The Sinking of the Titanic

Alison named our dinghy "Titanic" for obvious reasons.

Let me first explain what an ideal anchorage is.  As we cruise along the river, we must park our boat somewhere for the night.  We have two guide books and an Ipad app that gives us places to drop our anchor for the night.  They tell us where it is, what to expect and any problems they encountered.  So when we get an idea of where we will be around evening, we try to find an anchorage that is suitable for our boat.  Ideal for us would be a quiet, out of the way cove with a minimum of 6 feet of water depth, a soft mud or sand bottom for the anchor to bite into, and trees or a hill to protect us from current and wind.  Often, we have been able to find just such places and they are truly delightful.  Even if we could find marinas along the entire trip, we would prefer anchorages for the beauty and peacefulness, and because they are free and marinas are not.

Tuesday, we thought we had the perfect anchorage picked out.  It seemed to meet all our requirements: out of the current, enough depth, peaceful...  But when we pulled slowly into the opening to the cove, the depth was suddenly three feet!  The Keel dug into the mud and stopped the boat, throwing me against the wheel.  I quickly switched the gears to reverse but it wouldn't back back up, so I put it back into forward gear and hit the throttle while turning the wheel hard to starboard.  The boat rocked to port (left) and turned to starboard (right) and gradually pulled back out of the mud into deep water.  I tried once more to carefully, slowly crawl into the cove and was met again with shallow water, so we had to abandon this site.

It was still fairly early in the day, about 3:00, so we traveled on to the next listed anchorage.  It was immediately after Heflin dam in a overflow bypass river.  This is a river that makes a loop around the dam and is used to carry the overflow water that doesn't go through the dam.  While in the dam, I talked to the dam operator and asked how the water flow was going to be on that loop.  He said they were sending quite a bit of water through the river and because of recent rains, they might increase the flow overnight.  Ordinarily that would have made that anchorage unsuitable and we would have bypassed it, but there were no other listed anchorages for many miles after that and we couldn't make them before dark.  So we decided to go into the river and look for a safe place to drop our anchor for the night.

The current was very strong as we motored the boat into the river just past the dam.  If I drove in the center of the river, I could only make about 3.5 mph over land, but if I guided the boat over to the edge, I could make 4.5 mph.  We drove into the river for a mile or two and found that there were no coves off the main channel.  The only way to anchor here would be to anchor off to the side of the river.  Our kayaking experience came into play at this time and we looked for an eddy in the current that we could park the boat in.  The current in an eddy is much less than in the main channel.  After evaluating several possibilities, we settled on an eddy on river left (as seen going downstream).  The current was slower there and there was a tree that we could tie to.  So we dropped the anchor about 50 feet from the tree and let out some rode (anchor rope).  But we couldn't depend entirely on the anchor to hold us against that current, so I got into our dinghy (subsequently named Titanic) and Alison threw me a rope that I tied to a tree on the bank as back up to our anchor.  Rowing Titanic against the current, even in the eddy we parked in, was a brisk row. Again, my whitewater experience was very helpful in making this row relatively easy.  Someone without this experience would have had trouble keeping the dinghy under control against that current.

Once all was secure, we watched Happytat as she responded to the currents and the two ropes she was tied to.  The current swept her back and forth in an arc about 20 feet wide and about 30 feet from shore.  When we were satisfied that we could relax, we went below and had a light dinner before going to bed.  For those of you who are "dirt dwellers," picture going to sleep in a home sitting on water that is running quickly under you, tied to a tree and an anchor on the bottom of the river.  How much sleep do you think you'd get?

Well, we slept well that night. Well, except that I kept coughing with a sore throat much of the night.  It started raining sometime during the night.  I woke up at about 6:30 am and decided that I would pull up anchor and get going.  I felt like crap, but we needed to get on our way.  Our next stop was Demopolis Alabama.  We were out of supplies and needed some Walmart therapy.  I woke Alison up to ask for her help, just in case I had trouble pulling up anchor and releasing the rope tied to the tree.  If the anchor didn't hold when I released the tree rope, then the boat would go sailing downstream with Alison sleeping peacefully below and me in the Titanic, rowing furiously to catch up to the mother ship.

While she was getting ready, I lowered the dinghy and rowed over to release the rope from the tree.   Then the rain started back up again and I didn't have any rain gear on.  But I untied the rope from the tree and I let the current pull me back to the mother ship with the rope tied to the dinghy.  When I got close to the swim platform on Happytat and tried to leave the dinghy, the rope restricted my maneuverability, so I untied it and turned it loose to float downstream.  The other end was tied securely to the bow of the boat and I could pull it back on board later.  First mistake.

