Comedy of Errors

6.15

We had an easy sail up to Fort Meyers Beach, where we cut into a narrow channel that looped back behind the island and opened up to a mooring field. The field had about 70 balls in it and there were only about 20 of them occupied. We searched out a ball that was away from other boaters (so we could run our generator) and then motored over to pick it up.
On a side note, when picking up a mooring ball you use a pole called a boat hook - it is a retractable pole that has one rubber stopper coming straight off the end, used to push other boats or pilings away from you, and then a hook coming off the side, used to hooks lines or loops while docking or mooring.
So I motored us over to our ball of choice while Brad stood on the bow with the boat hook, ready to hook the loop coming from the mooring ball and thread one of our dock lines through it. On the first approach, he couldn't get the boat hook in the loop. On the second approach, he realized that we had selected a newer ball and the loop had never been used, therefore was very tightly wound and was difficult to grab. On the third approach, although he managed to hook the loop and pull the ball up to the boat, it was hard to thread the line through and the current ripped us away from the ball before he had gotten the line attached. Also in his haste to reach over and grab the ball, he had accidentally tossed the boat hook over to his side - directly off the boat and into the water. From 36ft back, all I could do was yelp and watch helplessly as our $50 boat hook slid into the ripping current of the river. Now thoroughly annoyed and pissed off, Brad threw a small temper tantrum on the bow of the boat. A few choice words were used, and he also managed to dent the second boat hook that I had given him after beating it on the forestay. Now it was us against the ball - we were determined to get on this damn ball! Fortunately for my sake and the sake of our last boat hook, a neighboring sailboater had witnessed our struggle and came dinghy-ing over to help us out.
Having successfully attached to the mooring ball, we started our routine of getting the boat secure and the dinghy ready to go into land. Brad untied the 2 of the 3 lines attaching the dinghy to the mothership and we started loading the paddles and other various items. At about the time that Brad got into the dinghy and I turned my back for half a second, the line tying the dinghy to the boat snapped and Brad quickly started drifting backwards in the rushing current. I quickly grabbed a line to throw to him, but he was already out of reach. Having not yet attached the motor, I watched in horror as he drifted quickly down the river. I could not imagine having to untie the mooring lines, go get him and then having the re-moor!! I yelled at him to use the paddles. As you will recall, we have had a previous encounter with the oars and it was unsuccessful. But in Naples, we bought a brand new used hard bottom 11' dinghy. This bad boy was equipped with oar locks - so he slipped them in and started rowing for all he was worth. Since he was having to go against the current it took a bit longer, but the oars worked like a champ and he safely made it back to the boat.
Could anything else go wrong today?!
We finally got ourselves together and went to land to get a bite to eat. We had a delicious mahi filet at a local restaurant, walked out on the pier and then headed back to the mothership. On the way back to the boat, we looked around the mooring field and realized the current had all the boats facing south...except our boat, which was perpendicular to shore. What the heck?! Upon closer inspection, we realized that the current had lulled at some point and then picked back up and had managed to wrap the mooring ball's line around our keel. The ball (which is very bouyant and usually floats happily on the surface) had been pulled under our boat and our bow lines were extremely tight - so much so that they were actually taking off some of our bottom paint. Never having been in this situation before, we boarded the boat and argued about the best solution. We finally turned on the engine and tried to back ourselves out of the situation. The tricky part with this was that the lines were close to our propeller and if we did manage to free them, there was a strong possibility that they could get caught - bad news for a boat!
So we finally decided to wait it out. Logic said that if the current pushed the boat onto the line that it should also get it off when it turned around. Sure enough, about 5 hours later, the ball came out and everything shifted back to normal. We hurried on deck to pull in the lines in hope that if they were tighter, the situation would not occur again.
After a day like today, we turned in early and hoped that tomorrow would be much better.