By Suzanna Leigh
“This t-shirt says ‘Nordland General Store’ on it,”R says as he folds the laundry (I wash, he folds). “I don’t recognize it.”
“It’s mine,” I say – and I am flooded with memories. Bob and I went aground on our boat Sea Change, on the way to Nordland. Nordland is a community deep in Mystery Bay, at the head of Kilsut Harbor on Marrowstone Island.
Where is Marrowstone Island? Well, if you look south from Port Townsend, you see two islands. One is Indian Island, a Navy base and munitions depot; a bridge across Port Townsend Channel connects Indian Island to the mainland at the south end. The other is Marrowstone Island, inhabited by civilians. These two islands are connected at the south end by an isthmus, and between them is Mystery Bay.
At the North end of Mystery Bay, there is a sand spit that is covered at high tide. A narrow winding channel between the sand spit and a submerged sand bar leads to Mystery Bay. At low tide …
… We had just come through Port Townsend Channel on an outgoing tidal current and had dropped anchor at Port Haddock, south of Port Townsend to take a lunch break. Perhaps we should have stayed an extra hour there. The tide was still on the way out as we passed a huge gray Navy ship loading or unloading munitions at Indian Island. Two little watchdog boats were making sure we didn’t come within a hundred yards of it. One of them followed us as we made our way toward the entrance to Mystery Bay. It’s good to know our Navy is doing it’s job, protecting that big ship from our little sailboat.
We checked the chart and located the green and red buoys marking the entrance. Red right returning – keep the red buoys and markers on your right and green on your left when going into a harbor. We threaded our way slowly between the exposed sand spit on our left and the red markers that stood on the submerged sand bar to our right.
OOOF! We stopped moving. What the? We were stuck in the sand. Aground.
Bob, who was a fan of the Hornblower books, remembered a scene where the British Naval hero and his crew “kedged” to get unstuck. We decided to try it. Bob loaded the anchor into the dingy and rowed out to deeper water. He dropped the anchor and made sure it was down good. Back on Sea Change, we pulled on the anchor line, trying to pull the sailboat closer to the anchor and thus into deeper water. It didn’t work. We were still stuck. Kedging may have worked in the fictional novel, but it didn’t work for us. At least not yet.
2:55 p.m. The tide was still going out, for at least another ½ hour. There was nothing more we could do until the tide came in enough to float the boat. I went below to read, to ease my tension, and to wait out the tide.
Walking around in the cabin, I noticed a different feel to the floor just aft of the V-berth. The floor was slightly humped there. While the rest of the boat seemed to move a bit with wind and current, the boat at this spot was very still. This must be where the keel is stuck in the sand, I thought.
I checked the chart. It looked like there was a red marker missing right about where we stuck. If the marker had been there, we would have steered further to the left, into deeper water.
3:25 p.m. Still stuck. A flock of seagulls circled noisily over head.
3:45 p.m. A passing motorboat sent enough wake our way to lift Sea Change slightly – just enough so that Bob could pull on the anchor line and pull us into deeper water. So we kedged off after all, thanks to a motorboat and a rising tide.
We rounded the spit and continued following the markers on a zigzag course deeper into Mystery Bay. When I looked over the side and saw eel grass brushing the hull, I held my breath, but the depth sounder said 10′ and we draw only 6′.
Within an hour we were anchored in Kilsut Harbor and rowed ashore to the Nordland Store. As we ate our ice cream bars, sitting on the store’s porch overlooking the harbor, we listened to islanders’ tales of other groundings on the sand spit and on the sand bar we had just escaped.
The most dramatic story was of two men who motored in a small boat to Port Townsend for a night on the town. After a night of drinking, they got into some trouble. They were fleeing the harbor police and tried to go directly over the sand spit – but they misjudged the tide. Crunch! Destroyed the boat and got arrested besides!
R hands me my “Nordland General Store” T-shirt, and I hold it close, then put it away, but the memory stays. Sometimes, no matter how careful we are in life, we go aground, get stuck, and need to wait for the tide to change before we can get unstuck and continue on our way.
For more sailing adventures and a peek into my studio, visit me on Substack, “Drinking Color,” https://suzannaleigh.substack.com/p/summer-is-for-sailing?r=ez6ga