CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT: BROKE DOWN BUT NOT OUT

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHT: BROKE DOWN BUT NOT OUT

Well, here’s a first for Slow Motion. We were calmly cruising along the ICW, having left Port Royal Landing Marina in South Carolina at 8:30 a.m. to continue our excursion down the beautiful Beaufort (Byoo-fort) River heading to Thunderbolt Marine in Georgia. This was supposed to be an easy day. The sun shone above, the wind was “variable”, but mostly negligible, and the miles we had to cover were easy peasy – 40 miles. We planned to arrive at Thunderbolt no later than 2 p.m. But as we approached Hilton Head, something happened for the first time ever in our 18 months of travels on Slow Motion. The engines – both engines – died. They just quit. It became awfully quiet. There was no warning, no flashing lights, no buzzers going off (that happens when a little water enters the bilge). We were moving along at a nice clip – 9 knots an hour – and then we were not. Even more amazing, when the Admiral tried to start up the engines, there was nothing, no grinding of the ignition. More quiet. It was 10:15 in the morning and we were done for the day. We saw other boats approaching from fore and aft, so the Admiral started lowering the anchor to keep us in one spot, rather than drifting into another boat or in among the grasses that lined the western shore. There was room for another boat to pass us, but this was not by any means a wide area of the Beaufort River.

Now if this happens in your car, you call Triple A or your insurance company. The Triple A of the boating world is Sea Tow. The Admiral put in a call to them – the number we had been given was no longer a working number. The Admiral espied a marina less than a mile away from our breakdown location, and we identified it as Skull Creek Marina, part of Hilton Head Plantation. The Admiral called the Marina and told the folks we were dead in the water, and we got a more current number for Sea Tow. The Marina folks also said that we could be towed to their docks for repairs. So we had a plan and a safe haven was in sight. We called Sea Tow, and the fellow said he was close by and would be at our location in 20 minutes. What service! Now if it had been raining and storming and at night time, I guarantee you the wait would have been hours. But this was a lovely, clear day – mid-morning – and right next to Hilton Head, the second home of so many CEOs and Important People who are not used to waiting. Sea Tow probably has a very good record in this area for getting to stranded boats quickly. And the tips – OMG, were we supposed to tip? – are probably very good for this prompt service.

Did I mention that we had never used the anchor before? So the first question when the Admiral pressed the release button for the anchor chain was: Will it unwind? It did! It’s really rusty and it threw out pieces of rust all over the bow as it lowered the anchor into the river, but the anchor sank into the bottom and held like a champ, so what’s a little rust when you’re trying to prevent a collision of 20 ton boats?

The Admiral took this breakdown in stride, showing a strong curiosity in the cause of the engine failure, but remaining very analytical. Not an ounce of panic or even mild anxiety was noted in his demeanor. I followed his lead and while not exactly nonchalant, I kept my cool and listened to the Admiral posit his theories for the sudden loss of both engines. The fire suppression system was a prime suspect, since it has the power to shut down the engines completely under certain circumstances in order to prevent or suppress a fire. We didn’t have any fires on board – none that we were aware of – so if this system had shut down the engines there had to have been some type of malfunction in its controls. As the Admiral was still in the first stages of pondering the reason for the breakdown, a bright yellow Sea Tow boat came racing from the south toward us. There was one operator, who looked all of 17. But he was efficient and knew his job well. He hooked his tow ropes to Slow Motion, asked the Admiral to straighten out the rudder, and proceeded to tow us to Skull Creek Marina. This took maybe 10 minutes, and when we arrived there were about 5 guys on the dock ready to take our lines. The current runs very swift at this marina, and it was running off the dock. So the lines helpers used all their might to haul us close to the dock. The Sea Tow rescuer had done a masterful job of pulling and pushing us up to the dock to the point where I could easily throw the lines to the dock crew. This great job cost $350, so the Admiral’s membership in Sea Tow for something less than $100 per year is well worth it. Sea Tow pays the bill. No deductible.

The only thing that would have made this breakdown and tow even more memorable would have been if the porpoises that we had seen popping up all over the Beaufort River had decided to escort us into the marina. But that only happens in fairy tales and Disney movies. Still, there was one porpoise who swam into the marina very close to Slow Motion and stayed around the marina, swimming from piling to piling, while we were there. Although he/she was probably there for the fish, I have to believe that our welfare was a concern too. I know that’s anthropomorphizing big time with a porpoise, but if any other mammal can show empathy with humans, it has to be this species.

The Skull Creek Marina, like many marinas, is owned by a bank, so nobody’s job is safe. This doesn’t lead the staff to go out of its way to please the transient boater. On the contrary, since all the dock workers could be unemployed tomorrow with a new owner, they are just biding their time, going through the motions – bank ownership of a business in financial trouble does not inspire confidence or loyalty in the employees, nor does it make them productive or boost their morale. Still, the dock master recommended a boat repair service, Marine Tech, which turned out to be a good referral, all things considered. By that, I mean the good boat repair people are few and far between. One doesn’t expect to find the best of the lot in Hilton Head, but rather in hotbeds of boating activity like Ft. Lauderdale and Charleston.

