Voyage of the Damned
In the days of sailing ships, and maybe other times as well, if there was someone on the ship who brought bad luck, he was called a Jonah. We need to find out who the Jonah is on this ship, and set him or her adrift in a Zodiac.
For 48 hours we plodded along on one engine, because one of the diesels wouldn’t start back in Ushuaia. We were falling 8 hours behind schedule for every 24 we sailed. Finally near the end of Day 2, the crew got it to start! We noticeably picked up speed, started making up time and were beginning to feel that we would get to Rio within spitting distance of our original schedule.
Ha! That was only the prelude.
I once listened to a podcast that talked about the probability of born human. It claimed the odds of a being becoming a human, as opposed to being born as any other life form on the planet, was equivalent to the probability of swimming underwater in the vastness of the ocean, and just happening to surface in the middle of an inner tube that’s floating out there somewhere. In other words, very very remote odds.
It seems we have found that inner tube. I’ll explain: Early yesterday morning, several people noticed that we appeared to be trailing something behind the boat as we were steaming happily along. Behind us, in the wake about 100 or so feet, something would pop up to the surface, flail around and re-submerge. After much consideration, the crew decided it was most likely a line from a fishing trawler that we managed to snag during the night. Considering most of what’s around here are squid boats that don’t trawl, the chance of us coming across a trawler line was extremely unlikely.
But…..not to worry, we had a planned stop during the afternoon to collect a water sample. (This is a scientific research ship after all.) So, while we’re stopped, we would put out a Zodiac and see what could be done to release the line. Just that simple.
Freeing the lines
All went well. It turned out the line was snagged over the bulb at the bow. The Zodiac people lifted it off, and we were set to go.
But, as we re-engaged the propellers, the port engine stalled. (It was the starboard engine that gave us all the trouble for the first two days.) The Captain and engineers said “hmmmm”, and restarted the engine. No problem. They re-engaged the propellers. Big problem. It stalled again. They repeated the process. Same result. No point in trying that again.
As best as they can determine, there was more to the line than just what we saw trailing in the wake. They now believe there were more lines and/or net that we were also dragging along under the boat, and as we stopped, those pieces drifted into and wrapped around the propeller. Every time we re-started, we made it worse.
So now, we have a fouled propeller, and no way to free it. Given the vastness of this ocean and the likelihood of even running across a trawler line, and then hooking it in a particular way, and then managing to have it drift into our propeller just so, I’d say we’ve found that inner tube and are now drifting along inside it. It’s just good the starboard engine did get fixed a couple of days ago, or we would be literally drifting at this point.
Looking at the charts, we’re less than 1/3 of the way up the South American coast, and there are not a lot of options for dealing with this. We’ve changed our course from NNE to WNW and we’re heading for Puerto Madryn, Argentina. Since we’re back to limping along at 8 or 9 knots, it’s going to take until Monday afternoon to arrive. Lindblad is flying in professional divers and a safety inspector, and they’ll do their best to fix the problem as quickly as possible. Could be quick, might not be.
Regardless, we were scheduled to arrive in Rio on Tuesday….and Puerto Madryn is less than a third of the way from Ushuaia. Somewhere along the line, assuming we eventually get going again, something’s going to have to give. Don’t know what that will be or when we will know, but what we do know is that we can’t worry about it. The crew’s rolling with it, the passengers are easy-going and are here for an adventure anyway, so it’ll be what it’ll be. Plenty of food, plenty to drink, and good weather, so there’s no mutiny in sight for now.
Cerveza Beagle. Genuine Tierra del Fuego beer.
As we were flying from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia, I lamented that we didn’t get more of a glimpse of Patagonia. Maybe I’m the Jonah, because now we’ll get that chance.