My last boat, a Ranger 23, got off its mooring twice in calm weather. Both times I was away and extremely fortunate not to lose the boat.

The first time, was back when we used to group launch six or seven keel boats in Bayside, we did this ourselves using the tides, cradles and a backhoe in an old fashioned process. My mooring had not been put out yet so the boat was left on another unused (and unknown) mooring. I had a promise that my mooring would be available, in a day or two. There was one boat left on our seawall that had not been launched and its owner was working on his boat midweek when he looked up to see mine floating 10 feet from his face. Fortunately it was high tide and very calm or the boat would have already been on the rocks, as it was . Apparently the pin on the swivel between the pennant and mooring chain had rusted through and just let go. There had not been any rough weather. He jumped into a dinghy and took it out to another mooring. By the time I arrived back in Bayside my mooring had been dropped and the boat was on it. The lesson learned here was never trust a strange mooring over night and unattended.

The second time was much luckier in the sense that by rights, I should have never seen my boat again, at least not in one piece. Both of these incidents happened in Bayside on the rocky coast of Penobscot Bay. Regarding the “how” of incident number two, there was no equipment failure, it was a simple case of inexcusable owner negligence and let’s leave it at that. I again had driven home to Connecticut after leaving Blue Parrot on its mooring Sunday evening. I was at my desk at work on a Wednesday morning when I got a message from my wife who related the following: She had gotten a call at 7 AM (she stays in Maine all summer), from the Belfast Harbormaster (Cathy Messier, a real fine professional) who said she had found Blue Parrot on the beach (it was low tide) just around the corner from Belfast Harbor.
The boat had beached itself about 4 miles up the bay from my mooring. High tide was due at 1 PM, and it was about 8:30 already when my wife got a hold of me. Since I live and work over 300 miles from there I had no chance to get there in time to do anything. My sainted wife organized a party of about six local friends and neighbors who went down to the boat to see what could be done. The assistant Harbormaster had already been there and used a chainsaw to cut up a huge driftwood tree that he thought might get in the way of a salvage operation. He told my friends he would be back before high tide with their work boat to assist in the salvage attempt. My friends stayed on the beach as the tide came in and they slipped cushions and bumpers under the boat to keep it from pounding at all in the small waves. When they decided the tide had risen enough, they kept her heeled using a halyard from the mast top and the work boat pulled her out to deep water. The whole ordeal left no marks on the boat but one little gel coat ding half the size of a dime, and there was nothing even off a shelf in the cabin. If they hadn’t called me, I would never have known anything happened.

To me this incident tells a lot about the fraternity of sailors and about how things work in Maine in particular. The only payment anyone would accept was lunch at Rollie’s, including the Harbormaster and her assistant who had gone way beyond their job descriptions to help someone they had never even met.

The lesson learned here was to finish each piece of the “putting away” ritual in order and completely before moving on the to next step. The mooring loop had been slipped over the cleat, but was never secured and I believe it slipped off the cleat when the boat moved toward the mooring ball. This took 48 hours to happen, and if the wind had blown all week as it can in Maine, it might have stayed put.

The attached picture shows the rocky ground all around, and the cut up driftwood tree to the left and rear of the boat.