anchor chain – Have Wind Will Travel

November 21, 2013 – Day Two: Another Dinghy Debacle

December 23, 2013December 30, 2013anniedike

Heeding Phillip’s shout for help, I scrambled out of the companionway hatch in my skivvies for a quick, chilly look-about, and he was right. We had definitely moved. The anchor light of the ‘nice and tight’ boat that had come up on us around sunset, which had once been inline with our cockpit, was now inline with our bow. Gulp. And, although it was dark, we could both make out the shoreline in the moonlight and it looked to be about ten feet closer than it had been when we had settled in for the night. Apparently, the 5:1 ratio we had dropped wasn’t enough.

You see the chart here where it says “too short – anchor may not hold.” They’re sugarcoating it. It should say, “you didn’t lay out enough rode, you dumbass – you’re screwed.” At least that’s how we felt. It was clear the boat was inching back toward the shore. We were going to have to pull the anchor up, motor forward and drop her back down. Snot was already freezing to my face, so I scrambled down below and started snatching every item of clothing I could find and throwing it on. I probably looked like a bag lady when I came up. I had on my long johns, Phillip’s t-shirt, leggings under pajama pants, a couple of scarves wrapped around my neck, a Christmas sweater, a tobaggan, my foul weather jacket and rain boots. But, I’m sure I made it look super sexy and smoking hot.

High fashion.

I refuse to believe I actually looked like this:

“Hey-haaay Cap’n! Let’s drop us an anchor!”

In the blistering cold, the black of night, we did it. We pulled the anchor up. Now, if you recall, Phillip has told me before that two of the most entertaining things you can watch a couple do are dock and anchor. Either is sure to be a catalyst for whatever tension might have been building between them during the trip. The process usually involves a lot of shouting, subtle (or not so subtle) insults and accusations and eventually name-calling. I am proud to say that Phillip and I have become pretty adept at it, and our process involves only hand-signals and code. Particularly after this trip, where we gained a good deal of anchor experience. Me, in particular, who works the bow. On our boat, we’ve got a windlass which pulls the anchor up by motor.

It’s a nice luxury to have since our rode is entirely chain, with the anchor alone weighing approximately thirty-five pounds. We also have a deck wash that hooks in at the bow and pulls in sea water to spray the mud off of the chain as the windlass hoists it up. From the first time he used it, Phillip always said “The deck wash is king!” And, while I agreed it was a handy little device to have when you’re pulling anchor, I wasn’t quite as enamored as he. Until, I had to learn the hard way (it seems that is the only way I truly learn) when the deck wash got clogged one time, and I had to hoist approximately 20-30 bucketfuls of seawater up to the bow to wash each link of that retarded chain off via bucket slosh, cursing it the entire time. Covered in sweat and my biceps and lower back screaming at me by the time I finished, I trudged back to the cockpit where Phillip made me reiterate it again. “The deck wash is king, right?”

Yes, the deck wash is king.

But, the only bad thing about the deck wash is that it sprays water everywhere. Particularly when the wind is howling and you’re spraying right into it, as we were that night. While my “bag lady” look was warm when dry, it was anything but when wet, and I got soaked. By the time we moved forward and re-dropped the anchor (100 feet plus this time, and nothing short of it!), I was frozen through. My fingers were barely functional and I couldn’t even feel my toes. I swore the next time we pulled anchor, I was busting out the Gorton’s fisherman outfit. Head to toe. And I did!

Misses Gorton ain’t got nothing on me! I rocked that number.

With our anchor secure, we woke the next morning to find the shore at a nice, safe distance.

Whew!

With 100 feet+ out, and a clean swing radius, we felt good about the anchor and decided it was time to go toodling around in our dinghy to explore our anchorage. Now, while you all are familiar with our downtrodden dinghy that made it’s way back to us from the middle of the Gulf, while she was making that wayward trek, we had a very generous boat buddy, Bottom-Job Brandon, give us an inflatable dinghy we could use in the meantime. The thing is awesome. It packs down a little bigger than my stand-up paddleboard and fits nicely in the aft cabin on the boat for passage. Once we anchor, we break it out, put the floorboards in, air it up – and GO!!

Like Daffy Duck and the Abominable Snowman …

“I will love him and pet him and call him George.” And, for those of you with too much time on your hands – video HERE.

all summer long, Annie loved on the dinghy, rubbed on it, cleaned on it, fixed it up and made it her own.

We even got an outboard for her right before the November trip.

Vrooom!

After some research and debate, we decided to go with a 3.5 horsepower, water-cooled Tohatsu. It weighs about 45 pounds and we lift it(by hand) from the dinghy up to a mounting board on the stern rail.

