What’s the saying?…”There are those that run aground and deny it, and there are those that run aground and admit it. Either way at some point in your boating career you will run aground.
After a beautiful few days in the Dry Tortugas, exploring Ft Jefferson and Loggerhead key we headed back to Key West. We really enjoyed spending most of our time around Loggerhead Key, it was so peaceful and serene and it made for a great place to explore the reefs. Our last night anchored in Ft Jefferson was by far the best, the water around the boat was so clear you could see everything…even the bull shark and crocodile that were swimming around the docks! We took the opportunity to fly the drone as the sun was setting and got some gorgeous footage.
Our sail back to Key West was not quite the princess sail (as Mike liked to call it) that we had going out, but it was still a great day and we arrived to Boca Grande with enough time for London to enjoy some beach and swimming time while we enjoyed some sundowners.
The next morning we pulled into Key West, topped off the tanks and picked up my Mom and Dr Bob. We went for a quick sail out to Sand Key and Dry Rocks for some snorkeling. The water was a little cloudy with the 2-3 ft seas but we still saw the beautiful sea fans, lots of different fish and a few barracuda. It was the last day for my brother and Meg on board so we were glad we finally got to really enjoy being in the water.
Our next couple of days we decided to check out some of the islands on the Gulf side about 15 miles to the east of Key West. This is when things got interesting. We headed out in the morning weaving our way through the stand up paddle board race that was going on around Key West. We felt genuinely sorry for them as the wind was intense and they were beating in to a pretty good headwind. The same as we were about to do once we got into the Gulf. We took the Calda Channel out of Key West which was a little tricky but we made it out and started beating into the waves for about 9 miles. Our destination was Snipe Point. It was a little rough getting the dinghy in the water but was worth it. Snipe Point was a beautiful, quiet beach. We enjoyed sitting in the warm water, throwing sticks with London and the sun shining.
Our anchorage for the night was going to be Jewfish Basin, the wind was out of the east and we had following seas for the 5 mile sail. It was enjoyable, until we got to Jewfish…the channel on the charts is no longer there so we navigated our way in with no problems but realized there was not a lot of protection. So we decided to head back to Key West. If we timed it right we would be dropping the hook right at sunset. This was the start of a stressful night.
We headed back to Calda Channel, the same way we came out, we checked tide and it was similar to the same from when we headed out. Just as we got to Marker 1 for the Channel we felt bottom, the wind was strong on our port side and we were stuck. Trying with no luck to get off the mound of sand we were sitting on, our depth sounder was reading 2.1 feet…we draw 3.8! And tide was dropping. We had about 2 hours until tide was going to be rising again. We called SeaTow, and they brought a flat bottom boat out to try to help. Unfortunately the waves were rough, the wind was blowing and we are a heavy load. So with no luck of getting us off we decided to wait for the tide to rise. High tide was supposed to be at 3:45am, when SeaTow left us it was 9:45pm. It was going to be a long night! Fortunately we were able to see that we were just siting on sand and grass. We turned on all our lights and called the Coast Guard to let them know we were grounded because we were literally sitting at the Channel entrance and we wanted to make sure another boat could see us.
Right around 11:30pm the boat started rocking more and Mike decided it was time to try. We had our game plan…we were going to get unstuck and anchor about 1 mile from the Channel entrance in deeper waters and spend the night. Sure enough he put engines in reverse and we smoothly came right off the mound of sand. We dropped anchor and spent a very rolling night in the Gulf. The next day once we got to the marina, Mike dove the bottom of the boat to assess and as far as he could tell there was no damage. We are lucky that our rudders and sail drives sit higher than our keels and because it was sand we basically were just resting on the keels. It was a panic moment for sure, but now we can officially join the club of the grounded! I am sure it won’t be the last time, but hopefully can stay floating for a while.
