It was the summer of 1971. Thirty-three years earlier Wanderer had begun to take its proud shape in some New England boatyard. Built in 1938, this old Seabird yawl is 26 feet long, 8 foot abeam and draws 4 feet of water. The keel has a massive chunk of lead to give the old girl her ballast as she moves slowly but surely through the cold waters off the New England coast. We left the American Yacht Club in Newburyport, Mass. around 9 a.m., destination Ipswich Harbor.

The crew on this trip consisted of my two sons, Kevin, 9, Chris, 6, and Kevin's best friend, Peter, also 9. We were to meet up with an old friend of mine at Cranes Beach. The day was warm and the wind in our favor. The boys enjoyed dangling their feet over the side as Wanderer moved along the course.

The day was uneventful except for Kevin losing one of his sneakers overboard. When we reached Cranes Beach we met up with Bill on his 38-foot wood cabin cruiser. His whole family was on board Ð five children ranging 6 months to 9 years, and his wife. After circling for a couple of minutes, Bill and I decided that I would tie up to his boat and he'd use his large kedge anchor. The day went without a hitch. My boat was considerably smaller so we figured there wouldn't be a problem with his large anchor holding both of us.

Around 9 p.m., Bill and I put our exhausted children in their bunks. We checked our lines and chatted a little before turning in. Everything was OK Ð we thought. But at about 11:30 I was awakened by the bumpers between the two boats squeaking unusually loudly. Bill heard it too, and we both went up on deck to find we had drifted with the tide and were now perched atop the jetty at the Essex River entrance.

While we had slept the tide had come up and swung us around, wrapping the anchor chain around the fluke and lifting the anchor out of the sandy bottom. The anchor then hopped along the bottom like a child on a pogo stick with the incoming tide. We drifted about 200 yards from our original position.

When Bill saw where we were, he jumped into action. Both boats were on the rocks, but since his boat drew only a couple of feet it was faring much better than mine. The night was pitch black. Fog had rolled in, and the only light was coming from our cabin lights. The boys slept as Bill and I cut the anchor line and the boats drifted free from one another.

Below deck the boys were awakened by a tremendous jolt from a rock and Kevin fell out of his bunk onto Peter, who was sleeping below him. Chris woke up too and started to cry immediately. He wasn't scared, just tired. I believe he really didn't have a clue what was going on the whole time. After the ordeal was over he went back to sleep like nothing had happened.

I rushed to get the boys into their lifejackets and aboard Bill's boat. He was afloat and in fairly good shape. By the grace of God, when he turned over his engines the screw somehow didn't strike a single rock. Wanderer, on the other hand, was listing on its port side because the keel kept riding up on the jetty. The swells picked up the heavy old boat and set her down hard again and again on her keel. The boat pivoted back and forth on top of the massive granite slabs that hid silently beneath the waves. Another ocean swell would come in and she would slide off the rocks with a thundering impact.

We tried to put my young crew on Bill's boat, but after several attempts, one of which almost ended up with Chris in the water, I decided to launch the dinghy and put them in there until I could maneuver Wanderer off the rocks. As I was helping Peter into the dinghy, the tiller swung around and hit him in the chest, almost knocking him overboard, but I managed to grab him in time. Only his life vest saved him from almost certain broken ribs.

Fortunately, the tide was coming in and after about 40 minutes there was enough water to get us afloat again. I steered us clear of the rocks only to run aground on a bed of sand. The fog disoriented me for a few minutes until I got my bearings and managed to wiggle us out of the sand and into safer waters.

I finally put down my own anchor, put the boys back to bed and stayed up the rest of the night keeping an eye on the bilge for rising water and boat-eating rocks. If there's a lesson to be learned, it's never raft up in tidal waters and always have a lookout Ð an all-night one!

Return to aground index page