We motor away from our mooring at around 0830, bound for the nice sandy beach on the Scarborough River just down the coast. There’s virtually no wind therefore no chance of sailing but the various currents between the islands make dodging the pots, even though they are far more spread out than ‘Down East’, an engrossing pastime.
We arrive at the yacht club where Tom works just before high tide. I try to tie up to one of the mooring balls that has a long grabby thing at the top but the bows are too high off the water to allow me to grab it so we go to another one which has a long line attached and I tie us on straight away.
Tom and Mike had discussed taking Jeannius a couple of miles up the river to be behind Pine Point, but there are two sandy beaches right here, one almost deserted and another one further away which looks full of people. I wonder why can’t we use one of those. I’m not happy about going up a very narrow, very shallow river, one that is described in the cruising guide as unsuitable unless you have detailed local knowledge. I know that high tide will bring an extra 8-9 feet of water over the 0.9 metres that it has at low tide but I still find it scary. Mike though, is quite happy as he trusts me implicitly when it comes to me guiding his through a tight space with the help of the electronic charts and his depth gauge.
As it happens, my concerns are unnecessary - when Tom arrives he suggests we actually go on the deserted beach to the side of the yacht club and directly in front of the local golf course. There is little wind today to whip up waves which could be hazardous when we are trying to refloat (which is why originally he had suggested going up the river and round the bend).
We untie from the mooring ball and oh, so very slowly, wind our way between the little tuition yachts belonging to the yacht club and up towards the beach. There are a handful of people sunbathing and they look up, alarmed to see us coming in so close.
Then we come to a very gradual … stop.
Unfortunately, one keel has settled on slightly higher land than the other and we are pulled sideways when the tide starts to go out, leaving us parallel to the beach rather than bows to but that’s not much of a problem.
There’s a bit of consternation on the beach, and one woman even wades out towards us shouting that the tide is going out, worried that we will be stranded. I explain that that is exactly what we want. She looks at me as if I am mad, then looks at our ensign blowing gently in the breeze, decides it’s a British thing and goes back to the beach.
Tom comes over and joins us for lunch while we wait for the tide to go out. It will take about 5 hours to reach low tide and then another 5 hours to come back in completely, one foot higher than it was. Tom tells us he has called the golf club and the local police because they are bound to get calls about a stranded boat. He goes back to work and we wait. After a couple of hours the water has gone down enough for Mike to look at the propellers.
He discovers that not just the anode on the port side has gone but the one on the starboard side as well. Luckily he spotted a spare one when he was searching but it takes him ages to find where he put it although he does eventually. First he cuts away pieces of rope that are still wrapped around the propeller shafts and removes the wire that stops them from falling into the sea if they become detached. Then the fun starts.
He struggles for ages to get the nose cones off but squatting down, unable to lean against the hull in case he rubs away the anti-fouling that he so carefully applied in the BVIs just months ago, he can’t get any leverage and his arthritic hands afford him little grip. In the end he has to call Tom who sends over a friend with muscle and soon they are successful. I make large washers out of empty plastic water bottles to fit between the propellers and the nose cones and scrub the hulls around the engine and generator exhausts.
As the afternoon draws on, we sink lower and lower into the sand. In Darwin when we did this beaching business, the sand was lovely and golden and hard – we didn’t sink at all. Here, the sand is grey, more like mud than sand in appearance, generously littered with broken clam shells and the sand is very, very soft. Mike estimates that about 2 feet of keel have now sunk down into it. This could be interesting!
Mike is constantly interrupted by people coming over to see what’s wrong. Most of them come over slightly amused as they think the stupid Brits can’t read a chart and have run aground by accident and some come to offer help. Some are just curious about what we are doing and take photos, asking us to pose alone in front of Jeannius or with them and their kids in the picture as well. One guy turns up just as Mike needs help tightening the nose cones on and offers assistance. I don’t think he was really expecting Mike to say yes but he gets down and helps anyway.
He is also befriended by a young boy who is digging for clams with his sister. He is forever coming over to show Mike his latest clam, kneeling down in the sand next to him and pointing out bits of interest. I keep well out of the way, acting as Mike’s gofer – he’s so covered in yukky, brown sand that I won’t let him back on the boat when he needs tools.
At about 5 pm the tide starts to turn and a bit later, with everything done and he cleans and puts his tools away after giving himself a good hose down.
At 7 pm, with the water well on its way in, Tom, having finished work for the day, arrives bringing wine and freshly caught cod fillets. He tells me that the cod might have some worms – apparently most cod has parasitic round worms – and although he has taken out the ones he could see, there might be a few more. How gross. I didn’t know this.
