"Aliens", Storms, & Detours | Battered & bruised, but we finally made it! | St Pete, FL to Kemah, TX

Описание: May 2021 - We arrive back to St Petersburg, FL to find our Lagoon 440, Makani, all ready to splash... then we woke up from that dream. 😄

Progressive Marine Services did a fine job with the saildrives and thought that the fuel was running clean once polished. They were wrong! After nervously leaving port we made it to the Sunshine Skyway Bridge before - "BEEEEPPPPP" - our port engine cut out... again. Very frustrating. The starboard continued to run so we limped back into the yard for more polishing.

Our fuel tanks are shaped like an elongated "U". When they originally polished the fuel they were using the same intake and output area so it the tank was not getting stirred resulting in many missed hunks of algae. So gross!

The delay was a blessing in disguise. We were planning on heading across the gulf be ourselves, but a captain, Captain Bobby, from Premium Captains in Ft Lauderdale experienced a delivery delay. His delay allowed just enough time for him to join us. Our biggest blind spot is weather and he was very experienced and had support from his team to deliver us weather reports.
In addition we had two volunteers, both air pilots, from Nebraska join us. Chris was very experienced with sailing catamarans and with Garmin radar and Colin was a green horn, but very eager to learn. This gave us a full crew and allowed for shifts of three hours on, nine hours off. What an awesome sail we were going to have.
The first day and a half were amazing. We averaged 7.5 knots and the weather was beautiful. Then late Tuesday we ran into some storms. They didn’t seem too bad, but we were approaching the Louisiana coast and the oil derricks were increasing in number. By midnight the wind had picked up and shifted to directly behind us. Our point of sail was a run at about 170 degrees and the seas were increasing. We were at first reef and prepping to go to second reef when out of nowhere the winds sounded more ominous, the seas increased to about 15 ft, and it became pitch black. We didn’t have time to do anything – three accident gybes (meaning the mainsail and boom when back and forth quickly across the width of the boat) within a few seconds. Steve looked at the wind / speed instrument and it showed 50+ knot winds spinning in circles. Makani was at the top of a wave and slid down at over 17 knots while turning a bit sideways. We thought that we were going to flip, but she held it. We looked up to see that most of the battens were shattered and the mainsail ripped. The sail bag also had battens protruding and shards of fiberglass littered the deck. We were lucking to be alive!

We think that we hit a forming waterspout, but it’s difficult to know for certain. We decided to keep going – the damage was already done. We were still making good headway and on target to reach Kemah within two days. We kept the mainsail up and kept heading west.

An hour or so later we received a call from an oil derrick informing us that we were straying outside of the safe zone. We made a hard left (port) to make a green bouy and barely made it. It wasn’t but a few minutes later that a different derrick haled us. They wanted to know our intentions because in just a few hours, we would be facing gale force winds. Crew meeting time! Since we were not sure about any other damage Makani sustained and we were approaching our last safe harbor, we decided to head into Port Fourchon, LA. The gale warning started at 7 am and it was 4 am allowing us a few hours to make it in. First though, we had to get the mainsail down. It took all Bobby had to keep Makani pointed into the wind while Steve, Mary and Chris wrestled the mainsail down and lashed it around the boom. It wasn't pretty, but at least we had the motors to drive us into port. “BEEEEPPPPP”! You’ve got to be kidding me! The starboard engine died again. Steve got it restarted after about an hour, but the celebration was short-lived. As we approached the inlet, littered with fast moving shrimp boats, it died again. Fortunately we had the tide with us and made it in.

We called Port Fourchon Marina to see if they had space for Makani… THEY DID! One last T-head and it was all ours. The weather was to be unsettled for a few days so after getting Makani settled, Chris, Colin, and Bobby were on their way to New Orleans to catch flights home. Steve and I braced for yet another storm and wondered if we would ever make it to Texas.

Makani road out the storm like a champ. We cleaned up the battens as best we could and in a few days, Bobby re-joined us for our final leg to Kemah. The starboard engine was still acting up and the mainsail was unusable; however the weather was spectacular. So the three of us motor sailed (port engine & jib) the remaining 271 miles in just over 42 hours. WE MADE IT! Safe in port in Kemah – now it’s time to get her cleaned and fixed up.