Anchor Watch

[Hilde’s log] April 16, 2008

There are days on board that are just plain tedious, and most have to do with bad weather when I am safe enough not to be scared, but am required to keep watch to make sure things don’t get interesting. They can get interesting in a split second.

A few days ago, I was knitting in the cockpit. The wind had kicked up a bit and I knew I needed to put the knitting down and take a look around, but I was within 10 stitches of the end of my row and wanted to finish. I have a tendency to make weird mistakes if I stop before the end of a row and weird mistakes usually cost me hours of frustration. The next thing I knew, our air horn went off by my head with a deafening blast and David was flying out of the cockpit as though he had been launched. “Boat dragging!” he yelled, and that got my mind of my knitting, which I thrust to the side as I leaped up. Sure enough, there was a 35 foot sailboat about 6 feet from our starboard side, its crew frantically trying to start the motor. “Get me a fender!” David hollered at me, so I scrambled to the stern, unhooked the closest fender and hurried forward toward the bow, where David was standing. He was leaning over the lifelines, pushing the standing rigging on the dragging boat, which was now about 2 feet from us, fending her away from Raven’s starboard side. There was no time to attach a fender. The dragging boat’s dinghy and big outboard motor were hanging from davits from its stern, which was even with our beam. I scooted amidships and leaned over the lines myself and pushed with all my might against the pontoons of the inflatable dinghy and then against the motor. It is amazing to me that the average puny human can cause a 20,000 pound boat to move just by pushing on it. The captain got the motor going in no time (although it seemed like hours) and they moved away, barely missing catching their rudder on our anchor chain. Later in the afternoon, he came over to apologize. He said he’d been in his engine room and noticed that another boat was dragging. Then he realized the other boat was dragging forward…then he knew his boat was dragging! It’s such a scary feeling. We were totally sympathetic, and as I told him, “If you haven’t ever dragged, you’ve spent all your time at the dock.”

All of which is to say, when the wind is high and you’re anchored out with other boats, you keep an anchor watch (1) to make sure you’re not dragging and (2) to make sure no one else is headed your way. I was so grateful the incident above happened in daylight. In Taylor’s Creek, Beaufort, NC two summers ago, I watched two boats fend off from each other in a raging thunderstorm in the middle of the night for a couple of hours. The creek was too crowded and the boats anchored too close together and when the wind came from a certain direction they “kissed”. Those two crews had a long night. In this last blow, we had friends on a mooring ball in Fisher’s Bay, and the mooring ball tether broke in the wind. They escaped without incident, but I’m sure it raised their blood pressure. You have such a (false) feeling of security on a ball.

Yesterday morning about 3:30 a.m. the strong winds that were forecast arrived in a huff, increasing from about 5 knots to about 20 knots in a matter of minutes. David and I got up and went above to check on our holding. We had moved Raven down the harbor almost to the farthest end in search of a viable wi-fi connection (no luck) and we hadn’t been in any sort of wind since we moved. We sat up and watched our bearing lines, drank hot tea, and muttered about the way weather systems always seem to arrive in the wee hours of the morning. I went back to bed about 5 and got up about 8, feeling as though I’d been kicked in the head. The wind blew like stink all day, without letup, between 20 and 25 knots. It blew right down the channel of the harbor, instead of over the land, as forecast, churning up two foot waves in the harbor that slapped this way and that. Boats streamed back from their anchors like ribbons pinned to surface of the water, some pulling straight along their anchor chains and others dancing side to side with the gusts, a field of water-bound kites in the strong wind.

Other than keeping a wary eye on things, there was nothing to do but read and listen to the wind. David fought with the computer, hoping to pin down a viable wi-fi signal, to no avail. I made bread. We snacked and let the dirty dishes pile up. We wandered the 20 feet from the hatch to the v-berth and back again. I flopped on the settee for awhile, then crawled up the companionway and sat in the wind awhile. Raven bobbed and sloshed and danced around on her chain, “sailing at anchor”. The boat in front of us, which looked awfully close, turned this way and that on her chain, bucking like a frightened horse. Even had you wanted to slosh your way to land in the dinghy over the rough water, you’d have been too worried about the boat to have any fun. So we stayed on board and daydreamed about rv-ing, and how when the weather is bad you just go to the laundry or to the movies or to a coffee shop. On a boat, you stay on the boat.

After blowing steadily all day, the wind got down to business about 9 p.m. and howled along at well over 25 knots. Quite a number of long gusts were in the low to mid 30s. I took the first watch and played endless games of mahjong and free cell on the computer, popping up regularly to check my bearing lines and the magnetic track on our Garmin to make sure we were still holding firm. About 12:30 a.m. the wind dropped off to “only” 20 knots, so I crawled into bed and died, telling David he didn’t need to get up. Of course, never one to let you actually get any rest, the wind came back about 2 a.m., and David got up to watch. I felt him leave the v-berth and then crashed back to sleep. I roused from time to time and feebly asked if everything was all right. About dawn, David came back to bed and he’s in there now, dead to the world at 8 a.m. It’s blowing about 15, and I really, really, need a cup of tea.