While Tom and I sit and chat, Mike goes down into the starboard engine compartment to check the oil level and discovers to his dismay that the stuff in the sail drive looks like mayonnaise rather than clear oil indicating that sea water has got in and mixed with it. The sail drive must be leaking after being damaged by the lobster pots.
With no time to spare Mike and Tom shoot down the swim ladder and prepare to bleed the oil out of the sail drive into an empty oil container. They are just able to do this in time – the boat is surrounded by water but Jeannius is sitting on a little sand bank, just a few inches higher than the rest – we are an island!
Mike fills the sail drive up with fresh oil. There’s nothing else we can do at this point. We won’t know if there’s permanent damage or whether the lobster pot line that was wrapped around it forced the water in. Time and some hours of use will tell.
By now my lovely clean boat is covered with oiled tools and brown sand. In all the rushing around there was no time to clean up properly. They give the worst bits a cursory hose down but it doesn’t look much better. This means it will get trailed into the boat now. Sigh.
We sit with Tom in the cockpit and watch the sky darken. It has been a beautiful blue all day but now it has grown ominously dark before it should and there is lightning and rumbles of thunder. The halyards start to bang against the mast as the wind slowly but surely grows stronger. Suddenly sitting in the cockpit becomes a nightmare as loads of mosquitoes just descend on us. I rush to shut the cockpit doors and get my thick jeans on but going out to the cockpit for just a few minutes more gives me a further 4 bites on my feet.
Tom leaves while he still can and Mike and I watch the wind instruments gradually rack up to show force 8 winds, 35-40 knots of very unwanted weather which is absolutely the last thing we need. Here we are, sitting exposed on our rapidly diminishing island, 2 feet down in the sand, being lashed with rain and wind with thunder and lightning getting closer and closer all around. Terrific. Great. When Mike comes to give me a cuddle, he realises I’m shaking.
At this point we still have nearly 2 hours to wait until we have any chance of getting afloat again. All my jokes with the people who came to look (“if we’re still here tomorrow, the plan didn’t work”) come back to haunt me! We go to bed and wait. Neither of us are hungry. We don’t sleep, just lie there and listen. The storm cracks all around us then after about 45 minutes, stops, only to start up again about 15 minutes later. During the calm bits you can hear the water swirling round us as the tide continues to rise and slapping against the hulls.
At 10 pm, half an hour approximately before we can float, we get up and put our waterproofs on. At this point, all is calm. If the storm is raging again when we lift off, Mike will just throw the anchor down with a load of chain in slightly deeper water; if it’s calm, I will hook a mooring ball right on the edge of the mooring field. Simple. Just like that. No problem. Shit!
Literally a few minutes before 10.30, the boat moves slightly. One keel is dug in deeper than the other and this makes us turn slightly towards the incoming tide. There’s a slight grinding noise, no doubt the anti-foul is being scraped off the bottom of the keels!
Time and time again Mike puts one engine into gear and tries to get us moving but to no avail. We lurch again and move a few yards then stop again. It’s still calm, come on!
I move towards the bow thinking that my extra weight (how’s that for an ego boost – not!) will help us move and suddenly we glide slowly forward, gently nudged along by the engine, and, I have to add, before my shifting bulk would have made any difference. Mike uses MaxSea, our chart plotter to retrace our exact route into the bay because we know we didn’t hit any rocks on the way in, and I shine our huge light out into the mooring field, swinging it left and right so Mike can see the other boats and mooring balls. Eventually we come to the ball we were briefly tied to this morning only to find that someone else is now on it. That means I have to use the one with the sticky-up pole which I already know I am too high on the bow to grab.
I have to let go of the light which means that Mike now can’t see the mooring and I am left to guide him in verbally. I already know I can’t grab the stick from trying to do it before so I try to hook the line beneath it’s little buoy but the boat hook isn’t long enough. Mike lets us drift back a bit and then brings the boat right in to it so that the stick is by the trampoline and throwing the boat hook down, I dive under the front rails, reach out and grab it. Success. However, as I try to stand up without pulling the pennant under the rails too, I get confused about which line I should be attaching and although I manage to get a line through, it all starts to go horribly wrong then it gets sorted. I have no idea what happened or how, but from thinking I had got everything tangled, we are tied on perfectly. Almost on cue, the wind starts up again and the rain comes down.
But it’s not over yet. We desperately need to charge the batteries so Mike puts the generator on … and nothing happens. Well, that’s not quite true. The generator starts but no water comes out of the outlet pipe. Without the cooling water it would overheat and then it would be bye bye expensive generator. Mike switches it off again and puts an engine on instead. We will now have to wait for an hour or so before going to sleep as it doesn’t charge as effectively as the generator does.
Just after midnight, we turn the light off.
Bloody boats!
Position: 43 deg 32 min N, 70 deg 19 min W
Distance so far: 1837 miles
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