1.18 – Friday

Kyle’s gotten pretty good at maneuvering the boat, but I need practice, so I was at the helm to back us out of the slip. The boat acted a little squirrely, but since our neighbors were already awake we enlisted their help.

As I backed out, the boat was turning hard. More of the cross-current that Kyle had to fight while docking yesterday? I was having a really hard time getting her to go where I wanted. We were right next to the docks for the pilot boats, and as we struggled to avoid the pilings and our neighbor’s boat, three captains on the pilot docks were also yelling instructions at me – yay, very helpful, thanks. Then the starboard engine died.

It fired right back up, but it was a total fiasco trying to avoid all the obstacles. We narrowly missed the pilings, then came within inches of our neighbor’s boat, but I finally got her to straighten out and head for the channel. Not a failure, but definitely not a success. Ugh.

In the channel, I throttled up but we were only making 3 knots, which meant we were going against a current of at least 2.5 knots. As soon as my heart rate returned to normal, I realized that top dead center of the wheel was no longer top dead center. I figured the strong current we were fighting might be pushing us sideways a little bit. But my wheels started turning. Things were starting to add up.

Then, the final nail in the denial coffin: the Navionics charts occasionally have little markers to show tidal current. It showed that we only had 1 knot of adverse current. Well, the chart must be wrong. It happens. I mean, it hasn’t happened so far, but surely it happens. However, my calibrated eyeballs don’t lie – after a week in the ICW, I can tell you what kind of turbulence the current makes behind the channel markers. I looked at the markers we passed, and they were definitely showing less than 2.5 knots of current.

Shit.

I started playing around with the engines. It didn’t take long to figure out that the port engine wasn’t giving us any propulsion. The engine was running fine, the tachometer wasn’t showing anything abnormal so we had no indications that something was amiss, Kyle checked to see that it was going into gear as normal. Everything above the water level looks fine, which means it’s either a problem with the saildrive, or we lost a prop. We won’t know what’s going on until we haul out.

And, in retrospect, it clearly happened around the time we tried to dock yesterday. After the second abort, we discussed docking strategy and the best approach, but we couldn’t get Hobbes to turn right. If we’ve only got the starboard engine, then we are only good at turning left.

Okay. So we are down an engine. That’s why we have two! As the day went on, we both thought through the implications of finishing this trip on one engine. Things we can still do: go forward, and turn left. Things we can barely do: turn right. Things we can’t do: reverse (or slow down, or stop). Our cruising speed is lower, so we can’t go nearly as far in a day. Docking will be very difficult.

The worst part is that those pilot boat captains thought I was an incompetent moron, in reality I was doing the whole procedure on one engine and didn’t know it – at one point, zero engines! I’m changing my assessment of this morning’s debacle to a resounding success, and I need to find the number for that office so I can call and let them know. Seriously though, the worst part is that we feel like we are working so hard to make progress, but the problems are quickly mounting and our “real” trip hasn’t even begun yet. We’re working hard, freezing our butts off, and now it feels like we’re even further from the finish line than where we started.

We passed an inlet with a strong sideways current, and I could barely keep the boat in the channel with just one engine. As the depth sounder started dropping I started to think that maybe trying to get to Charleston isn’t the best idea.

I did a little research and made some calls. Since Hobbes is so wide, we have limited options for haul outs because most lifts are too narrow. Our closest options: we can either go back north to Wilmington (a 3 day trip), or we can continue to Charleston (4 -5 day trip). North is definitely the wrong direction, but we’ve got a lot of strong currents between here and Charleston, we might not be able to power against them with one engine.

I’m stressed out, I’m exhausted from lack of sleep, I’m sore and dismayed about yesterday’s water fiasco. The shallow depth alarm has gone off twice in the past day. My nerves are shot. We’re now in a tenuous situation where we have very limited maneuverability, but we still need to fight currents and wait for bridge openings as we continue on the Intracoastal Waterway.

The fun-to-suck ratio today was very much skewed in one direction.

This sucks.

We anchored this afternoon in Calabash Creek, just across the South Carolina border. 32 miles today, 4.5 mph. I meant to pour myself a tiny glass of wine to sip as I sat and wrote all this out, but it ended up being a little bigger than I intended.