I ended up having a very fitful night of sleep last night. Actually, “night of sleep” is a misnomer as I didn’t get much at all due to the continually increasing winds and sea state throughout the night, just as forecast. In fact, what little sleep I did get was punctuated by weird dreams, all of which had to do with me being tossed up into the air.
One I remember very vividly. For some reason, in this dream I owned a big dog and decided to ride on his back. He evidently didn’t like it because he somehow lept straight up (staying horizontal with me still on his back) like 10 feet up in the air, and then we came straight back down, sort of gently. He did this like three times. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized this was because the boat was pitching up and down so much; the dog’s actions in the dram must have matched my body on the settee! Lol
In fact, I was getting tossed about so much that I eventually had to spin 180 degrees on the settee so that my head was on the aft end (which is narrower, but rides a bit nicer). Only then was I able to grab a few hours of sleep. But even these were constantly being interrupted not only by the motion, but by loud sounds of water slapping against the hull or halyards occasionally banging against the mast (no matter how tightly they were secured).
I finally decided to get up for good around 6 am as it was now light out. Even with the dreams and the noises, I hadn’t realized how violent the seas had become until I stood up and felt the true motion of the boat. I decided to poke my head outside. The seas were up to three feet (chop) and the winds were probably 25 knots, with gusts probably in the mid 30’s. It was ugly! The bow of the boat was going up and down six feet with each wave. Knowing that the winds were forecast to increase even further and continue through the next few days, I felt that I needed get out of there ASAP and make my way back to Coinjock’s marina. Staying there was no longer an option.
I was very glad, however, that my anchor had held during the night. I had set two anchor alarms, and had a plan in place in case I started dragging because there was shoal water all around me. But, I had 90 feet of chain out in 8 feet of water and thankfully didn’t budge.
However, there was a big issue:: I wasn’t sure I would be able to weigh anchor by myself in such seas and winds. I had developed a very good single-handed technique for both deploying and weighing my anchor, but the most extreme conditions I had attempted to do the latter in was about 15 knots of wind and 1’ seas back in Matanzas. This was going to be almost twice as much wind and three times the seas.
My calm-wind technique was just to use the windlass in small bursts (to not over-strain it) to gently get the boat moving toward the anchor while slowly retrieving chain. This was very effective.
In Matanzas, however, with 15 knots of wind off the bow, I had to put the boat in gear with the autopilot aiming at the anchor, then go up front and retrieve chain at the same rate that I was moving forward very slowly. When I got to the snubber, I had to run back to the cockpit, take the boat out of gear, run back forward, take the 30 seconds or so to remove the snubber from the chain, run back and put the boat in gear again, then run back up to the bow to retrieve the rest of the chain and anchor. It was a lot of back and forth, but it worked fine, and was actually quite quick. (I seem able to both set and weigh anchor in about half the time I see it take couples at the same anchorages I’ve been at).
But today was going to be a different ball game entirely. An exponentially more difficult proposition for a few different reasons. As I mentioned, the wind was almost twice the speed (which meant four times the strength)1 as Matanzas. This meant that if the bow got sideways out of the wind, it would be difficult to bring it back into the wind, especially at slow speed. Unlike Matanzas where I had a lot of space behind me before the water got shallow, here I was pretty much at the edge of water that was deep enough for my draft. In fact, when I had set the anchor, it was eight feet deep. Like at Oriental, there are no lunar tides here. And, just like Oriental (I was soon to find out), the wind direction determines the water depth. However, unlike Oriental where a south wind pushes the water out (lowering the depth), here it was the opposite: a strong north wind pushes the water out, and that’s what I had. When I finally turned on my depth meter when I was getting ready to weigh anchor, I was shocked to see that the depth had dropped from 8 feet to 6.4 feet! I had less than a foot underneath me. Considering that three foot seas were passing under the boat, I didn’t understand why I hadn’t started hitting off the bottom, yet. I had to get out of there! (Later that day the water dropped another foot in the sound, so it was good that I got out of there!)
My plan was basically to use the same technique that I had used in Matanzas, modified as necessary. However, I had two big concerns. The first was the sea state: The bow was riding up and down six feet at a time. In fact, when its down movement timed with a fresh 3-foot wave hitting it, I would get spray all the way back in the cockpit. At anchor! This was a violent motion, with the waves having only about a 3-second period. What kind of strain would this put on my chain and by extension my windlass gearing once I took off the snubber?
The second was my chain getting hung up in the anchor locker below deck. A tendency of all anchor chain is to pile up on itself as it goes into the anchor locker. If it doesn’t fall off its own pile once in awhile, this pile just grows vertically until it reached the deck, effectively blocking any more chain from dropping into the locker. I had learned that my boat was very susceptible to this. In fact, because of this, I kept my anchor locker access panel in the v-berth removed when weighing anchor, an open pathway through the v-berth to the anchor locker, and a light handy so that if I experienced this while trying to weigh anchor, I could run back to the cockpit, down the companionway, forward to the v-berth, through the v-berth to the anchor locker, where I would knock down the chain pile, then return back to the bow and continue retrieving the anchor. I had had to do this a few times. In calm weather, it was not a big deal. And, even in strong winds, if it happened when there was still enough rode out (i.e., the anchor was still grabbing), it was not a big deal. But, if it happened after most of the chain had been retrieved so the anchor was loose (or wouldn’t hold if a strain were put on it), then the boat would be drifting downwind the entire time I had to go down to knock down the pile, all the way until I could retrieve the rest of the chain and anchor and got back to the cockpit to get the boat under power. In strong winds, the boat could move quite a distance in this time. And, unfortunately, the chain typically didn’t pile up enough to cause a problem until a lot of chain had been retrieved. For this reason, if there was a lot of chain out, I would typically stop halfway through the weighing process to go below and knock down whatever pile was starting as a preemptive measure before the anchor started losing its grip.
Today, however, all bets were off. I had about 90 feet of chain out, with my snubber attached to the last 20 feet of it. As designed, the snubber was taking the large loads the rode was experiencing everytime the bow pitched up six feet. The 20-foot snubber was made out of nylon to stretch just for this purpose. However, once I took the snubber off, the chain would be in direct contact with the windlass, putting a tremendous strain on it—a strain it is not designed to withstand. As previously explained, I had to take the boat out of gear to remove the snubber (because it took about 30 seconds, and I didn’t want the boat to overrun the anchor. But, once the snubber was off the chain, I had to get the boat back in gear again ASAP to keep the strain off the windlass. That meant that there would be no time to run below and knock down any chain pile that might be forming. I would just have to hope that this time no pile formed, because if it did any time after the point when the anchor was no longer grabbing (50 feet? 30 feet? Who knows in that sea state?), and I had to take the time to run below and clear it, we would likely have drifted aft so far that we would be aground by the time I got the boat back in gear again.
So, having double- and triple-checked everything on the boat (all my navionics on, my solar panels stowed, my radios on, depth sounder on, engine warmed up, the autopilot set to its most reponsiveness, windlass on and windlass remote in hand, steering wheel friction off), I engaged the autopilot, put the boat in gear, set it at 1000 rpm, and went forward to start retrieving the chain.
The bow was riding up and down so much that it was impossible to stand without holding on to something. I realized (too late) that I should have donned my PFD. I waited for some slack to go into the chain, but nothing was happening. I looked at the water next to the boat, and it was obvious we were not moving. I would need more power. I walked back to the cockpit, boosted the RPMs to 1500, then ran back forward. This time we were slowly moving. Very slowly. But, not in the right direction. The autopilot had taken us about 30 degrees to port of the heading toward the anchor, and it was thus impossible to retrieve. I ran back to the cockpit and disengaged the autopilot, at which point the bow swung to starboard, inline with the anchor. I reengaged the autopilot on this new heading, then ran forward again.
