Introduction

Over Memorial Day weekend I helped my friend Jeff move his Pearson 365 from Pirates Cove (Roberts Bayou) over to Gulfport Municipal Marina. I have helped Jeff a few different times including moving his boat from Gulfport to Panama City. Then helped him move his car from Panama City back to Gulfport as he was going to be coming back here. He left Panama City and spent nearly a month at anchor bouncing around and slowly making his way back. He just wanted to have some help on the last little bit as he was kind of done with the whole thing.

Friday

I ended up arriving pretty late to Pirates Cove Marina. I left my car here and we were going to come and get it after we moved the boat. Even before getting to the boat, just the dinghy ride I had noted that Jeff was getting rather easily frustrated more so than before. It is a bad habit of mine to minimize this sort of behavior, likely has to do with what I went through as a kid myself. Jeff started drinking pretty heavily once on the boat. He wanted the air conditioner setup and set up his portable generator on the foredeck of the boat. The generator was on all night. He did have a CO detector and I slept with it next to me, but I still had a lot of difficulty really sleeping that night.

Saturday

In the morning just prepping to get underway, Jeff had a 5-min worth of issue with a folding ladder. He was cussing at it and getting all sorts of frustrated because he couldn’t get it folded up. Then tried to just laugh it off and make it like it wasn’t a big deal afterword. He had me man the helm while bringing up the anchor then immediately took it back to exit the Bayou as he wanted to be responsible if we ran aground. He did let me helm the boat again for a while after we exited the bayou until we got up to some ramp that had a ton of small power boats coming. As he would say I was one of the very few people he trusted at the Helm. We stopped briefly at Lulu’s for lunch, then had a pretty uneventful day to where we were anchoring for the night off of Dauphin Island. We set the anchor just outside the last bit of houses on Dauphin island and started settling in.

I had the beginnings of a headache, I thought it might have been from the sun or lack of sleep from the night before. So I went below and laid down and apparently fell asleep after a little bit. During this Jeff set up the air conditioner and the portable generator. Except this time he put the generator in the cockpit and the exhaust couldn’t clear the coaming. There was probably a bit of a back draft in the cockpit and the little gap between his hatch boards and the hatch with the AC in it exhaust was coming into the cabin. I happened to wake up, while he was making food but was fussing over the CO detector as it had a reading on it. He handed it to me, and it was close to 150ppm. He wasn’t really sure what to do, and I was in a real fog myself. Every thought was a struggle to latch onto something. I knew that the reading was a concern but was really struggling to figure out why. He handed me my plate and I ate but generally just didn’t feel well. I have sleep apnea and sometimes even from a short nap can wake up feeling super groggy and hard to function for a while. So it was hard for me to genuinely tell the difference at the time. Either way there was a lot of confusion and not enough action even at those levels.

While eating, the value on the detector was going down, but rather slowly. I think that the cooking had added a bit CO on top of what we were getting from the generator. It had got down to reading around 80ppm by the time I started taking action. Plus the alarm started to go off which meant we had been in that high concentration for too long as it was. It also was impossible to determine how long it had been as the alarm had been shut off a few times in the process of this whole thing. Either way the boat needed to be opened up urgently. However, I don’t think that is how Jeff was seeing it. He was arguing more just how to shut the alarm off and not much anything else.
After I climbed out of the boat he eventually started opening it up, and shut the air conditioner and generator off.

We did end up sleeping without the generator or air conditioner being setup. Although Jeff kept wanting to turn the CO detector off saying to as he put it save the battery. I told him that was better to leave it on and those batteries last a long time, and they are easy to replace.

Sunday

We got woken up at around 4am for a special marine advisory thunderstorm that rolled through with 40knot gusts and was dropping waterspouts. I couldn’t see much while the storm was going on but was keeping an eye on things and checking if we were dragging. It was a short storm and went back to bed for a while. Woke up the actual morning pretty early and Jeff immediately started the generator in the cockpit again. This time with the companionway completely open. So I exited out of the cabin and went and sat on the foredeck for the morning. He was running it to recharge the batteries as he said. Honestly we could have fired up the Diesel and did the same thing to get ready to go but whatever it is his boat. Jeff does pack all of that up, and we get the motor running and prep to leave.

After raising the anchor and getting underway. The autopilot gets set, and I am watching where we are going and made a few adjustments and talked over with Jeff when we would turn more towards Gulfport. Jeff wanted to go straight for Gulfport, but I pointed out that if we did we would have to navigate around a shoal. If we stayed on the heading we were on we would only need to make one adjustment later and head straight for Gulfport. During this we got into some pretty good rollers on our beam at the edge of Dauphin island and had to head back to the south a bit. I took the helm back over and finished getting us through the rollers and set on a course that we would avoid the shoal.

There is a pretty major shipping channel that goes between Petit Bois Island and Horn Island that goes to Pascagoula. There was a tanker ship in the channel out past the islands that I had been watching as we were approaching the channel. Jeff was down below cleaning up from breakfast this entire time. We were coming at the channel just slightly south of Bayou La Batre Junction Lighted Buoy. Now typically I know it is generally a bad idea to try and cross in front of any container ship, their speed can be pretty deceptive. I was keeping a close eye on it, and we had arrived at the channel while it was still out past the island and hadn’t made the final turn into the part of the channel we were crossing. Which on the charts would have put it about 1.5NM away from where we were, and we were at the channel which we only needed to cross a little over 100 yards.

