Major foul-up pays a brief visit

Opps.  In a moment of inattention while Alex was preparing the anchor, Helen drove into a mud bank in the Lynher river (Plymouth).  Full revs astern failed to get us off it.  Fortunately: i) the mud is very soft (we didn’t notice the touch) and ii) it was 30min before low tide and so the water was only going to fall another 0.5m before it started rising again.  While we worried about Ventata falling over and generally scrabbled around in nervous activity, she settled gently into the ooze, remaining perfectly upright.

Kayak inflated in super quick time.  We lowered the heavy main anchor and the 25m of chain into it and splashed our way into deeper water, paying it out as we went and dropping the anchor over as far out as we could.  Kayak failed to capsize although it did wobble a bit.

Came back for the lightweight fortress anchor and repeated the process to anchor the stern.

As all this haste was a bit undignified we nonchalantly washed down the starboard side of the hull with a sponge and a bucket of boat wash to make it look like it was all part of the plan.  Alex had cleaned the port side when we were moored port-side-to in Dartmouth and we did intend doing the other side when we had the kayak out, but it hadn’t really been on the plan for today.

Then hand-washed the clothes (salty-wet and muddy) and assembled chilli con carne in the slow cooker.

After a couple of hours we floated off.  We tensioned both anchor lines to stop us from being blown back into shallow water while we waited for there to be enough space to manoeuvre to a deeper spot.  To make us feel better, while we were setting at our new anchorage, about 150m from where we initially grounded we watched a Southerly yacht come in and do exactly the same thing. Fortunately for them, Southerlies have lifting keels, so after a lot of revving of engines they moved to a safer spot.  

Salcombe was good, by the way, although we were a bit miffed to be charged £12 for anchoring on the first night.  Got away with it on the second, possibly because we spent so long out walking on part of the SW coast path that we missed the harbour master on his rounds.