida that had the right prop for the right price, so we pulled the trigger and waited in idle anticipation. We socialized, we imported water and groceries and exported garbage, and we added to our anthropological study of this strange and unique oceanside community. We kept the boat work to a minimum, the breather before the sprint.
The prop was ordered on a Friday, shipped on a Monday, and it arrived that Thursday in the nearby city of David. Harmony and I dinghied to one of the docks, walked up to the highway, and within minutes were picked up by two long-time transplants and escorted to the DHL to retrieve our package, with a PriceSmart trip and an excellent Italian lunch tacked on just because. Generous people abound. We continue to look for opportunities to top up our boat karma and keep our corner in balance.
When we returned to Serenity, I opened the box and stood atop the cockpit coaming, hefting the shiny metal prop over my head to catch the light of sunset. “The new propeller is here! The new propeller is here!” I shouted to the anchorage. “Things are going to start happening to me now!”
We planned to head out to Isla Gamez and setup an underwater workshop to accomplish the repair. See, the complication is that the old prop hub was welded to the prop shaft with force and age, the hub was the wrong shape for traditional prop-pullers. Plus, even if I succeed in removing the old prop piece, there isn’t a set screw divot in the prop shaft, meaning that there’s nothing to keep the retaining nut from screwing off and prevent the new propeller from slipping off the back. This would be no simple prop swap. I had been doing breathing exercises all week.
Aside from all the birds perched on every wire, there are two little black and white ones who hang out on top of the gas cap on the dinghy motor, presumably to huff fumes. Tack has a special eye on those two.
Before Gamez, though, we got one last night of carousing at the tiki bar overhanging the anchorage. The owners (former Oregonians) have gotten the word out and gathered together a rich and eclectic collection of area expatriates, and Harmony and I have made Saturday nights at the tiki bar part of our routine. Luckily, everyone else around here has an early a bedtime as we do, so the party wrapped up around 9:30 and we got a good night of rest before the challenge of tomorrow: hauling anchor under sail in the middle of a packed handful of boats and braving the tidal current, submerged rocks, and the narrow breezeway passage to get clear of Boca Chica.
Did we make it? To condense a story into a word: yep.
At Gamez we spent four days dismantling and reconstructing our drive train. It had its victories and shares of frustration** interspersed with beach time, hammock reading, and lobsters over a fire with our friends from S/V Chrysalis. We hadn’t seen them since El Salvador, but we were members of the Little Boat Club together and we’d been keeping up with each other’s progress on the HAM radio. It was a happy reunion in a beautiful, remote place.
Isla Gamez.
Finally, all the drivetrain pieces were back together and appropriately humble prayers had been offered to any and all relevant deities. In no hurry to confront the moment of truth, we decided to wait for morning for the first spin test. In bed that night, looking out of the skylight hatch, a thought occurred to me.
“I’m going to miss this when we have a motor again.”
“Miss what?”
“I don’t know, this mindset. Being hardcore sailors. Thinking ahead about how to get where we want to be and how we’re going to respond when everything goes to hell. It’s like ultimate preparation and ultimate surrender.”
“You didn’t say all that. You said something barely coherent, but I still understood what you meant.”
“Fair enough.”
“For such a purist, you sure make a lot of stuff out of PVC pipe.”
“I believe in the purism of working with what you’ve got.”
“You didn’t say that either!”
“Sue me. You’re pretty.”
In the morning, after coffee hour, and the morning net, and a swim, and general sprucing up, we ran out of delays and had no choice but to fire up the engine. I positioned myself underwater behind the boat and held onto the dinghy painter, watching the new propeller through my snorkel mask on high alert.
That locking washer was bent all the way over the nut before testing, so all of the wise old boatmen with names that start with “D”don’t need to worry about us here.
Onboard Serenity, Harmony twisted the battery dial, flipped the engine switches, pushed down the plunger, turned the key, pushed the start button, and eased down the throttle lever until the engine rumbled to life, warming up to transport us through time and relative distance in space. Anyone who doesn’t look at a boat and see a spaceship sometimes is really missing out.
