August 18, 2004--Knock Two Times...

ELAN and I at the end of our first major haul-out at Manatee Bay Marina, near Key Largo, Florida. The new engine, transmission, drive shaft, and prop are installed, aligned, and the paint is fresh. That's Dave Kilpatrick's son Bobby raking the area (right). It was time to get back to the Bahamas after two years without a trip, and that was part of the engine installation deal with Dave and family.

A steaming hot Florida Keys day in August, 1990 found me wrapping up a second season of hard labor in the offshore charter fishing business and trying to get things aboard ELAN organized for a short Bahamas cruise. It'd been a long two years since doing anything significant in the way of sailing. I'd blown the original two-cylinder Renault a year after purchasing the boat in 1986, and struggled with arranging to re-power while doing a one-year scientific contract in Antigua, West Indies. I was also working extra long hours trying to recover financially from the purchase of the boat and a house within 12 weeks of each other four years previous. Part of the re-power deal was to take Dave Kilpatrick, my former diesel school teacher and general mechanical savior, to the Bimini area for a week along with his teenage sons Bobby and Kenneth. I wasn't to fall in love with Wendy for another three years yet, so I was in most ways quite alone in my endeavors.

We finally departed Tavernier, Florida at something like 0300 in the pre-dawn darkness. Bobby and Kenneth had pitched in off and on for the past two years, shoulder to shoulder with Dave, wrestling with various issues in ELAN's engine room, wiring systems, and hull. They couldn't wait for the big payoff, and neither could Dave and I.

Dave's teenage sons Bobby (left) and Kenneth (right) hanging out with the locals at the Compleat Angler, Bimini, Bahamas. The whole trip was a watershed event in their lives.

Half way along the hot, windless 72 nautical mile rhumb line to Bimini the new engine sputtered and coughed, then quit. We'd forgotten to pump up the day tank at the four-hour mark, meaning that we'd have to bleed the fuel system and fire it back up again...no problem, good practice...except that the engine ran really rough once re-started. We discussed turning around. I went back and re-checked my work, and popped up to report that I'd neglected to tighten the last injector properly--the engine roared to life and purred like a kitten. Then the alternator charge light started to blink, turning out to be only a loose connection. We made the Bahamas too late to clear customs, so we hoisted the Q flag and got a good night's sleep anchored off of Gun Cay.

Bright and early we weighed anchor and got in to clear customs and immigration at Cat Cay. Just as we pulled away from the dock, a puff of smoke emitted from the engine box, accompanied by the distinctive odor of burning electrical wire insulation. Dave, whose 20-year Navy career had included a full Vietnam tour of PBR (Patrol Boat River, like in the movie Apocalypse Now) and other extremely dangerous duties, ambled below yawning and said he'd check it out. He found and fixed the short in the wiring harness in approximately ten minutes. Then on the way out of the marina, after pausing in neutral at the entrance, I shifted the control lever forward and felt brief resistance followed by slack. At this point the shakedown cruise was getting discouraging--all we wanted to do was have a few days of fun in the sun.

	Dave Kilpatrick (left) and son Bobby (right) full of fresh lobster caught right in the anchorage. This is exactly the kind of thing we had in mind when we set off for the Bahamas.

Luckily the transmission cable had broken in neutral, with comfortable sea room and little wind or current. We had plenty of time to remove the back of the engine box and access the transmission. We shifted manually, and motored around to Honeymoon Harbor for a swim and to think things over. I didn't relish the thought of maneuvering around in the strong currents of narrow Bimini Harbor, our next destination, without direct transmission control, or for that matter in a number of the places we'd encounter between here and home. I'd only done a few trips to the Bahamas as captain/owner of my own sailboat, and though I had big dreams for a future circumnavigation, at the moment I was exhausted and the series of small setbacks as a result loomed larger than reality. Having an old sea dog like Dave along was the perfect antidote. "Look, Scott, when I worked the engine rooms of the big Navy tugs, all we ever did to shift was bridge to engine signaling. Those things don't even have transmission cables--no ships do. Why don't you keep that piece of 2 X 2 you use to tenderize conch steaks up here in the cockpit, we'll leave the back of the engine box off, and whap the deck one time for forward, two times for neutral, and three for reverse, and I'll do the shifting? Then we can relax and have a good time, just like we planned."

	ELAN en route home from the Bahamas, back in the old days.

I hated it that the boat wasn't working in all respects, but Dave's logic was irrefutable. Hell, if the U.S. Navy trusted him to control their ships, who was I to argue? We went for a swim, up came the anchor, and off we went to Bimini and a night of fun dancing to the sweet sounds of the Calypsonians at the Compleat Angler. We weathered a 50-knot blow the next day in the harbor, snug with the anchor hand set under a rock ledge. We cruised south to the concrete shipwreck, back down around Cat and Gun Cays, diving, fishing, then returned to Bimini for pick-up basketball, more junkanoo and calypso, and some late-night funk at the High Star Disco. Bobby and Kenneth went nuts over it all. Dave grinned ear to ear the whole time, even in his sleep. I quite forgot about anything that had been bothering me. We were all singing "Layin' Low in Bimini". By the time we pulled back in to Holiday Isle Marina in the Keys a week later, I whipped the boat in to the fuel dock and spun it around into the slip, knocking away with my 2 X 2. The dockmaster thought I was a little strange.

The years have treated the boat and me well, and of course now, geographically halfway through a circumnavigation, everything is far better organized and equipped, with all of the necessary spares. I have wonderful permanent co-captains in Wendy and my son Ryan. But I've never forgotten the important lessons learned from my dear friend Dave Kilpatrick: relax, improvise, and don't let a little mechanical adversity ruin a good time. It took months after installing a new control cable for me to stop reaching for that 2 X 2 every time I wanted to shift.