Just thought I would relate a recent incident that happened to me last week here in
Grenada. This fits into the category of "alls well that ends well." It was bizarre enough I thought to share it.
Last week I was anchored for a few days at St George,
grenada. I was anchored fairly far from the harbor, where it is less crowded. After a few days, a small double ender showed up and anchored a hundred feet or so from me. With the prevailing
wind from the east, we were both pointing towards shore and he was to my starboard. I didn't put much thought into it, other than to admire his
boat, which was a nice looking
pocket cruiser that seemed well maintained.
The following evening, the
wind had died and all the boats were randomly circling their anchors. About 10pm as I sat in the
cockpit before going to
bed, I heard a
boat motoring towards me. Looking over, I saw it was the double ender I had noticed earlier, I was surprised I hadn't noticed him raising
anchor and just now was noticing that he was moving. I was still pointed towards shore despite the lack of wind, so he was coming from my starboard, and appeared to be planning to pass fairly close to my bow.
I had on multiple
deck level lights in the
cockpit as well as house and
anchor lights on still, so I wasn't concerned that I could possibly be missed in the dark. As he came closer, I thought "he is coming somewhat close to me..." He looked to be on a course to pass about 30 feet from my bow, but with the low wind, my anchor line should be going downwards fairly steeply, so I figured he would be clear enough.
With all of my lights on, there wasn't much else I could do to help the situation. Plus I could see him at the tiller and he seemed to be paying attention. Just to be sure, I shouted a hello in case he wasn't paying attention already, but received no response.
As he passed in front of me, my bow started to swing to port. I suspected he had managed to run over my anchor
rode afterall. But since he appeared to be
full keel, I figured my
rode would slip off, hopefully. I got up and began to walk to the bow in case his prop fouled, etc on my anchor rode and asked my wife to ready the
engine in case he cut our line and we had to reanchor with a backup.
By now he was about 50 feet to port of our bow and turning to port to presumably loop around us. Our bow had stopped swinging, so I figured we had slipped off of his
keel.
As I reached the bow and he was now about 100 feet past where we had first seemed to be swung around slightly, our bow began to turn once again fairly rapidly to port and I could see his boat seem to almost stop in its tracks.
Well shoot, he really did manage to foul our rode, but I couldn't figure out how, since by now he was well past where our anchor line should be.
As his boat slowed, it drifted to port. Still in
gear and seemingly oblivious, his boat crab walked straight to his port, putting him stern to my stern and about 50 feet aft of us.
I shouted to him that he had fouled my anchor. He immediately cut
power, which caused his boat to rapidly turn and move towards the stern of my boat as the anchor took over where the
engine had left off.
I still couldn't figure out how he could be attached to my anchor, but I had more pressing issues to attend to, namely his 3 foot
bowsprit making ready to spear my newly installed
solar panel. Managing to reach past my
solar panel, his bow sprit made for fantastic leverage to push his boat aside and fend off to prevent a low speed
collision.
The immediate disaster averted, I asked if he was
full keel, and suggested maybe he could drift off of it if we waited. He hadn't
lost power, so I assumed he hadn't wrapped the line. Then I noticed a mysterious line running from the roller at the base of his
bowsprit and down under my boat. Incredulous, I asked if he had an anchor down. He mumbled just coherently for me to understand that he did. I finally understood how he managed to foul my anchor.
Grabbing a boat hook, I told him to release the line to create some distance between our boats. I managed to
fish out the line and pull up his anchor amd 60 feet of chain from the other side of my boat. Good thing I have no
windlass, so I'm used to such abuse. As I pulled up his anchor, I couldn't help but noticed that he had a solid 120 feet out. I could hardly believe he had managed to drag that around behind him in the roughly 16 feet of
water I was anchored in!
Gathering his anchor, I heaved it as far as I could away from my boat in his direction so that he could raise it without hitting us. Being a 35 pound Danforth with 60 feet of chain (I asked him...), that distance was about 10 feet, but he had no problems getting it up while remaining clear of us.
He said something about how his previous spot was "too close to shore with the wind shift" and motored off without another word. The next morning I noticed he had anchored about 3 boats away a little farther from land.
The next morning I moved over to prickly bay and have been here since then. Today I noticed he is anchored here now too. But thankfully he is anchored on the opposite end of the bay, so I get to admire his boat from afar this time.
Anyway, it all worked out in the end, with no damage done (even to his ego, judging by his reaction). I even had an unplanned evening workout hauling his anchor up from under my boat. I have to say that is the first time I've heard of somebody weighing anchor without actually weighing anchor, though...
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions