If I avoided sailing where I could get in trouble, it'd be sorta dull.
Here in the Fl Big Bend area, you have flats with less than 5' depths
many miles out, out of sight of land even. Channels are not marked,
they shift constantly. Running aground here is no big deal and if you
dont you havent been sailing much.

I've told this story here before but here goes again. Once ran aground
in the channel here at Shell Pt Florida where the channel markers mean
almost nothing. We sat for awhile waiting on the tide and a power
boater came along and offered to tow us off. He was insistent and the
tide was just about high enough so I said "Sure". He threw me the line
and just as I get it tied it to the bow he goes roaring off. I go
diving back toward the cockpit to avoid the rope I was sure would
break. Instead, there is a tearing sound and part of his transom goes
flying back over our heads. He barely manages to get the few yards to
shore before he sinks. Although I really didnt feel I owed him
anything for his foolishness I offered him some epoxy to help his
repair but he refused. A few minutes later, we floated free on our own.

If anybody gives you crap about running aground tell him your scraping
the barnacles off your keel.

"Capri" wrote:

In another post here a new sailor asked about what to do when he runs
aground. He was smart enough not to ask what to do WHEN not IF he runs
aground.

Our worst time running aground (except for the spring of 2004 when we
went aground south of Wrightsville Beach right in the middle of the
channel and had to call TowBoatUS because Bob said the boat 'hopped up
on a sand bar' and he couldn't figure out which way to go to get off)
was Queenstown

Bob wanted to go to a real grocery store for groceries. We'd been in
Baltimore, and he thought the grocery story near the marina's
vegetables weren't fresh and there weren't many of them.

We decided to anchor north of the entrance inside Queenstown Creek and
dingy in to Queenstown. The charts said the inlet was 6 ft. with local
knowledge.

We had directions from 2 guidebooks, so we tried. Three times we
approached and 3 times it shallowed up to 4.5 ft. and we went aground.
(we draw 4'11") Later we talked to Jim and Pat and they said they'd
done the inlet recently, and they only draw 2" less than we do. I
think Bob was giving the markers too much leeway again.

As Bob turned away to give it up as a bad job, the wind (still 19-20
knots) blew us down onto a shoal sideways and we were aground for the
4th time. We couldn't power out forward or backward or combinations
with us on the bow or stern.

We tried unfurling the main to make her heel, which she did, and we
went to the low side to make her heel more. We got off briefly, only
to be blown back.

I called for a tow or for someone in Queenstown on the radio but no
one answered. I found a # of a tow boat on the north side of Kent
Narrows and called with the cell phone, but got a recording that the #
was disconnected. The engine was overheating from running full tilt.

What really annoyed me about this was not only did no one respond on
the radio (and the previous day a guy had the same problem getting a
tow) but a sailboat actually came out of the inlet, passing within
about 10 feet of us and totally ignored the fact that we were
obviously in trouble - did not wave or even make eye contact. I was so
surprised I didn't hail them.

Bob decided to try kedging off. He got the dink out and put the motor
on, and put the 50 lb anchor in it. I fed 100 feet of chain down to
him. After he gained control of the dink which tried to come back and
ram the mother ship and after getting the chain arranged so that it
wouldn't pull him overboard with it (He skinned his shin in the
process), he carefully laid the chain out to the windward. When he got
to the end he heaved the anchor over, fortunately without going over
with it.

He came back and tied the dink to the lee side of the boat, and
started winching in the chain while I, at the helm, attempted to push
the boat toward the anchor with the engine..

At first (for the first 50 ft.) it did not seem to be working.

Then we were free, and I motored carefully but firmly into the wind.
Bob stowed the anchor (no need to wash it, everything blew off before
it got on deck, plus it was more sand than mud), and then went to get
the dink to a more appropriate place.

Suddenly, I heard him yell "We've lost the dink" and I looked up and
saw him with both ends of the rope (one end with a knot in it) in his
hand as he was leaping toward the stern. I threw the boat into
reverse, and unbeknownst to me (because I was paying close attention
to the depth gauge in front of me), he leaped from the transom down
into the dink as it was floating by, wrenching his leg, but only
getting one sock and shoe wet in the process.

I heard him say "We've got the dink", so I stopped reversing. He did
not know I had put the boat into reverse until afterwards. Probably
would have given him a heart attack if he had known.

After we secured the dink, we motored up and anchored in the Corsica
River.

We anchored off the country house owned by the Russian embassy (with
several 'Private Property' signs on the beach) in the Corsica by 3:30,
after 21.2 nm at an average speed of 3.6 knots. Of course that
includes the going aground time.

