Approaching the head of Blakely Harbor this weekend, we saw what looked like a rock near where we planned to anchor. It turned out to a small boat, submerged bow-up. It was covered with barnacles and appeared to have been underwater for a while. We guessed that it must have blown in from farther out in the bay. The boat appeared almost neutrally-buoyant—it spun slowly in the current and submerged only slightly as the tide went up.

The next day, the Bainbridge Island police boat arrived and attached a large orange buoy to it.

Later that day, Blakely Harbor resident Kim Bottles stopped by. (In his power power cat “Ceol Luaithe”, Kim had helped rescue a sailboat aground in Blakely Harbor earlier that spring.) Kim said he’d watched two boats struggle to raise their anchors the previous weekend. Eventually, up popped the boat we can see now. Apparently, it’s weighed down by chains in the stern. Someone might purposely have sunk it, or more likely those chains are attached to slipped anchors that became entangled in the wreck.

When we arrived, we had been planning to anchor just about where the wreck was. We’ve already lost an anchor once due to entanglement—we felt lucky to have avoided going through that again. The wreck is reasonably obvious during the day, but would be difficult to see at night without that buoy. Now that we’re off daylight-savings time and the days are getting shorter, we’ll be navigating at night and arriving at our anchorages like this one after dark for the next few months. It’s a good reminder to keep a careful lookout, even in anchorages we frequent.