People do love other’s failures

Social media is like a slot machine, hoping each refresh delivers rewards. When Eric Mongeau went aground, and it was caught on video and widely viewed on Instagram…. jackpot! In the Scuttlebutt series of grounding stories, Eric shares his:

This was to be our first Maine Cruising experience. On a Wednesday night at 1700, myself, my buddy Jon, and my two sons, Greyson (10) and Julien (8), left Marina Bay in Boston Harbor, heading north overnight en route to Sebasco Harbor, Maine. The lasagna goes in the oven, the spinnaker is launched, and life is beautiful.

We lost the wind around Cape Anne, threw on the engine, and motored through the night with 100% VMG. The sun came up on Thursday morning, and we were greeted by Sunrise Dolphins about 20nm from our destination. My sons emerged from below, and they were able to enjoy the ride into Casco Bay, and ultimately onto our mooring at the Sebasco Harbor Resort.

The Admiral and our dog Charlie made the drive up in the land yacht that morning. We blew up the dinghy and met them at the dinghy dock around 1000. The plan for the day was to head over to the Basin just north of Sebasco, do some paddle boarding, floating, and generally easing our way into our first week in Maine.

We had a great time at the Basin, and decided it was time to head back to the mooring to meet Jon’s wife for cocktails and dinner back at the resort. The wind was light, the sky was blue, and the crew was eager to tack our way back home down the harbor. The sails went up, the boat was moving along beautifully at 2-3 knots and spirits were high.

We saw a few little harbor dolphins swimming along across our bow, and just ahead we saw a small group of seals sunning themselves on a rock. I checked the plotter, and the depths looked great right up to that rock. We were on a close-hauled course and poised to tack just before the rock so that we should be abeam the rock on the next tack.

Moments before we would make that tack, disaster struck, there was a bang, the boat lurched, and then began heeling over aggressively to starboard. At this moment we realized we were on top of a ledge. “Sanctified fecal matter” was uttered by yours truly in a very loud way.

After about four minutes, a fishing boat appeared from within Cundy Harbor, Harpswell. I later found out this was a boat run by TJ Watson, part of the Watson family that owns the Watson Market, right there on the shore of Cundy harbor since the late 1800s.

TJ and his crew eventually got a tow rope over to me and I made fast a cleat hitch to our starboard stern cleat. TJ used all of the 300+ horsepower that he had available, and our boat started to spin. We were spinning, but not moving off the ledge. TJ tried 3-4 more times to get us off the ledge to no avail. This is when we started getting more concerned.

The tide was dropping and the boat would need to survive out there for at least 12 hours, if not more, before we would have any chance of floating off. At this moment, a 19-foot Whaler appeared with a crew of retired Coasties. They asked if we had tried the halyard yet; we had not. I took our spin halyard, made sure it was across to the starboard side, and the angels on the Whaler rigged up a tow line to their stern cleat.

With the Whaler pulling the halyard abeam, and TJ’s fishing boat pulling astern, off she came from the rocky perch! We were fully floating again, and a feeling of relief like I have never experienced before washed over me. I thanked TJ and his crew, and the crew of the Whaler, we hovered under tow for a bit while I went below, pulled all of the floorboards, made sure we weren’t taking on water, and then we disconnected the tow lines.

We motored back to our mooring less than two nautical miles away while the adrenaline diluted out of my bloodstream. We secured the boat to her mooring, cracked open the rum, and took a nice pull straight from the bottle. We had survived a potentially catastrophic event, and I’ll be forever grateful for that.

I made mistakes as the skipper of the vessel, and that was a huge learning experience. The entire event was filmed by TJ’s crew and has made for a pretty popular Instagram video… people do love other’s failures, and the comments section was pretty brutal. I personally re-shared TJ’s video because I think it’s important that everyone knows that we all make mistakes, but that there are some really wonderful people on the water willing to help.

Video: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DcJWCp-RsDv/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsi=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==