This time we were tracking straight toward the anchor and I began retrieving chain as it would start to go slack. It wasn’t long before the snubber was at the bow roller and I brought it aboard. This is where things had to happen quickly and hopefully without any issues. I ran back to the cockpit to take the boat out of gear so we wouldn’t overrun the anchor while I was disconnecting the snubber from the chain. Then ran back forward, yanked off the snubber, retrieved all 20 feet of it from the water and threw it in a pile on deck, and glanced at the chain. It had already become very taught and was straining a lot whenever the bow rose and fell. Back to the cockpit I ran, put the boat in gear and revved it to about 1800 RPM this time, then ran back to the bow. Luckily, we were heading fairly closely at the anchor, and the technique of pulling in the chain just before it went slack (but without putting too much strain on it), kept the bow pointing in the right direction as the boat moved forward at about half a knot. That was much quicker than normal, but I just held down the Up button on the windlass and brought in chain as fast as it would come, praying that it didn’t start piling up on deck because a chain pile had clogged the locker. 50 feet left, 30 feet left, 15 feet left, a big strain on the windlass as it attempted to dislodge the anchor which was now right under the bowsprit… and then behind the bowsprit and approaching the bow itself. Come on, Baby! Break free! The windlass was straining, but I wasn’t letting go of the button. Then it eased, the bow of the boat popped up a bit, and I knew the anchor as free. Hallelujah! The boat, of course, was continuing to move forward and I had to get the anchor up before we overran it, so I kept the Up botton pegged until I saw the anchor finally broach.
But my relief was only temporary because of two new things. It was completely encassed in a huge chunk of mud! Not mud inside it, as was typical, but basically a huge chunk of mud with an anchor barely visible inside it! I would not be able to stow it that way!
Normally what I would do in this situation is just lower the anchor back in the water, motor forward at a knot or so, letting the streaming water clean the mud off the anchor, then slowly pull it up and stow it.
But today, with the bow (and hence now the anchor) moving up and down six feet every few seconds, I wasn’t sure what to do. At least we were safe from going aground. No chain pile had fouled the process. And the engine was still moving us forward in the general direction we wanted to go.
But the mud combined with the second problem: The mud-engassed anchor, now dangling on five feet of chain, was swinging wildly all over the place because I had pulled it quickly out of the water when it was dragging six feet behind the bow roller. The bow action caused by the waves was only exacerbating it. I couldn’t let it get close to the anchor roller, the bow of the boat, or the bow sprit or it would so serious damage. (It was probably over 100 lbs of anchor and mud).
Once second it would be underwater, then get hit by a passing wave as the bow rose up, sending it swinging dangerously toward the boat. For the first time, I was glad that I had a six-foot bowsprit so that the anchor wasn’t already hitting the bow. But, if I brought it up any higher, it would definitely hit my bobstay, which hung under the bowsprit. Yet, putting the anchor in the water wasn’t a good option either, because we were now doing about 2 knots, and as soon as I started lowering it further into the water, it started approaching the bow of the boat, six feet back. What to do? (And, of course, what I didn’t mention was that as all this had been transpring, I’m standing in the pulpit, getting constantly hit by spray.)
Luckily, I didn’t have to come up with a solution because the next time a wave dipped the bow into the water, the anchor came up competely clean! Hallelujah, again! With it being now half the weight it was, it wasn’t swinging as far, so I pulled it in a bit closer to the anchor roller, timed the sway, and then pegged the up botton to get it up and over the anchor roller before it had a chance to swing into the bobstay. As it clanged tight against the bow roller, I knew for the first time that we were good, that now all I had to do was get us out of the anchorage and into the deeper channel to head back to Coinjock. Whew!
However, like everything else so far, this proved much more difficult than I would have thought. I ran back to the cockpit, turned off the autopilot and attempted to turn the bow to the right toward the channel. But the wheel would not turn! It turned to port, but not to starboard! WTF! Did something get wrapped around the rudder? Did we actually hit bottom during all of the gyrations, damaging the rudder? How was I going to get out of here if I couldn’t turn towards the deep water? Yes, I could make a left 270-degree turn to head in the right direction, but there was no way I would be able to steer down a narrow channel.
Then I decided to see how far I could turn the wheel to the left. Two full turns. So THAT was it. The autopilot had just had it pegged as far right as it would go. Another whew! With this realization, I was amazed that we were still heading into the wind and seas.
But, full right rudder wasn’t turning us to starboard, which is where we needed to go, and quickly as we were now running out of “deep” water on the other side of the anchorage! The problem seemed to be that we still didn’t seem to be going much of anywhere. We were at 1800 RPM, but were doing under two knots! I needed to get more speed over the rudder. I straightened out the rudder to continue going straight into the wind and seas, as I increased RPMs to my normal 2000 RPM cruise speed, but our speed only increased to 2.5 knots! Okay, 2300 RPM (which I couldn’t maintain for too long or the engine would overhead). This got us to 3.5 knots and finally gave me some steerage. (Oh, did I mention that now that we were doing over three knots into the wind and three-foot seas, that I was now getting spray in my face all the way back in the cockpit?) I was amazed that the winds and the seas knocked back my speed so much. At that RPM I should have been doing about 6.5 knots. A very good learning point.
