By Angus Phillips
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Bad things come in threes, so it should have been no surprise when the propeller fell off Wanaka in the wide, blue Atlantic.
Already in the six weeks since French sailing icon Bruno Trouble had made it to the Chesapeake from a summer in Maine, he'd watched one crewman (me) topple off a dock and break two ribs while bringing in his 57-footer. Then he'd had to orchestrate major repairs from Paris, 3,000 miles away, when a flagpole broke off in 50-knot winds and smashed a meter-square hole in the deck window 24 hours before departure.
"I didn't think we'd ever get out of here," said Trouble (pronounced True-blay) as we cleared the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel at Norfolk two days later. But the ribs healed after a few painful weeks, the folks at Sarles Marina in Annapolis engineered an all-day work party to cover the hole in the deck and we were off, bound nearly 1,000 miles south to the Bahamas where Wanaka winters over.
"It should only take us four days from Norfolk," said Trouble, a former French Olympian and three-time America's Cup skipper. "Sailing or motoring, we average 220 miles a day."
That, of course, was before strike three -- the fateful clunk 80 miles off Cape Hatteras, N.C., the East Coast's most feared headland, where wild storms spin up without warning. Wanaka had shot across the cobalt Gulf Stream at nine knots in big winds, but when the breeze died we started motoring and something didn't sound right below.
"It must be weed on the prop," said Herve d'Hauthuille, Trouble's longtime sailing pal from Marseille. Four times he brought the boat to a standstill, backed down to clear the prop and watched a plume of Sargasso weed bubble up. On the fifth try things went up in smoke: No plume, no weed, and, worst of all, no reverse !
The skipper came bounding up from the galley where he'd been preparing another gourmet feast. He scrambled back below to check the engine, found nothing amiss, then sent young Baptiste Roynette overboard in mask and fins to check the hull.
"No propeller!" said Roynette, shaking seawater from his mop of black hair when he surfaced. Somehow the Danish-made, three-blade, folding Gori prop had come off, a theoretical impossibility, leaving us powerless with 600 miles to go.
It's axiomatic that in times of stress, the captain must be strong. Trouble scratched his chin, adjusted his spectacles and declared without a hint of concern, "We'll do it the old way."
So began four quiet, blissful days of open-ocean sailing through flat calms and brisk winds. Back home winter was in full fury, the long, cold nights and gray days heralding the approach of winter solstice. Out on the high seas, where prevailing westerly winds are tempered by the Gulf Stream's warmth, it was T-shirts and shorts, bare feet, falling stars in a glimmering sky and a sliver of silver moon to steer by.
Lacking an engine, it pays to have a sweet sailing boat and Wanaka proved to be one. Trouble had her custom-built in Auckland, New Zealand, during the 2003 America's Cup. Her wedge-shaped hull hovers beneath a towering mast of carbon fiber, with water ballast chambers along the gunwales to flatten her in strong winds, twin rudders for control, sails of stiff Kevlar and a deep keel that can be lifted up when the water is shallow.
But even the slipperiest sloop won't move in a dead calm. "We've been 12 miles in the last 12 hours," Trouble announced from the chart table after a particularly exasperating night. On deck, the mainsail and big genoa jib slapped noisily against the rigging; you could feel a thump as the sails filled, then collapsed.
In one lull we dropped all sail but the boat rolled horribly in the swell. Little zephyrs came and went. We aimed the bow south when we could, knowing that somewhere around Latitude 30, about where Georgia meets Florida, easterly trade winds would kick in, if we could just get there.
Puff by quixotic puff our crew of six, standing two-hour watches, inched along. Flying fish skittered along, dodging hungry predators. Portuguese men o' war bobbed on the surface, their tiny, iridescent sails seeking out the breeze.
At last came the trades, pounding in from the east at 14 knots right on schedule at Latitude 30. The breeze quickly built to 16, 18, 20 knots, and Wanaka heeled, churning along at 9 and 10 knots.
In short order, the skipper went from fussing about making too little speed to worrying about making too much. Marsh Harbour in the Abaco chain is no place to approach at night. "No navigation lights down there," Trouble said. "We have to arrive in the daytime to see the shoals and reefs."
He went below to e-mail to his son, Roman, back in France. "He knows the boat well. I asked, 'Where is the brake?' We need to slow down."
Meantime crewman Christian Fournier, a former French submariner and student of the sea, proposed a solution from the days before engines, when sailors hove-to if they needed to stop, cleating the mainsail to one side of the boat and the headsail to the other and lashing the helm down.
Under a starlit sky, we set the sails that way and the way came off the speeding vessel. With the lights of Marsh Harbour appearing on the horizon, Trouble locked the helm down and awaited dawn, still hours away.
Daylight lit the way to Man o' War Cut, where seas break over treacherous reefs on either side. Soon we were through to placid waters behind the island. It was another four or five miles across a shallow bay to Marsh Harbour, where the final challenge lurked.
It's one thing to cross an ocean with only wind for power and quite another to land safely at a dock with no engine. Trouble took the helm with a gleam in his eye. He charged ahead, dropping sails at the last and pointing the bow at a narrow slip workers on shore urgently waved us toward.
In came mighty Wanaka at a brisk three knots. With just a few yards to go, the big boat seemed destined to plough through the docks and into the crowd standing by. But as if by magic Wanaka shuddered to a stop, inches from disaster.
How had he brought 18 tons of rampaging fiberglass to heel on command?
"I found ze brake!" said a triumphant Trouble.
With a deft flick of a switch, he'd dropped the keel from its lifted position into the mud below. We were hard aground right where we needed to be. Breakfast beer beckoned. This adventure was complete.
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