http://www.sailing.ie RSS feeds for Irish Sailing Association Website 60 http://www.sailing.ie/Cruising/SailorsTales/tabid/1616/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/27982/Left-High-and-Dry-by-a-Galway-Hooker.aspx#Comments 1 http://www.sailing.ie/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/RssComments.aspx?TabID=1616&ModuleID=3736&ArticleID=27982 http://www.sailing.ie/DesktopModules/DnnForge%20-%20NewsArticles/Tracking/Trackback.aspx?ArticleID=27982&PortalID=0&TabID=1616 http://www.sailing.ie/Cruising/SailorsTales/tabid/1616/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/27982/Left-High-and-Dry-by-a-Galway-Hooker.aspx It was working up to a foul Saturday night in Connemara, and we had tucked in behind Kilkieran pier for shelter. In the gathering gloom a fishing boat came in. “Wouldn’t lie there if I was you, there’s a big boulder on the bottom, you’ll dry out on it. Tie her up outside the hooker there, she draws six feet and never grounds.”   Do we believe him or not? It gets shallower very fast as you move away from the pier. We moved.  She sat OK all night, through the low tide. Next morning the hooker’s crew appeared, going out to race. We said “Let go our lines, we’ll back out”. “No problem,” they said, “just let go your stern line and we’ll slip out.” So they left, and then we backed out. Or would have done, had we not been hard aground, twenty feet out from the pier with the tide falling. Mike Peyton once drew a cartoon just like it.   It’s the only time in my life I’ve ever put an anchor out on the spinnaker halyard to keep her leaning away from the pier. And (incidentally) the big boulder turned out to be about the size of a brick. host Sat, 09 Jun 2012 13:26:00 GMT f1397696-738c-4295-afcd-943feb885714:27982