We made it to Orillia. We were excited because there was an anchorage that friends told us about we were heading to.  We decided to anchor just outside of Orillia, then take the dinghy in to see the town.  It was a lovely town, we enjoyed it and had lunch in town.

We went back to the boat and excited to go to the anchorage at Chief’s Island.   We started to pull up the anchor when all of the sudden the chain was jamming in windlass.  There was still 15 feet of chain to come up. There was no wind and the boat spun in circles and  twisted.  We were going to try to pull up the anchor by hand. We looked down and had a massive wad of weeds on our anchor.  It was about 5 feet in diameter and trailed about 12 feet.  We couldn’t budge it.  Now what?

We slowly drove, dragging the anchor in the water out to deeper water.  We drove forward and backward in circles trying to get some of the mass off.  We lost all the long trailing stuff, but not the mass on the anchor.  We didn’t dare let the anchor back down for fear we would not get it back up.  We were now in the middle of the lake with no risk of quickly drifting too shallow or into anything so we can figure this out.  Scott dropped a rope down to the anchor and cinched it up then was able to pull the anchor alongside the boat where he used a boat hook to get the weeds off.  Once clear he pulled the anchor on board and unhooked it.  We dropped all the bare chain down into the water so it could untwist on it’s way up.  yeah it worked! We hooked the anchor back up and thought our troubles were over for the day.

On our way to the anchorage we passed “Ship” Island.  It is a large Cormorant breeding island.  Some Looper friends from the area said the  Cormorant droppings killed all the trees.   There were hundreds of nests in the trees.  It was really a neat thing to see.  However, when we got down wind of it, yowsa did it stink. I renamed it “Bird Shi* Island”

We got to our anchorage.  There were a lot of boat there for a weekday but plenty of room left for us to anchor out away from all of them.

We swam, laid in the sun and then went fishing.   We caught a bunch of little worm thieves, but Scott caught a nice big bass and a 12″ perch.

Now that we are catching fish we wanted to stay.  We were watching the weather.  The winds kicked up but it looked like the rain was going north and south of us.  We kept fishing.  After a while, we could see the trees blowing, but we didn’t feel the wind due to being on the leeward side of the island.  We decided we better get back to the boat.  As soon as we came around the point of the island the waves hit us.  Wow they built quickly.  We got drenched.  I guess we made the right decision to get back to the boat. As we come around the corner, we are quite sure our anchor dragged.  We also saw two boat with people in the water.  What the heck, now is no time to be swimming. As we got closer we realize they were in distress.  We went over to the first boat.  Their front anchor let loose, so they revved up the engine to pull the boat forward before hitting shore, well they forgot they had a stern anchor out and wrapped the line around their prop.  The 2 men were at the front of the boat trying to keep it from grounding and the mother was trying to unwrap the line off the running gear.  They were all distressed and in trouble.  Scott said he would run to our boat get is mask and a sharp knife to free the line then we would attempt to pull/push them out deeper.  By the time we got back the mother got the line free.  Cudos to her.  The men were still failing at holding the boat, looked exhausted and stressed.  We hooked the dinghy to the side of their boat and full throttled it.  The boat started to move, the men jumped on board, pulled up the useless front anchor. We got them out far enough to start their engines and off they went.  They had such relief on their faces and yelled thank you 100 times as they didn’t hesitate to get out of there.

Now for our boat…. We indeed dragged a long ways.  The other boat looked like they were alright now.  We will check on them once we get our boat safe.  This is the first time our anchor dragged significantly and we anchored many many night.  We pulled up the anchor and once again…weeds!!  It took us a minute to clear but once we got it close we notice the people from the other boat were back in the water.  We motored over to them.  We asked if they needed help.  They said they were OK now.  They were smart.  They had 2 anchors and hop scotched them forward until they got in deep enough water to start their engines.

It is now almost dark and we cannot stay here.  We drove a ways north and anchored in mud..  Hallelujah. It is now dark and we had fish to clean.

Whenever something doesn’t go right we reassess the situation.  So What happened?  The winds were suppose to be out of the south making this a great anchorage.  The bottom was suppose to be sand, but for some reason this year the weeds are particularly bad. The wind change direction unexpectedly.  In fact when we looked at the wind modules it still showed it out of the south, but clearly it was blowing out of the northeast.

All in all, no one was injured, no boats were damaged, so it was a good day.  We were glad it was almost over.

Thanks for reading,

Scott and Karen

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