The owner of Marine Tech, John Torrens, had already retired from his manufacturing business in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, when he moved to Hilton Head. He quickly found, as he told the Admiral, that if you can do two things well, you can start a successful business in Hilton Head: answer the phone, and show up when you say you will. As you will find out later in this paragraph, he defies his own tenets by not showing up when he says he will. However, one thing he did well was diagnose the problem that caused our engines to stop. He determined that (and this is where the Admiral takes over) one of the relays in our automatic fire suppression system control had melted, because it was incorrectly wired so that 17 amps of current to power two of the engine room ventilation blowers would flow through the relay, which was rated at only 10 amps. Why it had not failed a long time ago (at night in the shipping channel in New York harbor perhaps?) remains a mystery, but one of the blowers malfunctioned and it drew even more current than the routine 17 amps, causing a meltdown of the relay. The meltdown caused the "Fire boy" (that’s what they call it!) control box to "declare an emergency" and shut down fuel to the engines. The engine shutdown bypass in the Fire boy would not work because it was "fried" as well. This diagnosis meant we needed parts and a redesign of the wiring to include adequately sized relays. John had arrived after 4 p.m. (we had been told at 12:15 p.m. that he would be there in 45 minutes). He called his daughter at the office to ask her to order the parts for delivery the next morning. They thought it was possible to get the parts that soon, but if the delivery truck had already been loaded for the day, we were going to have to wait another day at the laconic Skull Creek marina.

So our engines stopped on Tuesday morning, December 3. We finally left Skull Creek on Friday morning, the 6^th. The critical parts came in on the 5^th – in the morning. The Admiral asked when the repair people would arrive with the parts to do the work. Oh gosh, we were given a reasonable time, and then another reasonable time. Then all bets were off at 5 p.m., and I expected to have to languish at Hilton Head through the weekend, when shortly after 6 p.m. two guys from Marine Tech showed up with the parts. One guy was working on three hours sleep, and the other guy said he didn’t know exactly how to make the repairs. Fortunately, the Admiral had his diagrams for the “Fire boy", and he had taken photos and sent them to the Marine Tech office, so John the owner did not have to operate from memory. After a few phone calls with John and excellent coaching from the Admiral, Sleepy and Happy (said with total respect and affection) installed the new control unit for the fire boy and put in the correct 20 amp relay, so that we don’t have a recurrence of current overload on the blowers. I thought this fixfest might go until midnight, when they first got started, but surprisingly all the work was completed by 8:30 p.m. This meant we could still leave on Friday. Oh yes, the blower we had ordered had not arrived, but the Admiral had carried an extra blower on Slow Motion (you know, for that fateful day when your blower blows a fuse, melts the fire boy control box and shuts down the engines). Some day the blower will catch up to us. Right now we’re waiting with bated breath for the bill for this repair. I think this will be considerably more than Break Out Another Thousand (BOAT). Hey, you idiots who installed the fire suppression unit with the wrong amperage on the relay, care to step up to the plate and pay this bill for your negligence? Thought not.

What did we do on Hilton Head while waiting for the not so prompt Marine Tech folks? Of course, we did a Walmart run. Hilton Head’s Walmart, like all of its commercial places, is painted in earth tones, has a tasteful earth tone colored sign planted at a low level and is nestled in among some fully grown trees. You hardly recognize it. Inside it’s not even so full of mayhem as, say, the Walmart closest to Key Largo in Homestead Florida. Now that is true bedlam. This Walmart was comparatively quick at the checkout counter, even with the pre-Christmas madness. This does not mean that I am a convert to Walmart. However, their peach yogurt is the best, bar none. It leaves Activa and all those fancy Greek named yogurts in the dust. So now, once a month, against my better judgment, I have to go to Walmart to get this yogurt. Could these big box stores just lower their ceiling lighting a smidge, so that light iris eyed folks like me don’t get a headache when we walk into the store? Don’t worry, I’m getting around to the wage and benefits issues – it’s time to pay a decent wage, Walmart, and stop discriminating against women in management.

In addition to grocery shopping, I found time to get a massage. I didn’t realize this would be a trip through a time machine as well. The massage therapist I found, Jan, was famous long ago for putting a flower into the business end of a rifle of a National Guardsman at an anti-war demonstration in Washington D.C. She was thrilled to learn that I had gone to the Woodstock music festival at Max Yasgur’s Farm in 1969. She had a thousand stories from the sixties, and during the hour she worked diligently on my sore muscles and entrapped nerves, she shared a few. Dizzy Gillespie was one of her heroes. The Admiral and I had seen a statue of him blowing his bent horn in Cheraw, South Carolina, his birthplace. Jan had befriended Dizzy at a jazz club in Washington, D.C. Her first words to him were: “You take my soul away.” His response: “You take my breath away.” Her life story is in the works. Should be a good read. If you ever need a massage in Hilton Head, do not hesitate to call Jan Rose, Hilton Head Massage Therapy Associates. Be advised, however, that Jan is a rolling stone and is currently searching for a holistic community that is not so homogeneous as Hilton Head.

