To Tow or Not to Tow

Should you subscribe to a service like Seatow or TowBoatUS?

Story by Jonathan Lewis

To tow or not to tow, that is the question. Well, actually it’s not. It is whether or not—as an owner of a sailing vessel—to subscribe to a service like Seatow or TowBoatUS. I never have as a matter of principle, but my values may be misplaced. I’ve certainly observed sailboats being towed and pulled from groundings,and I’ve even seen them accepting fuel deliveries. I’ve always scoffed at the presence of the flashing-lighted red or yellow power craft lying in wait in areas known for shoaling. My self-sufficiency mantra and the pride I take in proper seamanship has kept me from engaging in an annual contract with the triple A of the seas. However, an experience I had at Stuart Island in the San Juans this past summer weakened my resolve and expanded my understanding of why some folks value their membership.

Turn Point Lighthouse, Stuart Island

We were anchored on the southeast side of Reid Harbor, off a small cove that had a dock with a few slips protruding from the shore. The chart showed between 12 and 27 feet of water and we’d dropped our hook in a dozen feet and back-winded the main to sufficiently set our Rocna in the soft bottom. Our rode was 20 feet of chain and 200 feet of line. We put out about 100 feet for better than 5-to-1 scope at high tide.

After spending two pleasant nights we hoisted our sails and started to raise our anchor. I was on the bow pulling the rode hand-over-hand when it suddenly became vertical, even though 75-feet still remained to be retrieved. The line was taut and wouldn’t give an inch. Very strange. The braid had to be caught on something, because the anchor and chain were in shallower water closer to shore. After a few attempts to free it I had my wife come forward and I cleated the line, hoping that as we returned our weight to the cockpit, the bow’s increased buoyancy would be sufficient to free the rode. I’d used this method in the past when a sticky bottom refused to free our well-dug hook. No such luck. Still vertical and as taut as a bow string. We added a bit of slack, sheeted in the sails and tried to use the power of the light breeze to free us. Nothing. By now I surmised that the rode must be entangled with a sunken log or tree. After all, this is the Northwest. Both nights had been still and our boat had just drifted quietly on her tether, which may have resulted in the anchor line snagging an obstruction and becoming hopelessly entwined. It was time to lower the sails and put the Torqeedo’s power to the test. Sadly, both clockwise and counterclockwise course directions were to no avail.

In an earlier life I was a professional SCUBA diver, and on previous larger boats I carried a small tank and regulator, but they didn’t seem appropriate or necessary aboard our 23-foot Townsend Tern. I did have a thin wetsuit, a weight belt, mask and fins stowed in the starboard lazarette, so I undressed and suited up. We dropped a lead line overboard and determined we were in about 30 feet of water. The harbor was frigid and the visibility was a foot or less, but I’d follow the vertical rope down and determine what we were caught on.

As soon as I hit the water I was cold and breathing quickly through the snorkel—not a good start. I submerged, but abruptly returned to the surface having had difficulty clearing my ears. I paused and tried to relax, slow my heart rate, and sufficiently fill my lungs. I had literally done this thousands of times. The summer of my seventeenth year I got my first job as a dive master at UNEXSO on Grand Bahama Island. I used to free dive constantly to 50 or 60 feet. I knew the dangers of hyperventilating and had witnessed shallow water blackouts, a loss of consciousness caused by cerebral hypoxia. If you’re diving alone with no one to recover you, SWB is a death sentence. Fifty years had passed since those nascent days in the tropics, but I was still relatively fit and I was determined. I dove again, this time reaching the bottom and finding our line wrapped around a hefty encrusted metal structure. But with the limited visibility I was unable to determine its size or shape. I swam back up to the bow of our boat where my wife stood with a worried expression on her face. I explained the situation and had her pay out additional line so I had slack to manipulate, and I made a third attempt. Then I returned to tghe metal mess fourth time. But it was like a cat’s cradle down there and I was unable to extricate the web. My head was pounding as I kicked towards the surface when my right fin dislodged from the effort. I yelled to my wife, who was now yards away, that I’d lost my fin and there was no way I could accomplish anything now without it. A moment later she pointed behind me and, miraculously, the thin silicone blade broke the water’s surface. All these years and I didn’t know the damn things floated. Betsy said she was relieved that I’d come up before the fin, because if she’d spotted that lonely object first it would have been an ominous telltale. Time to get out of the water and formulate another strategy.

There was no way I could hold my breath long enough to free us from whatever was down there. I needed a tank. I dried off and warmed up before going on the VHF and asking if anyone had a SCUBA tank in Reid Harbor. There were at least a couple of dozen boats in the anchorage at the time. The radio crackled, but it was the Canadian Coast Guard responding. We were quite close to the border. They wanted to know if we were in any danger, how many persons on board, etc. I started to tell them of our predicament when the US Coast Guard intervened. They too asked the standard series of questions, but I asked them to switch up to 22alpha. Once there, I was asked for my phone number and my cellphone rang. I told them our predicament. The guardsman asked my age. I told him I was 67 and he replied he didn’t want me getting back in the water. He asked if we had a second anchor and when I responded affirmatively, he suggested cutting the other one loose and leaving it. Not what I wanted to hear. I asked him if he knew of a diver I could hire and he gave me the name and number of a woman who was both a diver and a skipper for a TowBoatUS operation in Friday Harbor.

I called her, explained my situation and she asked if I was a member. When I said no, she said she could come out and dive the anchor but it would cost $850. She suggested I think about the replacement costs of my gear, which in all likelihood would be substantially less. She also suggested I join TowBoatUS, because if I’d been a member, this service would be covered. However if I joined today, there would be a one month waiting period before I could utilize their benefits.

We were in the middle of a two-month cruise and I didn’t want to interrupt it by shopping for a new Rocna, chain and line, but I also didn’t want to fork out $850 for what I thought would be a 10-minute dive. I understood there was the round-trip to Stuart Island, fuel, and overhead, but still, it was possibly a quarter of an hour in 30 feet of murky liquid and done. Neither my wife nor the Coast Guard wanted me to continue my attempts, and I was also considerably less than enthusiastic about it, so I decided to call a marina in Roche Harbor (at the northern tip of San Juan Island) to see if they could recommend a diver. Bingo! One was busy harvesting sea cucumbers, but another would be in the area the next morning and would only charge me $300— his hourly rate. We were fine with spending another night by then, and we certainly weren’t going to drag if some unexpected weather arrived. 

Mid morning the following day, Sam pulled alongside, handed us a line and his RIB dropped back off to swing from our stern. He donned his gear and slid into the water. I watched his bubbles burst on the calm surface for the next ten minutes and then he reappeared. He told us to take-up the anchor rode, which I did, and the hook was up and free. I let the wind move us about 25-yards away and dropped the hook once again, clear of any obstacles.

I asked him what he’d encountered on the bottom and he said he had no idea. It was large and metal, but with almost no visibility he couldn’t even guess. He did say there would have been no way to free dive and extricate the line from that mess. It had to be done slowly and methodically. That was some comfort to my wounded ego. He departed and we soon raised sail and did the same. There was a gentle breeze blowing as we fought the currents rounding the lighthouse on the west end of Stuart as we made our way to a solitary anchorage on Satellite Island. Another summer’s day in the San Juans.

So what did I learn from this event? Not much, I guess. I’m still struggling with the reality of aging. I haven’t subscribed to a towing service and I don’t plan to. Maybe I’m following the playbook of the now-deceased icon Bill Robinson (sailor, author, longtime editor of Yachting) and Blanche DuBois (fictional character from A Streetcar Named Desire) both of whom “depended on the kindness of strangers.” •SCA•