......................--- We Begin the Day Under Water ---
.......................................--- Saturday Oct. 03, 2009 ---
Day's Starting and Stopping Points Under Sail:
Today's Starting Waypoint #7 = N. 37o 06.172' -- W. -111o 10.453
Today's Ending Waypoint #9 = N. 37o 06.360' -- W. -111o 03.036
Entrance to Dangling Rope Marina Waypoint #8 = N. 37o 06.465' -- W. -111o 05.697
Night's Anchorage: In Balance Rock Canyon (west side).
Anchorage = N. 37o 06.923' -- W. 111o 03.155'
Today's Progress: Sailed Total =12 miles -- Up-Lake = 8 1/2 miles -- Motored = 3 1/2 milesTrip Totals: Sailed 51 1/2 miles -- Up Lake Miles 33 1/2 -- River Mile 43 -- Motored 15 miles
What a day today and the next day would prove to be. By far the two biggest challenges of our young sailing careers.
We really hoped to make some distance up the lake in the morning's southwest winds that had become somewhat consistent. In fact this area's prevailing winds are out of the southwest and that was why we decided to put in at Page and try sailing the lake from its southwest end up to its northeast headwaters and not the other way around. We were hoping for more running and reaching vs. tacking, but still got plenty of that in the fickled winds you will find while sailing this canyon lake. We were up well..............
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.......before the sun and had our usual cereal with coffee breakfast and were ready to sail about 30 minutes after sunrise. The wind was probably 5-8 mph and about perfect for us. Ruth was on the outboard and I was pulling us towards the anchor when we stopped far short of getting to the anchor chain.
The anchor rode was going straight down and I could see the top of a tamarisk tree just below the surface. I could also see that the anchor rode was caught in it. We tried going forward on the outboard hoping to either free the line or break the tree off. That didn't work, so next we took a 50/50 chance and let the boat drift back past the tree on one side hoping to unwrap the line.
That didn't work and since the tree actually appeared to be a clump of trees we felt we were probably doing more harm than good. Our options now boiled down to either cut the line and abandon our best anchor and rode (we still had two other anchors and rodes) or the other option was for me to go into the water and see if we could retrieve it somehow.
The air temperature was about 60 with the water temp a warmer 70 or so. I'm six foot one and weigh a little less than 160, so I don't have a lot of body mass and usually require 80 degree water temperatures to be comfortable in the water. With that in mind and anticipating a time when I might have to go in the water we had gotten a wet suit for me, actually a gift from Ruth's daughter Jane, the Jane part of Kera Jane, our boat's name. The wet suit was suppose to be good down to 50 degrees and earlier in the summer before our Idaho/Canada trip I had tried the suit on once at home and hated it. I'm not claustrophobic, but I felt like I was in a straight jacket with it on. We removed the suit from storage under the V-berth and after some struggle got me into it. There must be a trick to putting these on that we have yet to learn.
Before I had put the suit on we wanted to take the tension off the anchor rode while I worked on it. I took our danforth anchor and rode that came with the boat and that we store on the stern up to the bow. Ruth then motored us forward about 100 feet and I let rode out from the stuck anchor. Once forward I dropped the danforth over and we drifted back towards the submerged tree. Once we got to it I tied the danforth rode off and we started floating there with the tree about 8 feet off the port side of the bow.
In the wet suit I lowered the swim ladder and went down into the water. My feet, hands and head were bare, but with the water warmer than the air I never noticed the water temperature and couldn't believe how warm the wet suit was, no wonder people wear these. I had anticipated feeling cold water rushing into the suit but it fit so tight I only noticed water coming in once or twice and it was immediately warmed by my body.
I swam over to where the tree was. I had some small swim goggles on and tried to just look around some under the water, but with my bad eyesight and the fogged goggles I couldn't see much. I used some spit to help with the fogged goggle, but that didn't improve my eyesight.
