We ran aground in about three feet of water on shoaling right in the middle of the channel, literally between the two channel markers! This happened just as we were passing Lockwood's Folly inlet. This inlet is notorious in the guidebooks for bad shoaling caused by the strong tidal currents in & out of the inlet. Indeed that was Lockwood's folly, when in the 1800's he built a boat that was too deep to exit the inlet. Just next to us was nine feet of water. It was a soft sandy bottom but we were stuck but good! (my newest american saying). And on a dropping tide, so every moment that passed we were in less & less water. We tried the motor. Reverse. Forward. We tried getting the boom all over to one side to tilt the boat. We deployed the entire genoa to use the wind to shake us off. We were stuck but real good. We were about to call Tow Boat US when a good samaritan alone in a motorized fishing boat offered to help tow us off. We threw him a line (it's important to throw your line because in maritime law if he throws us his line he owns our boat) and after a few tries we finally got off.
That evening out of necessity from lack of options we anchored in another very shallow spot, also infamous in the guidebooks for its lack of depth. We anchored just before low tide. About 20 minutes after we anchored a sandbar appeared out of the water only 60ft away from us. We knew it was there from the guidebooks but it's still disconcerting to see it so close.
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| You can kind of see the propeller kicking up sand |
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| Good samaritan |
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| Shrimpers |
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| Forgot to turn off the bath |
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| Yummy |
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