Lack of a Copilot

Burlington, VT

44 28.11 N 073 13.31 W

Yesterday, Libby worked on Jenny's garden and decided to stay overnight. When I talked to her on the phone, I said, don't worry about me, I'll be alright. Famous last words.

The forecast called for gentle SW winds to shift to 5-10 from NW after passage of a front. No problem I thought. I had a good anchorage next to an open WIFI spot. NW winds would put me on a lee shore but I had the 70 pound Luke anchor out. My plan was to watch a movie on the computer.

Well, the wind shifted to NW, but it was a stronger than forecast; perhaps 20 knots. The boat started bouncing as the waves built up. No problem. After a while, I began to sense that I was slowly dragging closer to shore. My solution was to let out some more chain, increasing the scope. I did that, and I was about to go below, when I heard a loud bang!

The rudder was hitting on a rock as the waves rocked the boat. Bang, bang. I sprang into action. I reached to start the engine to get out of that spot. I turned the key; nothing. No cranking, not even the instrument lights. What the heck? That never happened before. It didn't take long though to understand what happened. I had been working on the wiring in the engine compartment and I must have failed to reconnect the master harness plug and socket securely.

So, my next solution was to bring back in chain that I had let out to increase the scope. That stopped the banging. Thank God. But I was still dragging towards a grounding. Time to get out of there. I climbed into the engine compartment and pushed the master harness plug home. The engine started right up.

That left a delicate problem since I was single handed. The instant I raised the anchor, the boat would drift downwind toward the rocks. That's why you're not supposed to anchor on a lee shore in the first place. I needed one hand on the anchor up in the bow, and another in the cockpit on the helm and the throttle. My solution was to run back and forth, and back and forth and back and forth. I'd run up on the chain a bit with the motor, then dash up to the bow and take in the slack chain. Doing that, I eventually got the anchor off the bottom just enough to move away from shore. Whew!

Now what? It would be very difficult to go to the mooring field and take a mooring single handed against that stiff wind. I elected to move away from shore only 100 yards and re-drop the anchor.

That should have solved the problem. I shut the engine off, and went below for a sponge bath because I was all sweaty. Eventually I resumed my movie. But my comfort didn't last long. I was dragging again. I don't know why. The 70 pound Luke should have held. Nevertheless, I dragged 100 feet through the rest of the night. However, this time I had more room for margin so I just sat it out and watched. Eventually, around 0200 the dragging stopped and I got some sleep. I was reawakened by stiffer winds at 0400. All in all it was a pretty restless night.

When Libby returned this morning, the two of us moved to a safer spot.

So what's the moral of this sad story? Even a well experienced old salt like me can still commit a chain of stupid errors and get himself into trouble. True, my experience allowed me to recover and get myself out of trouble, but it didn't prevent me from making mistakes. That, my friends, is why passenger airplanes require a copilot.