I was now able to turn right (east) toward the channel, and the speed gradually picked up to about 4.5 knots now that the waves weren’t hitting us square-on. I was surprised that the boat was still so hard to steer and was healing so much. The winds might be stronger than I had previously thought.
I also felt uneasy that so many post-anchoring tasks had been left unfinished (securing the snubber, turning off the windlass power, turning off the deckwash system and closing its seacock, putting a safety line on the anchor chain, etc), but felt that the most important thing at the moment was keeping the boat under control and out of the shoals. The other stuff would have to wait. (It ended up having to wait for over an hour.)
I felt tremendous relief when I finally reached the channel and turned south down it. Things smoothed out a bit with the wind and seas coming from behind the boat, the spray stopped, and the speed picked up to six knots. Now it would just be an hour-long motor to the protected Coinjock Marina. I still was a bit in shock by the whole thing, especially that I had even been successful! I had truly felt that there was a good chance that I wouldn’t be able to manage it single-handed, and that I would be forced to spend another three days in those very miserable (and approaching dangerous) conditions. I would not want to have to go through that again. It could have easily gone very badly. (And, as I would later learn, the water decreased another foot that day, meaning that I would have been pounding the bottom for three days, possibly causing damage to Serendipity.)
En route, I called Coinjock to make a reservation and let them know my ETA. The wind seemed to increase even more over the next hour, but the seas gradually decreased as I approached land and there was less and less fetch.. However, my speed increased to over seven knots; I was evidently in some kind of current. (I learned later that it was indeed due to the north wind pushing the water out of Currituck Sound.)
As I entered the narrow waterway leading to the marina, the water was finally calm, and the dockhand was waiting for me. Luckily, all the slips are of the parallel parking type (similar to Fernandina Beach). The current seemed to be between three and four knots in there, so I planned to pass the slip then turn back into the current and the wind.
And what a turn! Wow, I blew way past the slip downwind and down current and it took 2300 RPM to crawl back to it! Incredible current and wind blowing through this narrow channel. It made docking very easy, though, because just like at my last fuel stop in Adam’s Creek, I could “fly” the boat under total control very gently up to the dock, using throttle to control my approach speed, and then actually hold myself in position as the dock hand secured the lines. Well, I deserved something easy after all that! Such relief I felt after the lines were secure and I shut down the engine!
Coinjock truly is dead. I was the only boat here for most of the day. (I’ve seen photos of both sides of the channel packed with boats, some rafted2 three deep!) Later, two other motor yachts showed up. The dockhand said they are dead like this for another four weeks or so, when it again gets very busy for the cruiser migration south and stays busy until about Thanksgiving. I guess I will plan to bypass it when I come back this way, probably mid- to late-October.
Last night, when I knew that I would likely be coming to Coinjock, I had texted an old Coast Guard colleage I was stationed with at Air Station Astoria in 2003. He lived just down the road from Coinjock and had told me to look him up if I would be passing by. So, I did, and Jon and his wife, Trisha, came over and took me to lunch at the famous restaurant here at the marina. We had a wonderful 3-hour visit. We realized we hadn’t seen each other in 20 years! What is it about humans that makes us so unique that even after knowing someone for only a year and not seeing them for 20 years, when you’re back together it’s like you were never apart. It’s very cool how personalities don’t change, especially for personalities that I enjoy, like Jon’s and Trish’s.
I’ve decided that since I’m completely exhausted today, and don’t want to ruin my night sleep by taking a nap, that I’m going to put off troubleshooting the electrical system until tomorrow. It looks like this wind is going to be keeping up for a few days, so unfortunately (both for my time and especially my budget) I’m likely to be stuck here until Friday! My next leg is very long, and even though I could probably slog back through Currituck Sound at 2.5 knots, that would take so long that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the next anchorage before dark. So, these 20 knot NE winds are going to cost me probably $500 in slip fees!) 🙁
But, I topped off my fuel today, so at least that is out of the way. Only took 20 gallons all the way from Adam’s Creek (145 nm). That’s 7 nautical miles per gallon at 2000 RPM which gives me about 280 miles per tank. That has held consistent on this trip so far.
