Fixing Things in Paradise, and Getting a Scare

Events have been a mixture of joy, excitement, anger and terror the last few days. We have been to two most excellent (in some ways) anchorages, Navadra Island, which is the top of the Mamanuca island group, and Waya Island, which is the bottom of the Yasawa group. Navadra was first and it was knock your socks off beautiful with the island of Vanua Levu next door helping to form a seemingly snug and secure anchorage. However, it was exposed on the north and west and a nasty little swell was rolling in to make life miserable on board. So White Swan put out a stern anchor so as to keep the boat's bow in to the swells. The boat still bucks but it does not roll so much, which is much easier to deal with. We hate doing stern anchors but reluctantly put ours out with help from Bob on WS.

The big problem with a stern anchor out is that the boat cannot drift with the wind, and a boat's natural tendency at anchor is to point in to the wind, which is usually best. The profile of the boat to the wind is its smallest so presents the least force on the anchor trying to pull you loose, which we would all agree is a very BAD thing. But, the rolling was manageable like that. Of course, the wind picked up with a trough of bad weather moving in, and, of course, it started to really blow just as the sun went down, and, it blew from the east - right on to our beam (side). I did not like this but we seemed to be holding OK but the wind itself was now making the boat roll. So we were bucking from the swells on our bow and rolling from the strong winds on our beam. Great!

At 11:30pm, things just did not seem right. Just a feeling but I was nervous. I got up and looked around and it was totally black with all the clouds and still very windy with gusts to 25kt. The boat had also turned somewhat, so much that I thought at first that White Swan next to us had moved their boat but that didn't seem right either. I could hear the breakers on the reef and the shore but did not have enough depth perception to know how far we were. It did not look right though. Still, I was not sure so looked around some more, went down below, then came back up and finally turned on the depth sounder. Yikes! We had only 20ft of water under us, and we anchored in 65ft originally, meaning that we had drifted towards shore and a steeply rising bottom. We were almost on the rocks! My knees got weak and my mouth got dry!. Almost a panic! It looked like our stern anchor had held and our primary anchor on the bow had drug on the bottom and was no longer secure. The wind pushing on our beam was too much for the anchor, especially since we had set it backing up to the shore, not away from the new direction of the wind.

I took a few seconds to put together a plan to get us out of there and reset the anchor. The stern anchor was a big complication as we could not go anywhere with it connected to the stern. It either had to come up (no way in the wind and dark) or let loose. I went back and tied a floating fender to the line but did not cast it off as it was the only thing holding us at the moment. I started the engine to get it warmed up and let the noise wake Cindy. I was worried about Cindy since she had taken a half of a drowsy pill two hours before and would be sound asleep. She woke up though and we talked while I guzzled water to slake my thirst. I have to admit I was pretty freaked out but hoping for the best. Anchoring in low wind and in daylight is sometimes difficult, especially in 60-70ft of water. It takes a lot of chain out to set the anchor and the wind and waves are moving the boat at the same time. To top it off, it was pitch black and the anchor lights of White Swan and Ranger out in front of us were not visible. The three other boats nearby were visible from their lights, but were very close.

Cindy went forward to start raising the anchor and take off the snubber line which is like a big shock absorber. I put it in gear to help take the load off the windlass and loosened the stern rode at the same time just enough to give us some slack but not enough to drift over too much. It was almost impossible to talk to each other with the wind so Cindy and I had to keep meeting half way to discuss next steps. It was still very freaky! We managed to get the anchor up (great job Cindy!) and I let the last of the stern anchor line go by throwing it well away from the stern so as to not tangle in our propeller. We now could go find a spot to reanchor in the midst of boats we could not see. Radar was of no use so close and our chartplotter would not show us where the reefs were at in the middle further out. Cindy would shine our handheld flashlights on the boats in front of us when we got close and I would back away. We tried anchoring three times and each time we ended up too close to White Swan after we let out enough chain for security. The last time I said, Oh Well, and we were anchored just 20yds from their bow. If we drug anchor again we would hit them first. We rolled some in the swell now but did not care a bit.

Cindy was superb and overall we did what we had to do when we had to do it. Ironically, we had just bragged to White Swan earlier that we had never drug our anchor before, except that we did drag a stern anchor once in Mexico. Now more than ever we do not like stern anchors! None of the other boats woke up while we were taking up and putting out chain, which is a very noisy business, nor did they see our flashlights bouncing off their boats and everyone had their VHF radios off (except WS but they did not hear us calling!). So we were on our own. That was the terror of the night.

Fixing Things in Paradise is the next installment since I went on too long with this.

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