Saturday, December 27, 2008

The Rigolets

November 29, 2008

We left the anchorage at Horn Island and continued on our passage westward thru the Mississippi Sound on our way toward Lake Pontchartrain that would take us into the New Orleans area and on to the ICW. We had made the decision to come inland to utilize the protection of the ICW. The other option was going around the Mississippi river delta which was a 200+ mile trip thru the gulf and the weather forecast was not great. The inland trip follows the twists and curves of the ICW as it connects the dots of existing rivers and lakes. It’s about 150 miles further and 3 days longer but much safer.
The weather had been decent but the forecast was for high winds and scattered thunderstorms. As the skies around us started to darken we turned on the weather function on our Garmin which was fed by our XM Radio. With this service we could overlay wind speed and direction on the map along with full blown weather radar. The weather radar showed storm cells all around us. The storm cell show as symbols that can be highlighted with a cursor that shows the speed and direction of these cells.
It looked like we were going to get lucky, most of the cells were directly west of us and heading northeast meaning they should miss us. The forecast proved true, so we missed the 60 mph winds that were associated with these cells, but we still motored thru 30+ mph winds and plenty of rain which lasted for a couple of hours.















Birds around a fishing boat


At the end of the day we anchored just a ¼ mile from the Mississippi sound off of Catfish Point in a group of islands called the Rigolet’s (Rigolees to those in the know). We found a small channel off of the ICW that was deep enough to anchor and settled in. I took Ziggy ashore and found the bank was not solid but mostly swamp. It was almost dusk and I kept hearing strange sounds that sounded a lot like people talking in the distance but I knew that the only signs of civilization for miles around was a train track and an old decrepit oil platform. Julie heard the same sounds and called me back to the boat.
She went online and we listened to the sounds of alligator territory calls which sounded like people talking in the distance, a little scary. We decided to find some real land before we took Ziggy ashore in the morning.
As we sat in the cockpit in the setting sun the old oil platform took on a very eerie look. The platform was a metal building probably 75’ by 150’ sitting on a steel frame about 40 feet off of the water. The legs on the platform were twisted on one side and the whole thing leaned. The building itself was rusted and parts of the roof and some of the walls were missing, it had the look of some battle robot from some sci-fi movie.
















