Association Forum - Our first time anchoring (lotsa pictures)

Assn Members Area · Join

Home.

Association Forum

Ships Store

Cruising

Racing

Technical Tips

Photo Gallery - New

Boat Search - Updated

Manuals & Brochures

Swap Meet

Links

Officer Flag Line & Staff

Bylaws & Constitution

Members Area

Join the Association

Notice:
The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.

Association Forum

Username:	Password:
Save Password
Forgot your Password?

All Forums

Catalina/Capri 25/250 Sailor's Forums

Cruising Forum

Our first time anchoring (lotsa pictures)

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Author

Topic

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

Member Avatar

USA
4479 Posts

Initially Posted - 09/16/2007 : 21:50:35

Rita & I decided to head over to Blake Island for the weekend. We spent most of Friday working on the boat and planned to get an early start on Saturday so we could be relatively assured of getting a mooring ball over on the West side of the island. The best laid plans...
We didn't get out of the house till late morning, and didn't really get out onto the water till early afternoon. We had a chance conversation with on of our dockmates, who mentioned that they'd heard that a bunch of Boy Scouts were on the island, and that mooring balls might be hard to come by. Wonderful... Our first obstacle was this:

You can see a railroad bascule bridge sticking up right in the middle of the barge, and just at the far right side, you can see the West end of Spokane Street bridge poking out. We can't get under the bascule bridge (pretty much nothing can except kayaks, but we don't have to worry about the other. Our marina is in a fairly industrial area, and there are frequent barges, railroad trains, trucks going by at all hours. If you ever watch Dirty Jobs, they did a story on the Ashgrove Cement Plant, which is just right around the corner. That gives you an idea of the neighborhood we're in. As we idled out into the turning area just adjacent to our fairway, as Rita was letting out a bit more line on our Avon's tow line, I looked downstream & noticed the Spokane St. Bridge was open. This is unusual because it's a major thoroughfair to and from West Seattle, and to have the bridge open meant that road traffic was stopped and something was in or outbound. What that something was I had no idea, I couldn't see anything obvious either up river or down river, so I decided to head through the bascule bridge for the railroad since it was currently up and you never know when it's going to be lowered. I got several hundred yards before I realized why I didn't see what was coming, the barge in this picture was dead downstream of me and moving so slowly there was no relative movement for my eye to pick up as I swept past it, it wasn't till I was able to see the tugs that I knew that it was coming upstream at us. Anyway, we idled upstream of the bascule bridge while waiting for the tow to go by, then motored out to Elliott Bay after that.

As we made the turn out of the Duwamish River's mouth we saw this poor fellow on our port side:

I don't know anything about this boat, but it was still there this afternoon when we got back, and wasn't there a couple of weeks ago, so maybe it's been holed or something fairly recently. It hadn't moved an inch as we went by this afternoon even though we'd had a fairly high tide the night before. It looks like it's salvageable, but I'm no expert. I'd be curious to hear the story.

As we passed the Duwamish shoal marker, we put up the main & jib and shut off the engine. Immediately our speed dropped from about 5 kts to about 0.3 kts. And stayed there... So, since we were already behind the eight ball for getting a mooring ball, we motor sailed the rest of the way to the island, which took about 90 minutes or so. As we rounded the north end of the island, all we saw were masts, more masts and a fair number of power boats, including one that was high & dry on the sand. Not a free mooring ball to be had. We doused sails and motored to the south end of the island where we'd spent such a bumpy night a few weeks earlier in the vain hope of finding one of the only two balls available there. Hah, shouldn't have even bothered. So we decided to try anchoring. Now, neither of us have ever anchored anything larger than a john boat, and only one of us really knew how. I've read lots of books on how to anchor, the necessary rode, etc. so I wasn't too concerned. Rita was far less sanguine, but was game to try. I knew my tide state, knew that the water level would drop overnight by around nine feet, so I wanted to make sure I had plenty of water under my keel when low tide came at around 0230. I had Rita take the helm and told her to watch the depthsounder and to keep the boat in about twenty feet of water or so, not realizing that having her go any shallower would cause great anxiety for her, since she was supposed to stay at least twenty feet deep. I chose an anchorage in a slight cove with a very obvious landslide as a marker for watching anchor drag and directed her into shallower water. This was nerve wracking for Rita, but she toughed it out. As we came to a stop in roughly fifteen feet of water, I slid the anchor down towards the bottom, figuring we'd end up in roughly twenty five feet or so after snubbing up. Oh...forgot to tell her about the snubbing process... Anyway we ended up in slightly deeper water, but I neglected to note how deep as I lowered away on the rode. Rita backed us down to dig the flukes of our Danforth into the sandy bottom, and finally we hung. Now, the wait to find out if we were actually going to stick. I set an anchor alarm on my brand new Garmin GPSMAP 276C (my absolute favorite new toy) and we waited it out. I watched the landslide slash closely, using the width of my hand as a gauge to see if we were moving in or out, and relative movement for side to side. We seemed to be holding & Mr. Garmin agreed. Time to go ashore, there was a dog in need of a nice sandy patch & some exercise.

