Heading out and hung up Lindsay McRory April 5, 1996 Hail and thunderstorms delayed our departure yet another day. After 93 days in Titusville, what's another day? We were all surprised to see hail--large hail at that--here in Florida. The day of departing Titusville, we woke to overcast skies and 25-mph winds. It was the first day of a cold front moving in from the north. As we left the dock, we broke one of our golden rules--always wait for the weather. After a rusty departure effort, Denise commented that the reverse position on the transmission control felt a little different. It had been three months since the last time we used it. It might be a little sticky. Nothing a little gear grease won't cure. The ride from Titusville to Dragon Point (near Melbourne) went quickly with all the wind behind us. Hakuna Matata charged along at eight and nine knots, perfectly happy with the conditions. After we rounded Dragon Point the wind picked up and was now on our nose. We headed up the Banana River looking for a sheltered place to drop the hook. It was time to try out Mr. Ugly, the MAX-20 anchor we recently added to our ground tackle. We found a spot and down he went, in 20 feet of water. This is a little ironic because it is almost impossible to find 20 feet of water on the entire Intercoastal Waterway. After the anchor was down for a few seconds the boat started jumping around like a scared horse trying to pull away from a bridle. One second we were sailing over the anchor, then it would grab, the boat would flip around and sail off in another direction. We were all over the river, back and forth, jerking around. The sails were down, and the boat was in neutral. This went one for only a minute or so, but it seemed longer. Good thing there were no other boats close by. Denise killed the engine and we drifted back onto the hook. Suddenly it seemed like the boat was hit with a tranquilizer dart. I had never in my life seen, much less performed, such a dismal display of anchoring technique. It was windy, which should have made things easier. There may have been a contrary current flowing through the river, but that would not have had such an impact. I dismissed the incident as not paying enough attention to our boat speed when the hook was dropped. Up early the next morning, I started the engine and then went to the bow to remove the snub line. We were sailing over the anchor and across the river again. Back to the cockpit I killed the engine, and again we rested easy back on the anchor. After a quick inspection I found the transmission linkage had lost a cotter pin, so we never had a neutral or a reverse gear. Now everything made more sense. Yesterday, with a lot of wind on our nose, in forward gear at idle speed, we were falling back just a bit, making us think we were in neutral. But as soon as the wind got to one side of the boat, off we would charge until the anchor caught and changed our direction. Nothing we want to repeat again. Fixing the linkage was easy. Charts and binos to the cockpit, raise Mr. Ugly, and we're off. Hmmmm. Mr. Ugly didn't want to come up. It took only a few attempts to power the anchor out before I realized it was really, really stuck. Any more powering could result in serious damage to the boat. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that our little dance around the river was enough to wrap the chain around virtually anything. Stuck anchors can be a real problem. Most books and magazine articles on anchoring offer many tips and tricks to apply more force in an effort to retrieve a stuck anchor. Grapnel hooks and trip lines can also be used to aid retrieval. I haven't read anything that addressed this problem, where so much pressure has been applied to the chain rode that it won't budge. Ripping large chucks out of the deck--usually with a windlass or sampson post still attached--is the most common outcome of a power struggle with the bottom. The breaking load for 3/8 BBB chain is 11,000 pounds. A lot would break on the boat before the chain broke. The local diver was a man named J.J. who lived on his trimaran in the Banana River. He was out for the day but would be back in the morning. We set a second anchor, just in case we somehow unspun ourselves by accident. After dinner a delta rocket carrying a communications satellite took off from the air base at Cape Canaveral, followed by a lunar eclipse. J.J. arrived at 9 a.m. and followed the anchor rode down through a twisty path of rock ledges and other debris lying on the bottom. He confirmed our suspicion that nothing could have been done from above to free the tangled mess. The chain rode was wrapped around two different rock ledges and a piece of cement. Thirty minutes and $35 later we were on the road again.