Day 25 - A Fouled Day

Thursday, July 25

Entry by Brooke

We found a bay just above Curve Island and below an unnamed island south of Fox Island. It is just off of the channel at the southwest end of Buckhorn, and will provide us with a bit of shelter from the NW gusts.  Pretty weedy though. And after a few hours there we were bouncing a lot and discovered that we’d dragged a fair distance—not into any danger, just into a more exposed area of the bay. I weighed anchor and upon surfacing, found it was a monstrous ball of weeds and mud, the circumference of which was about 7 to 8 feet.  

Weed ball (smaller than the one mentioned above)

We cleared it  by dropping it back into the water and reversing engines, then lifting it and splashing it down again with more reversing.  After the anchor was more or less clear we moved gently forward to the North edge of the bay, as close as Cappie dared, then dropped anchor again into about 9 feet of water.  I went for a swim and forgetting about my plugged ear, put the mask on and dived under to clear the props of weeds.

It was an easy night, not much in the way of wind nor waves, a few small boats with anglers nearer the shore. The next morning the refrigerator wasn’t spewing much water in the manner it should, so after checking the strainer baskets and removing the intake hose from the thru-hull, Cappie figured the exterior basket must be clogged.  He went into the water with a life-line off the port stern and inspected first the port prop shaft, then I moved the life line over to the starboard stern where he checked that propeller shaft. It was one of our dock-lines—not the thickest, but still about an inch thick, and long enough for him to hold on to while he swam that side of the stern ; I pulled a scrubber out of the lazarette and dropped a second line mid-ships back on the port side so he could try to scrub the intake basket. Cappie swam over and held onto the line.  It’s pretty tiring work as the only thing to hold on to for support is not steady and without dive equipment there is nothing to control your movement underwater.  He could only dive down so far without losing light, so I lifted up the floor hatch in the salon so that the location of the intake could be described as precisely as possible.  He tried to scrub with the extended handle of the brush, but we had no idea whether the effort was successful. Maybe just by getting under way the basket might clear.

I was expecting another ball of weeds when I hauled up the anchor, so got a pole and hook and knife ready to make the job easier.  I pulled up the amidships rope and laid it in one line straight down the deck to dry, and after checking in the galley to make sure everything was secure from the engine vibrations, got my anchor shoes and gloves on and switched on the windlass.  Sure enough, the anchor was caked. Cappie suggested we try the same technique of lowering it into the water and putting the engines into reverse, but the starboard engine quit and the solenoid alarm was whining. He called to me to start the engine again, which I did, and then again it quit.  Cappie put the engine forward and eased us out of the weeds. I used my hook to pull off the weeds--mud was splashing and spraying up everywhere.  

A dock line similar to that which fouled the anchor

There’s more worry to tell, but it’s after 6 and things are quieting down here, so I’ll just cut to the finale—we didn’t go far, just up Pigeon Lake and around Big Island to a recommended anchorage in the Back Channel. After dropping anchor I found to our  horror, that I had forgotten the first life line I had put in the water. It was like a steel rod and was secured straight into the water from the hawse-hole down under the hull, obviously wrapped tightly around the poor starboard propeller shaft. More to follow...