Let’s see – Hilton Head is famous for golf. Sorry, there is not a golfing bone in my body. And the last time the Admiral golfed was when he was seventeen years old. Hilton Head may have some of the best golf courses on the planet, but its Burger King has to be one of the worst in the chain. The Admiral likes their tater tots, so we ended up there one morning for breakfast. It was terrible. The employees were yelling at each other from the counter to the dining room. Buzzers kept going off, and they kept going and going, as no one bothered to stop them. The person at the counter who took our order got it wrong, because he was talking to someone else. The coffee was lukewarm. The oatmeal was nearly cold. There was a person sleeping at one of the tables, who knows for how long. At least I think he was asleep. It took forever for them to make three French toast pieces, and then they forgot the syrup. Got the picture? The Admiral wrote to Burger King about this poor representative of the brand. Burger King HQ contacted him and asked which Burger King on Hilton Head. Duh – there’s only one. So much for HQ knowing anything about their business.

Enough about that mediocre fast food chain. I certainly cannot fail to mention the two trips to the Emergency Room at the Hilton Head Regional Hospital. They pretty much filled two afternoons in a row. You may not remember our ER visit in the Ft. Lauderdale area back in June, 2012, when the Admiral nearly sliced off a fingertip. This was déjà vu all over again. The Admiral was helping a transient boater move his boat (another gripping story), and when he released a line, he brushed against the piling covered with barnacles (think razor sharp shell) and opened a big gash on the back of his right hand. The Admiral takes aspirin every day. He bleeds profusely when he gets a cut. Off to the ER we must go to stop the bleeding and prevent infection by God knows what marine bacteria. On our first visit, when the Admiral suggested a stitch or two, the young ER doctor said they had moved beyond stitching to glue. She proceeded to glue the wound shut. Unfortunately, she had not thoroughly cleaned the wound before applying the glue. So the next morning there was significant swelling all around the glued gash, and the area was also reddened. Infection? We raced back to the ER and saw a different doctor, who believed we should have an X ray to determine if there were any barnacle pieces inside the wound. The X ray was negative, but the doctor also believed that a thorough cleansing of the wound was in order, so he removed the glue and washed out the wound. This is where the Admiral’s stoicism in the face of pain comes in handy. There was no screaming in the ER, just in the Admiral’s mind. This second doctor also believed that a stitch would hold the skin together as the wound heals, so this required injecting (read: large needle) the area with a local anesthetic. More pain, more stoicism. I winced, a lot. Once the area was numb, the doctor artfully sewed a stitch where it was needed. Never mind that the wound now looks like the cross that Jesus was crucified on. This led Sabina to the opinion that the Admiral may be the Second Coming. All together, this second trip to the ER was well worth the two plus hours it took. And now, December 8, the wound looks good – no redness, no swelling, no pain. The Admiral still bears the cross, however, until the stitch is removed. Hallelujah!

I know, I know. Bad things come in threes. So I have to mention that I crushed my finger in the door to the salon. No ER visits, a lot of tears, a band aid, and here I am blogging, so it’s fine. But it was the third misfortune to befall us this week. That and the cold shower at Hidden Harbor Marina in Brunswick. Come on, Active Captain, did you really write that they have the best bathrooms on the waterway, better than what you have at home? Doesn’t your bathroom at home have hot water? And how about some privacy? The Hidden Harbor shower is all transparent glass, with shower curtains on two of the four sides. Yes, the folks on the lawn can see quite a show. This would not be noteworthy, except that the Admiral and I had both put off showering because he had read about the excellence of the bath facilities at Hidden Harbor and we were so looking forward to long, hot showers streaming down on to our aching muscles and our injured extremities. The Admiral got about 15 seconds of cool water, and I opted for our galley sink, heating water on the stove. Today I got a full shower at the Amelia Island Yacht Basin, and the water was plenty hot. It’s the shower curtain rod that disrupted my pleasure by falling down repeatedly, every time I put it back up. No, it’s not like home. It’s like camping every night at a new camp site. You just hope the place is clean, the water is hot, and you get a little privacy. Not too much to ask for really. Oh, and a shower curtain rod that stays in place.

You’re just going to have to wait to read about our close encounters with porpoises in the South Carolina and Georgia waters. It’s late and we’re leaving before dawn for St. Augustine. Thank you so much for reading this blog and sharing your comments with me. Good night.