Sunday, February 14 – It is said
about boating in Florida, it is “when you run aground”, not “if you run
aground”. As it turns out, our turn to
run aground was today. We left the
anchorage just after 8:00 a.m. on a low, but rising tide (mistake #1) and then
when passing around the second corner of the island where we should have hugged
the island more closely, we swung too wide and drove the boat onto a mud bank
in 2-1/2 feet of water. A distressing
situation to be sure. Because LeeLoo has
a single engine and full keel, there was never any concern that the boat would
be damaged plus it was a soft grounding in mud.
At this point, we had 2 options.
One would be to wait about 4 hours for high tide. And the second option would be to call BoatUS
for a tow. The first option seemed
problematical because a strong wind would push us further into shallow water as
the tide continued to rise. To prevent
this from occurring, we deployed the anchor where it sat there in full view, as
if laughing at us, in 2-1/2 feet of water!
Using the BoatUS app on the cell phone, we called the dispatch center
and they in turn contacted a local BoatUS towing operation to effect
rescue. A few minutes later, the BoatUS
towboat called us to confirm that we were indeed aground. He said he would arrive in about 20 minutes.
When a towboat arrived, the first
order of business is to fill out the paperwork to be sure there is payment. This prevents cases where a boat once rescued
tries to escape without paying. In our
case, we had towing insurance so this was not an issue. Had we not had towing insurance, the fee
would have been $875!
The towboat operator was very
skilled and he maneuvered his boat close enough to LeeLoo to attach a
polypropylene tow line to LeeLoo’s port (left) bow cleat. Polypropylene lines are used for towing
because they float and thus won’t get caught in either boats’ propeller and
also because it has a lot of stretch which minimizes mechanical loading on the
boat that is aground. The towboat slowly
pulled LeeLoo off the mud bank and onto deeper water. The entire exercise took about 30
minutes. Once we were back in the main
channel, the towboat headed home and we headed south through Pine Island Sound,
then out into the Gulf of Mexico, and then on to Naples.
From this point forward, there is no
ICW, so all passages will be offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. While cruising in the Gulf, our main concern is the wind, the height and direction of the waves and trying not to hit the hundreds of crab pots!
