Finally we shoved off from the dock. All I am going to say is that we will need
some practice and some clear signals.
But we can work on that later, we were going sailing! We motored out and through a canal to
get out into the open bay. We paid
close attention to our chart to navigate this area because there were buoys
everywhere. Finally, out in the
water we let loose the sails and were off. I am still not sure of all the technical terms for what I
did while we were sailing, but it is not easy work. I hauled the lines for our genoa (this is a large sail on
the front of the mast. Mainsail is
the sail that swings along the back or aft of the mast). I had to get use to the winches and the
give and take to pull the lines. I
also had to remember to lock the lines and that you can still pull the lines
when in the lock position. So much
to remember, and daylight was slipping away. Andrew says he was just about to
tack (turn) so we could head home when…thud, thud, thud..ud..ud. Stop. Land Ho! Not in a good way.
We had run aground. I
started asking Andrew what we should do, my calm crisis demeanor setting
in. People say that I get eerily
calm when there is a crisis or emergency. The calm was
coming over me, although some where in the back of my mind I was thinking how I
didn’t know enough about sailing to solve or even help our problem. Andrew was busy hauling in the keel,
hoping this would release us from the bottoms hold. As we peered over the side we both knew that wouldn’t
help. There was about a foot and
half of water beneath us and by the looks of it all around us. Andrew tried our radio, no one was
responding. Come to find out later
we could receive, we just couldn’t transmit anything. No one could hear us.
We flagged down a passing boat, but of course had no way to talk to
him. Which is when Andrew took off
his shoes and got in the water. He
stood up and the water didn’t even reach his knees. He waded over closer to the boat to talk to the
gentleman. I could hear on our
radio the gentlemen radio for the coast guard. Help was on the way!
Andrew came back and proceeded to pull out the anchor chain and see
if he could dislodge us from the bottom.
He waded out and pulled and pulled. Nothing happened.
He came back on board and finally decided it was time to take down the
sails. Which is when I remembered
that we had our insurance card and tow information below. My calm, solve your problem personality
was kicking in. We called and
started the process of getting a tow boat out to us. Andrew started to shiver with the wet clothes, so I made him change out of his wet clothes. Unfortunately, with all the things that
we unloaded from the car, I did not unload the bag of clothing. So he put on his foul weather
gear. Thank goodness it was
already in the boat. Note to self:
Store warm change of clothing on boat for such emergencies. Finally, the Coast Guard arrived and
made sure we were ok. They are not
allowed to tow our boat unless there is distress so they waited until the tow
boat arrived. Our tow captain was
nice, patient and worked hard getting us free. It took awhile to slowly pull us over the sand on the boat,
trying to keep the damage to a minimum. It took about 1.5 hours to get us to
open water. By that time is was
dark and Andrew and I had no idea where we were. Not wanting to end up in shallow water again, we asked him
to tow us to the marina. About an
hour later, we were back at the marina and pushing into the dock. The tow captain came aboard. One of the nicest guys! He took out our chart and showed us all
the trouble spots in the bay and then the best places to take a sailboat. He had once owned a Catalina 25, so
there was a nice camaraderie going there.
He was nice enough to even save us a little bit of money. I wish that we had a better way to
thank him. He was truly a life
saver that night and helped calm our fears about heading back out. He even told a couple of stories about
running aground himself which helped make us feel better. We will be paying closer attention to
all the charts and buoys in the bay now.
Lesson Learned.
After all that we still had to take down the sails and store
them, clean and put everything away and load the car. It was a late trek back home after an exhausting day. But it is a day I will never
forget. Not only did I enjoy the
sailing (the “before” ) but I also had my first lesson to learn. I am just so glad that we made a binder
with all our important paperwork in it and brought it to the boat. So now I not only have to learn how to
sail but what to do in emergency situations.
