Aquapalooza 2008 - Tice's Shoal

[rondds]

ok, i'm certain everyone who attended this gala event has a story to tell. here's mine...

had a great time. got over to the ocean - had a great raft up and got to hang out with dominic (OSD9) and frank (FC3). Dominic was smart and left before the gale hit! and frank was even smarter as made the trip on his nitro-powered sea-doo.

james and his 420AC was the first anchor boat. when we got up to 5 boats AlexF dropped a 2nd anchor as a precaution, b/c the first anchor probably had 15:1 scope in < 6' of water (set with feet into a sand bottom), wind was initially not an issue and we were holding fine. as the wind kicked up (20 kts?), we dragged. we broke up the raft by jettisoning the two end boats, so now we're back down to 3. before the drag started, james had taken the dink back to shore to pick up his wife and daughter as we started drifting AGAIN, but slower. now we do not have the captain of the anchor boat and we are heading towards the 4 boat raft up behind and to our starboard. james made it back in time so alex and i sent him off BUT, of course, windlass issues ensued and as he moved forward, his boat (all 25K lbs) swung around and narrowly missed mine. good thing but now the problem is that now he is directly over alex's rode. he used the windlass (now working well) to pull the boat forward and off the rode and he escaped.

that left me and alex hanging on alex's anchor, which was dragging like farmer jones' plow. i get free and let the wind blow me straight back and away from alex but i am unable to turn the boat the way i wanted to due to the fierce winds. LUCKILY, there was no one behind us now so i surrendered to mother nature and let the wind spin the boat and we were off.

now we start heading southwest towards forked river, taking 2 footers (maybe 3 [?]) off the forward quarter. spray on the bridge, water running down the sidedecks - i swear it was like watching deadliest catch. at that rpm i usually make about 18mph, i couldnt muster much more than 15 b/c of wind resistance (still another case for diesel power!!).

i was the last of 4 to get into forked river and as i went forward to get a final set on the lines, i was picking eel grass off the fordeck.

this pic says it all - not even wind could spoil a awesome day...

nice pic of One Sweet Day - Dominic is scrubbing off bottom scum!

 

[Quint4]

Great pics. It was windy in Cincinnati Sunday when I was loading my boat after Saturday's aquapalooza...I almost hit the cop boat at the ramp! (that would have been bad).

 

[osd9]

Hey....that's my shiney bald head over there....:grin:


I left at around 2PM to attend a neighbor's BBQ. The wind was just starting to pick up from the south.....I was heading north. I actually picked up a knot/knot-and-a-half at the same RPM that traveled earlier in the day.

Great meeting up with you guys. We'll have to do this more often! I'm off to Atlantic City next weekend, but I'm open after that.

 

[Bridog]

I'm surprised. It doesn't look that crowded? I had to work and got to my marina at 5PM. It was pretty windy and a 220SD hit 2 boats at our marina pretty hard while trying to back in. I think he thought he was in forward when actually he was in reverse.

 

[osd9]

I'm surprised. It doesn't look that crowded? .

Those pics were taken looking northwest. The Aquapalozza folks were all anchored Southeast.

 

[rondds]

i was too lazy to post the pix facing south. it was controlled madness. the wind is really what made it exciting.

 

[rondds]

ok, this faces southeast. random shot but you get a better idea of the volume of attendees.

 

[Alex F]

I'm surprised. It doesn't look that crowded? I had to work and got to my marina at 5PM. It was pretty windy and a 220SD hit 2 boats at our marina pretty hard while trying to back in. I think he thought he was in forward when actually he was in reverse.

Actually, this time I was the busiest I've seen Tices for the past few years that i'm in the area. Just MM had over 1000 people with over 200 boats registered. Those MM rafts looked like minor part of the crowd.

I took some pics too. I'll post them later when I get a chance.

 

[Alex F]

Ron,
I'm not sure if you took the dinghy to the beach at the time, but before we had our own little adventure, we had observed how a raft of 15-20 boats started slowly dragging and almost lost control. They were on our port side. This was about 30 or so min before we had noticed our anchors dragging. They had their engines running and looked like they tried to control it by using the engines to bring the raft up to the safer distance. At some point the raft looked like deploying umbrella, due to the number of boats. Luckily, after few boats took off and the rest of the raft pulled up a bit they were ok.

I think we could have prevented some of the running around at the time when we’ve noticed our fist line of dragging. It was kind of slow and the wind was just starting to pickup. While enjoying a nice drink Eric made I offered to set one more anchor, but since you guys were going to leave soon we decided that we should hold on for some time. Unfortunately, the wind picked up much more forcing Eric and Rudy to take off much quicker then anticipated avoiding collision with boats behind us. I personally would like to complement Eric’s wife for being a true admiral. When she assessed the situation she said “Ok guys lets pack it up and leave, we’ve got about 3-5 min for the move”. It was a very good call.

It was also pretty cool how the raft behind us was reacting to the situation. When they offered to grab our lines, put extra fenders on their port side to join our raft and have our drinks. It was very cool of them, which also helped to handle somewhat difficult situation with some fun, humor and proper handling.

I think it was actually good thing that you guys had scheduled event to go to. It was a good timing before we would get caught in some mess. After you took off our anchor was fine but the sea conditions turned very unpleasant. So, I though for a second that if our team with good deal of experience had a bit challenging situation, what will happen when hundreds of other boats (lots of them with no clew how to control their boat in these conditions) will loose their anchor? MM had their event coming to the end anyway within next 30min or so. Thus, I decided to pull my old move to bring us to safe harbor from south wind, so we could continue enjoying the day on water. We took off to a spot on TR and felt like it was different day in different place. As we were leaving Tices, I saw lots of boats starting to take off due to the stronger and stronger wind. The wind was so strong that if we stayed we couldn’t serve the table, b/c the boat 14K lbs was rocking so much. Poor jet-skiers were looking for my or other wakes to hide, same was for smaller boats. My move turned out to be great. We were able to enjoy the rest of the day and went back to marina onlyt after the sunset.

 

[rondds]

alex, no doubt conditions worsened just as we left. and getting out of there when you did was a great move on your part. TR was probably calm as could be since the river would be in the lee of the land. sorry (again) that we were disbanded rather unceremoniously but since we had to leave anyway, the timing was good. as a matter of fact, just as i was approaching the marina we were staying at, i heard my cell phone ring - i didnt get it but it turned out that it was the dockmaster wondering where our registered party of 4 was! although forked river was calm, the wind was still a factor. took me two passes to get into my assigned slip, which was probably 3" wider than my boat. :wow: