HARD ON A REEF - HARD ON THE EGO

We are anchored NW of Punta Cobre on the east coast of Baja California about 72 miles North of La Paz at N 25° 12.69' by W110° 55.46'. Tonight, June 27, I am trying to rebuild my confidence and sense of well being after yesterday's afternoon of incredibily stupid navigational errors that led to Mirador running hard aground on a well-charted reef.

We have been aground in mud and sand before but that was always when we knew we were in thin water. There is not much chance of damage when hitting soft mud and it was never a big deal. Yesterday was very different and quite shocking. We were motoring slowly along about 200 yards off shore, trying to decide where to drop anchor, when - WHAM, Mirador came to a sudden stop. We could then feel her rise and fall, thunking on something hard with each wave.

Actually, when we grounded, I was standing at the mast trying to carefully flake the mainsail into the lazy jacks while Arlene was easing the halyard down to me from the winch on the cabin top at the front of the cockpit. Our autopilot was supposed to be keeping us on course parallel to shore and the engine was running just fast enough to keep the rudder effective. We had been running in 10 or 11 feet of water along the shoreline before I engaged the autopilot and moved forward to the mast.

As I just finished flaking the main I looked over the side and saw rocks, just a few feet below the surface. At the same moment Arlene yelled "five feet, four point nine feet", then we hit. Mirador draws 5' 3" so we hit something fairly hard. Fortunately Arlene had shoved the engine into reverse and almost killed our speed before the 2nd bounce along the reef.

We tried quickly reversing off since we could see eight or ten feet of water just behind us. We also quickly realized that no amount of engine power would immediately pull us off. I then ducked below and checked the tide charts on the computer. It was with enormous relief that I saw the tide would rise more than a foot in the next two hours. Then the only question was - how much damage would we sustain while the 2' swell bounced Mirador up and down?

Each time a swell came by we could feel Mirador rise a little and then drop back onto the reef. What a terrible sound and feeling.

I put on my mask and fins and lowered myself into the water off Mirador's stern. It was well over my head and I am 6' tall. I swam around and under the boat and was astounded to see that only about two feet of the keel was touching the reef. The front and back of the keel had several inches of water under them. More amazing was that there was over 10' of water only one foot to the right of the keel. We had come within a keels width, about two feet, of missing the darn reef.

I watched the stuck portion of the keel for about five minutes and thought I could see it starting to move a little as the tide continued to increase the water depth. I swam back behind the boat where I could hang onto the dive ladder that was underwater. I could then watch the keel and give engine and rudder commands to Arlene who was at the wheel.

After about five minutes of careful use of reverse with left and right throttle I saw the keel lift off the reef as a nice wave came by just as Arlene gave the engine full reverse with left rudder. That pivoted the stern left and the bow right and the keel dropped off the edge of the reef. I then swam alongside Mirador for about 10 yards as I yelled directions to Arlene to guide us to deep water.

What a sickening experience!

Hard on a reef with no other boat closer than 15 miles and no road access within 20 miles. It was just Arlene, the boat, and me. At those times you begin to understand the real meaning of cruising in remote areas.

At least we weren't in Florida where we'd have to pay a fine and environmental impact costs. The only damage to Mirador was to knock two patches of gel coat off the front edge and back edge of the keel. Mirador's keel is integral with the hull, i.e. the keel shape is formed in the same mold as the underbody. The keel is then filled with poured lead. There is no danger of bent or cracked keel bolts and no danger of water seeping into boat. Thank you Michael McCreary and Caliber Yachts!

You can see pictures of Miradors underbody and keel on our February 28 2002 WEB page.

Here is a picture of the reef taken from atop Punta Cobre, about 1/4 mile to the north.

The reef sticks out from the point in the middle of the picture and extends to the almost to the left edge of the picture. We wanted to anchor in the little cove between the point and the big catcus in the lower foreground.

I wish I could find someone or something to blame for the grounding - other than myself. Careful consideration, actually it was an easy analysis, shows that only I was responsible for hitting the reef. As with most problems, I had made a serious of poor decisions, and technical mistakes, which culminated with us hitting the reef.

