Where there's smoke...uh oh

“Martin, there’s a fire in the engine room.” 

“WHAT?” 

“Our wing engine is On Fire.”

Not what a captain wants to hear while station keeping in the middle of Nassau Harbour, waiting for a ginormous cruise ship to dock.  For those that don’t know, fiberglass – i.e. our entire boat – burns like dry kindling once it’s lit.

Yeah, it was that kind of a morning. And it had started off so promising!  To back up, we left Palm Cay Marina at 7am, wishing fair winds to our friends aboard Gone For Good as they left for the Exumas and waving goodbye to our new friends, Sandy & Bob who were on the dock. Sunny, calm and gorgeous, we were all set for our 30 hour-ish passage to Old Port Cove in Palm Beach.

Some pics from the last few days…

Hanging out on Gone For Good (Martin, Mike, me & Betsy)

Glenn and me

Mike, Marie and Martin

  

Martin, Bob & Sandy

We had decided to take the route through Nassau Harbour because the southern route around New Providence would have added 20 miles to the trip. We were about to exit the west side of the harbor when we saw (on AIS) a behemoth cruise ship coming in from the north. Martin called the ship and told him we’d station keep to stay out of the way. We even took a picture of the ship entering the harbor. In fact, Martin posted a picture on Facebook about 5 minutes before all hell broke loose.

Disney Dream coming in to dock

We decided to turn on the wing engine so we’d have thrusters to help us station-keep. (We have a hydraulic PTO on the wing to run our thrusters and windlass). Martin turned the switch but nothing happened. That’s strange. Do we smell smoke?  I walked down into a salon full of white smoke. I then ran down to the utility room and look through the windowed door to the engine room. It’s full of smoke and the wing engine looks completely engulfed in flames. That is So. Very. Not. Good.

The next 15 minutes or so are a bit of a blur so the details are probably only partly correct. We had to do two things – put out the fire and stop the boat, preferably in that order.  I thought quickly enough to state those goals, grab a fire extinguisher and give it to Martin so he could put out of the fire. Then he released the clutch on the windlass so the anchor could free fall. Meanwhile, I tried to keep us from hitting 1) the cruise ship to our port, 2) the Bahamian Royal Defense Harbor Patrol boat that was directly in front of us to keep traffic away from the cruise ship, and 3) the shore to our starboard. Not really knowing what exactly was causing the fire or what exactly was burning, we just wanted to put the fire out and shut everything down as soon as we could.

“Mayday, mayday, mayday, this is the motor vessel Blossom”. Yes, I know how to call a mayday but in the moment, I just - blanked.  We have a fire in the ER, we’re in the middle of a busy harbor, there’s a cruise ship docking next to us, we’re drifting into Bahamian Royal Defense Force Harbor Patrol Boat and our windlass is run off the wing engine that is currently best used for roasting marshmallows – and I’m at the helm.  Enter Charmer – a motorboat that was somewhere nearby and our angel for the next hour. First, they asked on the VHF if the Bahamian Royal Defense Force had heard our call, who responded that they had not. Then they ask “What is the nature of your distress and where are you?” This time I repeated the mayday and added some information “Our wing engine is on fire and we are going to drop anchor in the harbor, next to the cruise ship Disney Dream.” Help? The harbor patrol boat that had been watching the cruise ship came flying over but no one got there faster than Charmer, the cruisers who responded to our mayday on the radio.  

Once the fire was out and we were anchored with our engine off, we took a breath. Charmer sprang to action, and we tied up to their stern using our longest dock line.  BRDF officers were aboard both of our boats and directed Charmer to a safe anchorage at the side of the channel. There were several BRDF boats, watching our stern as we were being towed and trying to keep the looky loos away. Excuse me, we have stinky smells and smoke filtering out of our vents and are being towed by fellow motorboat. Would you care to keep a few yards away, please?

Charmer getting in position to tow us

BRDF watching our back

Attaching a tow line and pulling up the anchor

Marine Seaman Richards who accompanied us while we were being towed

Charmer anchored next to us so they could complete the required paperwork

The BRDF officers spoke with the Charmer couple and then with us. We filled out the needed paperwork and were free to go. Go where?  So they took Martin aboard one of their boats and brought him to a couple of marinas in the harbor to find an available dock that wasn’t too difficult to get to without thrusters in the increasingly strong current.  Then they followed us as we went to the marina to make sure that we got in okay and that no other boats got in our way. The BRDF officers were wonderful. Throughout the ordeal they were competent, courteous, calm, and reassuring.  

Who were those amazing boaters, anyway?  Unfortunately, the Charmer folks had to take off on their way to Florida and we never actually met them but for shouting across our bow. Fortunately, the BRDF gave us their contact information. I want to thank them in person, at least by phone, so we’ll wait until after tomorrow when they should be state-side to call them. I’d really like to buy them a drink & dinner as well. I hope we’ll cross paths with them some day soon.

So here we are. We’re docked at Hurricane Hole, on a face dock directly in front of the Green Parrot Bar & Grill. We stayed here in ’09 and really like it. This year, free passes to Atlantis are included in our marina fee - so that’s what we’ll do tomorrow. We could use a carefree day.

We’ve been on the phone with our commissioning manager at Nordhavn and our consultant, Steve. We’ve taken lots of pictures and sent them off.  Now we’ll wait to see what’s next. We’d prefer to get the fix done in Palm Beach but we need to be sure that we’re safe to travel. Our wing is down and we have reduced use of our windlass and thrusters without it. And, I’m feeling a bit skittish. It was really scary to see smoke rolling up into the salon and flames leaping from the wing engine. The realization that we had a fire on board was extremely distressing.

But Blossom is fine – if not for the rather “well done” looking, non functioning wing engine, a fine yellow dust covering the aft part of the ER, a faint scent of smoke, a bent band brake on the windlass that broke during the free fall, and needing to buy a replacement fire extinguisher. Not so major, really. While we may not have reacted “perfectly” under duress, we put out the fire, called for help, and caused no harm to ourselves or anyone else. We are so very grateful to Charmer and the Bahamian Royal Defense Force for their swift response and competence.

Of course we’ll report details on the cause of the fire as things unfold. I imagine it will take some time to sleuth everything out. 

Now we’re going to grill some lobster tails and open a bottle of wine. Life is still good, if a bit stinky, aboard Blossom.