(This is kinda long. Sorry about that.)
I think our black box (a la John Vigor's theory) is empty. I took my wife and two teenage daughters out for an easy overnight, leaving Sunday and getting back Monday night. Mistakes were made, both in preparation and reaction, and lessons were learned.
We got a late start on Sunday, because we overslept, still had to collect some stuff from the house, and then load food and clothing onto the boat. So, we had planned to be under way by 10, but it was actually 2 when we left Havre de Grace. We checked the weather before we left home, and they were calling for mostly cloudy skies on Sunday, with scattered showers and thunderstorms on Monday.
We motored down the channel from Havre de Grace because traffic was heavy, but we raised sail as soon as we rounded the fishing battery. The winds were farily light, and so we were not making good time (about two knots), but it was a nice day and everyone was relaxing.
We monitor ch 16 when we're under way (even though I don't think we're technically required to do so). After we were off Sandy Point, heading South, Coast Guard Baltimore broadcast the first severe weather announcement. I flipped over to the weather broadcast (22A), and they were talking about severe thunderstorms in Northern Virginia - other end of the bay. The second time the CG warned about severe weather, it was for Lancaster county (way up in PA). The third time I didn't recognize any of the landmarks to which they referred.
First Lesson: carry a road atlas, because weather information is given relative to towns and counties, most of which are not marked on
charts.
We thought this weather announcement was for farther South, and it may have been.
The fourth time the CG announced severe weather, it was again in Northern Virginia.
About 4:30, I realized we were not making good enough time, and had gotten a sufficiently late start, that we were not going to make our original destination - Still Pond. I talked to my wife and said we should switch our destination and head for the Sassafras River instead. Since we had never anchored a boat before, we did not want to try doing it in the dark at an anchorage we'd never visited.
Second Lesson: if you've never done something before, practice before going out and really needing to do it. We had never anchored before; we should have taken a day, sailed out just off the marina, and practiced setting and retreiving the
anchor. It turns out that we had never taken the
anchor off the hanger on the bow pulpit, and the latch holding it in was jammed. It tuned out ok, but as you'll see in a minute, it could have been very different.
At that point we were out in the middle of the Upper Bay, heading slowly across towards the mouth of the Sassafras River. It was very hazy, almost overcast, but I could see some cumulonimbus building up in front of the sun, and it was getting dark on the horizon. At that point, I told my wife we should drop sail and power, because even with our 8hp outboard we would make better time than trying to sail. This turned out to be one of the good decisions we made.
Just past the town of Betterton is a small anchorage (I don't recal the name and don't have a chart handy), but it's before Turner Creek. I looked it up in "Cruising the Chesapeake," and they said it's not really a good anchorage because it's too exposed, and gets uncomfortable in a blow. We decided to continue up river and
anchor off Ordinary Point.
Third Lesson: when it's evening and weather appears to be closing in, take the first anchorage you can get to. There were eight other boats anchored near this cove, but we decided to keep going up river. That was a mistake.
My wife had the helm, and I was taking pictures of the approaching storm. We were seeing significant cloud-to-ground lightning, and I was anxious to get to a safe achorage. We had about 5 knot winds, gusting to perhaps 10, but nothing really significant at that point. I went below and stored my camera, which took about 30 seconds, and heard my wife yell for me. A couple seconds later (before I could reach the companionway), the boat suddenly heeled over to port, very steeply. I jumped up into the cockpit, and we were caught in the gust front out in front of the storm. The
rigging was howling, and the boat was heeled over almost to the point where the lee rail would be in the water. I was yelling "head to wind" but my wife couldn't hear me.
Fourth Lesson: (and the lessons come pretty fast through this part of the story) my wife had NO IDEA what to do when the storm hit. We hadn't talked about it, she hadn't read anything about storm preparation, and she was at the helm while I was goofing around taking pictures. The lesson is that we should talk about what to do in various circumstances, and have a plan for the contingencies.
I grabbed the helm and whipped us around, head to wind. The waves were up to about six feet, but they weren't breaking. The wind was high enough that it was just ripping the tops of the waves off, and spray was swirling up into the air. The rain and hail started, and I couldn't really communicate well over the sound of the outboard and the sound of the wind. The boat was hobbyhorsing badly in the waves, which, fortunately, weren't breaking over the bow. The outboard, though, was alternately overrevving because the prop was clear of the water and in risk of being flooded out when the stern buried in the troughs. I went back and checked the NOAA marine weather archive, and the reported maximum wind gust during this storm was 72 mph. It was easily 50 to 60 sustained.
