SV Sine Timore: Challenging times

Quepos, Costa Rica

Over the last few days our sailing, and general coping, skills have been tested!

It all started at the end of a lazy day in Bahia Drake. We had decided to leave real early on Saturday morning, anticipating a fast motorboat ride to Quepos some 55 miles away. Since the marine forecasts were calling for almost non-existent winds, we figured that making the whole trip using the engine at full speed, all during daylight hours, was the best course of action. We were kind of looking forward to making a passage that did not happen at night for a change, especially as we were experiencing a "new moon" right now and it is so awfully dark at night. But that was not to be...

Friday evening I was doing my usual check of the engine oil and such, when I spotted this interesting pinkish soup in the bilge. This can't be good news! Indeed, it was very bad news.

That nasty sludge turned out to be a nice mixture of seawater and automatic transmission fluid. It didn't take long to spot where it was coming from - I could see the stuff oozing out of the overflow valve on the top of the transmission. Since I had not been adding fluid to the transmission, obviously it was coming from somewhere else. I pulled the dip-stick out and was greeted with a small geyser of seawater.

The only possible explanation for how this can be is that the oil cooler (basically a heat exchanger using seawater for cooling) was compromised. This is not something that I can fix and I do not carry a spare, so there was little I could do about it. We went to bed knowing we would not be getting up early in the morning to motor to Quepos.

In the morning, I did what I could. I disconnected the hoses that send transmission oil to the cooler and rerouted them so the oil just returns to the transmission without any cooling, used a hand pump to extract as much seawater out of the transmission as I could get, then refilled it with some fresh ATF. I really need to do this another time or two to get all of the seawater out, but I don't have enough ATF - it takes over two litres. I did some research on the web (I have Internet access using a simm chip we bought in Golfito) and determined that I could run the transmission this way for no more than a few minutes before it will overheat. But it might be better than nothing.

Bahia Drake is a lovely spot, but not a place where we were likely to get the help we needed. Quepos was a possibility and they have a big new fancy marina. Susanne was quick to remind me that it is only 55 miles away and we have a "sail"boat - we don't need no stinking engine! So we decided to go for it.

We had to wait until around 10:30 AM before a bit of a breeze came up, then we hoisted the mail sail and brought in the anchor. About 3 hours later, we had crawled out of the bay and were pointed towards Quepos.

What followed was some of the most challenging and frustrating sailing we have expienced to date. The only winds we saw were some onshore thermals which started around 11AM and died around 6PM each day, almost never more than 7 or 8 knots, and always from the west. We had a consistent counter-current of between 1/2 and 1 knot the entire time, pushing us backwards whenever the winds stopped. We spent some long, tiring nights attempting to catch little zephyrs of wind to try and keep from giving up whatever distance we had gained in the afternoon. Each morning we were just about ready to give up, then each afternoon there seemed to be a little glimmer of hope. The only good thing was that we never had to change our sail plan, keeping the full main sail and full Genoa out at all times.

We each cope in our own way

Dolphin, not a shark...

We can see the marina up ahead

In the end, it took us 4 days to get to Quepos. We had contacted Marina Pez Vela via phone and VHF radio and they assured us that they had a slip available, but after numerous requests for some help (possibly a tow) into their entrance channel, they were not ready when we got to the entrance, and we really couldn't stop to wait for them. We had little choice but to sail right into the marina. I was able to limit the engine use to only a few minutes while maneuvering into the slip.

We covered a total of 124 miles on this 55 mile passage. Susanne has pointed out that we could have walked it a lot faster.