So now it's dark. And windy. And raining. We are motoring down the channel, navigating blindly by compass and chartplotter (an electronic map with our GPS location). Every third gust shoves the bow one way and the stern another, sending teacups flying and completely disorienting the crew.
Still on island time, we had left our sheltered bay late and were now slogging our way home, after dark.
The wind continues to build as we approach the mouth of the channel, shaking it's finger at us for leaving the security of our protected bay to tempt it.
It's Christmas, so of course we festively have lights strung up the stays and down the mast, wound tightly around both our mainsail and jib. We had no intention of
Sailing our sailboat! But as we enter Seaforth (that's the big channel that runs right out to the ocean), John and I independently ponder the quickest way to rip those lights down and get a sail up in the case of an engine failure.
Keep breathing Grandma,
we didn't have to do that.
But we did have to turn around, admitting defeat and subjecting ourselves to a much longer journey than we wanted. But with 40 knots of wind on our beam knocking us over at every opportunity, choppy waves crashing over the rail, daggers of icy rain pummeling us, an almost swamped dinghy, and only 1 knot of forward progress, we just felt it was the
"smart" decision.
The wind hurried us along, encouraging our retreat. Back in Troop, out of the waves, the wind and rain continue to hound us. And here's the crux, the crucial moment, the climax:
Now What?
I hover over the chart, dripping, my left index finger lying flat on the page, meagerly imitating the violent winds pummeling us from the southeast. I search for an indentation in the land, protected from the force of my index finger, and shallow enough to hold our anchor. I find it- Troop Lagoon- perfect. It's only 20 minutes away.
As we approach the lagoon entrance, I turn on our high powered spotlight and casually shine it off to starboard, wondering if we'll be able to see shore through the rain. The solid rock wall that materializes next to me, reflecting my light like a mirror, startles the light right out of my hands. The entrance suddenly feels claustrophobic. Disoriented and unnerved, we turn around and pace the entrance, trying to find and keep our bearings.
As we creep through the narrow corridor (on our third try), my body tenses in anticipation of that sudden remarkable calm, as if someone has flipped the switch on the wind machine, and the corresponding confidence that you've found a sheltered anchorage.
My body stays tense. The calm doesn't come. The hills that on the chart looked glenda-like, with mothering instincts, instead take handfuls of already tempestuous air and hurl them down their backs at us. We take one lap and craw right back out of
deceptive Troop Lagoon.
Our feelings are hurt, our feet are soaked, and our eyes are strained, but we keep chugging, tracing our own wakelines from a few hours ago.
"
At least we know it's protected," I offer, breaking the exhausted silence. Halcyon is heading right back to our nameless bay, where there is: protected anchorage
(for wind), shallow bottom
(for anchoring), good crabbing
(for eating), freshwater stream
(for hiking). It also fills tonight's simplified criteria:
Safe. Close.
I still have the spotlight out, the beam shakily following the coast on our starboard side, as we creep back into our safe bay. Suddenly the beam is alive and flapping- 200 sleeping seabirds startle and simultaneously ascend. For the first time in three hours, I tear my gaze away from the shore and wiggle my numb toes. I stand, stretch, and head to the bow to perform my end of our
Team Anchoring routine. John turns Halcyon in a big U, so the bow will face what breeze squeezes past our beloved sheltering hills, while I unlash the anchor and prepare the windlass (that's the very handy piece of equipment that does all the heavy lifting for me). I've just turned on the windlass remote when John -
gasp- breaks the routine.
"Drop the anchor, now," he calmly shouts up to the bow. I don't ask questions, I drop the anchor. At 100 feet of chain out, I stop, waiting for John to resume the routine and put the boat in reverse. Instead, he stands on the deck and shines our trusty spotlight on some rocks that look a bit too close.
For a few moments, I pause, my finger still on the "anchor down" button, watching John watch the rocks, confident there is logic behind the staring. Soon he turns to meet my gaze.
"prop's wrapped"
"oh S@#!" it escapes before I can stop it.
Now we're both watching those rocks, and they definitely seem too close.
When Halcyon had made her big U to get into anchoring position, our faithful dinghy had followed a bit too close. Without a glimpse in the rearview mirror (perhaps we should get one of those...), Halcyon backed right over our poor dinghy's painter line (it's leash, essentially). The dinghy walked -floated- away with only minor bruises, but Halcyon was incapacitated, her propeller firmly entangled in the line and jammed to a halt.
What happens next is simply astounding. John and I act like sensible, smart, calm people faced with a crisis, instead of the cold, wet, hungry, exhausted people we are, and shuffle below to warm up and sort out our options. This turns out to be quite simple, really, as we have very few to sort.
- we have no engine
- we have an anchor down, but were unable to set it properly, so it may drag
- if the anchor drags, it will drag us towards a pile of menacing looking rocks
- there's currently no way to move the boat away from the menacing looking rocks
- it's late, dark, and still blowing hard
- there's no way to help the prop in these conditions
The decision is a quick one.
It's 10pm by the time we set a second anchor, peel off the drenched layers, and collapse into bed. I set the alarm for 11...pm. Every hour I'll pry my eyes open, stick my head out the companionway with our trusty spotlight (fast becoming our most prized piece of boat equipment), and squint at the rocks, trying to guage if they are actually closer than they were an hour ago... or maybe we just swung a bit... or maybe I'm paranoid and they are no closer at all. I'll eventually convince myself it's the latter and fall back into bed. For an hour.
"
You're going barefoot?!" John is covered from head to ankle in neoprene. The sun is up. Sometime during the night the tempest blew itself out and now the water in the bay is a mirror. A schizophrenic one, granted, with no recollection of it's previous night's demon act. The neoprene is to slightly delay the onset of hypothermia as John goes for an involuntary day-after-boxing-day polar bear swim. The only way to free our propeller is to cut the line away by hand. I stand on the icy deck, empathetically shivering as John lowers himself into the 41 degree water.
15 freezing minutes later, John climbs out with what's left of the chewed up line.
45 minutes later, I lash the anchor to the bow as John steers Halcyon out of the bay.
3 hours later, we pull into Whiskey Cove, after a pleasant, uneventful motor home.
It didn't even rain.
