Yo, hee, ho, yee-oh, ho

Abra Cove, Aialik Glacial Basin AK, 8:00 a.m. on a Saturday 7-AUG-2021 — Jennifer sleeps. We’ll spend the day here. An audio book plays in Flora’s cabin. Sleep comes to Flora with great difficulty and only for short periods of time.

Across the sound, giants grumble in the glacier. The rumbles, which must be down around 40 Hertz, seem to be something we should feel in our ribs instead it is the rumble of distance thunder, of dinosaurs, of giants.

It has been a still night with no wind and very little current from the rising and falling of the tide. Caro Babbo meanders around her anchor idly, not like a drunk, like a person with time to spare, waiting.

The water here is deep, we are anchored in 70 ft, which is about the normal for this trip. It means that the circle Caro Babbo revolves around her anchor is 100 ft longer than a standard American football field. We have anchored this trip in close to 100 ft with 300 feet of anchor rode, yielding a circle 600 ft in diameter, twice an American football field.

Correctly anchoring can take a few tries. With rodes this long the trick is not to swing into some place where there is no water, or will be no water at low tide.

Three days ago… We dropped anchor with 270 ft of rode. After a few moments, Jennifer said, ”we need to move. Our swing will take us to the shore. Would you pull up the anchor?”

I pull up the anchor by hand every morning before we leave, and it is not uncommon to have to reset the anchor by pulling it up, moving to a different place and dropping it again, as were about to do.

With the anchor on the end, the rode, vertically, in 70 ft of water is probably less than 60 pounds.

An article written years ago, when I was much less than 60 years old, as was, I suspect, the author, gave the friendly advice that after about 60 years old one is no longer able to pull anchor up by hand. 60 years old past me by 3/4 of a decade ago.

This time pulling up the anchor we were clearly in a rather strong current, it is not something that is unusual but makes pulling an anchor up more difficult. Normally, once I start pulling the anchor the boat gains momentum as I reel in the rode and moves forward. Pulling the rode until I get to the chain is merely a matter of maintaining momentum. This time each 18-inch pull was a pull against the current and while I was able to do it, that article, for the first time in many years, came to mind.

Eventually I reached the end of the rode. I pulled the anchor free of the bottom and we began to drift backwards; the anchor and chain are heavy; I use my legs to pull. As it neared the surface I noticed that the chain made an infitestimal wake as we moved backwards.

For a moment, I thought to myself, yes this is consistent we are drifting backwards, but in that moment I realized if we were drifting backwards we would be drifting backwards with the water and have no relative motion to the water. There would be no wake. I called back to Jennifer, ”are we in gear, are we in reverse?” I was answered with laughter, and a laughing apology, ”yes, yes, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. We have been in reverse the entire time” followed by more laughter.

My fears of not being able to pull up an anchor in these advanced years disappeared in Jennifer’s laughter, I had pulled the boat 270 ft forward against the propeller pulling us backwards.

Sent from Iridium Mail & Web.

Author: johnjuliano

One-third owner of Caro Babbo, co-captain and in command whenever Caro Babbo is under sail. View all posts by johnjuliano