We had moved Imagine further out into the river just before the storm. This morning we decided to haul anchor and move back to give the ferries a bit more room. It should have only taken ten minutes, not three and a half hours.

After all the times we have rescued other boats, it was now our turn to be rescued!

As usual with Sue on the helm moving the boat forward against the tide, I started hauling the anchor up. With just over 20m to go the winch started straining and getting slower with each metre of chain.

Because of the storm and the river flooding a lot of debris had come down the river. What prey tell had caught around our chain?

Sue now had to hold the boat still facing into the river current while I raised the anchor inch by inch. There it was, an old pylon (3.5 to 4m long) nicely tied up with the chain. I could see that it was at the 10m mark on the chain. This meant that the anchor was now off the bottom as we were in 12m of water.

I first tried dropping the anchor fast, hoping the chain would come loose. But no. Okay, inch it back to the surface again.

Note: For the anchor winch to work under load the engine revs need to be high to keep the voltage up. So Sue had to keep taking it out of gear and rev the motor so I could winch. Then she had to put it back in gear to get the boat back under control and face into the current.

Luckily we had previously met the young couple on the Cat anchored behind us, so I jumped in the dinghy and headed across to get assistance.

After about an hour of Andy and I tying rope around the pylon and trying different things, I decided that it would be better to get to the public wharf down river and tie up against that. I phoned Ben to come and give us a hand as the pylon was too big for the two of us to handle.

So we slowly made our way down river against the incoming tide (at .07knots). As we went past another Cat, Andy called out for Wayne to give us a hand.

The pylon was at the 10m mark on our chain this meant take away the meter of chain around the pylon we had 9m of chain and an anchor below us. Most of the river was 12m deep but coming up to the wharf it dropped to 9.5m and to make it more interesting there is an underwater powerline crossing the river.

We made it over the power cable, but 20m from the wharf the anchor hit the bottom. All we could do was drag the anchor. Full throttle and we made it to the wharf.

The crowd thought it was quite interesting seeing a yacht with a pylon out the front.

With a lot of pushing and shoving we eventually got two ropes around the pylon and tied to the wharf. Then we could lower the chain enough to untangle it. Free of the pylon we were able to leave the wharf, haul anchor and return to our anchorage before the storm. We have contacted the authorities to remove the pylon we had left tied to the wharf.

With many thanks to Andy and Steph, Wayne and two people from the crowd. Ben got caught in traffic and as we had so many people helping we told him to return home. But thanks heaps for trying to get here.

Sorry no photos we were a bit busy.