Old oil rig




The next morning it was sunny but very windy. We pulled anchor and motored over to the railroad bridge that was about a mile away and tried to call them on the radio to have them open up. We ended up talking to several bridge tenders until we were able to determine which bridge we were looking at.
You would think that if they heard someone on the radio saying “Railroad bridge tender, this is the sail vessel Second Star, come in please” and they looked out the window of the tender building and saw a sailboat sitting in front of the bridge they might reply. Apparently that’s not how it goes, we have found that unless you know the correct name of the bridge they don’t often reply even if they are the only bridge within radio range.
The 500 page federal guide we downloaded doesn’t help much either, they often have the wrong name and inevitably the phone number they provide ended up dumping us into to the voicemail of some young woman. We had better luck using Google earth to identify the river or island names that were closest to the bridge we were trying to contact.
Something else we learned fairly quickly was that we were far more successful if Julie made the call. Most of the bridge tenders dealt with tugboats, fisherman and ships and enjoyed talking to women. Julie started using her maple syrup with powdered sugar voice which worked even better. I wonder why she doesn’t talk to me like that anymore.
After passing by the bridge we head up Pearl River and it was just a few miles to go before we got to Lake Pontchartrain. We were only ½ mile past the bridge when the engine sputtered, running at only an idle. I knew immediately what was wrong.
We have 3 fuel tanks on the boat and I always kept 2 open until they were almost empty when I would open the 3rd tank. I then knew it was time to refuel and we had 33 gallons and about another 100 miles worth of fuel.
I had noticed the previous day that the 2 tanks were getting low but I had never opened the 3rd tank. I ran below and opened the 3rd tank but the engine was still barely running. I went below to kill the engine so I could quickly bleed the air out of the system that was sucked in when the other tanks went empty.
I was down below pumping the purge as quick as I could but there was still a ton of air burbling out of the drain tube into the jar I was draining it into.
Julie yelled down below that we were getting close to shore. We had been in the middle of the channel which was about ½ mile wide so I figured that she was just panicking. I told her to hold on, and that we would be running again.
She yelled a minute later that we were getting close and I asked how deep the water was she replied that it was 15’. I told her that I would be done soon. 15 seconds later she yelled again and I asked again how deep it was and she said 10 feet.
I ran up top and to the bow to drop the anchor which I did… just as we ran aground.
The boat was parallel to the shore being pushed towards it by the wind, we spent the next 1 ½ hours trying to get the boat out of the mud bank. The first thing I did was finish bleeding the air out of the system which took another 15 minutes. We tried to power out of the mud but being parallel to the shore we only seemed to get stuck even worse.
Using the dinghy I took the second, smaller anchor about 150 feet out into river and set it as best as I could with the dinghy. We tied the anchor line to the spinnaker halyard and cranked it in with a winch. This technique, called kedging, did 2 things, first it pulled the boat away from the shore, second it tipped the boat over since we were pulling from the top of the mast which effectively raised the keel up. Unfortunately the tide was going out and after 30 minutes of grinding the winch as hard as we could we realized that this wasn’t going to work.
We got online and called SeaTow which is a nationwide company that rescues stuck and stranded boaters. We had signed up for SeaTow at a cost of $140 per year early on in the trip as we had read about the cost of a typical tow running over $1,000. Looks like our insurance was going to pay off.
An hour later the SeaTow boat arrived and fed us a line. He tightened up the line and gave his twin 200 horsepower engine full throttle. The bow of the boat pivoted out and we started moving across the channel. About 300 feet out we were doing 6 knots when the boat suddenly pirouetted around and came to a stop. Apparently we had come to the end of the line on our 55 pound anchor. I had untied the second anchor and put a lifejacket on the line as it was shorter than the primary anchor. I never thought we would be pulled out as far as we were.
It was about 2:00 in the afternoon and the wind was getting stronger so we decided to motor the 5 miles or so to the marina and come back in the morning to get our 2 anchors. We motored up the river which took us to Lake Pontchartrain where the north west winds were whipping up some good size waves.
We were motoring about 200 yards from the rocky north shore when the engine started to stammer again. This was not good at all, the wind was driving us towards the shore and we had no anchors to stop us if the engine died.
We decided to set the sail and turn back towards the relative shelter of the river and the engine stopped sputtering. Our plan now was to go back where we had lost our anchors so I could grab the line for the second anchor we had dropped with life vest tied to it. This should be easy enough to do in the dinghy and when I had it Julie would drive the boat up to me and so I would pass it up to her and we could anchor. It was set far enough from the shore that we should have no problem getting stuck again.
