I think someone is screwing with my
anchor. I am anchored near a park and there are a bunch of million dollar
vacation homes around. I've had a few weird situations come about while I sit at
anchor waiting for a slip across the pond, my gut is telling me something is off.
I have a Col 26 Mk II. Good size Danforth
Fortress, 30 ft chain and a ton of
rode. The area is known for it's good holding.
I had to move my
boat but was still stuck on the waitlist at the Marina. Was suggested by the Harbour authority to anchor in this location, Plumpers' Cove, while I waited for a spot in Gibsons, due to good holding, good protection from a few islets, the nearby park and a reasonable amount of
boating traffic so the
boat wasn't left entirely alone for bumboats to come and try to steal something.
Arrived, dropped anchor, it set like a dream first time. Picked up anchor to move further from the park, it set like a dream second time. Stayed at anchor there for a few nights, went back home. Set the anchor with the
motor in full reverse at about 6:1
scope. Boat held just fine for a week. Some decent swells (its in a protected straight so no waves from open ocean) anchor still held.
Let out too much
scope, with
record low tides I was near the rocks, got a call from a fellow mariner. I booted it up there (takes me about 4 h), anchor held just fine, as the tide rose the scope decreased. I was pretty far from those rocks don't know how on earth I got so close, I had a friendly mariner send me a picture.
The following week I went up to check on the boat. Moved it to transient at the marina I want to go to to pick up my fiancee. Moored at the park
dock. Went for a sail. Dropped her off, dropped anchor, same area as before. Slept on the boat for a night and stayed there a day. Anchor held.
Two days later I get a call from the park operator. Tells me I am only 15 feet from the park
mooring buoy. I had moved into deeper
water so as to avoid the scope from letting me get too close to the rocks with the
record low tides. I had slept on it, anchor was solidly set.
Park operator was telling me I had two days to get the boat out of the area or they would tow it to Victoria (??? This is a long, long way away) Contacted a friendly fellow mariner through the harbour authority, he was a friendly guy and checked on my boat - said I was actually 60-80 feet from the
mooring buoys. The guy pulled in 20 feet of scope just to make sure I didn't approach that buoy again.
All this while this park operator refuses to take a picture for me of the situation, won't give me his
phone number to call him back (because the "government doesn't supply him with a
phone and he doesn't want to use his own phone"), refused to even jump on board and pull in some scope if I was too close to his buoy and was just wanting me to come straight there, knowing full well I live in
Vancouver.
By this point I had already
lost a half a weeks' worth of
work, I told the guy, listen man, I can't just drop
work all the time and the anchor was set so well I slept on the hook without an issue and spent two days on the boat.
I called the guy's supervisor and apprised him of this weird situation; which is (a) you can't just force me to pull anchor and move from public waters (not the park, I anchored outside the park), (b) You can't just tow my boat 8 hours away to Victoria when there's a
government harbour right there, and (c) this guy won't even send me a picture or give me a phone number so I can fix the problem or determine what to do and finally (d) he refuses to pull in a bit of scope if I'm too close to his buoy which would take him all of 15 minutes.
Then I get another call from this park operator saying "I wasnt there so I didn't see what happened but apparently your boat was adrift and some citizen towed it in a rowboat and put it on our buoy that didn't pass a divers'
inspection, you have to move it within 24 hours or we're towing it to Victoria". Of course he won't tow me off the sketchy buoy to a more solid one. The anchor is still firmly on the bottom, but now from a picture that was sent to me it is almost vertical; kind of odd for an anchor that supposedly dragged at least 600 feet.
What is making this all feel fishy to me is the following:
a) When I'm on the boat with a set anchor, everything is fine. No drag, good holding. I put out adequate scope and I have adequate chain and the holding is known to be good.
b) First week the anchor held just fine the whole week I was away. Second week it ended up near the rocks. Third week the anchor is dragging after the weird phone call about me being too close to the buoy. Mind you, the first week too - there was 25 kt winds and the anchor held just fine. The past few weeks it's been almost dead calm, can't even pop a sail.
c) This whole "we'll remove your boat and tow it to Victoria" thing makes no sense. Victoria is over 100km away; there are a whack of major
government harbours between here and there, most notably Gibsons,
Vancouver, and Richmond
I know Murphy strikes when you're on the hook, but this is seeming too convenient. Anchor is solid as a rock for two days and less than 24 hours later I'm dragging?
I think someone is pulling my anchor on a NIMBY rampage. My boat is no wreck, it's clean, can move under both
power or sail, and I spent from last Wednesday to Sunday on it without a
single anchoring problem. It's been moved around. I've been setting anchor with adequate scope and chain and seemingly mysteriously, almost once I leave it all these problems happen, but when I'm aboard it just looks after itself with good holding.
I'm almost at the point of hiding on my boat with a gun pretending there's nobody aboard to see is someone is screwing around. I find it quite odd as well that a "friendly citizen" managed to yard a 7 ton sailboat in a rowboat with the anchor dragging then tie it off using some other peice of line (I can't tell from the picture) off one of the secondary bow
cleats without the anchor resetting on it's own over a 600 foot distance that this park operator didn't see.
I talked to a few locals, apparently there's about 4 guys in that cove with
vacation homes that are super jerks. Also bear in mind I have been checking on the boat every weekend, so when I say "3rd week" that means it's the third time I have checked, reset the anchor, not that I've just left it for 3 weeks on it's own.
Any thoughts?