Part III, Cruisers Are Wonderful People

Boot Key, Florida
24 41.73 N 081 07.21 W

There's still more to the story of our grounding. Yesterday, Dennis and Barbara on Noble House arranged for us to borrow a mooring for a few days. Friends of theirs, Nancy and Russel on Lions Paw had their boat up on the hard for a few days for painting. We were grateful to accept, since the moorings are all full and so too are the anchoring spots inside the harbor.

Unfortunately, the City Marina evicted us when they found out. Their rules don't allow mooring clients to sublet or to loan the moorings to anyone else. Right now we're anchored outside the harbor. It's not bad out here if the wind is from the East or North. (But, tonight they will blow 30 knots from the West. We'll have to move.)

That's not all the friendly help we got. Shelly and Lynn on Anythings Pawsible called and offered to help us to find the lost anchor. We said sure. They, along with Scott and Debbie from First Lady came out in their dignhys with a grappling hook. It worked! After 10 minutes of dragging, they hooked my anchor chain.

We hauled in the chain the rope. Then we tried tugging with all our might and with outboard engine power to pull up the anchor. It wouldn't budge. When grounded, I pulled really hard on it so it dug way in. I went to fetch Tarwathie. We brought her to the site so that I could use my manual anchor windlass to pull it out. In the stump-pulling low gear on that windlass, I can pull with 3,000 pounds of force. It took every bit of the 3,000 pounds to do it , but the anchor did break free. Mission accomplishes.

Thank you thank you, Dennis, Barbara, Russel, Nancy, Shelly, Lynn, Scott and Debbie. Having helpful and knowledgeable friends is a large part of making the cruising life possible.

More on the story. I didn't tell the whole story about Sea Tow in my blog post the other day. The wind was blowing 30 knots, and the time was around 8AM. The first time I called Sea Tow, they refused to come and help me. The man on the radio said, "the sea state is too rough. Maybe it will quiet down later. If you can't get yourself off at high tide (4 hours later) call me back." Well, that was pretty amazing. He was in the harbor and I was grounded inside the harbor. Imagine a tow boat operator afraid to move around on his boat inside the harbor! While we were waiting those four hours, there was a constant stream of boats going in and out including dive parties and including day trip boats carrying tourist. Too rough for Sea Tow.

Later around noon, I called again and this time Sea Tow did come and tow me off. Before doing so however, he gave me three other reasons why he didn't come earlier. His stories began to sound like "the dog ate my homework." Then, to add insult to injury, he carelessly cut my anchor line with his propeller. I watched as he did it and his head was turned to look directly at my anchor line.

Yesterday and today, as I went in to the marina I was approached with a half dozen or more people who wanted to tell me how disgraceful it was that Sea Tow refused to come to help their customer. It seems that half the harbor, perhaps 100 boats listened to the conversation on the VHF radio when he refused to come. Tsk tsk Sea Tow; you did yourselves a heap of public relations damage that morning. Who knows how many of those 100 boaters will decide to buy tow insurance from your competitor instead of you?