As we got down to the area where the anchors were I dropped the sail and got into the dinghy. I had the life vest and the anchor line in the dinghy when I waved to Julie at the far side of the channel. She waved back at me frantically and I realized that something was wrong.
I dropped the line, sped across the channel and found out that the engine was barely running.
I got aboard and we discussed the situation. We were about ½ mile from the railroad bridge with the wind blowing us towards the portion of it that did not open. The engine was barely running. We still had no anchor. It was almost dusk. We decided to use what little power we had and the wind behind our backs to run the boat on to the shore which we did.
We called SeaTow again and talked to them about our situation. They were reluctant to come out because they had to cross Lake Pontchartrain and it was getting really rough. In the end they agreed to come out and set an anchor for us so we wouldn’t drift into the bridge if we broke free from the mud when the tide came in and the engine didn’t run.
They showed up just after dusk and dropped an anchor about 150’ upwind in the channel from where we were stuck. He let out some line, cleated off the anchor line on the bow of their boat and backed up under full power to set the anchor.
They tried to get close to us to hand us the line when I noticed that the end of the anchor line was wrapped around their outboard. The assistant on the boat almost fell in while we doing this but managed to hang on. It took them about 10 minutes but they finally got untangled and handed us the anchor line. They agreed to get us in the morning if we couldn’t get off in the night when the tide broke us free.
Shortly after they left I found that the fuel line going to the engine had kinked shutting off the fuel. I cut the wire tie that was used to hold the fuel line in place where it went around a 2” diameter support, which allowed the line to straighten out. We tried the engine and it ran flawlessly.
I went to sleep while Julie sat up on watch. She woke me up about midnight with the sensation of the boat moving freely in the waves, we were not completely free but we were not hard aground.
We backed out of the mud and started drifting downstream waiting for the anchor to stop us. We had gone much farther than I expected so I went forward and started pulling in the anchor line. It didn’t take long to realize that there was no anchor at the end of the line.
We now had another dilemma. We had anchor line in the water so we couldn’t motor forward and we were drifting towards a fishing boat that had anchored in the channel with it’s nets out, trying to catch fish as they came by in the tidal current. By the time we had all of the anchor line on board we were 100 feet from the fishing boat. Apparently we scared the captain of that boat as he was waving his flashlight madly at us. We motored away trying to decide what to do next.
We decided to break the law and tie up to one of the ICW markers. There was one across the channel in the lee of land which would give us shelter from the waves so we headed over.
I was on the bow of the boat as Julie guided the boat towards the marker, which is basically a telephone pole set in the riverbed with a red triangle and a flashing red light on it telling all that saw it where the channel was. We were about 50 feet away when we ran aground.
I jumped into the dinghy, Julie fed the anchor line into it and I started heading towards the marker. I was about 15 feet away when I heard Julie yelling. I turned around and realized that the boat was no longer stuck and she was drifting away.
I climbed back into the boat and we drove into the mud again only this time we were going 3 knots not ½ knot like we were the first time. It held this time and I was able to get the boat tied to the marker. Since it was high tide the water would only get shallower, so we decided to back the boat out of the mud. Julie powered up in reverse and soon we were out. With the boat safely tied to the marker we went to bed and slept soundly.
The next day it was windier than it had been and it was very cold so we decided to spend the next 24 hours there.
The fuel gauge for the 3rd tank showed that we had less than ¼ tank which was a little disconcerting since the we were not sure how soon we could get fuel. Many of the marinas in the New Orleans area were destroyed by Katrina and we couldn’t find out on the internet if any were open or if fuel was available.
With this uncertainty about our fuel situation we didn’t want to run the gen-set to run our sanders or even the space heater. We cleaned the boat thoroughly but spent most of the day reading and talking. It was odd to just sit around like this since we have always been hardworking and not the type to just sit around all day. We finally got comfortable with the fact that we were stuck and actually had a mini vacation.
The next day the wind died and the temperature was supposed to climb into the 60’s, so it was time to go anchor hunting. We motored down to where we had been stuck and I did as we had planned and easily retrieved the smaller anchor which we tied the boat to.
