Entry #83: N44.53.123, W87.25.360
Saturday, July 20th (Day 75) – The storms ended and the skies were clearing as I progressed through the canal towards the town of Sturgeon Bay. As I slowly motored my way the canal widened. I sadly realized that had I been able to make it through the canal opening last night, I could have anchored in calmer waters and likely not had the anchor line failure. Oh well. Its in the past, enjoy the tranquility of the morning.
I came to the first of three draw bridges around 8:45 am. For the non-boater readers, there are one of two protocols to the opening of a drawbridge. Either it will automatically open at set intervals like every hour on the hour or, you need to hail the bridge attendant on a designated VHF channel requesting to open the drawbridge.
I hailed the first draw bridge asking the attendant the clearance height of the bridge. He informed me that the clearance was 40 feet. NTL spars height above the waterline was under 35′ so I went under the draw bridge without it needing to be opened.
At approximately 9:15 I came upon the second drawbridge. It was too low for me to go under and would need to be raised. I hailed the draw bridge attendant and was instructed to wait as the bridge will open on the hour. There was a light current so I motored to the side and waited. On the hour the bridge promptly began to open. As I tried to position NTL in front of the bridge I found myself repeatedly increasing the throttle revving it to over 3,000 rpms as I was making little progress. I slowly made my way under the bridge at approximately 2 mph. The water current must have increased so I thought. The third bridge was only a few thousand feet further and began to open at 9:30. Again I struggled against the current to make it through.
When I finally made it through, I put the engine in neutral and looked around. To my surprise NTL was surrounded by weeds. Slowly I progressed to were I could tie up and got out of the boat to get a better look. Not only was NTL surrounded but my prop was deeply tangled with the weeds as well! I took my dock pole and spent the next hour removing the weeds from NTL the best I could. I must have removed hundreds of pounds of weeds.
As I was approaching Green Bay (not the city, the water body), I checked my weather apps only to find severe thunderstorms scheduled to hit around 4 pm! Though tired, I was hoping to advance north on Green Bay but with severe weather on the way, I decided to safe harbor in Sawyer Harbor. I jury rigged my damaged anchor line and set anchor about 100 feet away from the waters edge against the western tree line for protection against the incoming storm and wind from the west. The storm hit as predicted and I went into my cabin again hoping one more time not to be struck by the lightning.
Suddenly in the middle of the building storm, NTL stopped shaking? Puzzled I looked out the cabin window and saw that my anchor was not holding and NTL was being pushed out into the bay. I quickly got out in the torrential rain, gale winds and lightning and secured a second anchor. NTL continued to drift as both anchors together were not holding! I did not want to crash against the rocks so I moved to the cockpit started the engine and gave it all she had. But to no avail as both anchors and fully revved engine could not prevent NTL from being swept against the bank in a little over 2 feet of water! Fortunately, the storm pushed NTL against thick bushes that kept us from running hard aground. And though the GPS showed that we were in 2 feet of water, it must have been mud and so NTL tilted against the bushes but didn’t go completely sideways. Well nothing more I could do, so I went below and waited it out. Only later I found out that the winds were clocked at OVER 90 MPH together with a tornado! No wonder NTLs anchors didn’t hold! I’m lucky to have survived!
When the storm had finally blown over, I went back on deck and raised both anchors. I threw the bow anchor out towards the lake then threw the second anchor towards the lake from the stern of the boat. I slowly pulled at each anchor until I was able to extract NTL from the bushes and into deeper water. I started the engine and powered back to the other side of the bay and re-anchored in only five feet of water some fifty feet from the shore tree line!
Never Too Late For 