On an earlier trip I had come up this same river aboard my 36' ketch Ishmael. The trip had been difficult, negotiating shallows and 20' tide swings.
After almost a week at Mercadeo, the first major rain of the wet season flooded the Tuira higher up in the mountains. It wasn't raining at our anchorage, but the flood unleased a massive flow of water, sweeping dead heads and other logs loose from the banks and hammering the hull in the middle of the night. In the dark I had to cut away the stern anchor as the rode had become tangled in a massive log jam. Soon the bow anchor chain also began to snag logs. I was hanging under the bowsprit, slashing at tree roots with my machete, but it soon became hopeless.
Unfortunately I couldn't easily cut loose from the chain, and in the end Ishmael was dragged downriver. Eventually we were pushed up onto a sand bar where I was able to free the chain, one log at a time.
Before the floods had subsided, and as the sky had just begun to grow light, I managed to kedge Ishmael off the bank and find a more protected nook in the river before I could collapse, cook up a batch of pancakes, and organize the mess of tools and mud that were spread around the deck.
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