Drifting in the North Atlantic at Night
November 12, 2017 – Timing our departure at noon to allow for an overnight offshore run down the New Jersey coast around Cape May and up the Delaware for a dusk anchorage the following evening, the three-person crew set up rotating 4-hour watches to midnight then 2-hour watches through to the next day. With Thach on watch at 1 am, 10 miles off the NJ coast, the main engine high temperature alarm goes off (screaming alarm and flashing orange light – not something you would miss). Thanks to his rigorous training Thach turns off the main engine, turns on the wing engine, wakes up Karin through the walky-talky (next on watch) to take over in the pilot house and goes down to check on the main engine. The scene in the engine room is reminiscent of the more exciting parts of Das Boot, a U-Boat classic, with steaming coolant spewing from the main engine block. After choking off the main (the choke switch in the pilot house does not function – it’s on the repair list) the coolant is found to be blowing out of a drain nipple on the engine block that has somehow worked loose – thankfully, not a blown gasket. After tightening up the nipple (yes, like many of Thach’s friends who have never quite left adolescence behind – this is not what he imagined tightening a nipple in the middle of the night would be like) Thach and Tony (who had woken up to the sound of no engine) tackled adjusting the stuffing box of the wing engine prop to allow for proper sea water drip lubrication. To do that, Karin was asked to turn off the wing engine and let Emmanou drift in the North Atlantic at night – not something she had signed up for. Eventually, with Emmanou now properly running on the wing engine, we headed towards Cape May with the intention of getting a replenishment of Fleetcharge coolant for the main. Amazingly, YachtTech owner and Nordhavn guru James Knight responded to Thach’s speculative 2 am text to tell us to let the main engine block cool down, top up the coolant tank with water, start the engine, bleed the coolant system and dispense with the Cape May stop. The wonders of smart phones is that these instructions were effectively conveyed to our drifting novice crew with the help of photos and texts – a triumph of technology of idiocy. We were back on our way.
With helpful wind, tides and currents we make good time up the Chesapeake and dispense with our planned anchorage off Chesapeake City and make our way through the C&D canal.