I hooked up the davit ropes to the dinghy so that I could pull the dinghy back off the water later, and got back on to Happytat.  Alison was ready, so I started the engine and made ready to haul up the main anchor.  Before I started motoring forward toward the anchor, Alison asked if I shouldn't pull up the dinghy first.  I was totally focused on getting the anchor up and told her that it would be fine. I had towed the dinghy behind the boat many times with no problems, so there was no rush.  It was drizzling rain and I was cold, wet, and ready to be underway.  Second mistake.

As Alison drove the boat forward toward the anchor, the dinghy, being pulled sideways by the dinghy ropes, dipped down and swallowed a boat-full of water.  It was only a couple inches from being completely full when I came back to see it!  After having to listen to Alison's "I told you so's" and laughter, I had to figure out how to re-float the dinghy before I could haul up the anchor.  We have two bilge pumps that we use to fill the dinghy when we need to go under a low bridge, so I pulled a power wire to the pumps and changed the direction of the pumps from into-the-boat, to out-of-the boat and turned them on.  After a few minutes, the boat was empty enough to raise it up to the davit and out of the water.  Again, all of this in a drizzling cold rain with no rain gear.

Next, I went forward to gather up the long rope we had used to tie to the tree.  Remember the rope that I  released earlier?  That one.  As I gathered it up, it seemed to be tangled on something.  I pulled hard, nothing.  I used a winch to pull, nothing.  Alison moved the rudder back and forth and the stuck rope moved back and forth with it.  At first, I had suspected the rope was fouled on the engine propeller and was trying to picture me diving into the brown water under the boat to untie it, with a strong current trying to pull me downstream. But it extended too far aft to be on the propeller, so Alison suggested that it was stuck on our rudder.  So I got out on the swim platform and tried to unwrap it with the boat hook.  In the process, I discovered it wasn't stuck on the rudder either, but something underwater about 15 feet out from the boat.  I pulled hard and it was completely stuck.  So I took a utility knife and cut it loose.  We lost about 40 feet of rope, but it was a small price to pay to get our boat unstuck.

Once that was done, Alison once again drove the boat toward the anchor as I tried to pull it up by hand.  The rode came up fairly easily until it got close to where the anchor was, then it stopped.  I couldn't pull it any farther.  So I took the helm, backed up a few feet, then motored forward with lots of power to break the anchor loose.  The bow dipped down when it reached the point where the anchor was stuck, then bounced back up, indicating that I had successfully broken it free.  I gave the helm back to Alison to drive back to deeper water and hurried forward to pull up the rest of the anchor before it caught on something underwater.  I pulled hard and the anchor chain started coming up.  But something was wrong.  It took all my strength to pull the anchor up-far more strength than normal.   I pulled as hard as I could and after a few more pulls, the anchor surfaced.  It was fouled with a large tree root! That explained why it was so heavy!

I didn't have the strength to pull it all up by hand, so I tied the trip line rope to another rope and ran it to a winch by the cockpit.  A trip line is a second rope connected to the rear of the anchor and to a float that floats on the surface to indicate approximately where the anchor lies. Using the winch, I was able to pull the anchor up by its backside, causing the root to fall off.  Once that was done, we were on our way.

For the next 6 hours, I piloted the boat through cold drizzle, covered in layers of warm clothes and finally some rain gear.  The river was littered with sticks, logs and clumps of grass and patches of a floating flowering plant, so I had to stay alert to keep from hitting any large debris.  Alison supplied me with hot beverages and soups and stayed outside with me as much time as she could.  But since I had convinced her to leave all her cold weather clothes in storage, she wasn't dressed for this cold, wet weather and went inside much of the time.

We finally arrived at Demopolis and pulled gladly into a slip.  I hooked up the electric cable and a little while later, we had hot water for a much appreciated hot shower.  Then I took a long nap.  After a some much needed rest, we used the marina's courtesy pick up truck and went to Walmart for our Walmart therapy.

Now we seem to be stuck here in Demopolis for several days because the rain of the past few days has caused the river to rise above normal by as much as 5-6 feet, which means we won't be able to clear the four 52 foot bridges that we must clear on our next day of travel.  It's predicted to rain all day tomorrow too. We'll just have to wait here till it goes back down, however long that takes.  Oh well, we can use the rest.  Pulling so hard on the anchor Wednesday morning seems to have strained my back muscles and I need to let them heal some before heading back out.  I also need to recover some from the cold or whatever it is I have.

Sure glad I retired so I could rest.  Sarcasm.