Uh Oh...

OK, so when we first arrived at Palm Beach's Lake Worth (on the ICW, just inside the inlet from the ocean), we stopped at a fuel dock to fill our fuel and water tanks. Here is a photo of Madelyn helping to top off the water tanks. Both girls are starting to help out more with "chores". In a few years, we will have great crew!


We have tied fenders on so that our boat is protected from the dock itself, and so that our fiberglass and paint do not get scratched. We throw dock lines to one of us who hops off the boat in time to tie them off on the cleats and this stops the boat. When we are finished, then we have to maneuver off the dock. Sometimes this is straightforward, but not this time.

We had gusts of wind up to 24 knots on this day, unfortunately coming from our starboard side, pushing us onto the dock. So Brian figured out a way to tie the dock lines a certain way so that we could untie them in a particular order and "spring" the bow out using the engine, hopefully to overcome the wind. Powerboats and some bigger sailboats have strong "bow thrusters" up front, which can be very helpful in this situation, but we don't have these.


A few minutes after this picture was taken, we left the dock. In a matter of seconds, we were able to swing the bow outward and quickly try to retreive our docklines. It is hard to remember exactly what happened. At one point, one of the spring lines briefly got hung up on the cleat and I remember thinking in a panic "what if it doesn't let go? We'll come crashing back onto the fuel dock!", but I was able to wiggle it quickly, then pull the rest of it on with relief....

Just then we heard a crunch. Our man-overboard safety module, installed on the stern railing, hit the piling you can see in this picture, which was sticking out a foot from the rest of the dock. The box opened, and we could hear the whooshing sound of air inflating the module. The neon yellow one-man liferaft inflated and floated by the dock as we left, free at last. My heart sunk. Oh no!

Here is a photo of the white box installed on someone else's boat from a YachtWorld magazine. You can see it is on the outside of the railing, and the piling just knocked the lid right off the white box.

Here is a stock photo of the module from the company's website:

One of the bystanders on the dock ran over to pick up the safety module, and then offered to bring it to us on his boat. This was difficult in a busy fuel dock channel with lots of wind, but we got it back, and deflated it so we could pack it away and deal with it later.

We have spent a week now finding someone here in W. Palm Beach who can re-certify and re-pack this module. This high-end safety device is made in the UK. Our representative here sent it to Miami for servicing, and then we found out it is defective. It apparently leaks at the seams. Now we are dealing with the UK manufacturer (thankfully requiring only 1 international call, the rest is done by email), to get a new module. We purchased the module only 4 months ago, so it is still under warranty. We need it to go to the Bahamas.

So now, we wait for repair of this safety man-overboard module, as well as our davits which were damaged when we tried to leave Fort Pierce.