Anchoring Stories

[Teeto]

Absolutely love this tale. The funniest sailing story I've read. Thankyou !!

[Adelie]

Originally Posted by Capt Phil

Years ago while anchored in Snug Cove, Bowen Island in B.C., I was lounging in the cockpit enjoying a sundowner on a warm, quiet summer evening when a good size power boat with a 3 story tuna tower over the wheelhouse slowly entered the harbor. The other half dozen boats already anchored in this quiet piece of paradise were all watching as this fellow boater proceeded ot set his anchor.
The skipper was atop the tower armed with his loud hailer while his wife manned the foredeck. On the first pass, very quietly, skipper directed his wife to 'drop the hook' over the loud hailer. She waved and dutifully followed his order and splashed the anchor. She secured the rode and he backed down only to miss the grab.
The 'up anchor' command was given and complied with.
The procedure was repeated at least 3 more times with increasing frustration, louder and more pointed commands from the tower steering station and the foredeck crewmember following each order to the letter with a wave of acknowledgement.
By the 3rd or 4th attempt, everyone in the anchorage was watching the performance with increasing interest. By this time, the skipper was shouting into the loud hailer berating his wife and admonishing her to 'make sure the hook was set this time'.
On the last unsuccessful attempt, Captain Loudmouth unloaded verbally on his passive little wife. She turned, looked up at the top of the tower with hands on her hips, bellowed 'F*CK YOU' and walked into the wheelhouse leaving the anchor rode hanging straight down.
She got a standing ovation from the entire anchorage!
The red faced skipper climbed down to the deck, raised the anchor rode himself, entered the wheelhouse and left the anchorage in a hurry.
I've often wondered what they had for dinner that night!
Capt Phil

I don't know about her, but I'll bet he was eating crow.

[Adelie]

A couple of friends of mine from college and sailing got involved. Her father got a 25' or so powerboat and in time invited Mike and Lisa to come watch the 4th of July fireworks on Lake Union in Seattle.

They get to the lake which is crowded with anchored boats waiting for the show to start. Dad motors over to a gap in crowd and asks Mike to go forward and drop the anchor. Mike does as asked, dropping the anchor over then holding it just touching the bottom waiting for dad to back down so he can veer scope and set the anchor. Instead, dad comes bundling forward and ties off the anchor line.

Mike understanding his position bites his tounge, but wonders what they will do if a little wind comes up and they start to drag.

Sure enough, during the evening a bit of wind comes up, not much but enough to start dragging. No problem though, everyone around them was equally clueless, had done the same thing and they all dragged together at about the same rate.

[CaptPatAg]

What color is your helm while anchoring? Mine is always Pink while Blue is up front where the hard nasty stuff is. Pink follows hand signals just fine and Blue gets to have fine dinners thanks to Pink. Life on our boat....

[Unicorn Dreams]

Was anchored off the west coast of Fla one week in my old boat SANTANA 36' steel Spray. Anchored in 9' of water, clay sand bottom, forecast for 35-40 kt winds.

Put out a total 100' chain so I had about 7:1 scope. Tight befotr sunset 2 cats pulled into the anchorage upwind of me and dropped anchor. About 0100 storm hit, went outside everything was fine.
15-20 minuted later having coffee, when I heard shouting and felt a nudge. Went on deck and one of the cats was hung on my anchor chain between the hulls. Stuck like that for almost an hour with the winds blowing hard. When the winds subsided, mt anchor chain had chewed thru the cockpit up to the cabin bulkhead.

USCG showed up later, checked everything out and let us go.

To my surprise about 2 months later, I get served with papers saying I'm being sued for the damages to the cat, Family friend an attorney, laughed his a$$ off and said not to worry.
When court started, they tried to put the fault on me by saying I was using (excessive anchoring) if you can believe that $hit. Case lasted about 1 hour before Judge tossed it out, stating that there should be laws against frivolous lawsuits. The only bright point was my attorney counter sued and got me $2k for my sleep being interrupted and stress of the situation...

[markpierce]

Originally Posted by CruisingKitty

Anchoring is a spectator sport! Everyone has anchoring "stories". Some are funny, some scary, others just unbelievable. I have been collecting anchoring stories for some time and would love to hear yours.

So, you have nothing to share here? Your book, "Happy Hooking. The Art of Anchoring" is a very useful addition to any boater's library, you say. Sounds like you've lot to share.

[CruisingKitty]

These are great everyone! Thanks for sharing. I, too, got a chuckle out of "A Salt and Battery."

Here's one for you...friends were on a passage off the coast of England. The wind blew up unexpectedly and the seas were getting nasty. So they decided to pull into a harbor en route. They made it in just as darkness was settling in, dropped anchor, and went to bed exhausted but satisfied that they had made it to safety.

The next morning, they were awoken by rapping on the hull and found a local fisherman beside their boat. As they came up on deck, he said, "You do know you anchored in a mine field, don't you?" They pulled up their anchor very gingerly and sailed away vowing to never ever anchor without checking the charts again.

[CruisingKitty]

Originally Posted by markpierce

So, you have nothing to share here? Your book, "Happy Hooking. The Art of Anchoring" is a very useful addition to any boater's library, you say. Sounds like you've lot to share.

Hi Mark,
I have lots of stories, many from our own experiences sailing the east coast of the states, as well as the Caribbean and Atlantic islands and European coast. Many shared by friends along the way. I learn something new with every one of them. That's why I love them so much. I think sharing the stories helps us all learn from each other's lessons, don't you.

[sailorboy1]

If anchoring in an area where everyone has just dropped the hook over the side, no scope really, so you follow suit to match; is this a variation of "it is assumed everyone will swing the same" to ............... "it is assumed evryone will drag along the same"?

