Starting the Day With a Bang

Spent a peaceful night at anchor and were up early to take the dogs to shore before breakfast and heading to the lock. All was going according to plan until we tried to lift the anchor. Instead of the anchor coming up, the bow was being pulled down. Darn it. We had snagged something.

I lowered the chain several times. Each time I raised the chain down would go the bow. We tried swinging Moon Dance left and right to pull gently from different angles. No luck. Still held fast with no idea what was holding us as the water was so murky that nothing below the water surface was visible. We could only tell the location of the anchor by the angle of the chain.

The others were retrieving their anchors without issue so we moved to the next level in use of force. John put Moon Dance in gear to tug on the rode at idle speed. The bow went down, the bow sprint deflected a foot or more from horizontal and there was a tremendous bang.

Stunned, we were motionless for a few seconds. Then assessed the damage. There didn’t appear to be anything broken. And, better yet we could now retrieve the anchor rode. A chunk of wood appeared which had obviously broken off a larger piece. It was too large to pass through the anchor pulpit but after a little prodding with a boat hook it dropped off.

Thank goodness the tree we snagged was rotten enough to to break when tugged and its grip was loose enough that the broken piece left the chain easily.

No pictures but we did leave with two take aways. One, our windless is more robust than I feared. And two, a shallower spot in a flooded river bed is likely a submerged island. Don’t anchor there as chances are pretty good that some standing timber was left to snag your anchor or chain.