A beautiful day, a bit overcast, but let's just say we got off to
a "rocky" start this morning, the kind that causes a guy to doubt his skills, at least for a while. Most people's thoughts of groundings involve hitting a
rock at speed, five knots or more. This brings the boat to an immediate,
abrupt, total stop. We have been
fortunate to have experienced the other kind of grounding, like this morning. The anchor and
chain were as laden with mud as I've ever seen them. That's good; it means they
held us very well. While I was using the salt water wash down system to spray the mud off, and while Lene was going
very S-L-O-W-L-Y, we drifted onto some sand bar that was not shown on the
INavix chart, and were stuck.
Reverse could not back us off and there's no one around to help. What to do? We kedged off, but it took more than an hour. It is our
starboard anchor, a Rocna, with all chain rode, that we use every day. On the
port side of the bow is mounted the other anchor with only 12 feet of chain and 290 feet
of 18 year old, almost never used, nice stretchy three srand nylon line -- waiting in readiness. I pulled out and cleated off about 60 feet of it and
lowered it, and the anchor into the dink, motored off the starboard bow, paying
out the light weight line and them heaved the anchor overboard. In hindsight
the mistake in that operation was that the dump location was not enough degrees
off from the bow. Then, back at the boat, the job was to haul the boat to the
anchor, off the sand bar by reeling in the anchor rode. The first few feet of
pulling was easy, but did not move the boat. I tried to use the winch at the
mast that is designed to raise the headsail halyards. It was tiring. Meanwhile
Ilene was watching our depth and looking for boat speed, which was zero while
stuck. Finally I used the windlass. By loosening its clutch, all the way, so as
to disengage the gypsy (the part that has grooves to fit the anchor chain) from
the motor, leaving the upper winch-like drum engaged to the motor to pull at the line. Like
I said, more than an hour. But we were very happy when we were finally able to
get underway.
Our planned destination was tiny Blues Cove, at the town of
Orangedale, picked by The Admiral because it has a store and a railroad museum.
But after getting out into open water (3.3NM), and a nice sail under Genoa on
open deep water (3.9 NM), Blues Cove was 6.6 NM further in again through narrow passages.
Actually they are not so narrow, the problem is that the deep center parts of
them are narrow and unlike the Intercoastal Waterway (which has wide expanses
of shallow water with a clear, usually straight, dredged channel marked by US
Coast Guard Buoys, here there are no buoys. Buoys are expensive to buy and to
maintain and here the season is let's generously say four months and let's say
one boat comes in here each night; it's just not worth the expense. After being betrayed by our electronic chart
yesterday and this morning's activities, the Admiral looked at the chart for
the route into Orangeville and said "Why bother?" McKinnons Harbor was on the way, a lot
nearer, and we had planned to go there on a subsequent date, but a closer
reading of the two cruising guides gave a report that the entrance was silted
in. N
o way to get through the narrow passage. That report may be false, or the
situation may have been corrected in the last few years, but you can't get a
boat with a 5''8" draft through water that is only four feet deep.
We settled on Cassells Cove on Portage Creek, which is large with a wide 18 foot
deep spot, once you get past the eight foot deep spot. We now know that the iNavix electronic charts are not totally accurate, so nerve wracking, but we
are in and safely anchored and have the place all to our selves.
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