We set sail from Ventura to Santa Barbara because we had nowhere to stay. The yard, having fixed the minor problem that forced me to turn back, kicked us off the work dock. Of the three marinas offering guest slips only one had big enough slips available (the most expensive one, naturally) and we had used up the maximum days we were allowed to stay.
The app I used to find the guest slips in Ventura (dockwa or some such shit) indicated there were no guest slips in Santa Barbara, but that turned out to be incorrect, the marina there is municipal. Such marinas don't tend to be represented well on the web. Maybe I'll create another website with no income potential, to list them all... someday when I'm not so busy.
Based on this incomplete information my plan was to stay in the free anchorage off of Santa Barbara, and take the skiff to the beach to get supplies. As plans go, this one was fucking weak! Getting in and out through the breaking surf would've been unpleasant and dangerous. Luckily we didn't make it that far into execution of that plan.
Right out of Ventura Harbor the seas were a little rough, 3-5' waves from two directions, predominantly almost perpendicular to our course. This was my dogs' first experience in the ocean, we had been living on my sailboat in the marina, making quick trips within the harbor, they had even ridden in the skiff several times. This was new, they were getting tossed by the boat rolling in the seas when they tried to walk. They were trembling, which was heartbreaking.
We sat together and I reassured them, slowly they became less afraid, as long as I was near. I couldn't tend to the sails properly, couldn't even get anything to drink, but it was only a 5-6 hour trip.
I got on the VHF and discovered there were indeed guest slips available! All I had to do was smash the windlass foot switch to the deck, haul in the anchor and head for the comforts of [what we had been calling] home. Unfortunately a problem with the anchor, left by the previous owner, complicated this plan. I was aware of it, but had forgotten to do something about it. Probably would've bought me a few more days on the yard's dock, but it slipped my mind.
The problem was some kind of bow roller mismatch/misconfiguration, there was nothing to guide the chain the way it was run. It fell to the side and jammed about every 10 seconds. I had been able to cobble past it in 15' of water a week earlier, I was now in over 30', the chain was too fucking heavy to man-handle. I couldn't get the anchor up. Fuck!
I worked on the god damn thing for 4.5 hours, let all of the chain and rope out to re-route it through a channel that would control it, and was big enough to pass both the rope and chain through, onto the windlass and down into the anchor locker. And it was working, got all 100' of rope back onto the boat easily.
Then I encountered another previous owner fuckup, that made me want to strangle him with his own tongue: when you have a windlass the rope and chain are supposed to be spliced together, so the transition fits the windlass gypsies. The idiot assholes joined them with a shackle, that jammed hard in the channel.
Addendum: a skillful mariner on top of his game would've used the Makita angle grinder I had onboard to cut the shackle off, and used halyards to haul up enough slack chain to reave the bow roller and get it to the gypsy. It took me a couple of months for this to occur to me, I was thinking it back over... a better solution was at hand.
I felt like I was on top of my game 30 years ago, I taught intermediate sailing for 2 seasons. One class we were going over anchoring, and the anchor got snagged in derelict ground tackle (in the then-free anchorage off of Shelter Island, San Diego Bay.) Went through the range of tricks, finally got it free. When I apologized for getting them back 45 mins late they all said it was the best class ever, watching me problem-solve vs a planned lesson.
I'm working my way back nearer to the top of my game... it seemed more intuitive back then. It now requires more disciplined thought processes.
By this point I was exhausted. The shackle pin threads were frozen solid, I couldn't get them to budge. Even if I could've broken them free I didn't have a practical plan to manage the weight so I could feed it through to the windlass. To make matters worse I now had 300' of rode out, no longer anchored the same as the other boats in the anchorage.
Boats anchored with different amounts of scope swing across a different radius, so if they are near each other their anchor lines get wrapped around each other as the forces upon them change direction -- which is a huge mess! When anchored in a bay the predominant force is typically the tidal currents as the tide cycles between high and low, 2+ times per day. Sometimes the wind is predominant, pushing the anchored boats to point into the wind. If all the boats swing across roughly the same arc they will all swing clear of each other.
If we had been in a bay, my logic would've been sound, prudence warranted. But we were anchored off a beach head, waves crashing on the beach are predominant most of the time... but that wouldn't occur to me for several days. So based on the information I had available, I decided the best course of action was to cut about $3500 worth of ground tackle loose, letting all of it sink to the bottom.
I thought I should be able to hire a diver to help me recover it, but that perception wasn't tightly bound to reality either. Bad decision, I could've gotten a few hours sleep and waited for daylight, set an anchor drag alarm on my GPS, maybe sought advice, maybe BoatUS would've lent a hand. Now with no anchor my options were rather limited.
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