We received a call this morning at 7am. A friend of ours said our boat had broken loose and had drifted over to Bird Island (a shoal you barely see at high tide) and and was listing on her port side, if we hurried we could get there before high tide and float her off.
Thankfully the night before we were at the pub until some ungodly hour and well prepare for an emergency.
We got coffee and made it to the boat in a hour by driving a little over the speed limit. There she was grounded and listing to port. On our way out I commented on the spotted bottom
paint and said to the Captain "you said no one was gonna see the bottom"
When we got on board we noted that the swivel
shackle had broken from the mooring chain. We than threw two
anchors out over the starboard side. One forward and the other off the stern, The wind was blowing and holding us tight to the rocks.
The
anchors bit in and held. We than tied a
fender to the ancor
lines. We hooked the stern
line to the
winch and started slowly cranking. We also had a
line to the tender that has a 15 horse Honda on it. That took a bit but we were ready and high tide was at 10:30. by 10 the boat was back to even but we were still grounded. I got in the tender got the
line taught and gave her a yank and the Captain put her in reverse and gave her some and good scrape we are free. Back to the boat and dropped the lines over (hence the
fenders that we went backfor later).
What a morning we picked up a local mooring and fixed ours. Tomorrow we'll be back on our hook. No damage to the hull or rudder. We'll dive to look at the keel later. Not to make this sound easy because its not.there we a couple of scary moments. We pulled this off due to great communication and trust. We probably will never use a swiveled shakle again.
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