When the boat goes boom

There are two kinds of sailors: those who have run aground, and those who will. The water is not always kind, and submerged obstacles can find our path. The Scuttlebutt community share their stories:

At the eastern entrance to Mamaroneck Harbor is a well-known rock named Ship Rock. The rock is well marked, but as is the case with many such rocks, a reasonable percentage of mariners somehow manage to pass them on the wrong hand with the usual consequences. Such is the case Ship Rock.

On days of the month when the tide was predicted to be particularly low, my late best friend, Howie McMichael, owner of McMichael Boatyards, apparently could be seen at dawn on the exposed part of the rock conducting religious services of Thanksgiving for all the business it sent his way.

While I never witnessed this ceremony first hand, I have every reason to believe the story is true. Ship Rock was a great benefactor of McMichael Boatyards and Howie’s yards always had plenty of repair work.
– Butch Ulmer
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I know where every rock is in Narragansett Bay because I’ve hit them all, but if I were to name just one, it would be The Dumplings in Newport, RI. It’s right on the west side of the entrance to Narragansett Bay and we race around it a lot. There is a bell off of it, and there are lots of small rocks around it (it’s actually called Clingstone, for the house that’s built on the rock, with the series of rocks called the Dumplings).
– Moose McClintock
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I wasn’t aboard the Queen Elizabeth 2 when it went aground in 1992, but everyone in New England knows about the Queen’s Bottom Rock.
– David Ford
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Many years ago, sailing my lovely Frank Loud sloop Trace out of Marblebead, MA for Deer Isle, I heaved up on a rocky shoal off Salem. I was stuck, the tide was falling, and the Coast Guard advised pinning my hopes on rising water.

An old-school kid, my “electronics” comprised a compass and VHF radio. I liked reading charts, and could DR alright. Happy, excited for my new boat, her shiny black hull and varnished cabin sides gleaming in the early sun, I had no cares and then shudder, halt.

Trace’s external ballast was taking a pounding when a powerboater heard my alarm. I caught their rescuer’s line, made it fast to the bow, and got pulled off.

Of course, groundings differ from bashing into rocks. I suppose I learned firsthand that day, if I hadn’t heard it before, that if you’ve never run aground, you haven’t gone anyplace. I got up to our cove, they fired the small deck cannon, dug in the plow, and rowed ashore.

I went on to sail some 10,000 miles along the east coast, mostly singled-handed, and when Giffy Full bought my boat, I guess he eventually saw the gouges in her ballast.
– Peter Chapman; McIntosh, FL

Do you have a “rock encounter” story to share? Anonymously or with pride. Send to [email protected].