Romeo & Juliette Getlost: Whoa!! No Way to Steer!!……… almost

These last few days have been going by kind of fast…because of the problems.

Everything was fine a few days ago when I went to bed. When I got up I found that my global positioning unit was not sending a signal to all of the electronic components that require it’s signal. So I shut everything down and restarted it…problem solved, I’m a genius!!

So I leave the little bay I’m in and decide to go exploring down the coast about 40 miles. I make it to a little cove called Rainbow Bay. Nice area where I can see people fishing from the cliffs next to the beach. As I come into the bay, I find that I am the only boat there….Yes, just the way I like it. There is a group of four elderly people in the water near the beach in about 4’ of water. They all had drinks in their hands, clearly enjoying the beautiful day that was getting near its end. I steer the boat into about 9’ of water and let go the anchor, settling in about 400’ away from the quite water party of bathers.

I make a drink and sit back in the cockpit and enjoy the sunset, all is well. The next morning I get up expecting to explore further down the coast, but when I get ready leave and turn on the boat’s many marine electronics the GPS stopped working again. This time the restart didn’t fix it. So I start to see if I can trace down the problem. I was heavily distressed to find millions of miles of wires crisscrossing all over in an almost inaccessible space of 4’ x 2’. After poking around about an hour I decide that I should look for some outside advice, like the product techs. So I decide to head down the coast to find a Internet signal, well after about three hours of sailing with no help from my electronics. I decided to pull into a big protected bay with a huge beautiful beach with no other boats and no people on the beach….Nice!

So I spend the rest of the day tearing the boat apart trying to fix the problem. No Luck! I put the boat back together and make another drink and watch the sun go down thinking of my next move.

I get up the next morning and decide I need real local help with this, so I figure I’ll go back to Spanish Wells and see if there is somebody there that can help. It takes about 7 hours of motor sailing to get there. I grab a mooring ball and lower the dingy and go to shore. I found one guy there that runs an electronics shop, apparently he is the only guy on this island I can hope to get any answers from. We talk about my problem and he says the problem is 9 times out of ten the wiring connections go bad. So back to the boat I go armed with this new information and his description of how he would tackle the problem.

I tear the boat apart again but still I can’t find the culprit. Next step, check the internet. I find that a few people have had the same problem as me and it turns out that the gps antenna needed to be replaced. After a few calls I find one in Nassau. So I am heading there on Monday to pick it up and install it. Price for the unit in the States $325, price in the Bahamas $525. I’m sure shipping is part of that, but ouch!

The defective GPS makes it so that you don’t know exactly where you are, kind of important dealing with reefs and rocks, also a big deal is that you don’t have autopilot. I have found that after having it for two months it is a luxury that I don’t want to do with out.