Grounded

Today will be clear, a high of 55 degrees, wind from the northwest at 10 to 15 miles per hour.... says the weatherman. A day to play hooky. There will not be many more days like this, this year. It is the tag end of October. Soon the daylight won't be worth saving anymore. Two phone calls and Im free of meetings and appointments. The papers on the desk, the phone calls can wait.

By ten-thirty I'm at a quiet Gregg Neck Boatyard, on the Sassafras River, a northern tributary of the Chesapeake. No other cars in the parking lot. The slips and mooring still full of boats but no one on them or about this morning. I wave back at all the waving flags and pennants fluttering in the wind. A score of masthead windvanes on boats point at Seattle, maybe Vancouver, a continent away - tempting, and too far for a day's sail - but their playmates have to work and likely won't come today anyway, just Whisper's. And we will be happy to get as far as Ordinary Point on this northwest wind..

At eleven we are approaching Georgetown Bridge. The bridgetender sees us coming. Before I sound the horn to him, the roadway gates come down, the bridge swings up and Whisper and I are free. Now there is no obstruction between us and the Chesapeake. None between here and Bermuda, or Portugal, Cape Town even. If this northwest wind holds steady, we could make Rio de Janeiro without tacking. But I have only this afternoon on a river winding west. I'll enjoy having no destination; no destiny save being on the water enlivened by a wind, a brilliant fall day. The wind, though coming from cold places, has no harm in it. It was more West in its gusts, more North in its lulls. I find myself on the wrong side of the river and on the unfavorable tack each time the wind backs or veers, but we manage to progress upwind. I will get even later this afternoon when I turn the Whisper round to East to go home. A broad reach is our favorite point of sail, and later that will be our treat after all this bashing to windward in a gentle breeze and calm river.
Whisper is an Alberg 30, a blue-hulled beauty that came out of the molds in 1969. We acquired one another just this past spring. We're still getting to know each other's moves. She comes around deliberately on a tack. The old and baggy mainsail that dresses her now, has Whisper gliding at bit wide past the wind before stepping off in our new direction. We spend a couple hours tacking down the river watching the forests on the north bank get closer,then then the harvested corn fields on the southern flank rise. As we reach past Knight Island, I come up to the wind on a starboard tack. The island and its west-jutting shoal are cleared and I fall off the wind a bit making for the green flasher at Cassidy Wharf a mile distant. It is near the time now to make for home. I plan to tack through the NW wind, free the sheets to run SE back to Knight's Island, but the boat is moving well, 6.5 knots, 6.8 knots, the foliage is at its height of fall color. I sail on past Cassidy Wharf. Eight,Six point Six,, Six, Five; feet now, not knots, the reading on the fathometer. I put the tiller down, come around into the eye of the wind and stop. Dead stop. I've sailed into four feet of water in a boat that needs 4'3.

I back the jib to try to continue my rightward turn, hoping to skid off the shoal. The boat turns, heels some, but doesn't slide free. I strap in the main to try and get more heeling to lessen the draft, to no avail. Next, the motor, but it gives us no movement forward. I am pointing at deeper water- but maybe on a shelf. I free sails and then back the motor; no movement.

I am not a novice to grounding. Truth be known, too much experience has given me an unsought expertise at it. I know the drill better than I know the sequence of reefing sail. After sailing off or not, motoring off or not, motorsailing off/not, or hanging my weight to heel the boat, my next step would be to dinghy out the anchor in the direction of deeper water, then return to boat and pull the boat toward the anchor. Today, expecting only to sail, I did not drag the dinghy along. So, there will be a swim involved in this kedging tactic. The 55 degree air that the weatherman spoke of is chill when wearing only jockey shorts and a Bruce anchor. But the water of the Sassafras is still mild, warmer than the air. With the anchor buoyed by a floating cushion, I swim it out about 120 yards into seven feet of water. I don't linger long but I note what a fine-looking boat she is, and I notice she is listing. I swim back to the boat, but I know it will be to no immediate avail. Out of the water, the air is cold on my wet skin. There is no one about as I rush the anchor rode to the mainsail halyard winch, futilely trying to pull a seven thousand pound listing boat through mud to ward its anchor. It didn't move

I went below to dry off and dress. As I passed it, the inclinometer read just shy of 10 degrees; the clock in the cabin - 3:30pm.

The difference between high and low tides in the Northern Chesapeake are a foot to eighteen inches. At spring tides it can be two feet, at neaps only inches. I usually don't think much of tides when sailing here. The boat leaning toward starboard, makes that settee in the cabin the comfortable one to sit on. I get out the Reeds Almanac and note that low tide in Baltimore is 5pm this afternoon. The Sassafras River has its low an hour after that. I've run aground just after midtide falling. I will not be going anywhere this afternoon save a bit more down on the starboard side

The River is quiet. Anchor is holding us bow toward the deeper water. Patience is the virtue that will get some practice today. About eight tonight the boat will be free.
I take a nap.
I look at the inclinometer.
I have an apple and a warm coke for dinner.
I look at the inclinometer.
I take a nap

The inclinometer had a maximum reading of 14 degrees just before the time of low tide. Though no food is aboard, there is a plastic sextant and west of here a water horizon is visible through the trees that jut out at Ordinary Point. The sun is available, so I take a sighting of it as it slides quickly downward. The altitude of the sun is 12 degrees 32 minutes, and the time here on this Timex is 4:52:00 pm, give or take 10 minutes. We'll make that 18:52:00 Greenwich Mean Time. Later, at home, working out the 7 mathematics of celestial navigating, I fix us on a line of position that runs north and south just east of Cincinnati ( but I know I was actually in Maryland, well grounded, near Cassidy's wharf.)

No matter; when I was shooting the sun with sextant I saw just south of the sun the slimmest crescent of the moon. I know that when the sun and the moon line up like this we have the spring tides of the month. When the sun and moon quarter the sky are the monthly neap tides. I consoled myself for running aground with the knowledge that the mud into which I plowed is at no time nearer to the surface of the water than at the spring low tides of the month of the harvest moon.

Watching the sun go down and the sliver of the moon follow down soon after, I had some sense of their power over me, and this afternoon of thei jr power for me. They were tugging the waters of the Atlantic behind them. I could sense the water that would lift me and Whisper was being pulled from the sea, through Cape Henry and Cape Charles up the Chesapeake Bay. Powerfully it came after the sun and the moon, billions of pounds of water, filling first the southern bay, then reversing the current of the Potomac, and surging past Point Lookout and around Tangier and Smith Islands. The sea would compress and flood through Knapp Narrows, under the Bay Bridge, tilting all the buoys toward me. At five tonight the sun and moon would begin to tug the Atlantic up the Patapsco to Baltimore and at six tonight the beginning of this surge would begin to reach me and Whisper.

I watch the inclinometer tell me all this is beginning to happen- the listing halts and begins to reverse; at about 6:30 it has straightened by two degrees as the last light of the sun flows over western horizon. The moon sets and I am more upright. Near eight o'clock I hear the anchor rode creaking over the bow chock. I had winched it bow tight earlier, and this creaking is the notice that the bottom of the Sassafras is yielding my boat to the power of the set sun and moon.

At 8:15 the Whisper is afloat. There is no wind so we swing round to the rising tide. The tidal current is overruling the river current, we swing and our bow points west- I take it as a salute to the two stars that have just freed her. We motor home under other stars, the Seven Sisters coming up over dark eastern hills. Back through the bridge and finally to moorings at Gregg Neck, I call wife to excuse my lateness for dinner, "Sorry Kit, I got stuck - grounded off Cassidy Wharf - had to wait for tide to free me."

 

Joe Ferry