A Beginners Sailor’s Collection Lessons Learned
The next dozen or so lessons learned
Learning to anchor – or better how not to anchor
If you are going to travel the ICW or sail anywhere in the world, anchoring knowledge is a big deal. And by the time I was ready to make my first trip I did know a lot about anchoring before heading for St Augustine. Let me explain. A few months earlier, I made an attempt to renew my boating bond with my crew promising a very tranquil afternoon on a remote St, Johns Island beach – no authoritative command shouting, no raising the sails, simply motoring through a local knowledge cut and anchoring just off the beach and a short dinghy ride to where we could have a picnic lunch and enjoy serenity and privacy. Pretty clever way of selling the sailing life and re-bonding with my crew, huh? What could go wrong? Thankfully an anchor and rode was a part of the sail-away package.
The day did start out pretty well – we found the “local knowledge cut” in the Charleston Harbor jetty just like the locals said and a couple miles later, I dropped the anchor, and Captain and crew went happily ashore. For a while it was bliss until suddenly my littlest daughter innocently asked “where is the boat daddy”. Well the boat was in sight but about a half mile from where it should be – obviously a case of anchor dragging. But what to do about the problem was a bit of a quandary.
As I ran down the beach I thought about the Annapolis Book of Seamanship laying next to the couch in my house and vowed, once the present crises was resolved, I would diligently re-read each of the […]
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