[noelex 77]

Beautiful day 5k Breeze and a 50 foot boat is dragging across the anchorage!
I go over in the dingy, but by the time I get there its nudging the rocky bottom. After lots of yelling I board the boat and there’s no one home. No fenders. No lines and no anchor????
So I tow the boat off the rocks with my dingy (remember its only blowing 5 K) and tie it up to back of my boat.
The owner returns a couple of hours later to claim my new very large tender.

Turns out the owner asked his wife to drop 30m of chain. She did, but failed to check the anchor dropped. It didn’t. So the windlass put 30m of chain back into the anchor locker!
They left the boat "anchored "and went ashore without any anchor or chain out at all.

[YourOldNemesis]

Having spent a couple of weeks trying to make an awful Solaris cat ship-shape (eg, buying a grease gun as the shaft drives had grease-boxes, but there was no grease gun on board. Discovering that the grease-boxes were full of water and had actually rusted through, so reconstructing them with waterproof putty!) in Tahiti's marina Taina, we motored over to Moorea. This was the owner/skipper's second circumnavigation. We cut in through the gap in the reef and started preparing to anchor. I pointed out to her that the chart showed 40m, to which she said 'that cruise ship has anchored there, besides, we've got 50m of rode, so we'll be fine' <sigh>

After eventually gently persuading her that we ought to anchor nearer where the other yachts were, she sent the crew forward to drop the hook. After the third attempt where we'd dropped it followed by her spinning the boat 90 degrees to starboard as only a cat can - resulting in the chain popping off the roller, I went aft to 'give her a hand'. As soon as I took the helm, never having steered the boat before (she, having done a full circumnavigation in it previously), it was immediately obvious to me that the port engine was stuck in forward gear. I shut it down and anchored using the starboard engine.

I'm sure the rest of the anchorage was relieved when the big cat stopped driving about like an idiot. This relief was relatively short-lived as we then started the generator, some ancient single cylinder lawnmower engine that ran at about 90 dB. A couple of hours later when we shut it off we could hear a cheer from all the other boats in the anchorage. The skipper ran it again the next day, and then left us on board to look after it. While she was out it caught fire, so at least we were allowed to turn the damn thing off then. All 3 crew jumped ship the day after and we headed off to Huahine with some good friends on an extremely tidy 35ft banshee who turned up, in the Moorea anchorage as if by magic just when we needed to be rescued!

[harmonytek]

It was a dark and stormy night...not really but I always wanted to start a story that way.

2008 in the BVI (Great Harbor, Peter Island)...it was dark and beginning to rain a little when we heard someone call "ahoy catamaran, our anchor broke free, we are about to ram you", "like heck you are" I remember thinking. A charter boat with just a father and teen son aboard was drifting out way.

The Bun (my wife) and I hopped into the dink while our friend and my son started the engines and prepared to move. When the Bun and I got to the drifting boat the father explained that their anchor had come loose, when they tried to start the engine the dingy painter had tangled and the dingy had come loose. He did not want to try to restart the engine because he might damage the prop. His son then said he would dive in and swim after their dingy.

So I said (maybe not quite honestly) that "when we heard them call out, we had been on the tramp watching the sharks swim underneath". After all who wants to go searching for a boy swimming in the dark and rain.

Then Bun dropped me off on board their boat, came up front while I found and cleated off a spare line and we then towed their boat to a mooring field some ways away from our boat, presumably with their anchor bouncing along the bottom as we went. Finally we got them secured, went after and retrieved their dingy, and told them to make sure they went ashore and paid for their mooring in the morning.

They left early next morning...

[YourOldNemesis]

Having spent 21 days crossing from Gran Canaria to St Lucia in an 80ft 55t one-off ketch (yes it is possible to be that slow, especially when you get boarded off the Cape Verdes by Cote d'Ivoire refugees; you lose 5 sails over the side due to ancient steel-ended halyards and un-serviced jammers and take on 2ft of water via the holed exhaust system). 'If Only' limped into the marina at Rodney bay. We'd had to spend a night (dragging) on the hook outside the marina because none of the ARC organizers had expected us to turn up at that time (even though one of the rules of engagement was sending daily position updates to HQ).

She was the longest, heaviest boat I've ever been on without a bow-thruster. On our skipper's first attempt to enter the narrow fairway, someone else decided to take that opportunity to come out, so we had no choice but to get blown sideways in the breeze at the fairway mouth. As we drifted sideways we collected a little 40ft plastic boat, tore it off its mooring and sent it drifting out across the marina. Fortunately there were 6 of us on board and our dinghy was out - 2 of the crew jumped in it and rescued the boat (there was no-one on board her). The rest of us then motored back out of the marina to await further instructions.

The ARC people flapped about and eventually a few hours later had managed to find us a more 'accessible' berth. We came in again and successfully mored up. I learned in the bar that night that the skipper of our neighbouring boat had broken a finger in the panic to deploy fenders when he heard over the VHF that we were coming in next to him!

[smurphny]

Now, if there is not one already, we need a thread titled "Events at Launch Ramps." We used to go down to the Port Jefferson, LI town ramp specifically for a good laugh... car lights still shining underwater, etc.

[YourOldNemesis]

I woke up one morning in the anchorage outside Tahiti's Marina Taina to hear raised voices. One guy was there pulling up an anchor tied to a fender into his dinghy, the other was shouting at him and he was shouting back, in English if I remember correctly. Eventually, one of them jumped into the other's dink and started shoving him. Finally, in a James Bond stylee, one of them lunged at the other and they both fell over the side into the water struggling. It was absolutely hilarious.

Aparrently there had been some 'Oi, you're setting your anchor over my rode' issues the previous day and the guy had given up, dropped his anchor on a fender and had come back to collect it after settling elsewhere.