Keep Your Feet OUT of the Anchor Locker

     
     Or, Now is not the time to go for a swim!

April 26, 2013

     The average depth of the ocean is 2.3 miles.

A friend of mine had gone with me on a club cruise to Terra Ceia, a little cove at the end of a narrow channel off Tampa Bay. It’s always a lovely cruise, with a sheltered anchorage. Boats raft up and often there’s a chili cook-off.

My friend had done a lot of small boat sailing, but hadn’t done much on bigger boats, and she had no familiarity with anchoring. But we didn’t have to put the anchor down, because the boat we rafted up to had its anchor down. We minimized the number of anchors down so if there was a wind shift during the night, we wouldn’t have too many crossed anchor rodes.

The next morning, however, we couldn’t get the engine started, and I did put the anchor down, and then the wind backed the boat away to set it. A friend came along, rafted up, helped us solve our battery problem, and we were ready to get on our way.

There was little wind and it was a simple process. I explained to my friend what I wanted her to do to help get the anchor up –- slowly pull the rode into the anchor locker as I slowly drove up on the anchor. I told her there would be no real physical effort because the line would be slack. I showed her how to sit on the back edge of the anchor locker, with her feet wedged on the corner edges, and to use her whole back to pull, although there would be little strain on the rode. I showed her how to lock it off temporarily if needed, and I was going to have her lock it off at the end of the double-braided rode, and I would come up and deal with the chain. Come to think of it, I gave her a lot of instructions all at once. Just once. Hmmm …

I emphasized that she must keep her feet out of the anchor locker, and explained to her that it was extremely dangerous to get the anchor rode wrapped around one’s leg. She said she understood, took the right position, put on gloves and was ready to go.

After about a minute, I told her to lock it off. I put the engine in neutral and walked forward to see how she was doing.

There she sat, feet in the anchor locker, with all the rode she had pulled piled on top of her feet.

I pointed out to her that if the anchor rode started to pay itself out, she could get a foot caught and be pulled into the water, tangled in the anchor rode. I showed her the knife clipped to my pants. I told her that since the water was only 8’ deep, there was a 50/50 chance that I could have cut her free. In deeper water I might not have been able to get to her.

She really hadn’t thought of anchors as dangerous things until then. She had a lot of instructions given to her at once, and she missed one of them in the excitement of doing a new and important thing on the boat.

LESSON LEARNED:

The fault lies with me, not my friend. I should have gone over this process with her more thoroughly. I should have made the dangers very clear to her. We both got impatient after the delay, but that’s no excuse.

In addition, I should have given her the knife and had her clip it to HER clothes. A bra strap would have done. If things went terribly wrong, she would be the one in the water, not me. She needed the knife, not me.

You can give very specific directions, and people may not hear you –- for the best of reasons –- they’re thinking, they’re excited, or just because a bird flew overhead and cried out in the middle of it. Maybe –- just maybe –- you gave unclear or even wrong directions. Maybe you overloaded the person with too much information all at once.

Check after you’ve given someone directions and make sure things are going as you expected. Anything we do on sailboats can be dangerous.