“Oh What a Night” July 14, 2011

If you recall, the evening last night was one of those perfect movie settings where we are sitting enjoying wine in a secluded cove on mirror like calm waters.  To bed early with the peace of mind knowing that the anchor won’t drag because the boat is on the bottom in a well protected cove.

Well, I awoke at about 11:00 with the wind howling in the rigging, the waves slapping the bottom of the boat, and the boat healing to port.  I looked out the window and realized that the boat, though not moving, was turned crosswise to the wind (a very unnatural position for the boat.  I got up and checked my wind app on my iphone and was reassured that this wind had not been predicted and was not happening!  But it was! 

Thinking about why the boat was sideways I remembered that for our meal on the deck, I had lowered the centerboard to accommodate the table and had not pulled it back up.  It had buried   itself in the mud and holding us in this position.  I checked the tide tables and realized that the next high tide on which we could float free would be at about 7:00 AM so there was nothing to do but crawl back to bed.  Of course sleep was not to come easily.

 At about 2:00, I again awoke and was convinced that the wind had increased and now the dinghy had wrapped itself around the boat and was banging into the lower side.  I again got up and checked the weather forecast and current conditions and was reassured that this was not happening.  So, again back to bed eagerly awaiting dawn and planning my escape from this situation.

At about 5:00, I got up, dressed and went outside to assess the situation.  The boat was by now floating but the rudder was still stuck in the mud.  I reasoned that if I could pull the rudder up out of the mud, the boat would swing around and hang bow to the wind (the normal position) and we could start the motor and pull out for deeper waters.  By this time, Janine had joined me in the cockpit and we discussed our strategies.  They seemed quite straight forward.  I began to pull the rudder up and found it to be really hard to pull up.  I assumed that the pressure of the wind, the sideways force, was making it hard to get up.  I finally got it up and in its resting place when I realized that the boat was slowly drifting down wind into shallower water and toward the shore which was about 50 feet behind us.  The anchor was dragging!  A dragging anchor is absolutely the greatest fear of an anchored sailor.  I immediately grabbed our second anchor which was neatly and tightly secured for travel and ran to the bow of the boat and threw it out as far as I could.  I pulled it in to get it to hold and it came back to me.  I threw it in probably 6 or 7 times until it finally seemed to be holding and the effect of that along with the minimal holding of the main anchor stopped the downwind progress of the boat. 

I then went back and started the motor.  This would be tricky because the rudder in its up and locked position was stationary and unusable and the motor on the boat is usually locked in the strait ahead position.  With the motor unlocked, you have a very little steering movement and I assumed that if I could get the boat moving forward into the wind, the direction I wanted to go anyway, I could get out of there.  I still had to deal with the two anchors before I could go very far.   My plan was to get the boat moving forward slowly, run forward and pull the anchors and then motor out.  I put the motor in gear and it ran for less than 2 seconds when it died violently.  The propeller had wrapped around the rope of the dinghy and was locked up tightly.    I jumped into the water planning to unfoul the prop.  We were of course in shallow water but I didn’t expect to land in mud that came up to my knees.  I trudged my way to the back of the boat and realized that the rope to the dinghy was not only in the prop but was wrapped around the rudder and jammed into the slot where the rudder rests.  That would not allow me to raise the motor to work on the prop so I began untangling the mess.  It took me about 5 minutes to get the line untangled.  I then had Janine force the rudder back down into the running position so that I could untangle the line from the rudder post.  That done, I we would be able to use the rudder in our exit even though it would be in the mud, I was convinced the motor would push it through the soft ooze. 

Back in the boat, I explained my plan to Janine.  She would have to steer the boat with both the rudder and the unlocked motor – no easy task – as I pulled in the anchors.  So motors running, boat begins to ease forward and I frantically pulled in anchors.  The backup anchor came in easily, but the main anchor, having dragged maybe 20 yards, was buried deeply in the mud.  I was able, when the boat got over the top of it, to pull the anchor up.  The boat began to move forward more easily.  The anchor was a ball of mud so I left it dragging just under the surface of the water while Janine motored to deeper waters.

The feeling of elation is hard to describe in this writing, but believe me, I was feeling weak with elation.  I was soaking wet in a cold wind, the boat was an absolute mess with a carbon black sticky mud all over both the bow, from the anchors, and the cockpit from my carbon black muddy legs .  The time was about 6:15.

As we got out into more open waters, I locked the motor into the straight forward position and the boat began behaving as though nothing had happened.  We motored about a mile downstream to near the mouth of the creek where we encountered probably 7 or 8 boats who had come into the cove for shelter.  We moved into the back of the pack and dropped our anchor.  I let out 60 feet of anchor rode (line).  The more rode that you have set, the safer and less potential drag exists.  One usually figures 5 feet of anchor rode for each foot of water depth.  Let’s see, we were in 5 feet of water so that’s 5X5 = 60.  Yeah that will work!  Let’s get dry and demudded!

As I reflect back on the incident, it is a fact that there was not time in which we were in personal danger and being in a fairly well protected cove, the boat may not have been damaged had she driven onto the shore; however, getting her off of very shallow water way back into upper reaches of this creek would be difficult and expensive.  There are boat rescue services available but rumors have it that a visit costs a minimum of $600.00 to arrive on the scene plus an hourly charge.  So we came out okay, albeit a bit frazzled!

We rewarded ourselves with a great breakfast of Sausage Gravy and Biscuits and V-8 followed by a long nap in an attempt to catch up on some the sleep that escaped us during the night.  Once aroused, we began the arduous chore of cleaning the mud from the boat.  Janine began going over the affected areas with a scrub brush and was frustrated by the limited success for her efforts.  She remembered that she had bought a bottle of Oxyclean and so she concocted a strong solution that did a really great job.  I also had built a portable electric pump with a long handle that we could use to pump bay water up onto the deck for rinsing. After about an hour of hard scrubbing and rinsing, the ole girl looked fairly good again.  (You know I mean the boat!  Janine always looks good!) 

We had decided that this day would be one in which we would stay in the harbor.  It appeared that high winds and large seas would make for an unpleasant ride.  However, as the morning progressed, we realized that all of the other boats had left or were leaving and the wind seemed to be dropping off so we readied the boat and headed out.  We found the wind to be a nice following wind and few waves so for the next 3 or 4 hours we had a pleasant sail with the sails “wung out.”  Our destination is the village of Rock Hall.  There seems to be a lot to see there and a marina with unlimited services. 

The entrance into the area of Rock Hall is quite shallow and somewhat of a navigation nightmare, however, we made it without a problem.  At one point we were passed by a tug pulling a huge barge.  Our AIS system alerted us that he was coming up behind and provided course and potential collision locations if that is a possibility.  If a collision is eminent, it gets really loud and demanding.

Once in Rock Hall, we tied up at the Rock Hall Landing Marina and decided that we would spend the night there.  We rested a bit and then headed out to the Watertown Crab House for a sea food dinner.  The young waitress suggested that they had a special going on where you could get all of the crabs you could eat for $20.00.   I had never had crabs in the whole so I decided to try it.  She offered to teach me how to pick the meat from the crab.  She arrived with a large sheet of brown paper, a wooden mallet, and a 5 gallon bucket.   She next arrived with a serving tray piled absolutely high with, we now estimate, 25 seasoned crabs.  She then sat down and taught me how to dissect the critters.  I dug in and began the long process of devouring the meat of all of those crabs.  We figured that there was probably not much more than an ounce to an ounce and a half of meat per crab, however, it was still a bunch.  And Messy! Wow, About ½ way through the pile, I called for a bib because I was getting really messed up.  But they were good and I had a good time.  Janine ordered fried oysters and reports that they too were really good.  Both meals came with fresh sweet corn and mine with coleslaw and Janine’s with sweet potatoes.

After dinner, we headed into town looking for some ice cream but the little town was truly dead on a Thursday night so none was to be found.  We did find a grocery store and bought vegetable oil, and a couple other items.  

We walked back to the boat, read for a bit and then crawled into bed at about 9:15.