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Aground!
Sunday, March 22, 0800, Inport, Lighthouse Boat Yard near Daytona Beach, Florida, Onboard Griffin.

There is one significant problem with sending these daily e-mail updates to 60+ people in three countries on two continents. When you screw up, the world gets to know about it.

Ann and Jud Englestad picked us up for Dinner. It took them 23 seconds to tour our home afloat.

We woke up early and hit the waterway at 0630. Exiting the St. Lucie River, we turned north and started following the magenta line. Our charts are divided into long strips about 22 inches by 6 inches. In the center of the strip is a magenta line that follows the track of the Intra-Coastal Waterway from Miami to Norfolk. Our task is to cruise up this line until we get home. The Corps of Engineers try and keep the channel dredged to a 12 foot project depth from Ft.Pierce to Norfolk, and 10 south of there. As we only draw 3' 2" that is more than adequate for us.

Pelicans are more plentiful than pigeons in Central Park down here in south Florida. This guy was sitting on the end of our boat slip.

When you are cruising up the magenta line, it is easy to get confused about where on the chart you are. I learned a trick from Mike Baldwin on his family's 44' Atlantic motoryacht. On Tomfoolery they use a metal block with a little pointer and they advance that down the chart, keeping track of the channel markers they pass. On Griffin, with a little less chart table space, we use the little "Sign Here" sticky note tabs you can get at any office supply store. We move our sticky note every time we pass a mark and that way both Tom and I can immediately know where we are on the chart.

(All this isn't justification. I'm getting to that part. I'm just bringing everybody up to speed as to how we navigate onboard Griffin. Back to the voyage.)

We left the river and turned north in the ICW. The first vessel we passed was a robust Nordhavn 46. One of these has gone around the world, and they claim more ocean cruising miles for the class than any other production boat. We chatted on the VHF radio and the Nordhavn told us to go by at full cruise speed as they had stabilizers and our wake was irrelevant to them. We did, and it was neat to watch. No rolling from our wake at all.

Good Company! A 63' Hatteras on the left. A 37' Bertram on the right. Griffin in the middle.

We headed north up the Indian River towards Titusville. With few speed zones we were making great time. We decided to pass Titusville, our original night stop destination, and press on to New Smyrna Beach. We passed the Kennedy Space Flight Center with the huge Apollo Assembly Building on our right. We were making such good time we decided to advance our goal even further to Daytona Beach. Tom decided to take a nap and I drove up the nearly deserted waterway.

We rounded haulover cut at the top of the Indian River and entered Mosquito Lagoon. The Lagoon is about 15 miles long and 3 miles wide. The channel runs along the western edge of the Lagoon. We cruised north in the center of the channel. Ahead I noticed a 45' sailboat running north. We would have to pass her. The way to pass sailboats and other slower craft is to come up astern of them and decide which side has more deep water to pass on. Frequently the slower craft will ease over to the right and we pass on the left, but sometimes the boat being passed justs sits dead center and it is up to the passer to make the call.

I looked at the chart. Mosquito Lagoon is fairly deep outside the channel. Where we were it was 5 feet or more to the right, less to the left. I decided to ease over to the right and pass the sailboat on that side. When you get close to the sailboat, the nice thing to do is to slow down to about 6 mph so we don't bang them around with our wake. You pass them slowly and then kick it back up to planning speed. We closed in on the sailboat as I eased over to the right edge of the channel. I pulled the throttles back from 3,000 rpm to 1,500 to slow. We settled down in to the water as we dropped off plane. BLAM!

The QE II Defense: Here is the chart of the channel where we went aground. We passed green marker 15 at the bottom of the photo, heading up the page. The sailboat was abeam red marker 14 in approximately the center of the channel. With 5 feet of charted water for hundreds of yards to the right of the channel, I gave the sailboat a comfortable berth, heading over to what I thought was about the edge of the channel. We hit the bottom to the left of the arrow point, right on the edge of the channel.

The starboard engine stopped. I pulled both throttles to idle. We banged as we slowed, but floated free right away. The wind, which was blowind 28, gusting to 33 off the port beam started pushing us toward the shallow water. I put the port engine in reverse and restarted the starboard engine. We backed up into the center of the channel. We turned the bow north and advanced the throttles. At about 2,000 rpm we started to get a vibration that increased with engine speed so we immediately backed down. Optomistically, we hoped that there was just a crab trap or something wrapped around the screw.

We pulled over the the left side of the channel as that was upwind, and dropped the anchor. We shut down the engines and I got my bathing suit. I could have used a wet suit, but had to make do with what we had. I jumped in the cold water with a mask and snorkle. Tom told me to wait on the surface until I adjusted to the cold water. I felt below with my feet and I was able to feel the props with my toes. I spun the blades around and gave them a thorough going over with my feet. The port screw was fine. I moved around to the starboard side. This was the one that had stopped the engine. I felt with my toes. One of the blades was bent back about 30 degrees for what I'm estimating is the outer 3 inches.

I climbed back aboard and we restarted the engines. We pulled up the anchor and headed north at a slow cruise. The sailboat that I was trying to pass had stopped about half a mile ahead to see if we needed support. When we got underway again, so did they.

I got on the phone and found the nearest boat yard with travel lift was 20 miles north or 20 south. We headed north. The folks at Lighthouse Boat Yard are very accomodating. He is coming here at 9:00am to haul us out of the water. Unfortunately the nearest prop shop is up in Jacksonville, about a 2 hour car ride. We are going to drive the prop up there first thing Monday and wait for it to be repaired and then get back here to relaunch Griffin and get going again. The delay should only be 2 days if we are lucky.

Tom thinks I should use one of three defense strategies for this e-mail confession. The first, his personal favorite, is the Sympathy Defense: We were trying to be nice to the sailboat so we went out of our way and got wacked by the Second Defense. The QE 2 Defense. Remember when the QE 2 went aground off the coast of New England on an uncharted sea mount. We should blame NOAA and the Corps of Engineers. Tom also has a third line of reasoning that is a little weak that revolves around the weather, high winds blowing the water out of Mosquito Lagoon and shoving us to the right and out of the channel. He calls that the El Nino Defense.

Tom also wants me to point out that I was able to nap for two hours south of Titusville while he drove the boat north with zero incidents. He laid down for 10 minutes and BLAM!

Looking on the bright side, we are going to get the chance to clean and paint the bottom today, replace the zincs, and get her ready for the summer. Something I had planned to do in a month or two anyway. If we can pick up one mph from a clean bottom for the rest of the trip that will pick up 1/2 day of the lost time. We are still on track to make it home by Sunday Night. As an additional benefit, these kind of incidents make good reading and you always remember the drama in life more than the monotony. As the money flows out of my wallet, I'll try to remember that.

From here on out we are going to try and keep the northbound grounding score to Jon-1, Tom-0.

Warm regards,

The Griffin Crew, Jon & Tom

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