Stuck in the Mud - Lloyd Bay, Queensland, Australia
Harmonie
Don and Anne Myers
Sat 17 Jul 2010 02:34
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12:52.703S 143:21.558E
June 15th. The third day of our sailing
frenzy. 9 hours, 70 miles. Perfect wind.
At the end of the day, we motored well up into the
head of Lloyd Bay in order to get some relief from the roaring wind for the
night. The chart, the state of the tide and a friendly Aussie on a fuel
barge anchored nearby all said we were headed in the right direction, when
GLUG! That semi-sickening brief moment in time when momentum carries your
body forward while your boat mires itself into the muddy bottom and stops -
rather abruptly. We tried briefly to un-stick ourselves, but decided it
was silly to keep working at it when the incoming tide would take care of the
problem for us in three or four hours. Down went the anchor, which seemed
silly given our stuck state, but we knew it would eventually serve its
purpose. What followed were two sheepish VHF radio conversations.
One with the friendly Aussie fuel barge guy and one with Storyteller. Both
went something like this:
"Yup, we're aground."
"Nope, the chart doesn't indicate that it's this
shallow right here."
"Yup, looks like we'll stay here for the
night."
"Nope, shouldn't be a problem, we'll just wait for
the tide to come in tonight and we'll float off."
"Nope, won't have to worry about dragging anchor." "Yup, we'll have to get up and go tomorrow morning
really early before the tide goes out again."
All slightly embarrassing, but not upsetting.
It would have been a different story if we weren't mired in the muck of a river
estuary and instead had slammed into an unforgiving reef off the coast of an
island. If that were the case, we wouldn't have calmly set down the anchor
and gone about the business of preparing dinner, eating dinner and
watching a couple of episodes of Sex and the City on DVD while waiting for
the tide to come in and rescue us. Which it did, at around 7:30 that
night. We could feel it slowly starting to happen as the depth meter
registered 0.1 meters of water beneath the keel. The boat started to
turn slightly sideways to the wind (before this we were stuck with the wind on
our stern), then beam to the wind, then the boat slid around and
pointed into the wind just as a properly anchored boat should. The next
morning we skedaddled at 6:25 before what water there was disappeared out from
under us.
Picture 1 - Lloyd Bay at dusk. Not much to
see.
When we first arrived, in between telling us about
how and where to get ashore, the friendly Aussie fuel barge guy said he'd seen a
4 meter croc hanging around the area. This was no surprise, we were stuck
in the muddy mouth of a river surrounded by mangroves. A crocodile's dream
home. We didn't go ashore. Or swim.
Anne
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