So, things have been slow and quiet onboard Andiamo lately, accented by breakneck fast moments of insanity (more on that later). Miet and Linda went back to Guatemala about a couple of weeks ago after a week’s stay onboard that went by in the blink of an eye. They got their PADI certs, so they’re happy, but I think they would have liked to stay a little longer. It was nice having them onboard. I’ll probably run into them once more when I get back to Rio Dulce. I’ve been waiting on my replacement main for going on almost one month now. Honduran customs and DHL have made the whole process of me getting my sail an absolute pain in the ass. This kind of incompetence makes it pretty easy to see why things work the way they do in banana republics like Honduras. It’s a shame too. Because countries like these have all the tools and the makings to be efficient and prosperous. But the culture at all levels of government and bureaucracy are such that progress, if any exists, is painfully slow and torturous. It just doesn’t matter to them to make things better and easier.
The worst part is that had I contacted La Ceiba shipyard FIRST, they would have instructed me on the right way to get something shipped to them, and I would have had it by now duty free and for far less shipping cost than what I paid DHL. Instead, I just assumed that DHL knew what needed to be done, and well, here I am, still with no main. Talk about expensive lessons.
Andiamo is now in the La Ceiba Shipyard, getting some bottom paint work done as well as some repairs on my rudder, thanks to Roatan’s horrendous reef at Big Bight. I wasn’t going to get the bottom painting done until after the summer, but the rudder repair pushed that schedule up by a few months. I also managed to get a good paint guy to do a once over on my topside hull paint, which had come to get pretty banged up since leaving Mexico, for a VERY reasonable cost. Hopefully all the work will be done by Wednesday of this coming week, and I hope to have my main before I leave, if there is any kind of a god.
I chose to spare the cats of the horrific concept of getting their home pulled out of the water and having guys bang around it all day. So they have been duly “interned” at a friend’s house on Utila while the tasks at hand are completed. I’m sure they are enjoying their shore time. I checked on them yesterday when I went to Utila for Monica’s (one of the owners of Tranquila) birthday. They’re doing fine, much to my relief.
In other news, I’ve spent the past couple of weeks on Utila working on the boat, and getting my advanced open water cert. This meant doing a wreck dive, a night dive, a deep dive to 100 feet, and a couple other specialized dives.
The wreck dive was at the site of the Halliburton. A pretty big oil freighter that was purposely sunk just outside of Utila’s East End to create an artificial reef, and a dive site. It’s only been in the water about 7 years, and the reef growth on the ship in that relatively short time was pretty surprising. The night dive was out by Pigeon Cay, where we went in with dive lights, and saw some pretty amazing sea life that you just don’t get to see during the day. Then we killed the lights while we kneeled on the sandy bottom, and watched as the bioluminescence from millions of small fish and plankton permeated the water around us. It was really something, and made me want to do lots more of night diving. I actually did some night diving back in the Virgin Islands about 15 years ago, but I had forgotten how incredibly awesome it is.
So now for the aforementioned freakish moment. The last night before Miet and Linda were supposed to leave Utila, I had one of the freakiest, scariest experiences ever. Here’s the story:
I was up at Tony P’s house (who’s been in Texas), using his dsl connection to get some updates done on my laptop, which had recently crashed. It took much longer than I would have liked, and it ran me late. I was supposed to meet up with Miet and Linda to get them back to the boat so they can get ready for a dinner engagement. But I knew that Miet knew where the dinghy was, and if necessary they can get to the boat on their own, and just come back with it.
I headed down to Tranquila when I was done, expecting that Miet and Linda were going to be coming back from going to the boat to change for the dinner they were going to. They did show up, and I jumped in the dinghy to go shower and change. I was going to play some poker with a few other fellow regular players at Tranquila in about a half hour. So I dinghied out to the boat by myself, did my thing, and got back in the dinghy to head back to shore. After I left the boat, I was dinghying back to Tranquila at full speed when one of the motor’s mounts slipped off the transom board. I saw afterward that a huge chunk of wood peeled off the transom board, right underneath where one of the outboard’s mounting bolts was.
Anyway, the motor then suddenly pivoted to one side, because the other mount bolt was still holding it. And then that bolt came loose and the damn thing shot up RIGHT INTO THE AIR!!! STILL RUNNING!!!
I’m watching the motor fly in the air for what seemed like forever, and the fuel line connecting it to the tank pulled on it like a bungee cord and brought it back down to the water head first! I instinctively wanted to grab it to keep it from sinking, but it was upside down, and the motor was still RUNNING! So the prop was spinning like crazy. The motor went straight down into the water and down, down, down.
I realized after everything was over, which only took about five seconds total, that the shaft and the prop passed my head by a matter of about 8 inches on its way back down from space. Amazingly, the spinning prop touched nothing on me or the dinghy, whose respective soft tissue, semi-hard skull and inflatable bladders would have been no match for a spinning propeller. Count it as freakishly good luck.
Anyway, I’m now dazed and stunned at what just happened. It was nighttime, so of course there was no way I could go after it. So I paddled in to Tranquila with the one good oar I have on the dinghy, wet and pretty shook up. Some of my diver friends said that they would come and help me find it the next morning, and provide me with some lift bags to see if we can float it up to the top. I tried to chill out, but I was pretty freaked out the whole night at what happened.
I woke up quite early the next morning, didn’t get much sleep anyway. The water was perfectly still, no wind or current. So I got in the dinghy, rowed around where I thought the thing came off, and found it within 45 minutes or so, laying on one side, with the word “Tohatsu” blaring out at me. I dove in with a line, tied it to the outboard and pulled it back up myself. I brought it back to the boat, and put it on the motor mount with the help of Marcos, a fellow cruiser. I then washed it off with fresh water and lubricated it everywhere I can. I cleaned off all the electrical contacts I can find too. I was not sure if the thing would ever start again. But after some serious pulling to clear the valves of salt water and god knows what else, it STARTED! It ran rough for about 5 minutes or so, and then it started running normally again like nothing ever happened. I put it back on the dinghy, and rode it around for several minutes, and it purred like a kitten. Unbelievable. I hope it just keeps on running now.
So as of now, the boat sits in the yard at La Ceiba, I continue to wait for my main (which I should have by Monday now, but who knows) and hope that the work gets done on Andiamo by Wednesday or so of this week. In the meantime, I think I’ll take a couple of side trips up to Copan and San Pedro Sula so I can check out some other parts of Honduras.
Oh, and I’ll get the rest of my restored postings and pics back up here during this downtime.