Fouled Prop

Maybe it's a rite of passage in Maine that every good sailor needs to dive on a fouled prop and remove the line that has wrapped around it. I got my salty merit badge on Wednesday evening right in the middle of cocktail hour (1/2 a Manhattan down) . We had anchored in a mooring field which was pretty tight and one of the lobstermen returned and indicated we might want to move since we would likely bump his boat in the night. Not that he minded, but that we might. "Current and Wind make the boat go all which way" he said. So we pulled anchor. I should note here that we add a trip line to our anchor setup to make it easier to pull the anchor out of a muddy rocky bottom. The trip line is about 25 feet of line with a small bouy on one end tied to the head of the anchor. To use it just pull it and the anchor will pull backwards out of the mud. Our problem this night was that the trip line bouy was off to the side and the anchor pulled up with a need for it. The line found it's way along our hull with the bouy near the stern. As Nicole put us into forward it sucked the line right around the prop shaft. The engine stalls, now we are drifting with no power in a mooring field. We grabbed onto the nearest boat, got a tow to the town dock from the lobsterman and went diving. That's a knife I'm holding in my hand that helped cut away the line. I'm glad it's July and the water is fairly warm. I also hope this a badge I don't need to earn twice.