S/V Geru: Shoals, Groundings and Engine Failures

After staying the night in the middle of the subdivision, we left on a beautiful morning expecting a good day. This day, however, turned out to be a rough one. After Morehead City the ICW is quite windy with cuts out to the ocean that provide for constantly changing current. We would be going 8 knots before a cut, and then 5 after without changing the engine RPM (i.e. not giving any less "gas"). The currents in the inlets also cause shoals or sandbanks to build into the channel. These shoals can be very shallow, and they are usually only marked with a buoy when they have become really bad. Most are not a concern for a shallow-draft boat like ours, but they do get the heart racing as the depth suddenly starts to decrease dramatically on the depth sounder. So we were already a bit on edge on this day. To add to this, we had just come across a sailboat that had run aground in an area that was very confusing in terms of the buoys that were there. A power boat had gone the wrong way, and then the sailboat had followed and gone aground.

We had planned on anchoring for the night, however, the anchorage we had picked didn't look great and we were shaken up by the day so we decided to stop at the Swan Point Marina. We drove past the marina to take a look, then turned around to head into their harbour just off the ICW. Just as we were headed in, Geoff reversed the engine to slow down a bit and "BANG!" the outdrive kicked up and the outdrive line wrapped itself around the propeller. (The outdrive on Geru is built such that when you are sailing you can pull the propeller out of the water to reduce drag. This is done with a set of lines, which normally are fine except when the locking mechanism fails and the prop is allowed to move backwards and up into these lines). After some very stressful moments, dropping the anchor in mid-channel to help slow us down and then raising it again to stop the boat from spinning around, running about and shouting to shore, we were able to drift the boat to the marina's fuel dock in what turned out to be one of the best docking maneuvers yet (no kidding)! We had some help from a fellow boater on shore and a marina attendant who came running to soften the landing, but we placed her starboard side perfectly onto the dock.

This past spring Geoff had modified the locking mechanism that holds the outdrive down when the engine is put in reverse as we had problems with this before. It turns out that the modification worked just fine. We think that the engine kicked up this time because we bumped the control mechanism in the cockpit so that the outdrive was no longer locked down.

Shortly after we settled down at the fuel dock (and Ruth's knees stopped shaking), the sailboat that had run aground earlier showed up and docked as well - the skipper had decided that he'd had enough for the day, too.

A heron on the dock piling