KLUNK!
‘What was that?’
‘I don’t know, but … we’re not moving.’
Oh #@@**
We had departed at noon from the Miami Yacht Club to head down Biscayne Bay to No-Name Harbour, a preferred departure point for The Bahamas. A mile into the trip, we felt a shudder and heard a horrible clunk. We were in the middle of the busy channel leaving Miami and going nowhere.
We quickly set the anchor and ran through all of the possibilities, none of them good, becoming more disheartened with each. Having no idea what to do next, we called TowBoat US to came and get us. When the operator arrived, he patiently reviewed our options, and as he prepared the paperwork, looked from his boat to ours and said, ‘But I think I know what your problem is. Look at your prop.’
A large palm frond had become entangled in the prop and was fluttering behind us. He towed us back to the harbour, to the exact place we had left a couple of hours earlier, and then offered to dive and cut the frond loose. In ten minutes we started the engine and everything was fine. Talk about going from on top of the world to disappointed to excited again!
Although it was getting late in the afternoon, we opted to sail down to No-Name to be ready to go.
Saturday was a busy day, route planning with three other boats and keeping a nervous eye on the weather. After much discussion, we had a plan – and only changed our collective minds three more times through the day as we compared notes with other cruisers.
