And on the fifth day in Morro Bay, the adventure began. The word ‘adventure’ as used here means an event that will make a good story some day but while you are living it, the suck outweighs the fun in a dramatic fashion. This word, adventure, also means ‘things you already knew but somehow forgot and now they’ve made you feel like a chump’. But so it goes out here. As Captain Ron so famously said, “Anythings gonna happen, it’ll happen out there.” Or, in our case, in nice little Morro Bay.
We awoke to a wonderful sunny day, bright with the promise of a long and leisurely walk in town; perhaps an espresso somewhere; or lunch. It was about 10:30 in the blessed AM when I hear Michael up in the cockpit turning on the chart plotter. “Hey, Melissa! I think we have a problem here.”. Great. Those are just the very words I was longing to hear. I was not even dressed yet. What was up?
“Our depth sounder is showing only 1.5 feet under the keel. We need to reset the anchor.”.
Oh. Ok. Well that’s not so bad. I mean, sure, a stiff wind had piped up from the east, which was a little strange. The other boats in the anchorage were sashaying around in a disorganized fashion. I noted S/V Copacetic was pulling up anchor. Maybe they were leaving. I wondered if they had checked weather as there was going to be a gale tomorrow. We got our headsets on and Michael went to the the windlass to prepare to pull the anchor up. I put the engine in gear and gave her some gas to move the boat forward, as we do when pulling up anchor. We like to baby the windlass when we can.
This time, the boat did not move. What the what? With 1.5 feet below the keel, we should have 7.5 feet of water under us. Not great, but enough to move out to deeper water. I push the engine to 2500 RPM. Nothing. She was definitely not moving. Shit “She’s not moving.” , I speak, without yelling, into the headset. Mike tries assisting with the windlass. He pops the breaker. I scurry below to reset that, my stress level rising. We are hard on the mud somewhere.
Back in the cockpit I radio the Harbor Patrol and ask them if they can come assist us. They send a guy on a paddle board, which stresses me out because the tide is falling rapidly and there is no way he is going to be helpful. But he gets out to us quickly and radios for a boat to come help. They are there quickly and I begin to breathe more easily. I have full confidence that they will be able to lend enough engine power that we’ll come off with no problem.
Paddle board guy was there in 2 minutes.
My confidence turns out to be badly misplaced. They do their very best, engines churning the water fiercely, but, after all, the tide is swooshing out and we have a heavy boat. We are not going anywhere. They wave goodbye, with apologies for their failure, but everyone is good natured about it. This happens frequently in Morro Bay. I mean, it could be worse. It could be rocks. Or coral. (Shudder.) This is just mud. We’ll be fine, if uncomfortable for a few hours. I mean, how bad can it be?
We prepare the boat for careening. Or falling over. Whichever term you prefer. We pull in the boom to the center position. Drop the dinghy into the water and tie it off to a cleat. We begin stowing things below as though we were preparing to go offshore in heavy wind. As I go below to stow some stuff I note that we can already feel the floor tilting a bit. Not a lot, but there is a definite tilt. We sigh; collectively. I close all the hatches on the low side, just in case we fall completely over somehow. I know we won’t but I do it anyhow. It is now 11:30. Low tide is around 4:00.
Today we will be the entertainment for Morro Bay. Oh well. It could be worse. It could be raining. We settle in to wait. The tide is still screaming out of the bay. It was almost high tide when we got stuck. Almost. After 4:00 things would begin to get better.
The whale watching boat. I hope they know Galapagos was not a beached whale. I waved happily as though we meant to do this, as though we were, perhaps, European or from the UK where to careen a boat is just the thing you do. Had I gotten out there with some bottom paint and started brushing it on, people would have just thought we were thrifty and smart. Missed opportunity.
As the boat begins to list gently to starboard, helped along by the 18-20 knots of cold wind blowing from the north by this time, I am doing well. I am handling things. Mike is in good spirits. We find the humor in our situation, which, as I say, could have been worse. We could have been in a location less populated and with no one to help. On rocks. Or with big waves crashing us around. I turn the wheel hard to one side to lift the rudder up out of the water. I don’t want pressure on the rudder. We like our rudder.
As the inclinometer begins to inch toward 30 degrees of heel, I begin to feel ansty. Things we have not yet noticed have begun to crash down below. Drawers that were not quite closed suddenly open. Items stored behind closed cupboards crash into the doors, making us afraid of what we might find later. Things that have never moved from their places before begin to slide off Mike’s workbench. We go below and make another pass. It’s getting hard to walk down there.
A bit later in the day Michael would practice walking at an angle. Probably should have held the camera at 40 degrees for this shot. Maybe you can turn your head a bit. to get the full effect, which is, basically, an amazing core workout, Note red stretchy band that is hanging straight down, as gravity causes it to do.
