This post was written by Caleb Thompson after a boat run last week.
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, the Breezy Sea, or the sailboat with outboards, the Wesleyana. The latter is run by an all Haitian crew but the Breezy Sea must 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 first, 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. 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 with 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 to our course. This forced me to drive thirty degrees off course, making a long trip with a lot of steering much longer, to avoid taking the waves broadside. At last, less than 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! We were 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, I saw 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 a 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. 5 seconds had 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. White, vile soot, billows of smoke.
The noise of flames sounded back, but everyone was out, the crew staying out of our way. Then, 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 asked God for help again, “God, please, give us a hand here!”
I crawled back in. PT had thrown the tarp and garbage out of the way, a 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 had done the same thing. From examination later, we realized 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 in my memory it feels like more. I asked Bernard, one of the Haitian workers 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. The Haitian crew opened the engine hatch and poured the buckets straight in. This was not what I had in mind, but 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 had saved us. The fire was 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 kept me on my feet. What we prayed there was a real prayer.
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 several lung-fulls by accident in the fight. PT had done the same. I felt like wet pasta for about an hour, just kind of hanging on the sail boom as we plodded toward the dock. A few hours and a coca-cola fixed me up, though, so no harm done. PT was better after three hours later, as well.
The afterward 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
