You know what they say about the plans of mice and men – they oft go awry!

But, Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain;
The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy! – Robert Burns

And so our story begins as we leave San Domingo Creek on our side trip to Deale Maryland before continuing north to Rock Hall; we had a short-haul scheduled in Deale in order to have the bottom power-washed and for me to change the zincs.  The former to get rid of all the growth on the bottom of Rocinante’s hull and the latter to make sure we didn’t lose our saildrive and/or our prop!

Anyway, after all the thunderstorms and strong winds during our last week in St. Michaels we now had no wind whatsoever… wait, did I leave out the part about the major thunderstorm that rolled through the anchorage?  Gee, you must think that cruising is all sunshine & rainbows!

Slip Slidin’ Away

If I remember correctly, we were enjoying another beautiful saturday evening in the cockpit, when we started to notice the dark clouds building in the distance.  As time went on, the thunder started as did the lightning.  Now, thunderstorms are fairly common at this time of year in the Chesapeake and we’ve been through our fair share of them, so as usual, we simply sat there watching its approach and enjoying the light show.  But as we were soon to find out, this was no “typical” thunderstorm.  Nope, this sucker was huge.  Fortunately, I always follow the same procedure as storms approach while we’re anchored in an unknown area – specifically, I shut all the hatches & port-lights and fire up the engine just in case.

Sure enough, when this storm hit, it hit hard!  In an instant, we were hit with torrential rains, the wind direction shifted 180° and we were blown sideways by a huge gust that ripped our anchor loose!  In a matter of seconds, we went from securely anchored in our quiet creek to barreling uncontrollably down the river towards the previously gorgeous private docks that were now transformed into lethal, hull breaching protrusions along the shore!

I manned the helm and prepared to motor away from the rocks if it became necessary, but I cannot take credit for saving the day – we simply dragged fast enough to miss the first dock and the anchor grabbed again just in time to avoid hitting the second dock!  We swung towards shore tethered by our anchor chain and settled about 40 ft off the rocks as the winds continued to howl like a banshee, threatening  to rip us free and send us crashing into the rocks.  Adrenaline rushing through my veins, I stayed at the helm for the next 45 minutes with a death grip on the wheel!

Needless to say, short of scaring the heck out of us, nothing happened.  We dragged a few more feet during the 45 minutes it took for the storm to subside and ended up soft grounding (mud). The following day, the rising tide allowed me to kedge off using our anchor and we were on our way.  We later found out that particular storm had packed 45 mph gusts with a few as high as 60!  Gee, I guess that would explain why our anchor gave!

Time for a short-haul

As I was saying, after all that, we had no wind whatsoever today and thus, we simply motored back to Herrington Harbour North Marina for our short-haul.  Arriving in the early evening, we tied off at the T-head to await our scheduled appointment the following morning and headed out for dinner at the local watering hole!

Early the next morning, we prepped Rocinante for her short-haul.  The crew would be coming by at 11:30 to take her over to the slipway where they would use a travelift to haul her out of the water, so, we packed up as we do when we set sail; putting away anything that might fall and break in a seaway and then headed off to do laundry.

At 11:20 I headed back to the slipway with my tools as I awaited our short-haul.  Unfortunately, it seems that the travlift they normally use for us was otherwise occupied and their attempt to use a smaller one failed.  Our mast was too tall to clear the cross beam!  They lowered Rocinante back into the water and turned her around hoping to bring her in backwards… no luck, the wind generator off our stern wouldn’t clear!

As it turned out, our 11:30 short-haul didn’t happend until late in the day and while I managed to replace both the shaft zinc and the prop zinc, we still had quite a bit to do, so we would not be leaving on schedule.

Ok, we’re on our way for sure!

With Rocinante all set to continue her voyage north, we slipped our lines early the next morning and made our way out of the marina down the channel, past the breakwater and into Herring Bay.  With our relatively deep draft, we can’t simply cut across to the chesapeake, but rather, we needed to work our way south for almost 2 nautical miles to get around a shoal that averages about 4’ in depth.

After about 30 minutes of motoring through increasing chop, we sighted Red Buoy #2.  We made our way past and turned to port as I pushed forward on the throttle to speed up and cut through the chop… yeah, right!  RPMs drop instead! What the heck? I throttle back to try and stabilize the engine and try again… RPMs drop and the engine cuts out… of course, we start drifting towards the shallows.  I turn the key and our diesel engine starts up again.

We have a couple of options here: we can drop anchor and try to figure out what’s going on, but bouncing around out here would make that difficult and not much fun; We could turn around and try to get back to Herrington Harbour North, but there is no way I would trust that the engine would continue running through these shallows for the 30ish minutes it would take to get back; I had our sails at the ready and I have gotten into a slip under sail in the past (engine died just outside Haverstraw marina at 11:30 at night, on the Hudson River, during a storm!) but I can tell you that it’s no fun! The last option, and the one I chose, was to try and get to Herrington Harbour South and hope that the engine didn’t quit while we where in the stone-walled entrance channel!

We got Rocinante turned aound and headed towards Herrington Harbour South – sure enough, as we bounced around in the confused seas approaching the entrance channel, the engine quite once more. Fortunately, it also started up again, so, we kept going, made it in and managed to get alongside the transient dock and tie off just as she gave her all and died – guess we’re going to be delayed; again!

Till next time,

Carlos & Maria

SV Rocinante…_/)