Today I left the marina. I waited until around noon when the current was starting to ebb, then moved to the fuel dock for diesel and a pump out. Then I motored to the anchorage just down the river. Two permanent boats were there on cans, but I had watched other boats anchor there seemingly without any issues. Many of these anchorages are surrounded by sand bars, so you have to enter them at the right spot, which may mean going past them, then turning around to enter them. I anchored without any issues and the anchor was set. The wind and current were aligned, so all was good. I went down below to finish reading the paper.

But after awhile, there were noises up at the bow. Ignoring unexpected noises is a bad idea, so I went up to see what was going on. The anchor line went straight back under the boat and was bar tight. The spinnaker block was trapped against the anchor roller, in danger of being crushed by the line against it. I finally freed the block, but something was terribly wrong with the anchor setup. The line couldn’t be budged - there was no way to pull it in. I tried using the engine to back up, but could not move the boat one way or the other. The line has to be against the keel so the boat cannot swing the way it needs to, I thought. The current was pushing the boat, but the boat stayed sideways and swung hard both ways, but always hit some stopping point so it couldn’t face into the current. And now the anchor was clearly dragging as I dragged between the two moored boats.

Then a small power boat came out and asked if I was in trouble. Now that he was close, he could see that the anchor line was wrapped around my keel. At one time he had a sail boat and that had happened to him. He had to dive on it to free it. The current was slowing down and he was getting ready to try to pull me and unwind me. My engine was running, but in neutral. I tried one last time to steer out of my mess by putting the wheel hard over. And it worked! “You’re free”, he yelled. That I was, but I still had to get the anchor up and avoid the two boats. When I was only 10-15 feet away from the catamaran and getting closer, I put the engine in gear to move away. That gave me some breathing room. To pull up the anchor, I had the engine in reverse. The sailors reading this will understand that that is completely backwards. At the end, I could barely winch the anchor up. If I’m dragging, how come this thing is so hard to break free? I wondered.

Now I’m totally spooked. The anchor experience is done! The boat that anchored after me shortly before my meltdown, seemed to be doing fine. I called the marina I left at noon - no space available, which I figured based on what I had overhead while I was there. There was another marina closer to me, but I could not raise them. No answer on either of their two monitored VHF channels, nor the phone. But there was a lot of room on the long dock. After circling a few times trying to raise someone, to no avail, I added a spring line in preparation for the solo docking. That was a new trick for me, and it worked amazingly well.

Tomorrow I go to Titusville. Anchoring out a few nights to save money has lost its appeal. Maybe when there is current, I need to anchor in 10 feet of water, not 16. Why? Because in shallow water I have only 15 feet of rope out connected to the 60 feet of chain. It doesn’t wrap around the keel - it is too short and the chain holds it down. Today I had 45 feet of rope out - and apparently that was enough to ‘hang’ myself.