Kedge

kedge
verb, transitive. To move (especially a ship or boat) by hauling in a hawser attached to a small anchor dropped at some distance.
verb, intransitive. Of a ship or boat, to move in such a way.
Also a noun.

Marcy ventured one leg out of the canoe and regretted it. Sticky mud engulfed it halfway up her shin. With effort, she retrieved her ankle and foot, relieved that the mud had not sucked off her water sandal.

She turned to look at Hal. "We're grounded. The water fell while we were sleeping."

He grimaced at her stating the obvious, but agreed. "No way we could tell that when we stopped."

They had paddled for more than an hour after dusk began, unsuccessfully seeking a place to spend the night. Finally, after full dark, with only the beams of flashlights to guide them, they had dropped anchor in a quiet eddy downstream of a bend, and slept as best they could, curled in the bottom of the canoe. Marcy's left arm and hip felt bruised where she had lain on the slats without any padding. Suddenly, she felt angry. Why had she agreed to come on this trip with Hal? Ahead, she could see nothing but more conflict between the two of them.

Hal climbed out, sinking into the mud bar where they rested.

"Careful not to lose your shoes," she cautioned.

He nodded, with that same grimace. "You stay there, for now. Pull up the anchor, then tie the long rope to the forward thwart. I want you to brace your feet against that thwart and hold onto that rope. Maybe we can kedge the boat off this bar."

"Maybe we can what?"

"You'll see."

He moved in slow motion through the mud toward the bow of the canoe, then waited while she did as he had instructed. The anchor--a twenty-five-pound free weight, the rope threaded through the hole in its center--was bogged in mud. Marcy avoided Hal's eye as she dragged it to the gunwale, then wiped it as clean as she could with her hands. She didn't want to add any more mud to the boat's interior. After she pulled the anchor in, she turned to the long rope coiled in the bow and knotted it to the thwart.

"Toss me the coil," Hal told her.

He caught it, then began to move, in slow motion again, away from the canoe, feeding out rope as he did. After a few yards, he was off the mudbank and in water. He paused to agitate mud off his feet and lower legs, then moved faster. A few yards further, he was below a stout tree that grew out of the steep bank at an angle, then curved upward. Marcy saw him take a deep breath, then he surged out of the water and up the bank, the rope resting on his near shoulder. Hal clung to the bank somehow and shook the rope to one hand. He tossed it over the tree trunk, then secured it with some kind of hitch. Marcy almost recognized it from the book of knots she had looked at in Hal's apartment. Then, he let himself slide back down to the water and returned to the canoe.

He moved to the stern instead of climbing in. "Pick up the rope, brace your feet on the thwart, and get ready to pull," he instructed. "I'll push from back here."

Marcy obeyed, and began to pull as hard as she could. Nothing happened. She berated herself for skipping the push-ups and pull-ups so many times when she was at the gym. How could she have known that she would need so much more upper-body strength on a canoe trip?

The canoe shifted, maybe half an inch. Encouraged, she got a better grip on the rope and renewed her effort, leaning back so that her weight was balanced between her feet and her arms. When she reached a sort of "sweet spot" of leverage, the canoe moved an encouraging couple of inches. She could hear Hal grunting behind her as he pushed at the stern. Again, the boat moved, further this time. Soon, it began to slide on the mud. Marcy began to get excited. Hal's strategy was working. They were going to get off the mudbank and be able to continue downstream.

"Are we kedging?" she called as she kept up a steady tension on the rope.

"You are kedging. I'm pushing."

Definitions adapted from The New Oxford American Dictionary, Oxford University Press, Inc., 2005 (eBook Edition, copyright 2008), and from Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Publishers, Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, 1965, depending on which is more convenient to hand.