Rita lazing on some driftwood while Lola plays with her frisbee.

Lola heading out to retrieve her brand new glow in the dark frisbee with SL in the background.

After an hour or so of beachcombing, we headed back to the boat for dinner on our brand spanking new Magma grill:

Rita mixed me a nice drink while I was cooking and we sat & watched the sunset, such as it was. It was about 99% cloud cover, and there would eventually be a sliver of a moon around 2300. I was a bit concerned about dragging my anchor and had already let out more scope but the boat seemed to be holding. There was a bit of excitement when the tide changed and we drifted to the other end of our anchor circle, but we got to about 170 feet from our original point (not quite twice my scope) and stopped. I sat & watched that on the GPS and the landslide so I could be reasonable certain we wouldn't drag. I set an alarm for about an hour before low tide so we could check our position and we went to bed.

Here's our GPS track for the night, the "circle" is about 200' across or so:

The NW to SW track was us on our way in & out of the anchorage, the NE track was our initial run to set the anchor, and subsequent slow drift back along the SW until we caught. The spaghetti bowl is what we did overnight till I shut the GPS down around 2am to conserve batteries. I turned on a backup GPS which I have a power cord for a cigarette lighter. Not as good resolution, but enough to tell me I was dragging.

NOAA had predicted worsening conditions by Sunday afternoon, so we planned to get underway by around 0800 which didn't exactly happen. We needed to make one more trip to the island for Lola, make some tea & coffee, and then figure out how to raise the anchor. Remember we'd never done this before... Anyway, we sat & talked about it, and Rita had read up on the process the night before in one of our books, so the raising of the anchor went fairly smoothly. About this time was when it started to "rain". People think it rains in Seattle, it's more like it mists heavily, which is exactly what this was. We motored along the West side of Blake waving hi to our neighbors of the night before and headed back to our marina. Just before we made the turn into the Duwamish River we found these fellows "sunning" themselves:

The rain was starting to pick up to where it was actually rain instead of mist and we were glad to get back to our slip. An hour's worth of cleaning up and getting the boat shipshape, and we were home in time to catch the second half of the Seahawks game.

David
C-250 Mainsheet Editor

Sirius Lepak
1997 C-250 WK TR #271 --Seattle area Port Captain --

Edited by - delliottg on 09/18/2007 09:19:25

DaveR
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
2015 Posts

Response Posted - 09/17/2007 : 08:11:54

Sounds like a successful first anchoring! I'm looking forward to a week-end out in late October, can't wait!! Thanks for the pix!

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

Members Avatar

USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 09/18/2007 : 10:08:43

Dave,
You're welcome. We had a pretty good trip, but I think I'm now experiencing the "it hurts worst two days later" syndrome. I sit on my butt 10-12 hours a day in front of a computer screen, so going sailing is far more active than either of us are used to (sad situation I have to say). I had a really hard time getting out of bed this morning, and I ache all over the place. Rita's complaining of the same things. Sad to get old, huh?