The charts for the Sea of Cortez are abysmal! The chart for this part of the Sea covers an area 283 miles north to south and 451 miles east to west. That is over 127,000 square miles on a single chart or a scale of 1:667680. Just imagine a single chart that covers New Orleans on its NW corner and Miami on it's SE corner. There is no detail. And the chart is based on a survey done in 1881 by the US Ranger. Many of the lat/lon readings are off by up to 2 miles.

Cruising in the Sea requires use of detail charts done by local cruisers. Gerry Cunningham, of Gerry Mountaineering and Kelty Equipment fame, has produced three excellent guides. Yesterday we were using Cunningham's very detailed chart for Punta Cobre. Our prior experience with Cunningham's anchor waypoints was that they were exactly right, usually within a few feet when compared to his charts. We trust Cunningham completely. Almost every boat in the Sea depends on those charts.

And here is where my first mistake occurred. Cunningham provides waypoints and anchorages as degrees, minutes, and hundredths of a minute. I run the GPSs set to display degrees, minutes, and seconds. Usually that is no problem because I can convert hundredths to seconds and vice versa in my head with almost no error. But yesterday, for no apparent reason, I chose to forget that Cunningham was giving me hundredths of of a minute. I was reading Cunningham's charts which have lat/lon lines drawn every 1/10 of a of a minute (182 yards East-West at 25° North and 202 yards North-South) but I was interpreting those lines as seconds (333 yards East-West and 370 yards North-South). So - I couldn't reconcile the boat's GPS location with the chart and what my eyeballs were telling me.

The bay we wanted to enter has a serious reef extending SW off a small island about 1/4 mile northeast of the anchorage spot. We had to make sure we were far enough west and south to miss the submerged portion of that reef.

I got way too involved with avoiding the island reef because of the hundredths/seconds confusion. My eyeballs, when compared to the chart, showed us to be at about 25° 12' 40" by 110° 55' 10" . But, if I had read the chart properly I would have seen that we were really at N 25° 12.40' by W110° 55.20' which was exactly what the GPS was reading (in seconds). So we were actually 560 yards south and 118 yards west of where I thought we were when I compared the chart and the GPS.

I couldn't figure out how we were so much further south and west than the chart showed us to be. I don't know if you've ever been that confused in a confined area with a boat, but it gave me a feeling of vertigo. I guess I had lost what pilots call "situational awarness." I kept thinking that the small island and big reef should be almost ENE of us, not N, as I could plainly see it was. I know this doesn't make sense now, but at the time, I chose to believe my intuition, not the charts and GPS.

I should have acknowledged the confusion and stopped right there, in 13 feet of water. From the distance of 30 hours I am astounded that I just kept Mirador moving from an unknown location toward an anchorage that I knew had reefs and rocks. All I could think of when this was happening was "something is wrong here, let's just get the anchor down and sort it out later." I locked in on the idea of dropping the hook - not the idea of determining where we were.

But Cunningham provides good pictures of the shore and Punta Cobre so I was reasonably confident I knew where we were. There was the second mistake - "reasonable confidence" - not the dead certainty I usually demand.

We had had a great sail up the San Jose channel and the main was still up as we tried to find our way into the bay - our third mistake. I spent too much time trying to find the islands reef and didn't get the main down until inside that reef.

I saw that we were in 13' of water and that is what the chart showed for the position I thought we were in. So, I slowed the engine to 1000 RPM and engaged the autopilot. Fourth mistake! I immediately ran up to the mast to drop the sail. I should have stayed behind the wheel to ensure the autopilot kept us parallel to shore. It didn't - we drifted slowly toward shore as Arlene and I concentrated on lowering the main.

My fifth mistake was actually made before we left the previous anchorage, so I guess it was really the zeroth mistake. I did not highlight the little reef and rock symbols on the Cunningham chart. So - I didn't really notice they were ahead of us on the course we were following while we dropped the sail. Actually, since I thought we were 100 yards further east, it didn't really matter if they were highlighted. But, if I had marked the reef in red I would probably have noticed the potential danger and would not have engaged the autopilot.

What should I have done differently?

1) Highlighted the reef that was on shore

2) Dropped the main outside the outer reef or left it up until after we anchored.

3) Once we got inside the outer reef we should have stopped the boat and taken bearings on the island and the point to figure out where we really were.

