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Friday, March 16, 2018

Asunción to Abreojos

 We left on Jan. 1st along with Yatchcruz.  We were headed south and they were headed north. They had gotten up and out at 5am. They had managed to dodge the lobster pots. Asunción is famous for lobster fishermen. They sell all their catch to the local cop-op. We did not look into getting any because I did not want to cook them. Our new friends called us to warn us about the lobster pots. They were in groups of three. I stood out on the bow looking for them and told Mark which way to turn to avoid them.

  We managed to get out of the harbor without snagging any pots and were about 2 miles off shore when there was 2 loud bangs down below. Mark instantly turned off the engine and flew down below. He said "the same thing has happened to that happened to Yatchcruz!".  They had told us a story about their coupling falling off their prop shaft. Mark threw open the engine compartment and sure enough the coupling had thrown off all 4 nuts and bolts. Mark had cleaned the coupling and tried to get new bolts with locking nuts. The hardware store did not have the locking nuts and he did not use locktite at the time thinking he would get some later. He had me stay in the cockpit and watch the chart plotter for rocks and the distance we were from the shore. He opened the engine compartment and looked for the set of four bolts and nuts. He did have me look in his case with bolts and nuts for a set that might fit because he could not find the last nut. We did not have any the correct size. So I used the manual bilge pump to empty the area below the engine to make it easier to find the missing nut. We did find and Mark got the coupler back onto the prop shaft.  We did not drift to shore at all really.  I was worried and Mark was calm.  We stayed about 3 miles out the whole time. Mark was very confident that everything would be OK because he knew what had to be done and he knew how to do it.

 We radioed Yatchcruz afterwards to tell them our coupler had come off just as theirs had. They told us their auto pilot had just quit working. We said one last goodbye and good luck until we might have the chance to meet again.

It was only 48 nautical miles to Abreojos but with the delay of working on the boat we did not get there until just before sunset. We arrived about the same time as Singularity.  There was not much protection from the wind and there was wind that night.  We also could not get very close to shore because of all the lobster pots.  Even with our best effort we managed to get an extra line from one of the pots hooked to our rudder. 

The wind blew all night and banged the lobster pot into our boat.  Mark got up 3 times to try and move it away but it always came back.  When morning came we were tired of the wind and left.  Singularity stayed and went ashore. 

I have no pictures of this 24 hour period. 






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