We dined on melon, salad, grapefruit and hot dogs sans mustard as we
had no regular veggies. The next day we went up to Queenstown and
docked at the marina. He thought that both the stores near the docks
were too expensive, so he walked probably 1.5 miles out to the highway
to the shopping center with the Acme to shop.


grandma Rosalie

Mine isn't really a grounding story, but it was a lot of fun, anyway...

We were on the last night of our two-week bareboat in the BVI, with a
STT charterer. We pulled into Little Jost's pond and prepared to throw
out the hook. As I like to not have to run out hundreds of feet, we
parked in a relatively shallow spot, had dinner, and relaxed. There
were two other boats widely scattered from us (which we later learned,
were smarter than we).

This was Easter weekend, so there was a brilliant full moon above, and
relatively calm water lapping gently against the hull as we retired.
We caught a few bumps, which were just soft dragging of the keel over
the sand bar, not the least alarming, and then, none.

Peacefully sleeping, I awoke with a jerk (well, that's my wife's line,
anyway!) to find us at about a 45* heel. Bounding out of bed, I was
amazed to find we had no water over the sole - and, for that matter, no
water in the bilge, either!

Once I'd gotten awake enough to figure it out, I realized that we'd
dragged onto a high spot on a sand bar, the wind and waves had died,
and we'd perched, vertical and safe, on our keel. A passing breeze or
wave knocked us over, and there we were, high and dry (and safe)!

I figured, no problem, about noon, it will be high tide again, and
we'll float off. So, I went back to bed and acted as Lydia's mattress,
with me against the hull. However, now, when we woke, the moon was
behind the earth. Guess what that did to the water level? Not much...

Kedging didn't work. Two guys hanging on the boom didn't work.
Eventually, one of the other boats' 25HP dink (with which he'd been
pulling the kids waterskiing!) hooked on to all the line we could
muster attached to the halyard, and we got pulled off with the
appropriate application of power from our auxiliary brute of perhaps
30HP.

Thanks all around, including giving the couple who started helping us,
and who were borrowing a family boat for the last two years and living
on about $1 a day (!!) as they cruised all over the Atlantic before
taking it home to the upper latitudes, all of our remaining provisions,
which was like we'd given them the keys to Ft. Knox, from the way they
responded, and we were uneventfully on our way.

Whenever we actually do our website, the pix I took at dawn will be up
there. Pretty funny :{))

L8R

Skip and Lydia

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig - Callsign Pending!
http://tinyurl.com/384p2 The vessel as Tehamana, as we bought her

"Believe me, my young friend, there is *nothing*-absolutely
nothing-half so much worth doing as simply messing,
messing-about-in-boats; messing
about in boats-or *with* boats.
In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter,
that's the charm of it.
Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your
destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never
get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in
particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to
do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not."

In article .com,
"Capri" wrote:

Anyone else have any good grounding tales?


Honga River on the Chesapeake. We're tooling along in 35' of water, no
buoys to be found -- I was looking for the next one -- when all of a
sudden, we nose forward, the depth (ahead of the keel) reading 3.5'.
Back off a boat length, 35' again. Forward a little to port, slower: 3.5
again. Sat for a few minutes before guessing that the nearer shore was
the way to head. The red was almost on the shore when I finally found
it. I've never had good luck in that area of the Bay, though that was
the only time we touched.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/

In article .com,
wrote:

If you can get on the bar, you
can get off without help.

Not always. On the Chesapeake, if you go aground with a strong southerly
breeze, you could be stuck for quite a while as you waited for another
abnormally high tide.

This spring, we knew we were going to get 50 knots from the north for a
few days, so parked it in a tight little cove with 8' depth. For a day,
we couldn't have moved if we'd wanted to: our exit became a sandbar that
some fox kits explored as a new and wondrous thing. In the fall, it gets
even worse.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/

In article ,
Rosalie B. wrote:

Our worst time running aground was Queenstown

Queenstown humbles many. One spring, probably the dozenth time we'd run
the channel, I decided Pat didn't need to read the directions. Went
aground twice before Pat got her chance to save the day.

Yup, stay close to the *buoy* at the narrowest part of the channel. The
permanent ones got wiped out last winter, so there was only a temporary
#3. Passing that, aim at that house and all will be fine. Every once in
a while, I'll get it just right and see 8' the whole way.

--
Jere Lull
Xan-a-Deux ('73 Tanzer 28 #4 out of Tolchester, MD)
Xan's Pages: http://members.dca.net/jerelull/X-Main.html
Our BVI FAQs (290+ pics) http://homepage.mac.com/jerelull/BVI/

Jere Lull wrote:

In article .com,
"Capri" wrote:

Anyone else have any good grounding tales?