Oh well, it won't stop me from doing it again. I like rowing my dinghy over to the island, the exercise feels good, I just obviously need to do it more often. I almost (but not quite) wish our little 4hp Mercury wasn't coming out of the shop this week.

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 09/18/2007 : 10:37:58

Nice read and fun pics--thanks! The one with Lola, SL, and the overhanging branch is "suitable for framing"! Congrats on a successful first night on the hook! After the tide turns, it's always fun to wake up and find the whole world is backward! I love the 276C, too--I wired the power/data cable into the boat. My next task is to connect the data leads to my DSC VHS so it can automatically transmit my position in a distress call. Toys, toys!

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

Members Avatar

USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 09/18/2007 : 10:49:24

Dave,
Oh, I'm with you, I love my new 276, still learning how to use it. The best part is that Rita is also somewhat enamored of it, especially it's ability to do turn by turn instructions (with a couple of boat bucks worth of "accessories"). I bought her a GPS enabled phone some time ago to help when she gets lost (a not-infrequent occurrence, ask me about our first meeting sometime), but she's never used it once.

We're thinking about getting that particular picture blown up, it's a great one, I'm glad you like it.

Do you have photos of how you wired your 276C & where? I'm still trying to decide where best to mount it. I also want to wire it for DSC once we get a new radio to replace our current one. We find it's buttons hard to use, the squelch sucks (constant squelch breaks, really-really annoying), and probably most important from a safety point of view, no DSC. I also want to be able to interface it via NMEA for an autopilot once I get around to purchasing one that works (my $50 "great deal" Simrad died...go figure).

Edited by - on

Dave Bristle
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

Djibouti
10005 Posts

Response Posted - 09/18/2007 : 13:37:29

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Originally posted by delliottg
 ...Do you have photos of how you wired your 276C & where? I'm still trying to decide where best to mount it...<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">If I did, they wouldn't do you much good--my boat is just a little different from a C-250!

I used the beanbag mount and used the 12-volt car plug for it on my C-25. (I use the street mapping and voice directions too... Gosh, do you remember fold-up maps??)

Edited by - Dave Bristle on 09/18/2007 13:38:10

Nautiduck
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
3704 Posts

Response Posted - 09/20/2007 : 22:18:50

I'll take the 4hp Merc and give you my oars.

Edited by - on

delliottg
Former Mainsheet C250 Tech Editor

Members Avatar

USA
4479 Posts

Response Posted - 09/21/2007 : 09:32:39

<blockquote id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Nautiduck: I'll take the 4hp Merc and give you my oars. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote">

Hah, the funny thing is, my Avon came with an engine but no oars. I was able to find the whole package (Avon & Mercury) for less than $800 on Craigslist. There's currently another similar deal in the Seattle CL, an Avon 2.8 with a Johnson 4.5hp engine for $750. You could probably find a 2-4hp engine with little trouble for no more than $300 or so.

However, you've got that swoopy little 10' Walker Bay, if I were you, I'd be looking for the sail package for that. How fun! Just remember to never sit on the seats when the sails are up, or you'll end up swimming.

Edited by - on

Nautiduck
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
3704 Posts

Response Posted - 09/21/2007 : 12:00:53

We love the WB but it is tippy. I see a small OB and the tube kit in the future. Then it will be one audacious dink.

Edited by - Nautiduck on 09/21/2007 12:01:18

bigelowp
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

USA
1797 Posts

Response Posted - 10/07/2007 : 20:21:13

Great post! Makes Long Island Sound on the East Coast look boring . . . All the best

Edited by - on

Douglas
Master Marine Consultant

Members Avatar

1595 Posts

Response Posted - 11/03/2007 : 09:09:13

Nice post. I enjoyed reading your story. I remember similar experiances with our old Catalina many years ago. We did a lot of South Sound trips. Blake Island was always fun. Penrose Point in South Sound was always our favorite. Have you ever thought about going a bit further North and visiting Port Madison. Great place even when it's rough out. Catalina 25 are great boats and will provide you with the means for great adventures.

Edited by - on

Topic

New Topic

Topic Locked

Printer Friendly

Jump To:

Association Forum

Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.