HARRISVILLE ANCHORING FIASCO

Picture a quiet little New England-esque marina with ducks galore in the harbor and hills and trees near shore… 

Now picture “Grace” gliding into the harbor, hell-bent on anchoring, and breaking up the peaceful afternoon reverie that the local boaters enjoy.

Forget everything I said about starting to get really comfortable with anchoring in my last post!

Apparently that was before trying to anchor in a tiny harbor filled to the brim with weeds.  We were told that the harbor depth was 8-10 feet but the weeds kept throwing off the depth meter, unbeknownst to me at the time. I, at the helm, was seeing readings of 4.5’ to 7’ to 5’ to 6.5’ to 12’ back down to 4.2’ within seconds! Uh, to put it mildly, that was quite disconcerting to an anchoring novice at the helm especially since we draw 5’10” (we sit under the water about 6 feet) and we were sandwiched between the dock and the breakwall.  We made four anchoring attempts in this mess but were never able to get a good hold. Jeff kept pulling up gobs and gobs of weeds, calmly going about his anchoring tasks at hand (LAAA LA LAAAAA) while I’m screaming at the helm that we’re below depth and we had to get out of here. Jeff quietly comes back to the helm and tells me I’m acting quite irrational. I responded rather loudly in saying that my irrational behavior was totally rational in this situation and his calm behavior was totally irrational! Meanwhile, onlookers at the dock were enjoying their afternoon entertainment and we ended up pulling into a slip.

Wondrous journey to you all,
Pam