Honga River on the Chesapeake. We're tooling along in 35' of water, no
buoys to be found -- I was looking for the next one -- when all of a
sudden, we nose forward, the depth (ahead of the keel) reading 3.5'.
Back off a boat length, 35' again. Forward a little to port, slower: 3.5
again. Sat for a few minutes before guessing that the nearer shore was
the way to head. The red was almost on the shore when I finally found
it. I've never had good luck in that area of the Bay, though that was
the only time we touched.

We were following a smaller sailboat into the Honga (this was probably
sometime in 1998 or 1999 - not recently), and we SAW them go aground.
We were able to avoid that because they served as a bad example.

Most of the time, going aground in the Chesapeake involved mud.

We went into Broad Creek to pump out (also about 1999), and getting to
the pump-out slip, we were stirring up a lot of mud, and Bob said he
could feel resistance in the rudder. They decided not to have us go
across the creek to the marina, but just to leave us there next to the
haul slip overnight. It didn't leave any marks on the bottom of the
boat or damage the rudder which Bob thought it might.

Sand (which I think the grounding at Queenstown was) is a little more
of a problem.

Our other grounding which might have been serious was in Georgia


Dec 6, 2000
We've decided to go out Brunswick Inlet into the ocean to go down to
the St. Mary's River. This will be our first venture out into the
ocean. The weather forecast seems good - light north winds are
forecast.

We both have trouble sleeping (I keep thinking about going 'outside',
so we wake up cranky. So after the power boat ahead of us leaves, we
start off. We go around the south side of the island, which has the
mast of a shrimp boat wreck sticking up. How did that happen? Will
that be our fate too?

The first part of the trip - almost out the channel - is also used by
the ICW, and that's fine.

But the books say that one shouldn't exit at this point without local
knowledge. There is a LONG line of breakers (marked on the chart, and
visible with binoculars) extending down from the north on each side of
the channel. We see a fair number of shrimp boats out near the
channel.

Bob gets out the staysail for the first time in awhile, and then gets
all the sails up. We motor sail, but the winds are quite light - not
the 10-15 knots that was forecast.

Bob takes in the jib and then starts fooling with a way to keep the
boom over to one side so that we won't have an accidental jibe.

Suddenly I notice that the breaker line is very close and it is
getting shallower.

I say (and then yell because he doesn't seem to be listening)
"Breakers, Breakers", at Bob. He doesn't understand the situation, and
apparently thinks he's too close to the buoy on our starboard. The
depth alarm goes off and he's still going the wrong direction.

Then WHAM, we come down hard on something - probably a sand bar - I
hope not rocks. The breaking waves wash us off and then back down
again. We hit at least 3 times really teeth-jarring hard. Eventually
the waves lift us and Bob guns the motor, and we are over on the other
side.

Bob hopes aloud that the rudder is OK. We idle along because there are
two shrimp boats with their nets across where we want to go, and then
resume speed. Bob checks the engine room, and all appears to be OK.

We have 7.5 knots of wind from the NE for a little while. No
particular waves. Eventually, Bob gives in and puts the sails away and
we motor.

When I snorkeled around the boat in Key West and the Dry Tortugas, I
report to Bob that all the paint (both the base red paint and the top
blue coat) down to the bare white fiberglass has been scraped off the
front end of the keel up 3 or 4 inches on each side. I took a picture
of the results when we hauled the boat in the spring of 2001.
http://p.vtourist.com/2215033-Travel...yll_Island.jpg I
don't think mud does that.





grandma Rosalie

Anyone else have any good grounding tales?



My second most embarrassing grounding...
During a regatta race that started at our yacht club...up to a sister
club and back to the finish line just past our club again.
The body of water is a narrow 'arm' of the Atlantic that runs approx
North/South off the main harbour. The predominate winds are South,
south-west.
We started off fine...but under light winds slowly ended up near the
back of the pack. Our skipper got tired of this about 3/4's of the way
to the mid point when the faster boats could be seen on their way back.
We left the race, turned around and close hauled, followed the Eastern
shore back to the club. It was a beautiful sail...although we were very
close to shore and dodging wharfs & moored boats. Just as we got
opposite our clubhouse with the main body of racers catching up to us, i
looked at the depth meter and saw 2 feet. I got the words 's*it* out
just as we smashed into the underwater rock ledge. I was thrown forward
and scratched my eyeglasses lens on the aft end of the boom. The
helmsman was holding onto the wheel so he was ok and the owner was able
to catch himself. Good thing we weren't moving fast.
I pulled out my handheld VHF and called the club for assistance. Of
course everyone in the race could now either see us..or heard my request
for help. As soon as the main body of racers had finished, the club
tender came over and towed us off. We slinked back to our finger pier
and avoided the party scene at the clubhouse, enduring a few comments
thrown our way by smirking skippers.