Kaimusailing

I went up on deck to pee at 3 AM and was surprised to find Kaimu at the East shore of the North River Marsh sitting in the mud. It was a little bit after low tide and apparently we had dragged anchor and drifted aground. The tide was coming in and the range is about 8 feet here, so I wasn’t worried about getting off the mud. I hauled in the anchors, they were fouled. I put the spare Danforth into the dinghy along with all the rode with the bitter end tied off in the rope locker. I motored toward the middle of the channel as the rode payed out and then the chain and the Danforth went over. Back on board I began pulling and putting tension on the rode. The boat was lifting off the mud as the tide came in and then it began moving toward the middle of the channel.
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I secured the rode and went back to sleep. It had taken about an hour to get the boat reanchored.
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After working on the dinghies I went back out to Kaimu in the heat of the afternoon. She was aground again, I had let out too much rode. I took in more rode and she gradually began swinging to the incoming tide current. The fouled anchors were a real mess. I had used a technique described by David Leu, anchoring with two anchors shackled together. He claimed to have never dragged doing this, but I’ve dragged twice here in the North River with its strong tide currents. The two anchor method held Kaimu in a gale in the harbor at Charleston.
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I lowered the anchor mess into the dinghy and then got into it and began unraveling the mess. It was heavy work but after a while I had the anchors sorted out. I lowered more chain into the dinghy using the windlass and then took the anchors out in the opposite direction from where the spare Danforth had been set. This is called a Bahamian mooring. It works well with Danforth anchors, which are notorious for for fouling when the wind or current shifts to the opposite direction and the anchor flips over on the bottom, the anchors never flip in the Bahamian mooring. We’ll see.
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I want to thank Neal who commented about wire fids. Apparently they are simple to make DIY. The rigger showed me a tiny long wire fid that he used to make a dynema soft shackle. He is going to test it up to 5,000 lbs. lifting an old keel. He has already used it to lift masts. One mast on a large catamaran weighs 1100 lbs. including rig, boom, and mainsail.
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Another debacle, while continuing to break in the Lehr propane outboard I snagged my own dinghy painter about 100 feet from Kaimu and I was on my way to the dock. The incoming tide current was strong and I was soon swept by and on up the North River.I couldn’t tip the motor up to free the line from the propeller because the line was from the bow, under the boat, and securely holding the outboard from ever being tilted up. I had to remove it from the transom, being careful not to drop it into the river. The line came off easily enough and the motor ran OK afterward.
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Later I decided the Lehr was probably broken in and I could do the 10 hour service, change the oil, change the lower unit gear oil, and let Capn Jane Morgan take the outboard. It was ready for normal use.
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We went up to Darien, GA, supposedly to a fantastic shrimp restaurant. In the end it turned out to be not much better than our local gas station restaurant. The friends from St. Simons Island were a hoot, it was a fun lunch. It was too far to go for lunch and we ended up wasting most of the day. I got to see St. Simons Island and the town of Darien.
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I transfered the Hangkai Chinese outboard to the Seaworthy inflatable I’m now using. It planes out just fine. The dingy needs some inflation from the foot pump about every other day. Not too bad. The other inflatable, the 8.6RIB, will get some more Sika Construction Adhesive, Gray, to try to fix its leaks. Perhaps it will still resist repair.
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I sorted out the rigging cables again and made sure I had all the pins and Cotter pins I needed. Although we are more than ready to install the mast, the boatyard is congested, and even more now with a shrimp boat coming into the travel lift well in an emergency. The shrimper was accompanied by a Coast Guard vessel and a tow boat. Apparently the hull started to crack and the boat began to sink. They were offshore and trawling for shrimp. After seeing the damage to the hull I wondered how they ever made it back to shore.
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The photo is of the Hangkai 2 stroke mounted on the Seaworthy inflatable.