Let’s set the scene: It’s a lazy Sunday and a determination is made to take the old boat to a nearby sandy beach “Swim Island.” A quick check of the radar on Weather.com shows a little spot that may or may not hit us in about an hour. Alas we still head out, once we get there the skies begin to darken and the power boaters being to bail out one by one. We stand on and hold tight, with the worry beginning to show in the admiral’s eyes, I decide that I’ll pre-reef the sail. Rolling it around the boom and wondering how in the hell is this going to work.
Another 10 or 15 minutes go by and we reel in the deck ape and send her below, yank in the anchor and stow it on the bow. With my reefed sail hoisted we kill the motor and being heading back, the winds pick up and the rain dances across the water on a collision course with us, I ask the admiral if she’d like her rain coat and thrice she deciles, not wanting to look weaker I decide to pass on it myself, but decide the in the name of “just in case” the life Jacket goes on.
The rain begins pelting us and looking windward is nearly impossible, luckily the GPS is leeward and in full view, the old girl handled nice on a broad reach but the man at the helm wasn’t paying as much attention to the channel as he should have, and all at once a nice all stop shoved us both forward. Well shoot, I tried sheeting the sheets in and motoring out but no go. The rain god must have felt pity as the rain stopped shortly after we ran aground. After trying a few things including hanging from the boom, rocking the boat, and trying to back out, I decided to jump in and try to rock us loose a few good rocks and I could see it would bust loose. I put the admiral at the helm and had her put it into reverse, a few min of rocking; shoving, rocking and shoving it budged, and began to back away. Got the old girl spun around and headed home.
Fate would strike again on the way home not a half a mile from where we ran aground before, another all stop. WTF. I check the GPS chart and the contour shows 10 ft. not what the Depth sounder and or the hook pole says. On the starboard side there is 2 feet on the Port there is 7 feet. WTF. Out into the water again shove, grunt, rock, shove, grunt, and away we go. It made no sense it was like a sand bar, only right at the edge of the channel. Well at least the docking went well.
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