I dove deeper following the line into the mess of tree limbs, which were small and quite flexible. Trying to break some off they just responded by bending. It was back to the surface out of air. I use to be a good swimmer and had my Life Saving Certificate and taught swimming lessons and could swim further than the length of a municipal pool and more under water, but now at 66 those days were well behind me and I found I was having a hard time staying under water for any period of time. To add to the problem the wet suit was making me more buoyant and it was difficult trying to get down near the bottom which was 12-13 feet away.
I gave up on freeing the line at the tree and went in search of finding the line from the mess at the tree out to the anchor. First I swam on the surface just looking down, but I was having a hard time seeing the bottom. I started diving to within a few feet of the bottom and circled the tree in a counter-clockwise direction. I would have to surface and catch my breath and strength before resuming the circular trip. This was my first time swimming since about 5-7 years before this trip. I couldn't believe that I couldn't find the line and was about ready to give up when there it was. It exited the the bottom of the tree and went straight north under the bow of the boat, so was only visible for a few feet before disappearing under the boat.
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I dove once to try and pick up the line, but couldn't get all the way to the bottom. After resting on the second attempt I could get the line and noticed I could pull it to me from the tree side, so it wasn't in a knot at the tree. I dropped it and went back to the surface for more rest and air.
Ruth was now on the bow, bad knees and all, wearing her kneepads. She released some of the rode so that there was more of it down in the water by the tree. I went down again and was almost ready to give up as I struggled to get to the bottom, but not wanting to dive again pushed on to the bottom, grabbed the line and took it up.
I got to the surface and with the line over my knees caught my breath holding on to the bow strap at the bow of the boat. Getting the line out of the water and handing it to Ruth proved to be yet another challenge but we finally accomplished that and she cleated the line off.
We were really relieved now. We might loose some line, but at least we would still have the Bruce and 30 feet of chain. I climbed back onboard and went up to the bow. I was never cold in the water, but with the 60 degree temperature and wind I was becoming cold. I pulled the line, chain and Bruce up and stored them on the bow. I then removed the shackle that held the chain to the eye at the end of the line. Dropping the end of line back overboard I was amaze that I could start to pull the line back onboard from the rode bag end. The eye got to the tree and hung. I thought for about a half a second about going back overboard, but considering that we were lucky to have retrieved the anchor, chain and most of the line I decided to cut the line. I gave it a couple more "wishful thinking" tugs and bang it came free of the tree and back on board as if to say "I'm going with your guys".
We peeled me out of the wet suit with some effort and I dried off and went below and put on warm clothes. It was now after 9 a.m., so much for our early start, but it could of been worst.
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We could of sailed straight up-lake off our anchorage (see map below), but that wasn't the deal we had made and so with both anchors up we motored out into the lake back to the waypoint we had marked the previous day where we had stopped sailing.
The wind was still up and coming from the southwest. We quickly made the point and turn to the southeast that we had struggled to get to the night before with no luck. Then the wind died and we thought we were screwed and saw our hopes of getting to Dangling Rope Marina still 6 miles up the lake going down the tubes. Our ice was now down to a very small piece after being on the lake for a week at this point.
The wind gods must of heard our pleas and wind came back up off our stern and we began running towards the marina on our main and jib, at times wing on wing. After a couple hours of actually sailing consistently we made the entrance to Dangling Rope Marina (waypoint #8 above) right at noon. Things were looking up and we marked our position with the GPS and lowered the sails and motored the mile or so up into the side canyon. About a quarter of a mile before the marina there is a huge manmade breakwater that stretches all the way across the bay except for openings on each end.
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We ran in the west opening and then past the fuel dock to a..........
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............... slip on the east side of the marina.
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This whole marina is on the water, the store, fuel dock, rest rooms and huge truck like trash containers that are on barges like the one we passed back at Castle Rock. The employees live in housing at the top of a very steep incline above the marina. There is no road to this marina. Everything has to come to it over water.
