Davy Jones strikes again.

We got up early and prepared for our days cruise. Gary S cleared out his belongings. There was a bit of confusion with the docking and fuel bill but Bobby finally straightened that out. We took a couple of pics with Gary S a couple of hugs and got on the boat. June 25, 8:00 AM 691 hours. We retrieved our lines waved our “See Yaz” to Gary S on the dock and made our way slowly out the inlet. As we wound thru the markers on this beautiful day, I readied the chartplotter with today’s course. That’s when we heard this awful thud. The boat lurched up and then fell forward. I quickly looked up and saw Bobby had split the red and green buoys right down the middle exactly like we were supposed to do. The buoys on our port and starboard were no more than 10 feet away on either side yet we touched earth ! Incredulous, Bobby and I looked at each other and knew this was very bad. We had that real sinking feeling in our stomachs. He tentatively shifted the starboard engine in gear and that seemed fine so he tried the port engine and everything started wobbling. This felt very serious. While Bobby struggled to maintain our position in the channel, I called Gary S who was still at the marina, explained that we touched and asked him to send someone from the marina out to assist us back. The marina boat finally showed up a few minutes later after what felt like hours and I began readying the bridle for the tow. They clearly had no intention of towing us in and asked us if we had lost power and/or couldn’t steer. Bobby gave it a try and decided we could idle in under our own power. The marina boat told us to stay behind them and follow them in. As we passed near the spot that we had just touched we could see there were a couple of large chunks of loose coral scattered about on the bottom.
That was probably what we hit and realized now the thud that we felt on the way in the previous day was not a wave as we suspected but clearly a “soft” touch in the same location. Hobbling into port, they called a diver to come remove the props and assess the damage. While waiting, we were pretty anxious so I dove on the boat and saw we had just tipped one prop and badly bent the second. This wasn’t pretty. The diver showed up, confirmed what I had seen and removed the props. Unfortunately after he removed them, the diver aka Crazy George said he thought our shaft was tipped so he had us start the engines and put them in gear at idle. Yup, the starboard shaft was rotating out of alignment by ¾ of an inch, we needed a new shaft. Crazy also gave us more bad news,

he told us one prop could be fixed by the shop on the island but the other prop was probably too far gone to be repaired by the island shop, Caribbean Marine and Diesel. Things could have been worse. Options on the shaft were a new one from the US or perhaps Caribbean Marine and Diesel could cut us a new one. Options on the badly damaged prop were not as clear but names like Frank and Jimmies Prop Shop in Ft. Lauderdale and Lauderdale Propeller also in Ft. Lauderdale were mentioned. Crazy told us that Caribbean Marine and Diesel’s phone number was in the marina office so I went and retrieved it. We tried calling them several times that morning but nobody was answering the phone. In the meantime, I started searching for phone numbers of shops and suppliers on the internet while Gary S. and Bobby tried calling them to see if they had the needed parts and if they did pricing and expected delivery. All we could find was a new prop at a couple of places and a shaft that the Silverton dealer in Pompano said they had for his 42’ serial number blah blah blah. Bobby thinking that he might have a shaft made by Caribbean Marine asked the dealer how long was the shaft for his 42 and the dealer said 112”. We found new nibral props were $3200 each and a new shaft was $2080, yikes. One guy had twin bronze props that were 25 by 27 but that would lower our speed and may allow the engines to over rev. Not a great solution but at least something considering he was only asking $1,000 a prop. However, we needed a matching set of those and that was before adding international shipping costs. After calling everyone we could find on the internet at $20 for 4 hours of internet time and $2 a minute for phone time and mostly either getting answering machines or finding nothing we were at a standstill. It was near noon and Gary S had to be at the airport by 1:30 so we decided to head up to the Tiki Bar for a bite. While at lunch, Gina suggested we try calling Caribbean Marine and Diesel again. They answered ! They explained to Bobby that they were relocating their shop that day and had just plugged their phone in, he was the first call. Bobby explained the situation and Mike from Caribbean Marine said he’d be down to pick up the props around 1:30. Great, we finished our lunch, bid goodbye to Gary S once again and right about then Mike showed up for the props. Mike gave us some encouraging news, he figured he could fix both props and he even had enough 2 inch shaft stock to cut us a new one but he couldn’t start working on it that day because he was still getting his equipment back in place from the move. Mike also told us he would need the shaft so he could copy it exactly, sans the bend. We contacted Crazy and told him we needed to pull the shaft for Mike and he said if we got it ready for him he’d pull it the next morning. We spent a bit of time figuring out what we needed to do to get the shaft ready to pull and basically licked our wounds putting around on the boat. We lifted our dejected spirits a little when the marinated steaks we BBQ’d from the Farmer’s Market in Milton were awesome.