Dead Heads and Out of Control
25 July 2013 | John Harbor and Meldrum Bay
We've turned west, had a great sail from Gore Bay to John Harbor. Logging was once a strong industry on John Island with people working, ships hauling and commerce commercing. That's all long gone except.......what did they leave behind? We we found out the hard way. The weather forecast called for strong NorthWesterly winds, 30 knots or so. We had anchored on the southern side of John Harbor and as the winds increased I decided we should move to the other side, the north side. Up came the anchor and off we went. We found a spot; down with the anchor but this time it didn't feel quite right, so we sat and watched and sure enough the winds were strong enough that we were dragging, not good. So up again with the anchor and OMG we had hooked a Dead Head, a cut log, about 20 feet long and about 1 1/2 feet in diameter. Oh crap, now what? The wind is 25 to 30 knots, and we've got this huge log impaled on our anchor, this is way not cool. If I can't get this log off the anchor we are in big do-do. So, I hoped that by dropping the anchor really fast, faster hopefully than the log would sink, the anchor would sake free; Yippee! it worked no log. The anchoring events weren't over for us though but too much of our problems gets boring, right? right!
Next morning after Kody's shore poddy break we were of for Drummond Island, USA. Super sail, making great time until the winds went forward and increased to 20 knots. Now remember these old folks don't like to pound into waves hard on the wind, that's sailing close hauled and the waves were getting annoying so we bailed. We turned left and headed for Meldrum Bay for the night. Now we were beam reaching at 8.5 to 9 knots, right on! So Meldrum Bay it was, we anchored, took Kody ashore for you know what and settled back aboard LB for cocktails and munchies. About this time we notice a sail boat actually sailing into the harbor, nice job, someone who is patient, a real sailor, wrong. This guy sail up too close only to tell me his engine wouldn't start and he didn't know what to do. This was a disaster in the making. He actually had no clue what to do and throw an anchor over with jib and main still pulling, RIGHT IN FRONT OF US!! Holy crap, he's going to hit us. This was no time to be an observer. Into my dinghy and off to his boat. "My engine has no oil pressure" he told me. "Have you checked you oil level?" I asked. "You come and fix", was his reply. So up I went; down in the cabin, opened the engine access and discovered a Yanmar engine. The best. I checked the oil and guess what? It was perfect. I went to the cockpit and started the engine. Again perfect. He said when he turned the key he heard the low oil pressure buzzer. Dah, if the engine isn't running there isn't any oil pressure. By now two more guys showed up and with the engine purring we took down the sails, the other to guys pulled in the anchor while I drove the boat. Anchor up, motored to a safe place, anchor down, anchor set and all is well. This fellow, all alone, had placed Alice and I and himself in danger by being uninformed, irresponsible and lacking good judgement. I said to Alice, if you're in trouble don't make matters worse by putting yourself in and among other boats. Wow, Bottom line, his engine was fine and we got his butt out of a mess.