My alarm woke me at 3 am and I stumbled to the galley for a soda (caffeine) and some cookies. Properly fed, I crawled my way up the companion way and into the cockpit. Dave was behind the helm listening to a podcast while supervising the autopilot. The chart plotter said we were twenty miles from Chub Cay and the North West Passage and we were averaging 7.2 knots.

I ate my cookies and then I volunteered to take the boat thirty minutes early so that Dave could get some rack time. Dave looked like he felt guilty for about three seconds and then he jumped at the chance. No worries, I don’t sleep much and when it’s rolling like it was, I sleep even less.

I settled in to the helm with my smart phone playing music over some head phones and watched the night pass. Around 4:30 a half moon appeared behind us and by 5:15 the eastern sky was already beginning to lighten. At 5:35 the alarm on my NASA tracker app sounded and I watched the International Space Station zip by overhead. Way cool.

By 6 am I could see the Batelco cell phone tower on Chub Cay and I called Amy to let her know we were still alive. By 8 am we were up on the banks and the ride settled down a good bit. Dave woke up sometime after and relieved me at the helm. I dropped below and took a shower and then made us breakfast.

This morning’s menu consisted of grilled ham and cheese on sour dough bread served with a freshly made fruit cup salad and some Doritos. We were both starved and there were no leftovers.

The boat managed to go a solid 12 hours without breaking anything, but when we tried to start the generator around 2 pm to charge back up the batteries, we were greeted with a “ppppppplt” sound from the generator started. Shitty death!

No amount of coaxing could convince the genny to fire, despite having the main engine running. Within an hour our voltage level was down to 12.4 volts and so we shut down the fridge, the VHF, the toilet, the water pump and most unfortunately the autopilot. We were an hour from Bimini or 10 hours from Lake Worth. Decision time. If we put into Bimini, we could probably get another battery for the genset, but we’d loose at least a day effecting repairs. Heading to Lake Worth would require us to hand steer across the gulf stream in the dark, make a 2am inlet transit into the ICW and put us right at the edge of our electricity range.

After some discussion, we both decided to try for Lake Worth and get off this damn boat as soon as possible. If we lost all electric power, we decided we’d stay in the stream overnight and head to Stuart Florida, another 60 miles north. Once off of Stuart we’d cell phone Boat U.S. for a tow into a safe port.

Thanks to the unbalanced sail plan and 4 to 6 foot quartering seas, hand steering was a complete pain in the ass and quite a work out to boot. We opted to switch off steering duties every hour until we reached the coast.

The night passed quickly as we fought the boat and dodged lots of big boat traffic. We saw six different cruise ships heading to Freeport and three freighters riding the stream to points north. By 11 pm we were 30 miles off the coast making 12 knots (thanks gulf stream) and the lights of America began creeping over the horizon. My last shift ended at 1am and by 2 Dave spotted the outer marker for the Lake Worth  entrance.

We tried to roll in the head sail, but the piece of shit roller furler was completely seized up. I had to clip in to our forward run jack lines and crawl on hands and knees up to the bow of the boat. A quick inspection revealed the tack on the sail had shredded and gotten tangled in the furler drum, so I spent twenty minutes with a knife cutting it away while Dave slowed our pace to a crawl.

Eventually I got it freed, but the furler still wouldn’t engage from the cockpit so I ended up manually spinning the drum while Dave tailed the line in the cockpit. We eventually got the sail in, but it wasn’t pretty.

I made it back to cockpit and we proceeded to pick our way into the channel. There were so many backlights on the horizon that we had trouble finding the right approach, but with a little patience we made it in. As we cleared the dual break waters that line the entrance, we spied an unlit 50 foot coast guard patrol boat passing us by and swinging in behind us. Two minutes later they hit the search light and came along side. They were brusque, but professional and left us alone after only a few questions.

Ten minutes later we tied up to a nearby marina, plugged the boat into shore power and called the trip done. We have some clean up to do tomorrow in addition to clearing customs and all that, but the owners are supposed to meet us at 10 am and we should be on our way after that.

More to follow, end of line …