By the time the inclinometer reads 40 degrees my brain and my body are at odds with one another. My brains says, “You know this will be fine. It’s just mud. Galapagos is a heavy boat and well built. She will be fine. My body says ‘we should have reefed 20 degrees ago. We have too much sail up! This is dangerous! The boat is probably out of control!”. I am now fighting anxiety, which is what happens when your body’s signals do not match what your logical mind knows is true. I decide I better do some doom scrolling on my phone, so I set up in the cockpit and begin.
I mean, to be clear, I did not exactly sit. Because by this time we are heeled over 45 degrees so it’s more like I am hunched down in the cockpit bracing my legs in a semi crouched position. It’s not comfortable, but I’m trying to keep my weight on the high side, as though my weight will make any kind of difference in this situation. But everyone knows that when the boat is heeling you put your weight on the high side. So there you go. I’m doing my best here. I scroll through social media and the news and play a couple of mindless games, losing them all because I can’t concentrate. Good thing I’m not really a gambler.
As an aside, note Mike is wearing his coastal life vest in the photo above. We both spent the whole day wearing our PFDs, which could not have been more useless. Had we fallen overboard, we would have just stood up, muddy and possibly covered in eel grass. Maybe it’s just that when things feel weird a life vest seems like a good idea.
Still a great view! And I am so close to the birds on the mudflat, just like I wanted to be. Except the wind is very cold and blowing like fierce and I am not interested in sitting outside with the wind in my face.
It’s at about 50 degrees of heel that I suddenly decide to look up the tide for that evening. I note that the high in the evening is going to be 3.76 feet. The tide that put us on the hard was 4.38 feet and Mike was seeing 1.5 feet beneath the keel. The math was not adding up for me. By my logic, we would need at least more than 1.5 feet under us in order to power off the mud. That would be 1.5 feet of water we probably were not going to get. My usual string of curse words sprang forth as I began to stress on the idea that we would not be getting off until the next morning, when the tide would rise to 4.75 feet at 10:01AM. We might be spending the night at 55 degrees, and I do not mean fahrenheit. I was filled with dread at the thought. Not that I felt like anything would happen to the boat. Just that it would be a sleepless night. Which I hate.
One of the saddest sights a boat owner can have. Could have been worse. There could have been damage. There was none.
Right around slack tide some new friends from the anchorage dinghied over with wine and snacks. Liam and Heather from S/V Karma had come over earlier to meet us and chat and we enjoyed them a great deal. They are a young couple making their way on a small boat and having a grand time. They have already had a lot of interesting experiences and are truly cutting their teeth on the cruising lifestyle; solving issues, replacing an engine in Uclulet, British Columbia, and generally living their best lives. We could not be more pleased for them. Liam’s parents were here to visit and they came over as well. We were quickly joined by Zack and Lisa from S/V Copacetic (one of the greatest boat names ever). They are a young couple from Victoria, also cruising down to Mexico, and also embracing the kind of problem solving that will make them wildly successful as cruisers. These folks figured out how to make an auto pilot meant for tiller steering work on their wheel steering boat. I am in awe. We all yucked it up and toasted to the cruising life, even with ‘interesting’ experiences. We loved it. It was a very much needed respite from the stress of the day.
We were reminded of the time we were anchored somewhere in the northern Gulf Islands of British Columbia and we awoke to a sailboat in the anchorage; hard aground at low tide. We rowed over to talk to the couple, who were pretty stressed out. They had anchored many times in that same place and never had an issue. But something was different this time and when they awoke, they were aground on rocks. We climbed aboard with coffee and snacks and kept them company waiting for the tide to rise, which it always does. Now these new friends in Morro Bay had done the same for us. It was truly a bright spot in an otherwise fairly stressful day.
As we chatted and snacked, the tide turned and soon our toe rail was no longer under water. Not long after, the lower port in the midship cabin peeked above the water line. As the tide began to come in we started being hopeful, but I reminded Mike that this was not the ‘high’ high tide of the day. If we got off, we would be lucky. Mike noted that the bow had shifted a few degrees to starboard due to wind and current. He considered this an auspicious sign and who was I to argue?
Heather and Liam look over our hull and give us a barnacle report. Result: only a few small hangers on.
Once we were heeled only 20 degrees or so and things were feeling more normal, Mike got in the dinghy and took soundings around the boat with our portable depth sounder. It was clear that forward of midship, the water was deep enough. It was the rear of the boat that seem like it got over a small hill in the mud. As he climbed back aboard he said, ‘Too bad we have all that chain in the aft lazarette. ‘.
What?? I had completely forgotten about that. We added 200 feet of chain to that aft lazarette to add weight to the back of the boat when we took off the mizzen. I suggested we just take that to the bow, and he added that we should also take everything of weight to the bow. The fuel cans? To the bow. The generator? To the bow. The stainless steel swell damperner? The bow. Even the stern anchor and rode. We carried it all to the bow and crossed our fingers.
