About that anchor.........

                                                                 West Pass Take 2
                                                                          April 5th, 2008 
   
      The wind was blowing at the Sabal palms next to the boat ramp in Apalachicola and I wasn't the only one to notice it. The fronds were whipping back and forth in a manner that depending on your point of view as a sailor, (and the size of your boat) was encouraging or ominous. After loading and launching Jody paused, took one last look at those palms before we shoved off and said with a resigned sigh, “I guess we’re going now.” This would lead me to scratch Jody’s name in the latter column, but other than some rolling swells, the bay turned out to be reasonable that day. I regretted my decision to go with only one sail, and before long Jody and Timothy shook the reef out of their main in the Oystercatcher.

Oystercatcher with her loose footed main sail billowed way out. 
I'm not sure what Jody was doing with the sail at this moment.

     We made the point of West Pass after the 9 mile crossing of Apalachicola Bay and anchored much in the same manner as before and this time I did my best to put things to right and gauge the distances correctly. I lashed the four horse outboard a friend had lent us to the centerboard truck, low and to the center, and came to shore with a line to tie off and stake above the high tide mark. In turned out this was to be a heavy weather weekend, and as the sun set a bank of heavy grey clouds moved in, the leading edge of a large scattered front that moved over us the whole weekend.

    It’s natural to wonder why we would go out into bad weather, so let me mount a brief defense. None of us are free wheeling adventurers untethered to jobs and family. We look forward to barrier island camping all year and the discussions and preparations begins weeks ahead. Add to the mix often vague weather forecasts that never definitively slam the door on our plans to the extent that you can say, “so much for that trip boys, better luck next year.” Plus these guys are experienced campers; Jody is usually turning things over in his head two, three steps ahead of events and typically has a solution in mind before it’s called for. Timothy has a life time of diverse technical occupations to draw from, and Ali--he’s the most lateral thinking of any person I have ever known. Ali likes comfort and efficiency and no matter what situation we get ourselves into he usually finds it. So with that, bad weather is typically not a deal breaker, and in fact often lends a trip an element of fun and excitement. I should also add that I love storms and find them beautifully compelling. Provided I’m not on the water.

    So by nightfall we were snug at our campsite gathered under a rain shelter while our boats rode at anchor in the channel. A moderate rain slanted in on heavy gusts, and we turned in after one last anchor check to settle down until the next anchor check. Later, at around at midnight, we were greeted by the sight of my sharpie sideways to the waves rocking violently with her tall masts arcing to an alarming degree.  Bob’s thirty pounds or so of outboard was lashed to the leeward side of the centerboard trunk and that made things worse. With a little more wind she looked sure to go over. It was deeply unsettling to watch. We agreed there was nothing for it but to cast off the shore line, and let her swing around on her anchor line bow to the waves and tide. It meant a swim to retrieve her but that was preferable to another beach salvage operation like before. Jody’s Drascomb by contrast was riding comfortably at anchor behaving well with it’s little stub of a mast and it’s high free board.

      I settled in for an uneasy sleep, where I dreamt I was at a marina in Ft. Lauderdale surrounded by curious onlookers and old salts watching me salvage my sunken boat and offering advice. At four thirty I ventured out for another check. There was Jody’s Oystercatcher still riding the waves exactly as he left her, and there was my boat, gone. Tramontana had decided to up anchor and go on a little cruise in the middle of the stormy night, and that’s all there was to say about it. Except for the reason she did this; I found or was given an anchor with a ring that slides up and down the shaft and since it was the one I always used, I went ahead and used it. I understand this is a fisherman’s anchor, on account of the ring slides up to the flukes making it convenient to pluck the flukes out of the bottom and find a better spot to fish. Jody upon hearing my news said, “I wondered about that anchor.” But, looking back, maybe I didn’t have enough chain on it, maybe it dragged and couldn’t reset in that deep channel, or maybe it was just one of those things.

    No bad dreams at this point. No sleep at all, just utter shock and incredulity. We discussed various scenarios which I continued turning over in my head long into the night. With an incoming tide I decided the likely possibility was she had blown over against St. Vincent Island, or maybe out towards Indian Pass, but then there was a slight possibility one of those big shrimpers could PT 109 her, a result too horrific to imagine. Then another jolt of panic flushed through me as the thought that maybe her line came loose at the cleat, and she wasn’t dragging anchor at all, but was free wheeling in the wind liable to end up God knows where. I was becoming irrational, but I still knew she hadn’t gone out into the Gulf on account of an incoming tide.