4) Set both GPSs to run on degrees, minutes, and hundredths of a minute - just like the charts.

5) Stuck with our normal practise of having one of us stand on top of the bow pulpit and watch for rocks as the other person slowly hand steers the boat into the anchorage

A lesson hard won but at a small cost, other than to my psyche. I have always taken pride in my skill at navigating and my careful analysis of difficult situations. I don't usually take chances with the boat but yesterday I was lazy and very lucky to escape with only minor damage. Mirador would have been in critial danger if we had gone aground on the falling tide since, during the full moon, we see almost five feet of tidal swing.

Hitting the reef caused me to really loose confidence in my decisons and thought process.

Earlier in the day we had to pass Seal Rocks at the south end of San Jose Channel which are marked y red/white steel tower with a light on it. Pretty hard to miss. I carefully set the autopilot to take us 500 yards west of the rocks. You can imagine my surprise when the depth sounder went from DEEP (more than 300') which is what it had been reading for quite a while to 28' in about 15 seconds. Now, that is a heart stopper when you are making 7.5 knots over the bottom!

The depth sounder then started increasing in depth and was back to DEEP within 30 seconds.

I subsequently read Cunningham's notes on Seal Rocks and he says there is deep water all the way around them. But, as I looked back at the rocks I could see a little wave agitation where we had seen a 28' water depth. It sure looked like the 2 knot current was hitting an underwater structure. As we approached the rocks I should have noted the disturbed water and changed course to keep us even further away from the rocks. But, I was too involved with the fishing tackle to bother with navigation.

I am now real leary of going near anything here in the Sea of Cortez. Sailing here is sure different than in Puget Sound where every rock and sand bar are carefully noted and the fine scale charts are dead on. This is serious business down here where mistakes are painful and there is no towing service or coast guard to call for help. Often there is not even another cruiser within VHF range.

Yesterdays episode was especially troubling for me because it was a repeat of some mistakes I made as we left La Paz last week.

The La Paz channel takes us from the inner harbor, four miles thru a 200 yard wide channel, thru a couple of right angle turns, and out into deep water in Bahia La Paz. The channel has sand flats on both sides of it, except where there are rock cliffs to the east. As we motored along the channel I was arranging things on the foredeck while Arlene was putting the last minute groceries away down below. There was no other traffic anywhere in the channel. As we approached each bouy I would adjust the autopilot to take us to the next red bouy (left side of the channel for you non-boater types) so we would always pass close to a bouy on our port side.

Somehow, toward the east end of the channel, I set the autopilot to take us to the next green bouy. As we approached it I had a vague feeling something was wrong but didn't do anything about it. Finally, when we were only 100 yards from the bouy and a few yards to the right of it I realized it was a green bouy and we were making 7.5 knots, with the tide, into very shallow water.

I ran back to the wheel, dis-engaged the autopilot, and turned hard to port. Only then did I notice we were in 8' of water. The controlling channel depth is 17' so we were way out of the channel.

About five minutes later we got to the last red bouy where we have to make a 100° turn to port to follow the channel out of the inner harbor. I made the turn and set the autopilot to take us to the next bouy, about 700 yards ahead. Unlike yesterday, I did stay behind the wheel to see if the current was going to set us east. The water depth quickly went from 22' to 12' so I knew I'd made another mistake. I put the engine in neutral and started looking around.

It was then that I discovered that I had turned to port at the next to last bouy - about 1/4 mile before the channel turned to port! We were again headed staight into the sand flats, but this time they were on the left side of the channel. I was able to put the wheel hard over to starboard and get us back into the channel and never saw less than ten feet.

I guess those two mistakes were due to complacency or my impatience with still being in La Paz.

Several nights ago a 65' boat, Roland, headed for San Diego went on the beach at Bahia Asuncion on the west coast of Baja. Roland went ashore on the highest tide of the month. The beach is just gently slopping sand but Roland weighs 35 tons and no boat in the area could pull her off. The German couple abandoned her and all their worldly possesions.

When I heard that report I smugly asked myself "how could such a thing happen?"

Now I know!

It is hard work not being complacent, lazy, or over confident. But I sure am going to try to stay attentive and a lot more wary.

The next update will return to the more typical stories about anchorages, fishes, and annoying charter boats.