While there we replenished the ice with 3 blocks and 2 bags filling the two coolers as much as possible as we were still over 50 miles from Bullfrog/Halls the next place on the lake that had anything. Along with ice we bought more bread and some other items. We also bought one gallon of gas, which was all that we had consumed to this point with the outboard and generator, which we had only had to run for about 1 hour to this point thanks to the 40 watt solar panel that we had added prior to this trip. Instead of having to run it for about 30-40 minutes every day the solar panel had cut that down to about 30 minutes every 3rd day. If you haven't read our other journals the reason we use so much electricity is that I have sleep apnea and use one of those sleep machines that draws about 6 amps or about 36 to 48 amp hours per night.
The store was actually very well stocked and we had even considered getting an ice cream cone and maybe a hot dog, but there were quite a few people in line and we wanted to get further up the lake with yet another approaching storm. Before leaving we took our trash and Double Doodie bags down to the trash barge and disposed of them. Following that we got underway and motored back out to our waypoint (#8) in the main channel.
While at the store we ran into one of the park rangers that patrols the lake and also mans the station at Dangling Rope. She said that she had seen us sailing or floating on her way motoring up-lake from Page to her duty station at Dangling Rope. She said that we were "purist" since we weren't motoring at all. I thought about that and thought we hadn't even considered that point of view. We felt we were "just two people trying to achieve a personal goal".
At the waypoint and with the now increasing wind we reefed the main to the 1st reef point and didn't raise the jib since we would be running. We then ran along at about 3 knots with the sails set like this towards Balanced Rock Canyon our night's destination.
There were new high wind warning in the forecast that predicted sustained 25-35 mph winds with gusts to 50-60 mph. The ranger at Dangling Rope told me that Balanced Rock Canyon had some sheltered places, but in retrospect I think she is more attuned to places to park a houseboat for the night and not an anchorage for a sailboat.
We reached Balanced Rock Canyon shortly before 4 p.m. and lowered the main and motored slowly up into the canyon and as soon as we entered a couple houseboats followed us in, but soon turned and left. A short ways into the canyon we spotted a cove-like indention on the west bank and headed over to it. There was a fairly large rock outcropping in the water (very small island) along with some rocks up on the shore that I thought we could tie to. I dropped the anchor in what was suppose to be 15-17 feet of water according to the depth finder, but the anchor seemed to drop straight down. After the anchor problem earlier this morning I had attached about 20 feet of line and a small fender as a float directly to the anchor top so we would know where the anchor was and could even pull it up by that line if needed. Well the 20 feet of line and float disappeared under the water out of sight, so much for the 15-17 foot depth.
The anchor was holding us though so we felt things were good enough for the moment and would work until we got a shore line from the bow to............
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....... the large rock on top of the small island (see arrow) that was actually the top layer of the sandstone island. With that line in place I got a line off the stern to the shore and tied it to a large rock outcropping there. We left the anchor down, but didn't feel it was doing much.
We settle down thinking we were in pretty good shape for the anticipated high winds that were expected the next day. Little did we know at this point that the next day would turn into the most trying and demanding day we had ever spent on water and in some ways one of the most frightening, yet thrilling days either of us had experienced in our lives.
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But instead contemplating something we didn't even consider to be possible at this moment we took in what was happening right in front of us, which was a beautiful end to the day. A rainbow appeared rising to the south behind the red rocks there and in front of Navajo Mountain. It made its way...........................
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.......... up and over the Kera Jane and fell off into the red rocks to the north with........
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.............. the boat dead center under the rainbow and if that wasn't.......
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.......enough a second rainbow started to make its appearance above the first, but fell away with the fading light of the day. All of this happened not too far from Rainbow Bridge which at this point was not too far away to the east and south of us down Forbidding Canyon.
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There are two pictures showing the days progress as we ran off the map to the right in the picture above. We anchored the night before at the bottom left arrow and resumed sailing at the top arrow (waypoint #7)
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Then continuing on this map coming in from the left. Just to the right of the left arrow is waypoint #8, the entrance to Dangling Rope Canyon where the marina is (top left arrow). From there we continued up-lake to waypoint #9 (bottom right arrow) where we stopped sailing and motored up into Balanced Rock Canyon to our anchorage about where the top right arrow is.
