Nocturnal Misadventures

Elizabeth City, NC

36 17.92 N 076 13.10 N

We're in a rut. We arrived at Elizabeth City the day of The Potato Festival; same day as last year. Like last year; we elected to anchor our until the festival was over because of the loud music. It was a choice we came to regret.

We anchored in the Pasquotank River, above the Elizabeth City bridge. It was a lovely quiet evening with a great sunset. We really enjoyed it. The enjoyment didn't last till morning. At 0430 I woke because the boat was heeling over and I could hear the sound of powerful winds whipping us. I estimate the winds at 50-60 knots. I scrambled to get up and put some clothes on to man the tiller for an anchor watch. I knew that the soft mud on the river bottom made poor holding and that the anchor might drag.

Well it did drag. Before I could get out in the cockpit we had dragged several hundred feet. I jumped in the cockpit, started the engine and tried to hold Tarwathie's bow into the wind. It did no good, we thrashed from side to side. It was very dark, and raining torrentially. I had a rain jacket on but the water ran down my neck and soaked me. I could see around us in the brief flashes of the frequent lightning. There was a tree sticking up out of the water only 20 feet behind us. Uh oh.

I poured on more power and we began to move away from the tree. Horray. But we didn't move far. Soon she seemed to be stuck fast. I couldn't even turn her left or right despite the fact that the winds were dying off now. I looked behind us. In the lightning flashes I could see the top of a stump sticking up (very bad). Behind the stump was the float for our anchor trip line. Oh no, to retrieve the anchor we would have to get behind that stump once again. Still I couldn't move her in any direction. We were 't aground. The depth meter showed 10 feet.

By now Libby was up on deck. I gave her the helm and went searching for the cause. Up at the bow I was shocked to see the anchor chain wrapped around three more stumps sticking up just a few feet away. Oh no! But wait, maybe that wasn't so bad. Those stumps would hold us firmly until the storm passed. I decided that the best remedy at that point was to go back to bed. We did go back to bed but there was no way I could sleep. My blood was full of adrenalin and my mind was racing. How would we rescue Tarwathie from this predicament. At 0530 I couldn't stand it any more. The storm was past and it was light enough to see. I got up and rousted poor Libby out of bed too.

My plan was fourfold. Launch the dinghy. Use the dinghy to take the second anchor (a Danforth), 50 feet of chain and 200 feet of line out to the middle of the river. I dropped the anchor way out there, and then we pulled the line taught. That would prevent Tarwathie from being blown closer to shore once we got her free.

Then, I rowed the dinghy over to the anchor trip line float. (A trip line is a rope attached to the back end of the anchor. Pulling the trip line allows the anchor to be raised easily. A float on the end of the trip line keeps the loose end at the surface.) That worked fine and soon I had the anchor in the boat. Then I just started pulling chain into the dinghy until I had it all the way up to the stumps holding us. I tried and tried to unwrap the chain from the stumps but I couldn't.

Now our fantastic and trusty all bronze windlass came into play. I passed up the anchor end of the chain, so that now we had both ends of the jammed chain on deck. Using the windlass, I started pulling up on one end of the chain, then the other. In low gear that windlass gives me a mechanical advantage of 50:1. It's very powerful. Working it that way from both ends it took only 5 more minutes to break free. Crisis ended; or was it? Just then I looked up and another thunderstorm was heading right for us. Fortunately that second storm (and the third, fourth and fifth storms that passed in the next 2 hours) brought only rain and a few flashes; no strong winds. We just sat below and made a Sunday brunch cheese omelet for breakfast as they passed over.

So, what could I have done differently to avoid the problem in the first place? I knew that the soft mud bottom made for poor holding. However we had lots of room to play with. If I had put out 150 feet of chain in 10 feet of water, instead of 80, we probably would have been OK. It takes a very large force to lift 150 feet of chain off the bottom before it even begins to tug at the anchor.

By the way, I was originally tempted to entitle this post Night of Terror. It is a gripping term guaranteed to capture the attention of any reader. But then I thought, it wasn't true. We were in a small to medium size river. No rocks around. The shores were lined with cyprus swamps. There was no reason to fear for our lives, or fear injury or fear that we could sink Tarwathie. I only feared getting blown aground such that it would be a heck of a job refloating her. Since I wasn't scared, Libby wasn't either. Terror would be a gross overstatement.

We took these pictures during the rescue operation.

The stump behind us. Our anchor float behind that.

Our chain wrapped around stumps that saved us.

Retrieving the anchor.


Retrieving the chain.