With the boat firmly anchored it was time to retrieve the other anchor which was a 2 month old Delta anchor along with a 1 month old 75 foot length of 3/8” chain and 175’ feet of ¾” anchor line that in total cost about $1,000.
I had paid attention to several landmarks around where we had dropped the anchor so I changed into my dry suit. The dry suit was not a diving type of dry suit but a sailing type for small boats that I had bought years before when racing Lasers (a 1 man racing boat that tips easily) on Lake Michigan in the fall.
We hopped into the dinghy headed towards shore where I hopped out of the dinghy and walked around the area I thought the anchor should be.
It was hard to walk around since the bottom was all mud. There was a semi-hard mantle or crust on top that you could walk on most of the time but occasionally the crust would break and I would sink into the incredibly soft mud below. One time I sucked in so deep I almost panicked, OK, maybe I panicked a little. After that I held on to the dinghy while I walked around.
After a half hour or so we decided to try a different tack and went back to the boat, changed back into dry clothes and McGyver’ed a treble hook using 2 gaff hooks, a boat hook and a 5lb lead weight. We tied a line to treble hook and tied it to dinghy and motored slowly back and forth for about ½ hour hoping to snag the chain or line. We were just about ready to throw the towel in but on the last pass we caught the chain. We pulled the chain up enough to tie a line with a life vest to it and went back to the boat where I changed back into my dry suit.
We went out to where we had snagged the chain and pulled it up to the dinghy again and pulled ourselves hand over hand along on the chain towards where the anchor was. When we got to where we could not pull the chain up anymore I jumped in the water which was about 50 degrees and used my feet to follow the chain.
About 6 feet further it disappeared into the soft mud where the water was about 5 feet deep. When I had dropped the anchor originally I had managed to drop it in about 3 feet of water just as we ran aground. The anchor had also been about 20 feet closer to the shore and barely hooked into the mud.
I cleared as much of the mud away from the chain as I could with my feet and then dove down and started clearing as much as I could with my hands. The mud was soft and cleared away easily but after a dozen or so dives my hands were 2 feet down into the mud, about 6 feet underwater, and I still hadn’t touched the top of the anchor.
We determined that when the tow boat had pulled us out to the middle of the channel and we came to the end of the anchor line the 40,000lbs of boat moving at 6 knots had pulled the anchor to some incredible depth in the mud.
The only way to pull the anchor out was either tie a line to the head of the anchor or to use the boat to pull it out backwards. I couldn’t reach the head of the anchor and the only way to pull it backwards would be with a bulldozer or crane on the beach. We realized that we could not salvage our new anchor so we decided to try to salvage the chain and line.
We went back to the boat and I changed out of my leaky dry suit and into my clothes and we went back out to pull the line out so we could retrieve it. We took the line that was around the chain and using a sawing motion slowly worked down the chain towards where we thought the end of the line would be. We only went about 30 feet along the chain before we were on the anchor line meaning that 40 feet of chain was buried in the mud. We later heard a story of a boat having it’s anchor 20’ deep in the mud under similar circumstances, this was a commercial boat and they had a nearby barge and crane that they used to pull it up.
We went as far as we could out on the line but it was apparently snagged or caught on something so tightly we could not lift it up into the dinghy. We decided that the best way to salvage the line and chain was to cut the chain off where it disappeared into the mud, drag it back to the boat and use the diesel to pull the line free.
So it was back to the boat and into my swimsuit this time, the dry suit leaked so badly and was so cold it just didn’t seem worth it.
I brought along the bolt cutters and went back to the float that we had left tied to the chain and jumped into the water. The chain was in water about 4 ½ feet deep so I had to dive down to get the bolt cutters on the chain in the muddy water. After a few tries I was ready to go, held my depth, dove down and pulled the handles of the 30” bolt cutters together and nothing happened. After a few more tries I realized that the 3/8” high test chain was much stronger than I and my bolt cutters.
2 hours later which included three 15 minute forays in the 56 degree water, each followed by bouts of shivering and shaking, we loaded up and took off for the marina that we had been trying to get to 3 days earlier.
Reflecting on this fiasco it all started because I was soooo very smart. Had I actually paid attention to Julie when she was telling me we were going to run aground this never would have happened. But I knew I could get the engine started long before this happened and that she was just overreacting. Maybe I’ll listen to her next time………………….. I hope I listen to her next time instead of being such a know it all.

2 comments:

Steve said...

i guess it's useful to have maybe 10 anchors?

Mark and Julie Lambert said...

The new plan is to have a grand total of 3 anchors. If I lose these Julie can fill my boots with concrete and throw me overboard.