Are We Taking On Water....our first night.

After a long 24 hours, we crawled into bed looking forward to an amazing night's sleep and hoping to feel refreshed and ready to go the next morning. We have a lot of work to do in the days ahead. Knowing we were safely tied to a dock, we should have a quiet, uneventful first night.

We had set up a small barricade to keep the dogs from coming down the stairs to our sleeping area. This was their first night on the boat and we needed to establish rules on who sleeps where. Around 4:00am, Gord heard the exterior door to the salon slide open. Moments later, Brodie bounded through the barricade and into our room. Having to establish the proper sleeping quarters for humans vs. dogs, Gord got up to march Brodie back to the salon of the boat. I then heard some chaos and got up to see Gord frantically looking for a flashlight. This is our first night on the boat and nothing is organized. He exclaims that the boat is listing to the port side, and that is why he heard the door slide open and he needs a flashlight to start searching if we are taking on water. It's 4:00am, we were drowsy, and then suddenly we are very awake and a little panicked. It's at that moment I could truly feel the lean of the boat to the port side and it was significant.

Gord gets his hands on a flashlight and raced to the engine room. Actually, I feel like Gord is racing everywhere outside. I started lifting hatches in the floors to see if I could hear or see anything. Nothing! So why the list......? Suddenly, I had an idea, an awful idea. Gord shot up out of the engine room again and said "I wonder if we are on the bottom!" Well, now it's been said out loud! "That's what I just thought," I said. Gord grabbed a boat hook, jumped onto the swim platform and plunged it into the water to see the depth of the water. The boat hook hits bottom at approximately 3 feet which is alarming but also in some way a relief. We are on the bottom! Now "the bottom" in a beautiful Marco Island canal is far more forgiving than the granite of our Canadian Shield back home, but being on the bottom is never ideal! So, on our first night, we learn another one of many lessons about the tides in these areas. They are substantial and need to be respected. There's a saying in the USA - "If you haven't been aground, you haven't been around." Gord asked the previous boat owner if this was considered "aground" so that means we've "been around." I think the jury is still out on whether it counts or not.

Oddly being on the bottom would usually cause a great deal of stress. In this circumstance, this was the more desirable option than taking on water. We were able to crawl back into bed with no worries that we were sinking. In fact, we had no where to sink to. We knew when the tide slowly crept back in, the 60,000 pound boat we now live on would float again, leak free.

How do you solve the problem, you ask, when tied to a dock and the tides for the next 3 nights will have your hull resting on the bottom? You tie the lines a little more strategically! We are now set up so when the tide seeps out, our boat will drift a little further from the dock to the deeper part of the canal. We don't need a ton drift space, just more than we had. Inches matter!