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