While we were away having lunch yesterday the stern anchor drug and the boat drifted over a shoal. We didn’t realize just how shallow it was and how quickly the tide would go out. We balanced on our keel for a while, unaware of what was happening. Then all of a sudden the boat fell over about 30 degrees. Everything on the port side shelves, which includes the galley, crashed to the floor. We cleaned up and secured everything on deck. Then we set an anchor on a line at the masthead to keep the boat from falling any further. That kept us at about a 45 degree angle without putting too much tension on the rig. At the lowest we were in about 2.5 feet of water. The starboard thru-hulls, which are normally above water, were well submerged and we learned that the head sink drain leaks quite severly. We plugged that hose with one of the bungs that we keep near the seacocks but took on a few gallons of water in the process. We have two other above water thru-hulls on that side but they held. We cleaned up a bit and waited out low tide before turning in. We set an alarm every hour to check the bilges for incoming water but they were ok. Low tide was at midnight and by 9am we were able to crank the boat up enough to get the thru-hulls out of the water. With that secure we ran out for a quick breakfast. We’ll head back now and wait for high tide this afternoon to pull the boat into deep water.
The pictures are from about 9 am and low tide was at midnight. At 10pm you could see the keel, the prop was out of the water, and the starboard chainppates were about halfway submerged but it was too dark to get a photo with the phone. Visions of water lapping into our leaky hatches kept us going. We’ll be keeping a closer eye on the wind’s effect in amplifying the tidal change in here.