Story: Dragging Anchor

I remembered the following experience the other day and thought it was worth recording. It happened the first summer we had our own boat (the irreantum) anchored out from the boat launch. I'm pretty sure it happened on a Sunday because if as I recall...

We were still attending church at the Gig Harbor building which overlooks the harbor; at least part of it. As we were leaving church that Sunday, I looked for our boat as i always do. An anchored boat is not the most secure boat and it had been windy. To my horror, the boat had moved; in fact, it had moved a LOT! It was now close to the shore next to the boat launch. Well, a boat in the mire was close enough to an ox in the mire for me. We hustled home, where I changed and headed down to the boat launch.

I had no clue what I was going to do exactly, but I through a couple extra 2x4 into the van just in case. At the boat launch, my worst fears were confirmed. The boat had drifted into shore and was stuck in the muck. I waded out to the boat to see if I could shove it off. I spent quite a bit of time, rocking, twisting and heaving the boat, but I couldn't get it out. Part of the problem was that I was working against the tide. The tide was going out, and every moment the boat sunk deeper and deeper. Once I accepted the fact that I couldn't manhandle the boat free, I knew I needed to keep it from tipping over when the tide was really low.

If the boat were to tip low enough, at low tide, it would be possible it would begin taking water; at which point, we would have a really big issue. I'm pretty proud of my solution; hokey as it was.

My solution was to lash an oar and a 2x4 to one side of the boat (the side it was leaning towards). This created a tripod with the keel of the boat being the 3rd leg. As the tide left, the boat rested on the oar, 2x4 and keel and remained upright until high tide.

I then, waited until high tide to go back out to the boat and re-anchor.

It was embarrassing to have it happen in the first place, but pleasing to successfully handle the situation. That's seems to happen to me a lot when I'm dealing with boats.