The Hunsinger Guide to Grounding your Boat

If ya gonna do it....own it.

We have always been well aware of the vagaries of our channel, narrow, shallow and unforgiving.
There's the main channel, and then it branches off to our channel and the commerical marina. That's when it gets weird.

And our channel is not marked well at all, in fact I did find an older chart that proves that it is missing a very important ATON.

However, one of the reasons we chose our Southerly is because we did like the variable keel and grounding plate aspect. Because we are doing some serious skinny water sailing here. Oh, and hurricane, yeah, that thing, rearranging the bottom and such.

So, what went wrong. I was at the helm, and I am mad at myself for some seriously rookie mistakes.
To sum it up: I WAS AT THE HELM. I HAD THE INFORMATION, I NEEDED TO BE IN CHARGE.

But, nope, this time I thought I'd be a team player.  So, Tim, who usually is NOT on the deck was a bit freaked out because since we approached from a different way and since he was on the deck, it all looked very unfamiliar to him.

He keeps calling out, slow down, keel up you are going the wrong way.  I did tell him that it would be fine, just keep a hand for the boat.  But he insisted, and since I am not always the best team player, I thought--well maybe he sees something I don't.

So, I slowed TOO far down (I own that one) and keel was too far up and big old blue baby is now at the whims of the breeze, wave action and current which are all currently on the beam.

And she went sideways, in a hurry, and we went from 10 feet of water to 3 feet of water..just...like...that.

Tim is stubborn at the best of times, and he thought he could get us off.  It took him a bit to realize that I had called it--time to involve TowBoat US.

At one point, we could have had it, but Tim didn't have faith when I said keep backing up.  For some reason he had got really disoriented at this point of what was where (and why I harp to study your charts constantly).

So, game plan in place.  We bicker alot, but when it comes time to put emergency plan in motion we got each other's back (not that this was an emergency, but the tide was rising and we would have been pushed deeper into shallows, it wasn't going to rise enough for us to get off ourselves until 11pm that night).

So, Tim calls TowBoat US and I drop our anchor, we tried to swing it out, but awkward and heavy.  I did suggest that one of us (Tim) walk the anchor out until about 5 feet of water and we could possibly pull ourselves off, but Tim wasn't getting into the water and I wasn't sure I could get our heavy ass anchor/chain set in.  Both of us really wished we had a dinghy, we could have pulled ourselves off.

So, we waited about 30 minutes for our rescue, which doesn't look bad because we don't heel over when grounded, we just sit flat bottomed.  (Cue in Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls--our grounding theme song now)

After our tow showed up it was get the bridle on and we slid back into deep water like we were on greased skids.  He pulled us for a little bit I think to help rinse off any sand in our prop and rudder and followed us back in for the paper work. 

Long story short--from here on out more communication before we reach the channel.  Whomever is at the helm will need to let the other crew member know what their plans for approach are.  EVERYBODY needs to understand what is going on so there is no 'you are going the wrong way' assumptions. Make sure you are not TOO throttled down.

Last but not least....make sure your tow insurance is paid up.  :-)

Meandering about the Keys

Last few trips down to the Keys we did a bit of wandering about.  Anchoring at our usual hidey hole and sailing up to Marathon to see some friends and hang out up there.

Pictures can't really show the damage that is still visible from Irma.  Large patches of mangroves are completely dead and you see brown along the shoreline.  Up to Marathon I still noticed random bits of things floating around in the water close to shore, more things to dodge besides the lobster balls.

All along the Keys are the final staging areas for the relinquished or unclaimed boats to be destroyed and hauled off. They get lined up with a semi size commercial dumpster beside them, by this time all electronics, engine and environmental hazard stuff has been removed.  Then its crunch, crunch, crunch until they get down to the keel.  Even the mast will get broken up.  However, up in Marathon there are stacks of masts recovered and I guess if you need a mast you can arrange to see if there is one that will fit your boat.

Things are slowly returning to normal in some areas, but where the eye passed will still be a while.  A lot of the lower income housing (boats and trailers) that service based employees lived are gone and there is a shortage of affordable housing for them and therefore a shortage of employees for the tourism industry.

Its been interesting to see the socio-economic effects of what a major storm can do to an island chain.