A post by Mark
The River Giveth
Today, I got a free anchor! For real… Here’s the story.
As has become the new normal, we were trying to get a real early start today – as we were hoping to cover a long stretch of river to get to the next ‘really good’ anchorage. So, the day started at 5:00 – bringing Willie for a walk pre-dawn and pulling up anchor at first light (around 5:45). We were in a really narrow anchorage last night, so we had to carefully spin our boat around to get out. We went really slowly, got pointed in the right direction, and started on our way out. Until we stopped dead in our tracks. What??? We’re in 9 feet of water – we can’t be stuck. But we were. Ugh… Then, to make matters worse, the starboard engine just stops. I idle the other engine to think for a second.. We must be caught on something. While the engine is off, we spin around – and now the port hull is really close to the riverbank (meaning, the bow (front) is in the mud and a few tree branches are brushing up against the side of the boat.) We get our extra anchor out again and start pulling ourselves off the bank. As I set the anchor – the lightbulb goes off and I figure out what’s going on… We’ve wrapped our starboard propeller around something – probably an old rope in the water. Time to get the wetsuit out again. Into the water (now, at least, it’s a bit light out), and under the boat. Well – I was right – we had an old anchor line wrapped around our propeller. As I start to cut it all free, I notice that one end has a lot of tension on it. After I cut that piece, I bring it back up to the surface and Julie ties it to the boat. I clear the rest of the line from the prop and climb back onto the boat. I start pulling on that line – which pulls us off the river bank. After a lot of pulling (and using the engines to back-down on the line), I pull up a ~20 lb anchor.
We then pull up our extra anchor and are on our way – the rest of the exit goes smoothly. We’re out of the anchorage by 6:45 – still possible to make the anchorage – but things have got to go our way the rest of the day.
The River Taketh Away
Since the anchor was really muddy, we left it on the back of our boat – on the stairs that go down to the water. As we motor, water splashes up on the bottom stair and it helps get some of the mud off. Julie also spends a fair amount of time getting the muck off. (Note, the picture above was taken after most of the muck was off it). Fast forward an hour or two… I decide to try to go a little faster and make up some time. I speed up – about ½ mph. About 5/10 min later, I look back – no anchor!!! Turns out, the massive acceleration from 8 to 8.5 mph (I’m a real speed demon) was enough for the anchor to slip backwards off the back of the boat. What a bummer! Oh well.
The Rest of the Day
One of the things that had to go ‘perfectly’ for us to make the anchorage by dark was that we had to make it through one lock – and do it quickly. About 5 miles away from the lock, we see a barge (not an unusual sight). Unfortunately for us, we were going in the same direction – meaning that we were going to have to wait for it to go through the lock before we could (for, even if we passed them, they would go get to go first – as they have priority on the river). No way we’re making the far anchorage now. No big deal though – we talk to the lock operator, he tells us about another spot we can stop, and we head there for the night. We’re there now – and its pretty shallow (the lock operator told us it was 6-8 ft, our depth sounder says 4.5 ft. Luckily, we draw 3′ 9″)– so we’re waiting until its light out before we leave. I don’t want another pre-dawn bout of excitement. Hopefully, we won’t have any post-dawn excitement either..
Until next time…