The day we were scheduled to go in the water, the yard workers came to us and informed us the ramp was just repaired and the cement wasn't dry yet and we needed to wait until the next day. What? Repaired ramp? And we were going to be the test boat to see if the repairs worked.
Luckily, the splashing went ok but as soon as we tried to back out the engine started to go haywire and I had to jerryrig it. The "channel" out of the the yard area isn't marked and is about 15 feet wide. Instead of marking the channel they decided it would be better to just explain where it is and watch the fun. No one informed us that it is common for boats to run aground from time to time. We weren't 1000 feet from the ramp and hit something, and I know we were in the imaginary channel they described to us. We tried the normal things to get loose, backing up, turning sideways, heeling the boat over etc. Nothing worked. Two other boats were launched as we were trying all this and requests for help were met with, no fucking way are we getting near you! ( not a direct quote, but basically the same). The tide was going out fast and within 2 hours we went from 5% heel to 20% heel. The wind started to blow about 10 knots so as a last effort we deployed the sails to help heel us more in hopes it would free the keel from the mud. But what it did was blow us another 20 feet into the shallower water! Crap! 2 more hours and Nomitia was completely on her side!
We were told that the first thing you do when running hard aground is cover up the name of your boat, so people can't make fun of you later. Or pull out the paint and make it look like you meant to do this so you can paint the bottom. But, everyone here knows us, so......
So we blow up the dingy, a nearly impossible feat on a boat that's heeling at 35 degree angle now, and (after hours of working on the outboard to get it running) I took Dominga and the dogs ashore. Using the dinghy, I set bow and stern anchors out in the middle of the channel and then we waited until the tide came back in...over 9 hours later. In the crazy chaos there is always a silver lining. We met some wonderfully crazy 'seasoned' sailors that kept us entertained with rum and cokes, great storytelling, music and laughter (and a magical plant that seems to make people happy, we need to market this stuff) while we waited. We now know them as King George and King Arther. Thank you gentlemen.
About 9 pm the boat was back up to about 10 degrees of heel, so we dinghyed out to the boat with the dogs. Dominga pulled in the stern anchor and I pulled in the bow anchor. It was remarkably easy to pull the boat through the mud and back into the middle of the channel ( which wasn't exactly where they first told us,btw). We motored, very slowly, out to an anchorage near the city and called it good for the night.
One thing this showed us is that we need to store things much better in the boat. Everything from the starboard side of the boat was now on the port side of the boat. It took 3 days to put everything back in its place, but this time stuff won't move.
Another thing we learned, attitude is the difference between an adventure and an ordeal. We consider this an adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment