We went sailing and it was quite fun. On our way back to the slip, we got the engine started, the sails down then ran into a bit a “snag”. There was a girl sailing a little sailboat called a laser. She was coming right at us and I was watching her to make sure she didn’t hit us. She almost tacked right into us then immediately tacked again to avoid us. I thought that was weird and continued on. Ten seconds later the engine stopped with a thunk. A bit of panic rose in my stomach as I ran to the bow to drop the anchor. Could my engine have seized ? Just then the sailing instructors in their power boat motored up and ask if we had seen their small buoy. No I said. Then they asked if I had their buoy. No I said. Then it dawned on my that I might indeed have their buoy. I went back to the stern and looked down by the rudder and sure enough there was the buoy under the boat, its line wrapped around my propeller shaft. I yelled over, Yeah we got your buoy, its in my prop! I went down below to get my mask and wetsuit on. This might be kinda fun I thought.
I got down to the propeller and tried to unwrap the line but it was way too tight. So I started untying the buoy from the line. It was a bowline so it should have been easy to get undone but I still had to come back up for air multiple times before getting it out. I threw the freed buoy into the dingy and went to work on the rest of twisted up line. It was really tight and I realized I would have to reverse the propeller in order to get it loose. I got back on board and started up the engine in neutral. I popped it in reverse for a few seconds and could hear the engine working really hard to reverse the propeller. I popped it back into neutral and drove back in the water. Now the line was more loose and I managed to unwrap the line taking care not to drop the line leading down to the little kedge anchor. It was a good thing that anchor wasn’t too heavy or else it would have pulled me down with it and I would have had to let it go. After getting everything back on deck we pulled the anchor and motored over to the instructors to return their buoy.
The next day I motored the boat around to make sure everything was working ok and it was.
