What Happened on the Breezy Sea:
Yesterday was a tough day but it started like the rest. PT and I got up at about six to pray quickly, make coffee, grab a stale biscuit and meet Butch. The plan was for the two of us to run the lobster boat without Butch for the first time. Every pound of food we bring to the island comes by small boat, either the lobster boat Breezy Sea or the sailboat with outboards, the Wesleyana. The latter is run by an all Haitian crew but the Breezy Sea is required by local law and preferred by base leadership to be in the command of a North American. So, PT and I had done some training and were off on our first run alone.
I took the helm for the way over, figuring PT could have it on the return when it was loaded and required more skill. Pete Thompson, aka “PT”, is my uncle and wingman down here since Josh and Andy are gone. He and his church have contributed enormously to this ministry. (They funded the second container alone, among other things.) PT is also a former Navy Commander so running a lobster boat is well inside his ability.
The sea on the way over was the worst I have driven in myself, maybe five foot swells consistently with six or seven footers occasionally. One seeks to drive into waves or to follow them, of course, but the difficulty yesterday morning was that the length of the waves ran parallel our course. This forced me to drive thirty degrees off course, making a long trip with a lot of steering much longer. The crew complained often that we were so far off course but PT reassured me that I was quite correct to drive a big triangle to avoid taking the waves broadside. At last, within a bit under a mile from shore the waves calmed enough for us to change course and drive following them, roughly toward our destination. No more wash over the front deck and spray onto the windshield, no more way up on the crest and crash! down into the trough; almost there and glad for it.
Suddenly, without warning, the noise of the engine surged in our ears. We had been at a constant 2300 rpm’s, constant temperature, constant oil pressure. In a heartbeat the engine roared to maybe 3000 with load clanging and a great plume of black smoke. Before my mind realized what was happening I cut the throttle and a second later cut power. Turning around, it’s frozen in my mind, there were knee high flames roaring out of the engine compartment into our cabin. This was a fire of intensity, burning fuel with plenty of air, not the soft crackle of kindling or campfire.
Immediately in front of me were two fire extinguishers laying on a pile of tarps and boxes. I yelled to PT, “Fire!” and tossed him one of them. The cabin was already filled with thick black smoke. I jumped out the port door to the rear, PT the starboard. Now 5 seconds have passed. We both struggled for another second to get the stupid pins pulled, then wheeled back in simultaneously and fired at the base of the flames where they came out of the deck. White, vile soot, billows of smoke.
“Where’s that woman?!” I was referring to a passenger. PT yelled back that she was at the stern. He yelled again into the smoke if anyone was in the cabin below the bow. The noise of flames sounded back, but everyone was out and the crew was staying out of our way. Now maybe 10 seconds had passed. I asked out loud for the Lord to help us and ran back in. It was probably pointless to shoot at the deck where the flames were coming out of the gaps around the hatch but I did one more time. I ran out to grab a breath then crawled back in to try to open the hatch. No good, choked and had to leave. PT shot some more, I think. I asked God for help again, “God, please, give us a hand here!” (Not the most eloquent prayer, I suppose.)
And here’s where God really showed His presence. I crawled back in. PT had thrown the tarp and garbage out of the way. Good move because now I could see a one inch hole in the deck right above the fire and the engine. I laid on my stomach and shot my entire extinguisher into it. I learned later that PT did the same thing. We’re not sure who shot there first but we are sure from examination later that the hole in the deck was in the perfect place over the spraying fuel and source of the fire. No more flames, anywhere.
I can’t say at this point how many minutes had passed, probably only a couple but it doesn’t feel like it in my memory. I asked Bernard, one of the Haitians and a good man, to grab some buckets of water in case of a flare up. Our extinguishers were all but spent, only PT thought to save any at all. (I guess I should only get how many bullets people want me to shoot.) I did not communicate my thought very well and they opened the engine hatch and poured the buckets straight in. In hindsight they were right to do so, a little corrosion is a small price to pay for the last few embers out.
The smoke started to clear a little so I held my breath and grabbed our packs out of the cabin. God saved us. The fire was put out. PT called us all into a circle, hands on shoulders. I was so smoked and sweated up that I couldn’t stand as the boat rolled and drifted, only the people in the circle next to me made it so I could stand. What we prayed there was a real prayer. I don’t remember exactly what PT started with or if I prayed out loud myself but we meant it. Thank you, Lord, for saving us and our boat. Praise God for His deliverance. Praise our God who hears us. (Even when we pray things like, “God, give us a hand.”) Praise God for making every second count. Thank you Lord that you never let anything happen to us that isn’t in your control. We see your hand in this Lord. We see how you are with us.
Pretty soon after, the Wesleyana came to tow us the last half mile to the wharf on the mainland. I don’t know, but I imagine that they saw our smoke. For me, at this point, the smoke and “purple K” as PT calls the extinguisher fog, was making me pretty sick. I’d breathed in a good bunch of lungfulls by accident in the fight. PT said the same for him. Honestly, I felt like wet pasta for about an hour, just kind of hanging on the sail boom as we plodded toward docking. A few hours and a coca-cola fixed me up, though, so no harm done. PT was better after a couple three hours later, as well. We even went to spend the night in St Marc so that we could throw 36 tons of rice with Ywam.
The afterword on the boat, as we know it so far, is that the boat is not too badly damaged by fire and engine is not destroyed. It looks as if tomorrow we, being us but especially Butch, will just need to replace some wiring and tubing. At the same time, we could see just how close that fire really came to destroying the boat and forcing us to swim. It was the return fuel line that had been broken somehow and sprayed fuel onto the super heated exhaust pipe. If the supply line had only a few more degrees, it too would have bled into the fire and from there we would have had no recourse as if fed the fire bigger and bigger. Once again, see God’s awesome mercy.
I hope, in writing this, even if I have conveyed the excitement of the moment, I have made the only point I wanted to make. That point is how trustworthy our Lord is, that we can cry out to Him and He will save us. He has shown this to us yet again. I praise Him for that.
HS.
Caleb Thompson
Caleb Thompson
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