We had sailed east uneventfully through beautiful Albemarle Sound, NC, and turned south into the mouth of the Alligator River. Initially the river is a wide and deep body of water, but then a long point, composed of lowland and marshes, puts out from the western shore and squeezes the navigable area into a narrow channel.
It was now dark and the channel markers were difficult to find. Marnie had to search for each one with the spotlight, so sometimes we proceeded blind for a period until the next mark was spotted. I therefore also kept an eye on the computer screen to watch the GPS-driven icon representing our boat as it made its way down the channel displayed by chartplotter. There was a turn to the right, west, and I was careful to stay in the center of the channel on the screen, and of course stayed inside the actual channel markers when I saw them. As we turned, the boat began to slow, then slowed some more, and finally came to a halt, although I had not touched the throttles. I threw the boat into reverse but she didn't budge. I tried to rock her forward, and then backwards, to no avail. I had been aground a number of times before, so didn't panic, especially as the muddy bottom, unlike the rock ledges in Maine, did not represent a threat to our steel bottom, I decided to call it a day and take a fresh look at our situation in the morning.
However, in the middle of the night I felt the boat gently rocking, perhaps meaning we were coming free. I started the engines and tried to back down -- or push forward -- no luck. Back to bed. A couple of hours later, the same scenario. At daylight, I saw we were close to the mark on the west side of the channel, and watched a couple of other boats navigate the passage successfully by hugging the mark on the eastern side. I decided we would just have to wait for a rising tide to get us off. However after reading up on the area I learned there was virtually no tidal range here and that the water depth only increased when a strong north wind blew water from Albemarle Sound into the river. So waiting for a high tide to lift us off was not in the cards.
I can be a stubborn, cheap s.o.b., and in 30 years of groundings, power or sail, was always able to eventually free myself without assistance. So whenever the boat was rocked a bit by small wave or boat's wake over the next 24 hours, hinting we might be able to break free, I rushed to the pilot house to start the engines to try to power us free. Sometimes we would be able to move in one direction or another for as much as ten or twenty yards, but we never broke loose. After 36 hours I finally threw in the towel and called Boat US towing service on the VHF. It was going to be expensive, but I and poor crew had had it! The nearest towboat was several hours away but it finally arrived. At first glance, I was very disappointed. The fiberglass boat was no more than 20 feet long with twin outboards and could not have weighed over 1500 pounds -- and here we were, all 55 feet and 90,000 pounds of dense steel!
The towboat's skipper tossed us a line and we agreed that when (and if!) Simba started moving, I would throw her in gear but not rev the engines so high that, once we broke free, we might run over the little boat and turn her into a shattered white Christmas tree ornament.
The little boat moved ahead and took up the slack in the tow rope. Its engines roared and the water frothed, but we didn't budge. For five minutes the Little Engine that Could's motors roared continuously, with the props producing apparently nothing but a large amount of foamy, muddy water. I knew that the little boat could not possibly drag us across the sand and gravel bank, so wondered what the skipper was up to. It finally dawned on me that the little guy was not actually attempting to tow us. With its propwash, it had to be trying to dig us free; trying to dig a channel to deeper water.
Finally, I felt Simba move a few inches forward. I put her in gear with low engine power. Now we moved a few feet and stopped. I goosed her a bit. We moved further, and faster. Maybe we'll finally make it! Suddenly we broke free. I quickly pulled the throttles back to neutral and we coasted after the towboat, the boat feeling light and free as a bird. A wonderful feeling of relief surged through my body.
I can't imagine you'd be surprised to learn that within 24 hours, at our very next port of call, I signed up for a year of towboat insurance.
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