Outboards are not cheap and if dropped in the water, I’m sure they sink right to the bottom, either irretrievably so or, even if retrievable, they are likely forever ruined in the process regardless. So, you can just imagine our first nervous, wobbly-kneed hand-off from Phillip up at the stern, to me down bobbing in the dinghy. It was hairy and there were a lot of “You got it?” “You got it?” “You sure you got it?” ‘s that were exchanged back and forth – but thankfully we got her down safely and mounted firmly on the transom of the dinghy. I don’t think I’ve ever gripped anything so hard in my life. My knuckles were white and my fingers were gnarled tight around her. I was NOT going to be the one who dropped the engine. But, it’s now a fairly routine exchange and we manage it fairly easily, without all the nerves and tension. Still a death grip, though. The death grip is key.

With the sun just rising on our first morning of the trip, and our boat now securely anchored, Phillip hopped in the dinghy and fired her up for a morning ride.

We cruised on over to Fort McRae first and poked around. The fort is no longer standing, but there are some old barricade walls and tunnels to explore, and it does feel pretty empowering to stand up at the peak and look out onto the Gulf knowing this was one of three spots where massive barricades were erected so many years ago to protect Pensacola’s shores.

We then dinghy-ed back across the chilly waters to Sand Island to go exploring.

It really is gorgeous there. Pristine and untouched. We frolicked along without a care in the world. Like a goofy couple in a Kay Jeweler’s commercial. Hands clasped blissfully together, we skipped back to the dinghy and patted her gently as we nestled in. We both smiled warmly at the outboard and commented on how shiny and pretty she was and how well she was running that morning. How well she was running. She WAS running. Had been anyway. Phillip pulled the cord, had to have been 20 or 30 times, but she would not start. Refused to start, or even to try. That bitch! She had turned on us.

We sat in the dinghy looking out across the water at our boat, and I know what you’re probably all thinking. Stop your whining Nancy and row! Sure, we could row. Assuming the wind was light enough. But, we still had nine days to go on our trip and plenty of little inlets and places we wanted to explore — in our dinghy — and we bought an outboard for a reason. This was America dammit and we’d spent our hard-earned U.S. dollars on that foreign motor. I wasn’t having it. I shoved Phillip aside. Let me at her!

November 20, 2013 – Day One: The Rode Out West

December 18, 2013December 30, 2013anniedike

With Big Mom tended to and Alabama in our rear-view, Phillip and I set to planning our Thanksgiving voyage. Due to the rush trip to North Alabama for the funeral and the lost time from work, we both needed to put in a few days at the office to make up for it before we took off again, so we settled on a departure date of Wednesday, November 20th, which would still leave us 10 whole days at sea. Now, while a trip east to Carrabelle, Apalachicola and the like was still do-able, it would be a stretch as Carrabelle, alone, is a two-day passage, assuming good weather, and I can tell you what we did not have that week was good weather. A front was set to pass through, leaving us with 25-30 mph winds and a predicted 6-9 foot sea-state. Not something you want to jaunt out in just for fun. There were plenty of anchorages we had heard about on the western route, so we decided to stay protected along the ICW inshore and head west in search of (what else?) — women, whiskey and gold!

Here is an overview of our planned voyage:

We planned to head over to Fort McRae first for a couple of days on the hook, then ease in to Pirate’s Cove to dock up and hang out with the local riff raff for a day or two. From there, we would jump over to Ingram’s Bayou (a place many of our sailing buddies kept telling us was one of the most beautiful, pristine anchorages over that way) to drop anchor for a couple of quiet nights, before we made our way over to The Wharf in Orange Beach where we had reserved a slip for Thanksgiving. Phillip’s clan was also planning to rent a condo there for the holiday and we – as true cruisers tend to do – were planning to make full use of their facilities! There is nothing like a hot shower and a washer and dryer after seven days at sea!

All told, our trek out west was going to be about an 8-9 day trip and we had planned one last anchorage on the way back (likely Red Fish Point – just near Fort McRae) for one last night of solitude before heading back to the real world.

So, we set off on a brisk sunny Wednesday afternoon (Nov. 20th) and headed to our first stop — Fort McRae:

Now, we’ve been to Red Fish Point many times, so the passage across Pensacola Bay and through the little inlet by Sand Island was all too familiar territory. No sweat. We could make that sail with our eyes closed (assuming, of course, no other boats, bouys, or a shore). Stevie Wonder style!

Yeah baby!

But, we had never made the “uey” around the corner and into the inlet between Sand Island and Fort McRae.

And I’ll have you know I had to Google the word “uey” for the proper spelling. Urban Dictionary says:

Uey

To take a U-Turn

I guess this is a New England thing.

