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Not Another
Day in Paradise
4/23/01
Janet Parks
We’ve
just finished setting the anchor as we do at the end of the majority of
our days out here.
As I watch Blaine put the snubber on the anchor chain, I turn off
the engine and collapse into tears, releasing the stress of the past hour.
We’re finally anchored and all of us have escaped the ordeal
without a scratch.
After many days of Paradise, we have been put to the test and
survived.
Anchoring has become our preferred nightly stop.
Sometimes we need the amenities of a marina, so we have to go
through the wonderful docking ordeal…usually pretty simple, but
sometimes treacherous.
We just finished a one-night stay at the St. Augustine’s
Municipal Marina and were ready to anchor out for a few more nights.
After rushing around getting all of our “marina” duties out of
the way, i.e. washing the boat, doing laundry, filling the water tanks,
etc., our marina time had expired and we were headed to the nearby
anchorage.
Knowing that the current was rushing past us and the winds were
picking up, we asked a couple of boaters on the dock to help us get out of
our slip.
And the adventure began!
We
had two people helping us out of the slip and as the current and wind
pushed us into the slip next to us, they ran for more help.
We backed out of the slip only to have the current and wind pin us
against the pilings.
Our volunteers increased in numbers as it became apparent that we
were up against the wind and water gods.
We tried numerous times in a variety of ways to push and pull our
home off the pilings.
Our selfless volunteers were putting every muscle they had into the
effort of pushing her away from the docks.
Our
next to last attempt pins us against the pilings again and our dinghy
becomes a major obstacle for clearing the pilings as it hangs from our
stern davits.
One of our volunteers suggests getting the dinghy off the davits to
remove that obstacle which we promptly do.
The next obstacle is getting off the pilings while battling the
wind and current.
Wind?
Let’s use our sails!
Blaine decides to use the staysail to help us use the wind in our
favor. It
starts to work, so up our main goes as well.
We are finally off!
We
were going in the right direction and suddenly I see that we are not
turning right and out of the marina anymore, but a hard left and into a
pair of slips…one empty, but one with a trawler in it!
I see our bow turning into the trawler and race to throw a bowline
to our volunteers on the dock…once, twice, three times…no luck!
I get ready to fend us off the trawler as the bow quickly swings
into it.
Knowing I cannot stop that much weight at that speed, another
volunteer jumps on the trawler to try to help me.
Blaine says he has lost the function of the rudder.
Suddenly the movement of the bow to the trawler stops…we’re not
going to hit it!
What a tremendous relief!
As I later find out, one of the volunteers had jumped on our stern
to get a stern line and tied it to a cleat.
With the boat against the finger pier and the stern line attached
to a cleat, we weren’t able to swing anymore and were able to stay off
the trawler!
With lots of muscle and strategically placed dock lines, we place
‘Charbonneau’ into another slip, with the stern in and bow out.
We realize the sails are pushing us away from the slip and quickly
pull all sails in to decrease the motion.
We are now in a much better position to get out of the slip.
With
no rudder, I’ve resigned myself to staying in our newly found slip for
the night to fix the problem, when Blaine says, “Ley’s try it
again”.
“What!”, I cry in disbelief?
“Without the rudder working?”
He explains that Bailey had hit the autopilot and that everything
was now working fine.
Bailey sat sheepishly in the corner somehow knowing he had made a
mistake.
So
we attempt it one more time!
Keeping the bowline attached to help us pivot around, we finally
pull ‘Charbonneau’ out of the slip.
We thank all of our wonderful volunteers who have put every muscle
they had into getting us safely out of those slips…all three or four of
them that we have visited in that hour.
Completely exhausted, we head out to anchor.
We fight the strong current to wait for the next bridge opening and
finally get to the other side and anchor…finally the tension
releases…we’re safe!
Another
day out on the waters with another experience under our belt.
This one not as pleasant as we’d wished.
As we reflect on the day, we realize how lucky we are to have
gotten out without a scratch on our boat or any of the other boats in the
marina; how wonderful the boating community is that we would have so many
volunteers (8-10) put every muscle and brain cell into helping us off the
dock; how we wished we could have thanked our anonymous volunteers again;
how we pulled together as a team, never losing our cool or yelling at each
other like we see others doing; how the dogs remained calm and relaxed
through the whole ordeal which allowed us to concentrate on our tasks.
Not another day in Paradise, but we know it’s Sunday and we
don’t have to go to work in the morning, Charbonneau and her crew are
still intact, and we celebrated!
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