I reached the end of my rope!

So I felt this would be a better place to explain my anchoring troubles from this past Sunday's float on the Nestucca instead of on my actual report for the day. This story would feel much more at home here.
This was my first experience using a drift anchor. This was also my first experience anchoring in a smaller, quicker moving coastal river as opposed to the Willamette. Here goes.

Spot and I were getting towards the end of the day. We were anchoring more often now than we were towards the beginning of the day and I was feeling like I was starting to get the hang of this drift anchoring thing. I was approaching a back eddy that formed directly down river from a large, uprooted tree stump obstruction and I figured I'd drop my anchor right next to the back eddy in the faster moving water. I dropped my anchor past the obstruction and let out a lot of line to give me what I thought was plenty of scope and it seemed like it was holding at first. Since the water was moving pretty quick, I was swinging back and forth pretty good and when I would get to one side of the swing, the drag created by the position of the boat would cause the anchor to slip a little bit. So I hung my boot out to one side to try and minimize the swing. This had been working for me a few times earlier in the day. The drag my boot created was also just enough to cause the anchor to slip. I noticed a submerged obstruction that I was coming up on while my anchor was dragging. It didn’t look very big at all and it looked like I was in the position to float to the side of it at a comfortable distance. By now, I was getting far enough from the spot I was trying to fish that I figured I should just pull up the anchor and catch up with Spot. So I started pulling up the line as the anchor was still dragging. I soon realized that I was not continuing to move down stream as I was pulling up the anchor like I normally would be. I kept pulling in the anchor line and realized that I was snagged. 

Great. Now what? Well, luckily Spot was still in sight and still able to paddle back up river via an eddy after I flagged him down. After realizing my situation, he pretty much immediately knew what I was going to have to do and let me know. I needed to unwind all my line and lay it in my lap so it could pay out quickly while holding the line tight so I would stay anchored. (Keep in mind, I don't have a jam cleat  ) So I loosely coiled out the line in my lap while holding the line against my foot well under my boot.
1.... 2.... 3..... GO!
I paddled as quickly as I could to the bank where Spot was standing while the line was paying out. I was probably within 5 ft. from the bank when I ran out of line. Now here's probably my biggest failure. I had the line connected at the end to the chord wrapper it was wound on. So when I ran out of line, it didn't just slip out the guides, it stuck. So now that I’ve reached the end of my rope (yuk, yuk) I jumped off into chest deep water while grabbing the front handle of the kayak. I tried to reach to the bank and pull the yak up river but it is now being held sideways in a slow to moderate current. I look at Spot and signal him to come over and try to pull me and the kayak in to shore. I then look back and see the kayak flip over as I’m holding the bow handle. Wonderful. Before I executed this maneuver, I took a minute or two to make sure everything was stowed and hooked in. However, for some idiotic reason, I didn’t secure my Nalgene bottle or my dry bag to anything which had my keys, cell phone and other things that I like in it, but luckily, both of those items float nicely. So I quickly flipped over the Mini-X and this motion caused the anchor line to break free from my kayak. I held on to the kayak while I scrambled to grab my dry bag and water bottle. My rods stayed in their holders but were leashed in anyways.

So now that I and my kayak are out of the river, (I’m comfortably dry from my dry top and neoprene wader combo by the way  ) it’s time to see if we can somehow get that anchor back. Since it was a floating anchor line, we threw on some spinners and made like fishermen. We would cast upstream a bit and let them sink and then reel them in to try and hook the anchor line dangling in the current. It was in fact the best fishing we had all day! We were actually hooking into what we were trying to hook into. That’s the goal, right? We were grabbing the line with the hooks, but not actually hooking it so it was slipping out of the bend in the hook before we could reel it in to the shore. However, with a little teamwork, we finally both hooked it and brought the line in. We spend a good twenty minutes trying to pull the anchor free, but that thing was stuck gooooood. We had even wrapped the line around a nice log and tried to use that as a lever to break it free. It wasn’t budging. So we cut the line and gave up. Luckily, I didn’t need the anchor for the rest of the trip.

So take from this what you will. Spot and I both realized that it could’ve played out a lot worse. I understand that a lot of you older vets of the rivers probably knew all of this and could’ve seen it coming from the beginning of the story, but it’s good to get these experiences out in the open for those without as much river experience. The river is a totally different ball game from flat water or open ocean kayak fishing. I learned that if you have anchored in a spot and you find that your anchor is slipping, it probably isn’t a great idea to let it slip until it finds something to hang up on or wedge itself into. Let out more scope or pull up and move on and maybe consider getting a heavier anchor. Most importantly, if you notice that you are slipping and you look down river and see that your path could take you even remotely close to a submerged obstruction that may not even look that big, don’t chance it and pull up your anchor while you still can. Oh yeah, and make sure your anchor line can run free from your yak. You may think, “But what if I want to not lose my anchor line so I can try to pull it free?”  It just makes more sense to let it go than to risk flipping your kayak, possibly losing gear that isn’t secured for some reason, and having to scramble back on while floating down the river in quick water that may be leading you into something rough while you don’t have control. An anchor isn’t worth that much.

Thanks for being the guinea pig and going through this for the rest of us.    But seriously, thanks for the advice and writing up the detailed report.

As Pelagic said, "when things go south on a river, they go south quick".
Always have a way out. 

One thing I check for at the begining of and throughout a drift is to make sure that my anchor line doesn't have any knots in it.  If you get in trouble on anchor, you want to be able to get free of it quickly.  That's why I'd made sure that Jeff had a knife handy at the begining of the trip. 

I probably should have been more specific that the line needs to be completely free but Jeff maintained his cool thru the whole thing (which is the most important part).   

All in all, it was a good exercise.  Not too much was lost and next spring I'm sure that one of use will head back down for some lead salvage.   

So I felt this would be a better place to explain my anchoring troubles from this past Sunday's float on the Nestucca instead of on my actual report for the day. This story would feel much more at home here.

Welcome to a safe place to post. 

Wow thanks for the post, glad it turned out the way it did!
Good food for thought!

Chuck

Thanks for sharing.  Good lessons there.