Learning something new EVERY day now....surviving a grounding!

Well it has been an interesting few days…particularly with the grounding yesterday!

We left Green Turtle Bay and headed up the river about 12 miles to Kuttawa Bay where we spend Saturday behind their breakwater. It’s actually an old road and bridge which they cut a hole in to make a channel. You can see asphalt under the piles of stone that they have put on the road to protect the bay during higher water in the spring. We are about 3-5 feet below normal pool which can make for some shallow running.

We kayaked around the bay, sunshined a bit and did our usual routines of running the generator to top up the refrigeration and at the same time charge all the electronic batteries that need it (GPS, VHS Radio’s, Phones, Computers, Flashlights, Radio, Camera’s, house batteries, jump start battery, etc.) There is a ton of stuff to charge. We need to buy new batteries for the inverter though as it seems to be shot. We usually do the generator routine after dark so we can run our tiki lights up on the bridge too.

After Kuttawa we went upriver thirty miles to Dry Creek, a narrow channel snaked up into the bay and we found good water in a cove to starboard and stayed there two days. We fished enough to catch dinner for last night and motored down the river in the dingy to the Tennessee Border. Nice slow troll along the rocky bluffs. We pulled in to a small bay to let a tow go by and found ourselves on the beach watching a Grand Haven Boat named Headquarters go by….golden loopers we met at GTB that were returning from Nashville.

We cruised downriver yesterday to another anchorage 20 miles back. There were a few buoys to mark our way into Dryden Creek Anchorage and some missing too, as we found out. We headed to port along the peninsula and in no time at all felt a bump and came to an abrupt stop. We were grounded and as far as we could tell, hard aground. The props were turning and in reverse we kicked up some great swirls of mud. Nothing. Vaughn went back to the swim platform to check depth with the handheld and reported 5 feet of depth and that the boat was about a foot out of the water in the stern!

A jet ski came by and offered to help. He recommended that we try one prop at a time and try to wiggle out. He hooked a tow line to our port stern and tugged on the boat as I tried props in reverse. The boat would rock and roll to the point Vaughn was holding on and things were tossed in the cabin. I would reverse the prop that was higher from the ground and really run up the RPM’s. It must have been a sight with this big beast rocking in the mud and belching blue smoke as we burned out the carbon for the day. After a couple of minutes I gave up and went back to release the jet ski.

There was a companion jet ski with two women on board and they said that the boat had moved a bit. It was also laying a little lower in the water too. So we tried it one more time. A little more wiggle and we were free! So a hard grounding, apparently in the mud and hopefully no damage to hull or running gear. There are so many rocks around that we felt blessed not to have had a much worse experience. It’s still floating and the props turn.

A little shaken, we carefully moved into the other bay to starboard and found some deep water to anchor in. We think the depth guage had cut out because we never got our shallow water alarm. We had gone from 17 feet to grounded in the space of a short cell phone call!

We launched the kayaks and did a tour around the two bays here. Nice place with undeveloped shoreline and reasonable protection from wind and waves. An abandoned boat launch nearby was covered with driftwood so we decided to have shore dinner, cooking our fish in packets over an open fire. Watched the sunset by the bonfire and considered ourselves very lucky indeed. What a day!