My wife, concerned about the possibility that I would drown and leave her to figure this out by herself, insisted that I put on a PFD. It was still hot and working with a PFD on was not improving my mood. I started to lower the dinghy and then had to go back down below to get some dry lubricant to free up the sheaves on the lifting tackle. Eventually, with more cursing, I got the dinghy lowered in to the water and swung the bow alongside so that I could step in from the swim ladder. As I stepped, the boat went sideways and I slipped onto the engine, which had grown teeth and fangs while waiting for me. I swore, bled and glared, but the engine didn't move.

I tossed the painter up to my wife and she held it as I released the davit lines. I then muscled the engine into place and connected the gas tank. The gas in the tank, by the way, came with the boat. I had not considered getting new gas a priority.

I tugged on the starter rope. The engine spun, sputtered and stopped. I tugged again with similar results. After the third tug, I got decidedly different results. The engine quit sputtering. It just spun and stopped. Over and over again.

I was insane. I pulled the cord a dozen, two dozen, three dozen times. Finally, I dropped into the dinghy, sweating, panting, worried that my live–aboard career was about to end badly.

NO WHERE TO RUN FRANK MUMMERTSuzanne and Frank Mummert, Rockhopper's crew.

I glared at my wife again and demanded that she bring me the dinghy oars. If I couldn't motor the anchor out, by golly, I'd row it out. She started to point out that this was a bad idea, but by now, I was a man on a mission. I threatened to come up and get the oars myself (not much of a threat, I know, but I was hot and tired and not thinking clearly).

She got them out of the lazarette and handed them down. I slipped them into the dinghy's oarlocks and pulled mightily. They popped back out of the oarlocks and hit me, one in the chest and the other in the mouth. Cursing again, I slammed them back down into place and tried again. They leaped back up and bit me. I tried a third time with exactly the same result.

I stormed back out of the dinghy and on to the boat. I wheezed and panted and glared as my wife handed me a cold soda. I glared at the dinghy, at the kedge anchor and at the channel markers, so close, but so far away. I kept glaring as the sun slowly drifted down, the tide slowly drifted out and my wife slowly proposed that we contact the bridge tender again. I refused to consider it, which, of course, infuriated her enough to make her call anyway.

The bridge tender let us know that she was contacting the county marine patrol and that they would be happy to come give us a tow. At this point, I realized an important piece of information. We were stuck on the bottom.

Of course, we were stuck on the bottom. That meant that the bottom had to be less than six feet away, probably more like five or even four feet. I, on the other hand, am six foot, three inches tall. Therefore, if I wanted to put out a kedge anchor into deeper water, all I had to do was...walk it out. When the water got over my head, by definition, I would be in water deep enough.

I explained this to my wife who, by this time, was perfectly happy to let me walk out into water deeper than my head carrying an anchor. In fact, she probably would have happily pushed me into water over my head and was regretting the suggestion that I put on a PFD.