We spent quite a bit of time setting anchor here (two anchors, actually) because weather was coming.
And boy did weather come!
At one point we had hiked about 1000 feet above the boat to sight-see. Looking down on the boat, while wind gusts pushed us around like little sails, we prayed it would stay in place. When we got back it was just how we put it, the anchors buried under about a foot of sand, at 45º anchors from the bow.
But what’s the worst that could happen? Oh, it would be pretty bad actually: the boat would blow into and scrape up against sandstone walls, which are effectively rock-hard sandpaper blocks.
The perils of navigating this man-made lake are sometimes intense, but my captain enjoys the rigging and isn’t too precious about his boat bottom. That, and there’s a rubber dinghy to take us into tighter spots. The other day it was funny watching a house boat loaded with bikini-clad girls using broomsticks, trying to un-jam it from a narrow canyon they’d gone too far down. Probably not so funny for the couple in a much smaller boat caught behind them up canyon.
Sometimes the bottom of the lake is suddenly RIGHT BELOW you, in the form of a submersed rock tower, and sometimes the reservoir is very deep. Sometimes it is crystal clear, then the next morning you might wake up to a huge log jam — debris flow from a flash flood. That is what happened to us while camped here over several days.
That evening, debris started to come down canyon toward us, mostly smaller tree branches and bark. The lake was getting dirtier. The next morning I woke up and the boat was surrounded by very large logs. A giant cottonwood log, smooth and white, probably about 8′ around and 25 feet tall, maybe weighing half a ton, was just off the swim deck. I walked on and paddled around the lake on my log for a while. It floated like a boat. It had finally washed all the way down Navajo Canyon, who knows how far, and who knows how long it would float and imperil boaters before sinking to the “bottom” of Glen Canyon along with all the other drown trees. Floating around on that log, with my cheek where its bark used to be, was soothing, but there was a little concern about if some speed boaters or fisherman came around the bend, what they’d think about the naked lady on the tree…