Greetings from the icw. We are at the end of the Alligator River in
North Carolina parked along the edge of the route in seven feet of
tobacco brown swamp water. There was not a breath of wind today and
less than that in the afternoon. By the time we coasted to a stop and
dropped Mr Ferrous, our sixty pound (that's big) anchor, into the
brine it was just perfectly still. In fact it was the quietest place
I believe I have ever been in. Not a bird call, a fish jump, a wind,
not an insect, nothing. The water was perfectly still. Just the barest
of undulations waving the reflected sky There is no tide here and, I
guess, no flow of water at all unless it storms, at least none I can
see or measure.
We watched the full moon rise in the sky and a couple other traveling
boats came into the bay, briefly disturbing the perfection of the
peace, then dropping their anchors and sitting quietly as us.
Along this whole route from Maine to North Carolina I have had phone
coverage and access to communication except for this spot. So I'll
have to wish my dear son Andrew a happy birthday belatedly, voicewise,
though I sent a voice email twice yesterday.
Last night we came to the end of our day near the top of the Alligator
River after dark. It was a long day, the last miles punching through a
stiff wind and a steep choppy sea which cut our speed a lot.
Reconnoitering after dark is very difficult here. There are few
navigational aids marking the way and there are shoals which shift and
make the charts unreliable in many places. We were required to execute
an s turn into the channel from a long bay around sand bars. We made
it but touched bottom a couple times. That is really scary at night.
It's hard to tell which way to go after one of those things stops you
or turns you abruptly.
We got through and into a long straight stretch cut through a bay with
shallows a mile wide on each side of us. We motored down to a place
that had 7-10 feet of depth indicated from the waterway over to shore
a mile away, turned and headed off to find a place to drop anchor. We
needed to get off the waterway in order to not get run over by a barge
in the night, near enough to shore to keep the waves to a manageable
size in the wind I expected to come up during the night but not so
close as to run aground in the gradually shoaling water or onto some
sunken log or rock on the bottom. We were about a half mile from land
when I stopped. I knew the waves would be lumpy that far out but
touching bottom earlier had made me gun shy. I put out the big anchor
and what I thought was a lot of chain for the depth, went below and
sat down to supper.
The wind increased over the next hour or so and the boat started
thrashing around. Jen asked if I had installed a snubber line. I
hadn't. We agreed it should be done and began suiting up. (A snubber
is a nylon rope with a grab hook at one end which when hooked to the
anchor chain and tied to a cleat on the deck absorbes the shock loads
of wind and wave, since the nylon stretches where the chain does not.)
By the time we got up there, clipped on our safety harnesses and I
went forward to the anchor the wind was ferocious. The boat was
pitching up and down at the end of its chain so violently I couldn't
figure out how to add the snubber where it normally goes, since doing
so involves climbing out to the end of the bowsprit, leaning over the
rail, 'mousing' (tying) the hook onto the chain, feeding the nylon
line back through an opening in the hull (a hawsepipe) to a cleat,
then feeding more chain out by lifting it off its retaining wheel on
the windlass until the load is on the snubber. If I had tried lifting
that chain up and mistimed the lunging of the boat I would have lost a
hand. By now the wind was stronger than any wind I have ever stood out
in, the boat was pitching up so violently it snapped the chain out of
the water like a hooked marlin jumping at the end of a fisherman's
line then burying the bowsprit into the waves on each descent.
I stood holding onto the rigging, frozen in place trying my best to
think of a way to take the incredible loads off the chain windlass and
rollers. The best I could come up with was to attach the snubber to
the chain as a backup in case the windlass was taken off by the shocks
of the waves. I tied it in place, lashed it to the sampson posts
(large vertical timbers on the foredeck provided for such mooring) and
retreated.
Once below Jen and I got out of our foul weather gear and stared at
each other. We hoped what we had done would hold until the wind abated
but things weren't getting any better. Then, with a sound like an
explosion, a shudder went through the boat. The chain had been thrown
off the windlass by the violent twisting of the boat and the load was
fully on the snubber and the sampson posts. If we hadn't just put it
in place, the anchor would have torn the front rigging off the boat,
possibly taking the mast with it. We had very narrowly escaped a real
disaster.
We threw on our jackets as fast as we could and jumped back on deck to
assess.
I clipped onto the safety lines again (these are called jacklines and
they run fore and aft along each side deck for times when one might
get pitched off the deck into the water) and went foreward. I knew I
had to put out more chain The extra length would cut the shock loads
which were now threatening the boat with each new wave. I also knew
this was an operation that could cost dearly if anything went wrong. I
stood in that wind, riding the boat up in the air then down into the
water for what seemed forever, the wind washing spray back over me
from each splash.
Finally I went back to Jen in the cockpit and had her start the
engines. I went forward and shouted for her to engage the engines and
drive the boat forward full throttle. When she did, I found that I
could move the chain a bit by hand. I shouted to her to stop,
surprised she could hear me, but she did. I went back to the cockpit,
got another snubbing line and went forward after telling her the plan
and giving her the cues for when I would need the engines again.
I went forward, fed as much chain as I had over the side with the new
snubbing line in place and prepared myself. Any mislaying of the lines
would at least have torn the windlass and rollers away if not the
bowsprit and rigging above. I called and she put the engines in gear.
The engines got the strain off the system enough for me to loosen the
first restraint, feed the extra chain over the roller, take the strain
onto the new line and it only took two tries during neither of which
did I lose any part of either hand. I watched the boat fall away from
the anchor back to the full length of the chain. The new line held. I
put the first line in place as a backup on the chain and crawled back
along the deck, the wind now at my back.
We shut down the engines and went below. We turned on the weather
radio and it was alive with constant looping announcements of Doppler
radar discoveries of dangerous winds in the area, which at this point
we did not consider news. The conditions outside were orders of
magnitude greater than their earlier predictions The boat was still
violently pitching and dashing into the surf, spray flying everywhere
but the shock loads had been much reduced and if the cleat stayed in
the deck and the anchor wasn't torn out of the bottom we would
probably survive.
Jen fell out, exhausted, fully dressed in bed. I stayed awake as long
as I could before I, too, slid in beside her. She woke up just long
enough to make sure I only got under the top two blankets, not under
the third one or in between the sheets. She might be in danger of her
life but she wasn't going to die with dirty sheets.
The wind continued well into the night. I tried to think of what to do
next, what fall back plan I should have. I concluded that if worst
came, we'd be blown away across the two mile wide bay and aground
someplace but there wasn't any place deep enough for us to drown by
sinking the boat. Even if she was holed and flooded, we'd probably
have some part of her sticking up high enough to cling to as she lay
on the bottom. I kept the radio warmed up to call the coast guard but
daylight came and we were still intact.
In the morning, the tumult had abated and I went out to take stock. I
found no particular damage to the windlass and only minor to the
roller system. I took the back up snubber off. The primary snubber
which had taken the beating all night long was stretched to a
permanent rock hardness but intact. I pulled in all the chain hand
over hand and we rocked the anchor out by pulling the chain straight
up over it and applying the engines forward and reverse a few times.
When I finally got it up I could see that it had been seriously buried
by the repeated pounding and that, thank god, I had planted him in
good North Carolina clay, strong enough to take the abuse.
We had a good breakfast, motored over to a fuel dock to top off then
spent the day going down through the Alligator River as the wind
gradually reduced itself to a whisper, a breath then to nothing at
all. Which is where you find us now, hoping Andrew's birthday was
quiet and good for him.
John from the boat
