Kaimusailing

The next morning we are still aground. The boat doesn’t budge even under full power astern. A call to my towing provider, Sea Tow, gets me a run around. They claim to have pulled their boats due to the incoming storm. They say they will ask Tow Boat US to assist and I can pay for that service and get reimbursed. Hah. Finally they say they can call the local police to see if they can provide assistance. Of course when the storm does hit there will be local flooding and we will be off then, maybe tomorrow.
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Sea Tow says Tow Boat US has also pulled their boats due to the storm. The Coast Guard calls on the cell phone and we discuss my situation. I’m OK with staying put and getting off at high tide tonight or tomorrow when there is supposed to be coastal flooding. They give me a contact number if I need help. Because the railway bridge to the North is unmanned and down, they cannot reach me by boat but can send a helicopter. I get a call from the local marine police, one of who has come down to the dredging harbor near where I am stuck, and he gives me his mobile number and we discuss the situation.
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I run the engine about every half hour to keep it warm. I find a tide chart on the cell phone online and high tide is a quarter to 11 tonight. Tide range is .6 meters, about two feet. I read more about the Cuban missile crisis of JFK’s era. I make chicken parm pasta with canned chicken breast.
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We get pelted with heavy wind and rain, but it stops and we now have overcast and maybe 10 knots of wind. I go to weatherunderground.com using the cell phone and their weather app, click on the hurricane page and see we are between rain bands and could actually be in the clear for a long time. The storm is pinwheeling to the southwest and we are to the northeast of it. I’d actually like to get a lot of rain to float the boat, but the tide should do the trick.
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At some point someone drove to the railway bridge and raised it and left it in the raised position. The swing bridge at Centerville which is just South of us continues to open at the hour and half hour even though there is no ICW traffic.
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Sea Tow calls again and says they will try to get a “trailer boat” to the boat ramp at Centerville. It takes them about an hour to drive to the ramp and launch their boat. They tie up and pull Kaimu off. I settle the paperwork with them and continue North through the railroad bridge and anchor near the next drawbridge, Great Bridge.
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At Great Bridge there are public free docks, but it has become dark and I don’t want to try to maneuver near them. Instead I head up a few hundred yards South and anchor out of the channel. It looks to be an anchor watch night. The wind is gusty maybe 0-20 and the forecast is for tropical storm conditions, gusts to 45 knots. Because conditions so far have been less than predicted, I predict conditions tonight and tomorrow will be less than predicted. I expect gusts to 25 but maybe 10-20 most of the time. We have not seen the deluge of rain either.
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The channel here is narrow and the East bank is lined with very tall trees, so the wind is blocked a bit. I am anchored on the West bank, quite literally, in about 5 feet of water and a dolphin about 50 feet astern. A dolphin is a group of pilings clustered together to form a single strong point, you could tie up a barge to it, etc. If we dragged anchor we would crash into the dolphin astern.
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We are using the large danforth anchor which typically sets and doesn’t release unless the wind and current reverse, as long as the strain on the anchor remains in the same direction, it will hold with great strength. The plow anchor on the other hand never totally gives up, like the danforth might, but it does work like a plow and constantly is dragging a little bit.
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My problem is that I will have to sleep at some point and conditions are expected to worsen during the overnight. In fact the next morning has us still safely anchored with some rain and wind around 10-15 knots. By noon the rain was intermittent and light and the wind was practically calm. I could get underway but the Coast Guard has been announcing on the radio of a bridge closed until further notice. The announcement is strangely garbled and I will stay put until I am sure we can travel all the way to Willoughby Bay.
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The Coast Guard radio transmissions are obviously prerecorded and that is strange because they are so bad, garbled, but the gist is that the port of Hampton Roads is closed and the railroad bridges are closed. That means we can’t go North or South on the ICW. I can see the railroad bridge we came through yesterday evening to the South and it is closed. In my quest to find out what the Coast Guard was talking about I called the Gilmerton Bridge, which may have been the bridge mentioned in the transmission and they answered the phone and said they were operating as usual but there didn’t seem to be any marine traffic. He took my number and called back after trying to call the railroad bridge adjacent to his bridge and also calling the Coast Guard, and he said he got no response from the Gilmerton railroad bridge and that the Coast Guard said the other railroad bridge just to the South of us was unmanned, down, and evacuated.
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So, we are anchored just South of the Great Bridge bridge, just South of Atlantic Yacht Basin, and having ridden out the night, I am reluctant to do anything different until the port is open and the railroad bridges are open.
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A couple of personnel called me from shore, one either a marine police or Coast Guard and I let them know I was just going to stay put and wait for things to open up, maybe tomorrow. The other call was from someone from Atlantic Yacht Basin who offered whatever they had there, fuel, maybe a restaurant, and I said the same to him, I’m OK and will stay put.
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The weather report online was reduce from about 25 knots to 15, toldja. I look at reports from Myrtle Beach and Belhaven, my recent landfalls, sounds like lots of rain and a forecast of 45 knots onshore at Myrtle Beach. So we are now anchored at the fringe of the storm which is slowly heading away to the WSW. Tomorrow we will probably get underway for Willoughby Bay.
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The photo is of the ICW before we went aground near Centerville.