Personal Experience
Before Sea Tow tried (without success) to sue for salvage over a boat they took over the tow from when the fire dept was putting out a boat house fire, most of us figured one tower was about as good as the other. The last time I renewed my BoatUS membership and of course the insurance, I paid the extra $35. for local unlimited towing. Good decision, as fate would have it. Sea Tow would be my second choice, nowadays.
I wrote up our own grounding "adventure" for a local 'net sailing group, and here it. Have a chuckle on us!
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Dateline: Sept 8, 2008.
"Fantastic sail we had on Saturday on the annual SYSCO cruise down river to St Helens. About 22 miles in a wind that started at about 10 kts and built to over 20 near the end.
Bright sun, 80ish degrees temp by late afternoon.
Boat was going to weather well, and pointing with the best of 'em. I was getting a bit tired of winching after 3 hours... but Kathy was doing a great job driving, and getting increasingly better at modulating the tacks to slow the fall-off onto the new tack so I could hand tail the 135 in and only have to winch the last 4 feet of sheet. Actually, before some chop started slowing us down, we were hitting 6.7 to weather!
Just above the Warrior Rock light we made one little miscalculation, though. Carried a starb. tack 20 feet too far and when we straightened up for the new tack change we stopped... immediately.... in five feet of water. Unfortunately we draw 6 feet.
Sand/clay bottom. Went from 13 feet depth to 5 in about a boat length... Yikes!
Several friends with other sailboats motored over to take lines from the bow, but no go.
Only 3:30 p.m., and tide still dropping for another hour, too. Hmmm....
Trivia: Being about 100 yds out of the ship channel, it IS true that a loaded freighter does suck back the water from the shore as the bow is across from you. The resulting heeling is rather bad for your heart rate! It did not put the turn of the bilge on the sand, but for a few seconds there we nearly had water on the side deck!
The inrush of water shortly after raises the level right back up but not to any additional height..... so no help to drive off. Darn.
Called BoatUS and they dispatched a tow. From Portland, and over an hour plus because he was ungrounding some other unfortunate boater.
Super nice guy and very very competent. I dropped the loop in his hawser over both bow cleats and he took up the pull gently. After about 2 minutes of increasingly throttling up his 200 hp, the bow came down, I had to stop running our diesel due to our prop coming out of water and/or cavitating, and we slid forward about 5 feet and were floating again.
The tow boat is purpose built, with two large OB engines and large reel for the line. Darned good thing I opted to pay the extra $35. towing this year to BoatUS. I saved well over $600. in this one incident...
With 20-20 hind sight, I maybe should have asked my initial "good samaritans" to take the spin halyard out to to deep side and heel us down while another boat took the tow ahead. That idea, traditional and good as it is, might not have worked out either, because there was a monster deadhead about 20 feet off the beam in about 5 feet of water on the side that the halyard-picker-upper would have to maneuver in...
(In the afternoon chop we never saw that log ahead in the shallows, either, going in toward the island.)
Also, we could tell by some reluctance in our steering that the rudder was partly on the sand, once the bow was faced out. Not a good idea to linger longer, waiting for high tide six hours later after dark and bouncing through hundreds of ship and small boat wakes. I will have the rudder checked soon, as well as see how shiny the keel is at the bottom!
So, a super-great sail, and even a new "adventure." (Well, after all, no obvious damage and no personal injuries.)
Yes we have been aground several times before in the last 3 decades, but always at low speeds and always able to eventually drive off.
Since we were last in to the town dock, the gang was ready and waiting with a raft-up spot for us and many tales of their own groundings, several in almost exactly the same place! No one gave us a hard time about it either.
No great moral to this story, just that no matter how fast you sail and how much fun you are having... You should tack away from the shallows a little bit sooner that you think that you
really have to. (Kind of like reefing before you really have to do so.)"
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I hauled the boat for a quick noon-lift in the travelift slings and found no damage. Bottom foot of the keel was shiny, though.
Insurance is good. Luck is good. Both in the same year: priceless.
Loren