Jeff popped his head out of the companionway and looked around and saw the ship and our direction and said it is moving really fast. Then said we can’t make it and to turn the boat. I said we can make it as we were already at the channel. He then came all the way out and said yeah it looks like we could but what happens if the engine dies. I was like well we can just pull the headsail out (we had a good wind on our beam and no sails up). He yelled: “That’s Bullshit!”. At this point he had moved into a very threatening way to me at the helm like he was going to start something physical right there. I started getting tunnel vision and took a step into a more fighting stance at the helm. Which honestly was totally ridiculous and totally unnecessary to even get it to that point. I considered things for a moment while staring at him and then said fine. Cranked the wheel and turned the boat almost completely around as we were already in the channel. Jeff growled at me to move and said that I should have just done what he asked. I said: “Whatever Captain…”

I got out of his way and went below for a bit, then came out onto the foredeck while we waited for the tanker to pass. At which point I was getting sprayed on a little too much so went back to the cockpit. Tried to stay on the opposite side away from him as much as possible. After coming back to the cockpit I could feel the adrenaline giving way. This tends to be a bit miserable for me. We didn’t really say anything to each other the rest of the trip.

Fortunately we made it to Gulfport around 5pm. I did kind of help with the lines but since Jeff wasn’t really communicating, not very much. The most he said to me was that we would go get my car in the morning. I was neither waiting until morning to get my car nor willing to spend another 2 hours around Jeff in a car ride. So I ended up spending $150 for an Uber to go 2hrs 100miles to get my car back. The next morning I gave the boat paperwork that Jeff had left in my car back to him by aggressively knocking. Then handing it to him and walking off without a word.

Carbon Monoxide

This particular event really highlights how dangerous it is to use a portable generator on a boat. I know a lot of people who do this, but even having it in the right spot if the wind does something unexpected would be terrible.
Like if you had a dedicated spot on the aft rail for it, and the boat ended up not pointing into the wind that one day. I know there are other concerns about running a generator on a boat dealing with grounding issues. The carbon monoxide seems rather significant and super dangerous on its own though. I likely will not bring a portable generator on the boat, it just seems there is too much downside without much positive.

I do know there are other sources of carbon monoxide on a boat. Any engine and any combustion source generates CO.
It is unrealistic to avoid all of those sources of CO. Even the propane stove on a boat will generate CO. I think for a lot of this just proper ventilation is important. As well as having good CO detectors.

It is also important to remember that on a boat even when close to shore getting help can be a long time away. From my time in the service and as a Site reliability engineer that did a lot of incident responses. One thing that I like to try to frame these things is how to handle a situation at 3 am when half asleep and groggy. I think that I was not fully prepared to try and think through a CO poisoning event in that light. The most realistic first action should have been to get out of the cabin of the boat. Then start addressing the issue once cleared out a little bit. We have so many different alarms on a boat that all have similar buzzers and beeps, and they all need different reactions. There needs to be a better way to handle the multitude of these situations to stay reasonably safe.

The coast guard has a pretty good flier about Carbon Monoxide: Boating Safety Circular 86. Also, the ABYC has Guidelines for CO Safety

On my boat I have 2 CO detectors, 2 Smoke detectors and a Propane detector. My CO detectors sadly don’t indicate the level of CO, but they are marine rated. They will presumably go off at the requisite time and CO levels.
Obviously without testing there is no real way to know for sure. I think there would be a benefit to having one with a digital readout even if it specifically isn’t a marine rated one. Or to have some sensors that can be monitored from an ESP32 or RaspberryPI and data log it would be interesting either way.

Boat Crossings

From a technical standpoint there is quite a bit of tech that could have been implemented that would have alleviated this situation entirely. Even just an AIS receiver would have shown if we were on a collision course with the tanker. Receiver only AIS is not super hard to set up and not super expensive with a little know-how. Also, just having the radio on would have been important and could have radioed the tanker. On my boat I don’t have an AIS setup quite yet but fully intend to soon as it is. I should also take the stance of another friend of mine who brings his handheld radio along most of the time regardless.

Crossing in front of commercial traffic with a sailboat like this is typically not a good idea as it is. I did want to get back to Gulfport that day myself and the thought of staying another night onboard wasn’t super appealing as it was. Even if I was sure that we could make it. I imagine if it were my boat the scenario would have been a bit different overall as I would have likely been sailing. Even if I didn’t have AIS up I would have still considered it given the totality of variables.

The situation from Jeff’s side could have been handled much differently as well and I would have been more inclined to go along with it. Had he stated something more akin to not feeling comfortable about it saying something like: “Yeah it looks like we could make it, but I would feel more comfortable if we didn’t try” I would have maybe just confirmed with a: “You sure?” then would have gone along. This wouldn’t have caused any hurt feelings or a possible fight on the boat.

Conclusion

I really need to stop chasing these red flags like a bull. Also trusting my gut would have avoided the entirety of this situation to begin with as I would not have even gone. As I had a lot of reservations about making the trip in the first place. I can also still improve a lot on speaking up for myself and not just letting things blow over.
It is unlikely I will have much more to do with Jeff sadly.