Running aground

[Stede]

Hi everyone,

This topic might have been covered before, but it's one that can always be updated. Running aground has to be one of the worst feelings sailing. I’ve run my 26 footer aground three times, which is a pretty major accomplishment considering that she only draws 3’2". The first time it happened was in the Pamlico sound, heading towards the NC outer banks. I ran the boat aground on a lee shore during some heavy weather. At the time, it was my first offshore trip, and it happened many years ago. I made plenty of mistakes. The boat was heeled over and waves were coming across the rail. I was concerned that my cockpit was going to flood. My wife and daughter were very upset over our predicament. My nine year old daughter thought that we would be washed over board, and on out to sea. I tried to explain to them that the boat only draws 3’ 2" and that we should be able to walk to shore in the worst case scenario, but it didn’t seem to matter. I called the Coast Guard and requested assistance. They asked me two questions: “Is anyone injured, and is the boat taking on water.” Well, to answer the first question, yes, my pride was injured and I had two women on board that were some what hysterical, but I had to honestly answer “no” to the Coast Guardsman’s question. To the second question, well yes, we were taking on water, but we weren’t in danger of sinking. So, I again feebly muttered “no.” With those two responses, they told me to call a commercial tow vessel. They asked that I report back in often on my progress. So much for the easy way out. Now, I was on my own. I thought about using my anchor to kedge off. I had never done it before, but had read about how it’s done. I didn’t have a dinghy, so I thought about using the life jackets to float the anchor and rode out on. I looked down in the water around the boat, and it was full of small sea nettles. I dreaded getting in the water with them, but I slipped overboard and had my wife hand down to me the life jackets, anchor, and rode. Once the anchor was floating on the life jackets, I started waded my way out towards deeper water as the sea nettles occasionally stung me. Once the water was over my head, I drop the anchor and pulled on the rode to get it to dig in. I kept the rode tight as I worked my way back to the boat. By this time, a man and his two teenage sons had seen us from the shore and decided to come out to help. They waded out to the boat. Just seeing them gave my wife and daughter some comfort. I guess it was because they knew that there was civilization close by, and that they didn’t have to rely totally on me to get us out of our mess. I explained to them about kedging off with my anchor, and they agreed to help push the boat as much as they could. I ran the anchor rode to one of my winches, and slowly starting tightening the line. The bow slowly turned towards the deeper water as I throttled my diesel for full power to aid the momentum. I raised my sails to get the boat to heel as much as possible. With a combination of kedging, diesel, and manpower push, the boat slowly made her way off of the shoal, and into deeper water. Once the boat was free, she really started to pick up speed. The anchor rode was quickly drawing towards its bitter end. I frantically dug through my cockpit locker trying to find another line to tie on to it. By the time I found one, the bitter end was drawing taunt on the winch. I took it off and tried in vain to tie another line on to it, before it was pulled from my hand and into the water. I yelled to our friends that helped us to grab the anchor rode, but they couldn’t hear me and the rode slipped beneath the waves to stay there, along with my new CQR anchor. Once sailing, I called the ferry boat terminal on Cedar Island and requested to be allowed into their port to take refuge from the bad weather. They reluctantly agreed. We eventually made it to our intended destination, Ocracoke Island, but we did so without an anchor on board, and with an electric bilge pump that had quit working. The whole experience made me re-evaluate my boats offshore readiness, and I’ve made many changes since then. To me, these are the “hard lessons learned”, that you never forget. Have you had a similar one?