    Jody awoke early feeling refreshed and said “I slept great, for once you didn’t snore.” Walking up and down the beach in the early dawn light there was no sight of her, or of anything through the low light and fog. Ali met me walking back from my search and asked “Where’s your boat? I thought you got up early and went for a sail?” Pining over my coffee I refused to imagine any but the most tragic outcomes of this affair. “All that money, all that time to build this boat, my dream of having something to sail and explore in, Bob’s outboard motor...all down the crapper.” Also there was the realization, “That’s it, Tracey will never put up with me building another boat. I’m done.” It felt like a flowering branch of my life was just sheared off in one night. Awful.

     I stood up to retrieve the radio, and nervously went over what I was to tell the Authorities, (something like, "there's a derelict vessel hazarding boat traffic in Apalachicola Bay"). I pressed the transmit button and at the same moment I heard Ali’s voice from down the beach.

Hey! I found her!

    There she was, way off in the hazy distance, sitting over St. Vincent Bar, the place where all the oystermen line up their skiffs to harvest oysters. She had dragged her anchor, skipping it along the bottom till finally it hit something solid (oysters). She looked like a feint ghost out in the fog. After a few happy tears and breakfast we sailed out in the Oystercatcher to get her. She was perfect. Amazingly there was hardly any rain water in either boat, and a styrofoam cup one of us had jammed in her mast partner was there just as we left it.

Tramontana riding at anchor over St. Vincent Bar at max. telephoto. St. Vincent Island looms in the background.

     Feeling elated we all headed back to the beach, and the four of us rolled both boats up on the beach after considerable effort. I think we used the trunk of an old palm tree as a roller. The weather radio assured us the heavy stuff had not yet even begun, and neither Jody nor I had the stomach for more anchor watch drama. My wife’s friends called the house to warn her of bad weather on the way and I heard the message a day or so later on my cell. Tracey wanted us to come in and find a hotel room, but there was no leaving even if we wanted to. As before our camp site was tucked up against the first row of steep dunes and chatting over lunch someone noticed a ghost crab emerge from it’s burrow, almost an arms length from where we were sitting. It took a look at us, then quickly began sealing up the entrance of it’s tunnel with sand. Before the last bit of the tunnel was closed I swear it stuck it’s claw out one last time and gave us the middle finger but perhaps that’s my memory embellishing a bit.

My rendering of the storm on the beach. All the flying debris impressed upon us the need for a concerted beach clean up,  a great excuse future beach camping. The lines you see on the sand is railroad vine.
This is a living beach if there ever was one.

     The storm hit with a violent blast that filled the air with flying debris and tore out the grommets of Timothy’s rainfly. Ali’s simple technique of folding a tarp over his tent like a taco then turning the fold to the storm worked the best--simple and economical of effort. After the wind the rain set in for the remainder of the day and we spent the time enjoying the spectacle of a storm out on the end of a barrier Island. A big shrimper spent some time in the channel later in the day and we watched his fishing technique, noticing how the big boat swayed this way and that as the huge outriggers dropped out wide to spread the shrimp nets. Scores of gulls surrounded the boat at all times.

    Lightening struck the beach across the way over on St. Vincent Island and that was startling to say the least. That prompted discussions of lightening’s effect on sailboats, how much danger we were in, and why we were not dead already given all the metal tent poles surrounding us. I pondered this question for years. Specifically, if you’re camping out in the open on a beach, is it better to shove a long steel rod in the ground a few hundred feet away on top of a dune to attract lightening or would that be more dangerous? I finally got a really good answer to that specific question by listening to the Podcast “Stuff You Should Know.” If you have a little while it’s a fascinating analysis of what lightening is and what you’re actually seeing when lightening strikes, a topic still surrounded by lots of confusion. As Floridians it’s pertinent as we do live in the world’s lightening capital.

    The storm continued throughout the weekend and only abated after we completed the crossing back across the Bay in twenty-five mile an hour winds, a harrowing experience in a sailboat with only a foot or so of free board above the water. Upon our return we surveyed a sailboat which had been blown off it’s trailer while parked under the bridge across from the ramp. My wife saw on the news that several houses along the coast had suffered damage, which can be attributed to those initial first gusts. The sail back was worth a post of it’s own so I’ll touch on it next time I think, couched in a discussion of safety and maybe survivability.  I hope this is the last anchoring mishap I’ll ever have to report, I’ve replaced that particular anchor with a proper version, and to it I have attached an ample length of chain to keep the flukes down on the bottom. Folks have laughed at how heavy my anchor and chain is compared to the boat. That's okay.......
So for now let me say goodbye from the rail and clink my coffee cup to yours.

Salute.

I caught up with my lack of sleep during our rain in. What beats sitting under a tarp in the rain?

Standing over a fire with a puny umbrella in the rain.