From underwater I yelled an instruction that sounded like “Hit it!” when it entered the snorkel but when it came out the other end sounded more like an anxious goose honk through a . . . well, a snorkel. Harmony had no problem interpreting with her years of experience and put the engine in gear. Without a moment’s uncertainty, Serenity raced away in a flurry of churning bubbles. It was like watching your kid ride a bike for the first time. You go, new propeller! Watch out for that rock!
The hell? Is that what I think it is? Sheeeeeeee!#t. I thought I’d gotten rid of that thing when I broke the propeller.
We decided to head to Isla Bolanos for lunch and snorkeling to celebrate and observe our post-op patient further. The engine revved up smoothly, and we clocked a max of 5.5 knots despite dragging our dinghy and outboard behind us. Bolanos has several beautiful golden sand beaches and offshore rocks bristling with coral and sea life, and we both had the opportunity to make interesting and funny observations about fish antics. Yes, fish are funny. Work with what you’ve got, remember?
After snorkeling it was back to Isla Gamez to meet another boat of “radio friends”, S/V Brio! We had been their boat’s Neighborhood Watch as we whiled away last summer in Chiapas, and they had brought us a special delivery of tequila, casera salsa, and canned Mexican shredded pork to introduce themselves in person and foster a karmic balance. These items are to us the equivalent of fine wine and caviar, and we raced back for Gamez like it was a Christmas tree.
If anyone out there is in a cruising boat in Mexico headed south, heed my advice and buy the stores OUT of the Chilorio and Cochinita canned meat. As a social currency, little would warm the heart of a fellow sailor faster, including your own. I think it should replace the six-pack of national beer as the BitCoin of the Eastern Pacific Free Trade Market and Karma Economy (a.k.a. Cruiserland). Its versatility should be the stuff of songs, and those of us without refrigeration should light candles on our altar of special thanks for the powers that bring Mexican canned meat to our cupboards.
Needless to say, we were stoked to finally intersect with Brio out in the world outside of bloggyland, and the four of us hung out in our cockpit well into the moonlit night. I swear, we didn’t go to bed until 11 at least. Bad influences, we were on each other.
The final day of our island work holiday (at the end of the week, problem handled, I can finally call it a holiday), we spent the morning swimming off the white sand beach at the island and socializing idly in the surf before we had to catch that day’s high tide back to Boca Chica. For a weightless moment — who knows how long it will last — there are no major problems with the boat. If this shoestring sailing life has a luxury, this is among the contenders for most decadent.
Before we returned to the boat, one of the guys who lives on Isla Parida asked us for a ride to town. He hopped aboard and we had a nice hot afternoon sail with light, steady winds at our back. He knew a lot about the cluster of little islands along the way and the region in general, and it was an unexpected pleasure to learn more about these waters, what’s going on inland, and what to expect of the rainy season if we’re still in Panama in a couple weeks when it begins.
As we neared the anchorage, we once again confronted the narrow rocky passage between the islets surrounding Boca Chica. Just as we were about to pass the first of three reefs we needed to avoid, the wind at our back died down and a large following sea started to roll six-foot swells at our butt like bowling balls down a narrow lane. Harmony bounced around on the foredeck in agitation and regularly pointed behind us saying carefully, “Hey Babe, you see that big wave coming right? You see those rocks right?”.
Had this been a week ago, we would have been in for a stressful and potentially dangerous (but probably not really, because as hardcore sailors we would have been prepared for this) logistical puzzle. However, the past two weeks of our effort, and of course the money that we poured along with it, had bought us an alternative solution: we doused the sails, fired up the diesel, and promenaded through the anchorage at parade speed. Totally worthwhile investment, engines. Everybody should have one. Words of congratulation came on the radio and over the water from our friendly neighbors on S/V Someday and S/V Margarita, who had seen us flap out of the anchorage at the beginning of the week.
The loss of our engine mobility had dominated my mind for over a month and a half. Every other problem was either overshadowed or amplified by the stress of living in a broken machine beyond my ability to repair. Now that the problem is steadily receding into the past, does that mean a return to functional boat bliss? The answer is a) yes; and b) not hardly. I’m relieved to be back in business again, but on the other hand, now we have no more excuses to keep us from having to decide where we’re actually going to *go*.
Mobile home problems.
** I’m holding myself back from launching into an expansive dissection of the ins and outs of a major propellerectomy and engine realignment. I’ll save it for some day in the future when I’m leaning on a fence post, talking to the cows.