s/v Annah Foster - My Last Adventure by Dennis Doak: Haooy - Sorry

Monday, February 21, 2011

Haooy - Sorry - I meant HaPPy Ending

A tiny crisis here has had me and many other cruisers upset, and I can now write that it has reached a very positive conclusion.
When my friend, Jean-Marie, a Belgian who now lives in the Czech Republic, where he owns a lumber company, arrived at Fantasy, every man noticed the beautiful young woman with him. She probably was the most beautiful woman here at the time, and turned many heads as she passed coming up from the beach to the bar in her bikini. Many times, I saw a 2nd man with them at their table. After the 2nd man departed, and later the girl, I became acquainted with him, and asked him about his friends. She was a girlfriend who had lived with him aboard for 7 months, and the other man was a Canadian friend, who had departed for the island of San Adres, off the coast of Nicaragua.
Five days after the Canadian's departured, Jean Marie began to worry. There was no word from his friend. As the days ticked by, more concern for him - he was overdue from what should be about a 4 day sail. No one had heard from him and he had a girlfriend and another lady coming to visit him in San Andres on Valentine's Day, and they had heard nothing.
I asked Jean-Marie why he did not come on the morning cruiser's net here, and put the word out to look out for his friend and his boat, and he replied that he felt his English was not good enough, so I asked him to write down all of the pertinent info for me, and I carried it to Jerry, the dock master here, who gladly put the word out where it spread across an Eastern Caribbean Cruisers' Net run on the SSB radios. As word spread, with no one reporting the boat, and friends becoming more worried, it looked more and more bad for this man. His girlfriend canceled her tickets for her visit. Jean-Marie went to the Port Captain here, where he was stonewalled. But other countries agreed to start a search for the vessel - Nicaragua, Guatemala, Colombia, and finally Canada. With some pressure, even Honduras relented and initiated some search.
Yesterday, the 15th or 16th day since the boat's departure, Nicaragua reported that they had found the man and boat, and towed him to a small bay there. He had suffered a catastrophic electrical failure. The cause was not known yet, but speculation here included a lightening strike - his is a steel boat - which could have ruined all the compasses aboard, making navigation almost impossible.
Anyway, it is a happy ending to what I had assumed was going to be a very bad tale, which possibly would never have an answer. I am glad that I played a tiny role getting the search started. There are so many risks at sea, whether with several folks and more when sailing alone, and in the area he was travelling, there have been numerous pirates reported. It gets worse as the world economy tumbles.

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About Annah Foster

Annah Foster is a 1980'ish Morgan 462. She is a USCG Documented vessel and the year on the document is 1979, which I believe is the year the keel was laid. She is known as a ketch, which means she has 2 masts, and the aft mast is forward of the rudder. She also is a center compartment boat, which means the helm is located between the 2 masts, which are, by the way, the main and the mizzen. She is equipped with roller furling on the jib/genoa sail which is the big triangular sail on the front. Her empty weight, or rather displacement, is 33,000 lbs, which is fat for her length. Mr. Morgan believed in thick fiberglas for strength and I am told that at places it is often found to be 2 inches of solid fiberglas. Her keel has encapsulated lead weighing 8,000 lbs.

She boasts 2 staterooms, - v-berth forward with separate head and twin beds aft with separate head, including the famous bathtub. The configuration of the aft stateroom could easily be changed with a change in the mattresses to an almost queen berth, port to starboard, but currently she has twins, running fore and aft, with 2 large mattress cushions separating them. There is also a ladder and sliding hatch aft for egress in an emergency, to the aft deck, which I call the back porch. I bought some director's chairs for it and have sat there many evenings enjoying a drink and sunset. The aft deck is also the location of the propane gas grill, storage for the 2 outboard motors, Yamaha 4hp 4cycle, and a Yamaha 15hp 2 cycle, which power a new Apex Lite 10'6 inflatable dinghy, which can hang from the installed davits.

The main sail has 2 reefing points on jiffy reefing and the mizzen has 1. No lines lead to the cockpit but the jib, main and mizzen sheets.

She has a Switlick 6 man life raft mounted aft the mizzen mast. And, an emergency tiller aboard.

She is equipped with a Perkins 4 cylinder diesel engine, powering a Hurth transmission and turning a 4 bladed Max Prop, which feathers when sailing, and reverses pitch in Reverse so that she has the same thrust as in Forward. One unique design flaw is that the propeller shaft exits the boat at 3 degrees off center, making the port prop walk in reverse, even worse. The engine is equipped with about a 90 amp alternator with a very good voltage regulator.

She also has a Westerbeke 5.7 kw diesel generator, which produces 110 v AC power, and charges the batteries thru a 40 amp charger. I also have a Honda 1000 watt gasoline powered generator for emergency 110v, and an automotive battery charger aboard.

She came with an old Windbugger wind generator, not quite perfectly mounted. Stowed in the V-berth, there is a replacement AirX marine wind generator and 8 foot mast waiting to be installed, along with the controller, and 2 solar panels, which are half the possible wattage the controller can handle.

She has 3 4-D AGM batteries for the house bank and a type 18 start battery - all are 12volt.

The 4 gallon water heater will heat with both engine cooling water and 110v AC power and is equipped with a mixing valve to prevent scalding.

Tankage - Water - 110 gallon port and 85 gallon center tanks
Fuel - 175 gallons
Range when new at 2250 RPM is almost 800 nm.

Currently, her refridgerator and freezer are 110 volt AC, with several holding plates each which must be manually started and stopped. She has waiting to be installed, 2 Cool Blue 12 volt systems, with automatic controls, but truthfully, I don't know where the new holding plates will fit.

Electronics -
She is equipped with 2 VHF marine band radios, one at the helm and the other at the nav station, with repeater at the helm, and a hand held low power VHF 'walkie talkie'. Also, at the nav station, she has a Single Side Band HF radio - SSB with a Pactor 2 modem making her capable of downloading NOAA weather fax and Sail Mail emails and Grb files. onto a dedicated IBM laptop. She has as primary a Raymarine E-80 Chartplotter at the helm and a smaller Garmin Chartplotter for back up at the helm, a handheld Garmin Chartplotter, and an older Furuno GPS at the nav station. She has an older Raytheon black and white 24 nm radar at the helm, with a repeater at the nav station. She has a RapidFix 406 EPIRB, emergency locator beacon, that is hand activated. She has a new Clarion AM FM CD player, with input for computer or MP3 player on 3 sets of individual speakers - cockpit, salon, and aft cabin.

For those who do not know me, I named her for my parents - Annah Margaret and George Foster Doak. It is through their beneficence that I am able to live this dream and I felt that I should dedicate my boat to honor their memories.