Numerous Groundings

It was a very interesting day due to the high winds and low water.  Tides were lower than average and the high winds pushed water out of the Bay for almost 3 days.



Numerous boats went aground attempting to leave the harbor for the Wednesday night races .  At one time, there were 3 boats aground in the channel all hoping to get out of the harbor to race.  The solution was to get all of the crew on one side of the grounded boat to cant the keel while the skipper tried to "wiggle" the boat through the mud by moving the rudder back and forth while increasing the engine throttle.  If that wasn't sufficient to get the boat moving, some boats put a crew member on the boom and swung it out to increase the leverage and get the keel canted even more.  In some cases, a boat with shallower draft would cast the grounded boat a tow line and help pull the grounded boat through the mud until it was able to move forward on its own.  Race start times were adjusted to allow those racing to get to the starting line in time to begin the starting sequence.

Jubilee draws slightly more than 7 feet and grounded 3 times heading out but we did get out. Winds were in the mid-teens and waves were about 2 feet high.  Great racing conditions.  Used the #3 jib and had a great spinnaker run.  We took the gun as first in our class to cross the finish line; however, we ended up in 2nd place losing by a few seconds on adjusted time.

Jubilee finished last in getting into her slip.  We grounded several times getting into the harbor and had to be towed twice by other boats returning from the races.  We were also last in getting to Skipper's for the after race social gathering where the big topic of discussion was not the races but instead getting in and out of the harbor.

While Dwayne was off to the races, Carla stayed aboard Foreign Affair and watched a movie on Netflix.  She couldn't go ashore because while watching the movie, Foreign Affair went aground in her slip and was too far from the dock for Carla to get off the boat.  She also noticed our dock lines were getting pretty taught and let some of them out.  We've seen pictures pictures of boats suspended in air by the dock lines in places where the tides are really great.  Our situation was not so dire.

The low tide also revealed some round indentations in the mud near the shore.  These were made by fish, most likely striped bass, as nests for their eggs.  The fish use their tails and bodies to create these round nests to lay their eggs.