[hphoen]

It was November, western shore of the Chesapeake in Virginia. I had motored over to the marina a couple of creeks north to fill my tank with diesel before winterizing the boat. Coming home, I went aground on a hard sand bottom. It was one of those "low, low" tides you get in the Fall. It was getting dark, and the forecast was for snow beginning that evening. The tide, as low as it was already, was dropping.

A tug pushing a grain barge went by me, and I waited for his wake to bump the keel up and down a bit, while I worked the engine. Got maybe six feet with that techinque. Hmmm. It was going to be a long, cold night.

I finally decided to call my neighbor on my cell phone, and he came out in his runabout. I passed him the spare mainsail halyard, and he attached it to his transom and started motoring away from me, perpendicular to the beam. The boat heeled over about 30 degrees before it started to break loose. I gunned the engine and off we went! Back home, I couldn't quite get into my slip, the tide was so low.

The technique came in handy again a couple of years later in the Abacos where we stuffed the keel into the sand in Black Sound on Green Turtle Cay, and a very nice local boater pulled our mast over.