Cab driver : “I’ll just bang(make a/take) a uey on the next stoplight”

Although I’m not sure that’s just a “New England” thing. I think ‘to bang is to make’ rings true just about anywhere.

We had a phenomenal sail over. But, I will say, we had not been out on the boat in weeks and I think just about any conditions would have been ‘phenomenal’ to us as we were just thrilled to finally have water moving across the hull. Although many may disagree, runny noses and chilly fingers just aren’t enough to make any sail UN-phenomenal in our book. But, apparently we were a little rusty. I’d love to say we executed the ‘uey’ around Sand Island perfectly and eased right on up into our anchorage by Fort McRae. But that’s just not how it happened. As we were making (banging I guess the New Englanders would say) the bend, the boat lurched forward and let out a slight groan. With my hands on the bimini bar, I could feel the soft, thud of the ground we hit below. And let me just say for the record – although I’m a little reluctant to admit it, we have done it a time or two now (run aground) – but it’s never a feeling you get comfortable with. It’s a sickening, discomforting movement of the boat and instantly identifiable as contact with the treacherous bottom below. Thankfully, for us, it was a soft, sandy bottom and Phillip had the sharp skipper skills to back us out, “bang out” a bigger loop and get us into Fort McRae with our keel in tact.

Now, I’ve heard some people refer to this anchorage as “party alley” because it’s usually chock full of sailboats, power boats, trollers and the like. Hence the “party.” But, we were hoping that on Thanksgiving it would be pretty sparse so we would have plenty of room to spread out. Sadly, that wasn’t the case. There were three other boats in there, a marker for some sunken hazard, a bouy and a tight shoreline that we had to deal with. Enter the infamous Swing Radius. Now, most of you are smart enough to make a pretty good guess as to what that is, but humor me for just a moment for the newbies.

Imagine your anchor as the center of the circle. The radius, then, is the distance from your anchor to the stern of your boat:

Using the radius, you can then plot out a hypothetical ‘circle’ your boat could occupy depending on which way the wind or tide pushes it. Now, with several “obstacles” around us – three other boats, an immovable marker for the sunken hazard, a bouy, and a nearby shore with outstretched shoal, we had to be sure we dropped enough anchor chain (known as “rode”) to hold our boat secure while not creating a swing radius so large it would allow us to strike the surrounding obstacles. We typically like a 7:1 ratio. Meaning, if we were in 7 feet of water, with 4 foot freeboard (distance from the water line to the deck), that’s 11 feet total depth, so 77 feet of rode.

Now, while getting the anchor set right is important, making sure we had a proper cocktail at sunset easily trumps it. So, with the tight parameters, we dropped about 55 feet of anchor chain (an approximate 5:1 ratio with our ten feet of total depth) and set to our evening ritual. A book and cocktail at sunset. Could there be anything better?

But then another boat pulled up nice and tight near us and set us both on edge. We started looking around, running and re-running our calculation of the swing radius and speculating, once again, as to the approximate distance to the shore.

With both of us being born fierce litigators and each a few drinks in and, thus, a little more ballsy to boot, Phillip and I embarked on an exhaustive debate about the swing radius. I made a rough calculation and explained to Phillip my educated guess as to the radius, to which he naturally responded:

With no one else on the boat with us, a riveting discussion ensued, in which I had to drop some serious geometry knowledge on Phillip that, if translated to a demonstrative aid, would look something like this:

Length of Boat + [ (Rode )²– (Depth + Freeboard )² ]^1/2

Simple, right? I thought so. Or at least I was sure, in my eloquent, unslurred, precise and persuasive frame of mind, that it was. And, I told Phillip as much. To which he responded:

Fine by me! I had made my peace with it. I offered my best pitch – full of reason and geometry and gin – and my plight had fallen on deaf ears (or ogling eyes – although I consider them to be synonymous). I set about to “banging out” another drink or three and resting my weary mind while Phillip got up about every hour to try and make out the markers and shoreline in the dark of night as the wind began to howl over the boat. I kept a shoulder turned to him, pretending to be sleeping soundly (lah-tee-dah) as he was checking GPS coordinates on his phone, but I was wide awake and just as worried as he. The sounds and motions of the boat from below were incredibly deceiving. What could just as easily have been the wind and a smooth shift of the boat in the water sounded, in the v-berth, like the keel wedging into sand and the boat preparing to tip over. Neither of our weary minds were resting. Phillip made one last trek topside, and I heard him walk up toward the bow, my eyes following the sound of his footsteps in the dark. Then I heard them pound quick on the deck above as he scurried back to the hatch and shouted down to me:

“Annie, I need you up here now. We’re moving.”