As the water crept up and the depth sounder approached 0.00, which would give us 6 feet, the amount of water we draw, we turned on the deck lights fore and aft so we could see better in the darkness. Mike cleared as much of the floating eel grass and kelp from the anchor chain as he could reach with the boathook. We turned on the engine, Mike put her in gear, and …..she budged. “She moved!” he shouted in my ear. I love our Sena headsets, but sometimes…Our hopes were rising with the tide.
It’s possible he took only two strides to reach the windlass. I was already in the cockpit and at the wheel, making sure our course was straight out, the rudder perfectly centered; this after examining the chart, the boat’s heading, the wind, and all the depths around us. It seemed like our best chance. I put her in gear and she moved enough for him to get the anchor bridle off. Then I gunned it quite suddenly, without even any drama, we were free and floating in 16 feet of glorious water. I literally just gave her a quick burst of power and she drove right off like she was never stuck in the first place, like she was just joking around with us.
“You’re off! You’re off!” Mike shouted from the bow as cheers erupted from the crowded cockpit on S/V Karma.
Still clearing weed from the anchor rode, we tarried a few minutes in the anchorage, then went further in and got anchored for the night. We were both pretty stressed and tired, mostly from trying to move around a boat heeled that far over. There is no place to walk when the floor is at 55 degrees. We got full body workouts all day long.
This morning we upped anchor, got pumped out, and then picked up the last mooring ball, close to our personal friends the sea lions. A gale has been blowing outside the harbor and we’ve been glad to just have a day of rest. Galapagos got through her ordeal in fine form; no harm, no foul. The fuel filters are fine (we worried about muddy water in the intake). We learned that roofing tape is, indeed, very water tight as the midship viewing port did not leak a drop.
Last night we had a celebration party aboard Galapagos, our first real social time since we left the dock in Olympia way back in August. We had Lisa and Zack from S/V Copacetic out of Victoria, Mark from S/V Eva G from Seattle, Heather and Liam from S/V Karma from Seattle and Liams parents, Grant and Kate, who are here visiting. It was a real party and we stayed up well past our bedtimes without even realizing it. It was worth being on the mud for a day just to bring all these fine people together aboard Galapagos, swapping stories, sharing resources, talking books and boats.
No post with dramatic photos of a boat on its side would be complete without examining the mistakes we made that resulted in this fiasco. So what did we forget, that we absolutely already knew? Here’s the low down:
1). We’d been in this anchorage for 4 days. It was time to reset the anchor, just like in Mexico in La Paz. Just like in La Cruz. There is a lot of current running through here, so the boat swings 180 degrees twice daily. In addition, winds had clocked around from several different directions. Reset the damn anchor, Team Galapagos. Reset the damn anchor.
2). There is a ton of free floating eel grass and some kelp. The anchor chain is quickly wrapped in it. All the more reason to pull anchor, clear the chain, and reset. It is hard to overstate how much weed floats through here.
3). Did we drag? No. We did not. What we did, though, is fail to realize how the low tides were changing day to day with the waxing of the moon. Even 4 days made a big difference in how close we were to the mudflat, and it gets shallow really quickly. Had the wind not been blowing like stink from the east, we would have been fine. But when that wind shifted it basically put us on a lee shore. The back of the boat floated over a hump, and the rest is history. It took a very short amount of time for this to happen. We also learned, from a local boat captain, that during the big storm of January 2023, winds and rains were so intense that the depth charts are no longer accurate in parts of the bay. That jives with what some other cruisers were seeing, and with our experience in places. The sands do shift.
4) This is a small anchorage. When we pulled in, we had no choice about where to put the anchor. It was either put it down where we did, or go to a mooring. At that time we had plenty of water under the keel (see #4). The first 5 days of anchoring are free here. After that it’s about 18$/day, more or less. We put down the anchor. Harbor patrol thought we were fine where we were and also gave us the option of anchoring just outside the channel, since there were other boats that may have been too close otherwise. As the low tides get lower with the waxing of the moon, the useable part of the anchorage gets smaller. When a 4th boat showed up, that would have been a good time to take stock of where we were and get to the mooring ball.
Ouch. Nothing bruised but our egos. We could have cleaned the hull but it was too cold and windy. Also the hull is pretty clean anyhow. Good to know.
We’ve taken our lumps and kept our sense of humor with this. Harbor patrol was out today and I hailed them to motor over to the boat so I could thank them for trying to help us out yesterday. They were glad to see we had got off and had no damage. As they said, in parting, “If you haven’t been aground, you haven’t been around!”. True words. This was a first for us, and we hope it will be the last. But if not, I know which drawers to check to see they are firmly closed.
The neighbors on the mooring ball.
S/V Galapagos, floating and standing by on Channel 16. We made it to San Miguel Island and are now technically in Southern California and wearing shorts.
