Maiden Voyage

I needed to get out of New York for many reasons, most of them financial. In general it was going to cost me much more money to stay in New York to work on my upcoming, pre-pacific projects, than in Annapolis. Marina’s I found were more expensive, with most of them not even allowing liveaboards, meaning I would have to rent an apartment or airbnb, then I would need transportation. So in summary, I would need an expensive car rental or uber, from my expensive apartment, to my expensive dock. See what I mean? Also, I think most sailors can agree that Annapolis, Maryland is an all around better place than Staten Island, NY. 

So off to Annapolis we went. On board was myself, and my adventurous friends Sam and Katherine, who were there to lend an extra hand and improve overall morale. The trip from Staten Island to Annapolis is roughly 250 nautical miles. We left the dock in the afternoon and went over to Sandy Hook to anchor for the night, have a few beers, and catch up on life. The goal here was for everyone to get a good nights rest before departing early to try and conquer the New Jersey coast. The weather forecasts were questionable, and it seemed like there was a good chance we may have headwinds during the second half of the day. Although it felt great to be anchored on the boat for the first time, the anchorage was a bit bumpy, which added to my concern about unfavorable weather the following day. The problem with having friends help out on a sailing trip is that it usually means you have a schedule to keep, and sailing and schedules go together about as well as lamb and tuna fish (not well). I knew the earlier we left the better our chances were of avoiding headwinds in the afternoon. So after a very short night in which I slept a total of zero minutes, I decided to weigh anchor at 0200 and get things underway. 

It turned out to be a beautiful sunrise. We had the mainsail up to stabilize the boat and capture the little bit of wind that we had at about 25 degrees apparent wind angle. It felt great to be on the move for the first time on my new boat, heading south. We were making good speed, motor sailing at about 7.5kts. Everything was going great so far! Sometime around 0900hrs I heard Kat moving around down below, I knew she was awake now. About 5 minutes later a foul liquid began gushing out of a vent hole right onto the deck. It was SHIT WATER! I yelled, “KAT STOP PUMPING!!!”. I don’t think she heard me and the shit water just kept pouring out onto the deck, being contained by the high bulwarks on the Kelly Peterson 44, and sloshing around from side to side with the slight rolling motion of the boat. By the time Kat realized what was going on we had a REAL shitty situation on our hands. Our clean deck was now an official poop deck. I hooked up the saltwater wash down hose and began blasting it away and trying to redirect it to the drains. After about 30 minutes most of it was gone and I directed focus to why that happened in the first place. It turns out that there was a blockage in the discharge hose, which I then cleared using an airhorn to blow out the blockage from the pump out deck fitting, while turning the macerator pump on at the same time. We were back in business!

As we motor-sailed through the day I began to try and figure out where the best place to stop for the night would be. Because we were making such good timing, we blew past our original stopover spot in Atlantic City, NJ at around 1500hrs. The next logical place we could stop for the night was Cape May, NJ. I had been there once before during a delivery from Belize to Newport when we had to stop for weather. I wasn’t too crazy about the place and remembered it to be underwhelming. With a low pressure system expected to pass through during the night, we were hoping to get a slip at a marina, but after calling around, everything was booked. Luckily, my friend Kat is well connected. She had just been to a wedding in Cape May a few weeks earlier and called up the bride to see if she had any ideas. 10 minutes later we had a slip at one of the marinas I had previously called that told me they were full! I guess, for the right person they will always make room.

We showed up on a Saturday night, the town seemed lively, unlike my previous experience. Kat had arranged to meet up with her friend Sydney, who had gotten us the slip. We walked over to the C-View Inn pub and dove into some delicious food and a few beers. My perspective on Cape May had changed. I was wrecked from my lack of sleep and soon went back to the boat to get a good nights rest for another early departure the next day.

The next day started out rainy and windy. We left at 0600hrs and sailed on a close haul into the Delaware Bay before the wind died and we reverted back to motor sailing. Once we entered the C&D canal the rain had stopped and we powered through the beautiful channel while listening to music, enjoying the scenery, and having grape catching competitions with our mouths. It had turned into a beautiful summer day when we entered the Chesapeake. Once again, all was going well until…THE ENGINE QUIT! Raindancer doesn’t have gauges on her two fuel tanks, and although I was surprised that we had burned through that much fuel, I quickly realized we had ran the forward fuel tank dry. I later found out, because of some plumbing restrictions, the tank was likely never full when I went to fill it up before leaving. So I switched fuel tanks, bled the air from the engine, and got it started again. All good right?  Wrong. After a few minutes of running, the engine shut down again. I thought, “that’s weird, maybe there is still air in it”. I bled the engine again and started it again, it ran for a few minutes and then quit. OK, what the f**k is going on.

Meanwhile, while I was in the engine room, Sam was cooking dinner, and Kat was sailing the boat in about 5kts of wind, but it was enough to keep steerage and keep the boat moving along at about 2-3kts. We were only about 5 miles away from our anchorage for the night, and the golden hour had arrived. I realized that I was missing out on a beautiful sunset sailing experience in the Chesapeake bay. So I decided to wait until we were anchored to fix the fuel issue, and enjoy the tranquility of sailing the boat in, even if it was at a slow pace. When I look back on the trip to Annapolis, that evening the engine quit was my favorite moment. Perhaps it was the worlds way of telling me to slow down and open my eyes. It was a problem with a silver lining. We spent the next hour sailing in flat water, eating dinner, and telling jokes. We spotted a few eagles and watched the sun go down as we sailed into our anchorage and dropped the mainsail as we dropped the anchor.

Now that the honeymoon was over, it was time to get back to work. I lowered a dipstick into the other fuel tank to confirm it was full, and it was. I then pulled the supply hoses coming from the tanks to the primary filters. I summoned Sam to do some sucking and see if fuel came out. Both supply hoses could not produce fuel. Either there was some valve somewhere that I didn’t know about that was shut, there was a blockage, or something else was going on. It turned out to be something else. Something that I would have never guessed. After more trouble shooting, and tracing of fuel lines, we were able to determine that the supply hose was connected to the wrong port on the fuel tank! The previous owner seemed to have never used that tank after he replaced it. There was another port on the fuel tank that was not in use. I connected some spare hose to it and we immediately got fuel to come out. So now all I had to do was move the fuel line over to the spare port, which was no easy task considering there was only about 1.5 inches of space to stick your hand in a small hole and get the job done. A few swear words and hand cuts later the hose was on. I once again primed the system, started the engine, and this time it didn’t shut off. We were once again back in business! By the time we finished this project it was about 1am, and it felt like the whole boat was covered in fuel. While I was trying to fix the issue, Sam and Kat had been trying to rig up a hose to siphon fuel into the other tank. So there was even fuel on deck. We finally got the boat cleaned up and were off to bed.

I woke up with a mechanical hangover but nonetheless feeling optimistic about only being 25 miles from Annapolis. We had a great morning underway, Kat whipped up some eggs and pancakes, and we popped champagne while we were sailing into the Annapolis harbor to celebrate the successful completion of the maiden voyage on “Raindancer”. We tied up to our slip at South Annapolis Yacht Centre and soon everyone was on their way again. It was quiet on the boat without my crew, just me and my giant to-do list of projects.