I told my wife to get the life jackets out and get them on the kids. The kids were completely freaked out by this time.
Fifth Lesson: we should have had an agreed-upon procedure, where if it looks like storms are coming in, everyone gets in their life jacket. Just for safety. That would have accomplished two things. First, the kids wouldn't have been freaked because it would have been "normal" procedure to have the jackets on, and, second, we would have had them on as soon as we needed them (we should have been wearing them when the gust front first hit us).
I was pretty concerned, because if we lost the engine, the bow would have blown off until we were ahull, and we would have either pooped the cockpit (and this boat is NOT designed to have a pooped cockpit - no bridge deck, and the companionway lip is maybe six inches) or blown onto the lee shore. Given how difficult a time I was having keeping the bow to the wind, and how close the engine was to being flooded in the troughs, I had my wife call a Pan-Pan.
Question: was this an over-reaction to the moment, and an unwarranted distress call?
The Coast Guard did not answer the Pan-Pan.
Sixth Lesson: my little
handheld VHF is not necessarily strong enough to summon help if needed!
The powerboat Martinique, however, did respond. She could not find us, even though she was in the same waters as us, because visibility was so bad. My wife found an LED strobe light/lantern, which I had thrown in the boat on a whim (literally because it would be handy if we were playing cards in the cockpit after dark). She turned on the strobe, and Martinique spotted it.
Seventh Lesson: carry a damn strobe, where you can get it when you need it, and make sure it has fresh batteries!
By the time Martinique came alongside, the worst of the gust front had passed, though it was still raining heavily and quite windy. Martinique asked what she could do to lend assistance, and we replied that if we lost the engine would she be able to give us a tow to safe anchorage. Martinique agreed, and stood by off the port quarter the rest of the way in.
Eighth Lesson: we didn't have a tow rope, only a 3/8 inch spring
line. We should have had more (and heavier)
line aboard for emergencies.
Ninth Lesson: we don't have jacklines, and we had no
harnesses aboard. We never thought we'd be in conditions where they'd be needed. Nonetheless, we were caught out by this storm, and my wife would have had to go forward to secure a tow
line, on a pitching foredeck, with no safety
harness. Bad bad bad bad.
We got into the cove, and Martinique took off for home. I went forward to drop the
anchor. Fortunately, we had, a week ago, pulled all the
anchor chain and
rode out of the locker, made sure it was ok, and free of knots. I managed to get the
anchor off the pulpit and dropped it off the bow. I had some real difficulty getting the
anchor out, though, because the latch on the mount was bent; I could not release the
anchor. I would have found that if I had practiced anchoring under better conditions. The other problem, of course, in hindsight, is that if I actually had lost the engine in the worst of the storm, the right course of action would have been to immediately throw out the
anchor. Given the bent latch, there was no way I could have done that. Certainly not safely, give the lack of
harnesses and jack
lines.
Question: is there some other way we could have, or should have, handled the possibility of losing the engine? If we had lost the engine, would dropping the
anchor have been the right course of action?
Now, we were paying attention to wind direction, not necessarily the way the other boats were lying. The
anchor held all night, through three more storms (though none nearly as severe). When we got up in the morning, the boat's motion was very VERY uncomfortable, and we were facing a different direction than all the other anchored boats. It turns out our
anchor rode was run under the bow from the starboard side, around the port side of the keel, and back out to the
anchor off the starboard side. Fortunately, one of my daughters and I were able to jump in and swim the boat towards the
anchor, which created sufficient slack that the
rode slid off the keel.
Tenth lesson: pay attention to the other boats' positions when anchoring, to better avoid the keel wrap problem.
Also, we have a fairly light
Danforth, with 10 feet of chain and 120 feet of rope
rode. We do not have a snubber. I'd feel much better about our holding power in storms if we had a bigger
anchor and more chain.
In light of this experience, I plan to make the following changes:
- Carry a road atlas to be able to better interpret weather info.
- Install jacklines.
- Put reflective tape on all life jackets, and attach strobes.
- Store harnesses aboard for at least two people to work on deck.
- Get a CQR or plow anchor, with longer chain, and mount it on a bow roller for fast deployment.
- Put in a better VHF.
- Develop and discuss procedures for dealing with various dangers.
- Find out who skippers Martinique and buy him a really, really nice bottle of wine.
Any other suggestions or advice? I feel like I made some really amateur mistakes, and got through by luck alone (which doesn't make me feel very good).
Cheers!
"Always approach the dock at the speed you wish to hit it."
