Yesterday while leaving the marina for a short sail with the
family, the
engine died in the worst possible place between the jetties. The entrance in pretty narrow and we had around 20 knt of cross
wind, no room to drop the
anchor and no time to get the genny out. Despite the help of a guy on his
dinghy to try to tow us in less than a minute we where aground 10 ft from the rocks. We never hit anything and the grounding was really soft. We were extremely lucky. I called the marina to see if they could tow us and also Tow
Boat US who gave us an ETA of 2 hrs. I remembered two weeks ago I installed a vacuum gauge in the
Racor precisely to avoid something like this to happen. In the meanwhile a guy who did not identify himself said he wanted everyone out of the
boat. We were not in immediate
danger, but I thought it might be prudent to get the
kids and wife out, so they boarded the
dinghy with the guy that was still trying to help (looked for him afterwards to thank him with some wine, but could not find him). So I went down below to remove the gauge and bleed the
fuel lines, the guy yell at me that I needed to get out of my boat, to which I replied that I was going to try to restart the
engine, so he told me that he was giving me 10 minutes. At the time my only thought were to start the engine and get out of there so I did not pay much attention to what he was saying. So I bleed the lines and the engine restarted fine and with no effort I was able to get the boat out. After the adrenaline set and I we were safe at the
dock I kept thinking if this guy that I later found out was a fireman, has the authority to get me out of my boat in a situation of no immediate
danger at least that was my assessment. I always though that should be the captains call. Any thoughts?