A Venezuelan fishing boat at anchor, home and office to five or six crew members that venture off into notoriously windy waters on often unreliable equipment for a day’s catch.

We were bound for Panama and anchored off a remote island some sixty miles off the coast on the western part of Venezuela. The winds had been boisterous, but from dead astern, making the sailing fast and on the rhumb line, if a bit rolly as our 35-foot Sparkman and Stephen’s design frolicked down wind. We were tired from the sailing and slept the hard sleep that comes after several days of sailing, but the light in the tropics comes early and is a bit insistent and cruisers soon become accustomed to waking up at daylight and going to sleep soon after the sun sets. I tossed and turned for a bit, and then, listening to several boats pass close to the hull and bouncing in the bunk as the wake hit, I decided to get up and see what was about. Venezuelan fishermen get up early, and apparently, this day, I was on their time frame.

We were the only cruising boat in the anchorage, and it was with some relief after sailing among the throngs of boats in the Caribbean. We were familiar with stories of ‘boardings,’ a catch all euphemism for robbery and worse that occurred with some regularity along the coast of Venezuela, but most notoriously along the eastern stretch of the country. Despite some established ‘hot spots‘ especially for boats hugging the coast on the way from Trinidad, the morning SSB net seemed to have at least one incident a month. And this was in the back of our minds as we lay anchored, the only cruising boat, among a fleet of ramshackle wooden fishing boats that came and went.

On shore, a long spit of deserted beach stretched out with a lone palm tree battered by the trade winds. Several fishing boats swung at anchor on their line rodes that seemed tattered and stretched to the point of breaking. The fishing boats were no bigger than our boat, low slung and wooden, screwed by five or six. The deck and cabin houses were strewn with fishing gear as some of the crews slept or fished off of hand lines. It was pretty much business as usual. I made a cup of coffee and then went back topsides.

A small dinghy with two fishermen in it motored by and waved. I waved back and didn’t think anything more about it. Then they motored by again and waved before heading back to their boat. Friendly guys, I thought. They turned around and motored over, heading right at our boat. ‘It looks like we have company,‘ I told Laurie. We’d just spent six weeks in the boat yard in Puerto La Cruz getting the topsides Awl-gripped, so I scrambled for the fenders and managed to get them down just in time. Laurie came topsides and we fended the dilapidated wooden dinghy off the boat. Were they coming over to hack us into little pieces and make off with all our worldly possessions? Their smiles said otherwise.

Another good lesson of cruising: Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and don’t be afraid to offer what you can.

Our Spanish was of the hardware store variety. After cruising Central America, we knew how to say a few boat related items: stainless steel, inoxidable, hose, tubo, and a number of other expressions not commonly found in a Lonely Planet guide. But when the words start flying and flitting this way and that, sometimes it’s easy to get confused, and then only the tangible will set the record straight. And so it was one of the dinghy’s crew produced the reason for the visit, an alternator covered with grime that looked as if this was the first time it had seen the light of day. They wanted to know what every mariner at some point wants to know, the fundamental common denominator of the sea: "Can you fix this?" I wasn’t sure, but decided I could do worse than give it a whirl.

First thing was first, a proper work space. If you’ve never handled a grime covered alternator, bigger boat messes exist, but they are few and far between. I’m unsure whether it’s the diesel and the belt dust that bakes with the heat of the engine into a gooey mess that coats everything, but as soon as you pick it up, your hands will need a thorough washing in a strong solvent. I turned the neglected piece of equipment in my hands and could feel the eyes of the crew in the dinghy and the rest of the crew of the fishing boat that was anchored several boat lengths away. Hoping to contain the mess, I found a plastic Tupperware lid and placed the alternator on it on the aft deck. First, I said in my lacking Spanish, clean all of this with gasoline, then bring it back. They smiled, we’d seemed to have understood each other, and off they went.

Five minutes later they were back, not with the alternator, but with a fish--one that they intimated was the best around. Fish isn’t my first choice for breakfast fare, but today it was apparently on the menu. We said thanks, and they rowed off again. Twenty or so minutes later, they came back. It was showtime.

The author and a crew member, united by the vagaries of the sea and the equipment it breaks.

I’d taken alternators apart and put them back together again a few times, but this was somehow different. We were miles from anywhere, and I was hardly certified in alternator repair, and if we needed any special parts or tools, we were sunk. I was hoping for an easy fix, but alternators have springs that hold magnets onto a metal shaft. So once they come apart, there’s a little tell tale ‘boing,’ of the magnets releasing that is hopefully not followed by a ‘blup’ of them sinking through warm tropical waters. I laid out my rusting socket set with the air of a surgeon about to get down to business. After loosening the four bolts that held the two halves of the housing together, I inserted a flat head screwdriver and gently pried the two halves apart. The springs sprung and we reached the point of no return. The inside of the alternator was a black gooey disaster. Belt gunk had caked, melted, and recaked on the armature and stator and a thick layer occupied the inside of the housing. This would be another project that would not be taking place on our boat. And so for a second time the crew set off in their dinghy to clean the inside. Twenty minutes later they returned, the windings not exactly gleaming, but in much better condition. I was hoping the belt gunk had simply clogged one of the spring loaded magnets, mostly because it was my only diagnosis and that rewinding the thing was beyond my skill set. Putting an alternator back together again is a little trickier, but most have small holes on the backside of them perfect for a small flathead screw driver to enter and hold the brushes down while the two halves are lined up. After a few tries the two haves came together with an assuring finality. I gave the alternator back to the fishermen and hoped it worked.

They again dinghied over to their boat and set to work, disappearing into the engine compartment while the rest of the crew looked down at them. Twenty minutes later they rowed over yet another time, this time to borrow a pair of vise grips. How you set off into potentially very rough waters without vise grips is a bit mind boggling to me, but there they were, fishing probably in the manner that most of the world’s fishermen fish: five men on a leaky boat and a temperamental engine without so much as a wrench that fit. Another twenty minutes went by. We were approaching what we’ve come to term on our boat as the ‘Moment of Truth,’ or the ‘Moment of Doof,’ the moment when the sea gods smile on your endeavors and repairs or callously strike you down and return you to square one. The motor revved, and a large plume of black smoke shot out the back. And then the captain, a sea and sun-worn old man missing some of his teeth, smiled at us and gave us a thumbs up, the universal sign for ‘I can’t believe you fixed it either, but nice work.’