What started off as a quiet day turned into a rather interesting afternoon for the crew of GH. Here we were, taking care of a little business on Grey Hound when I called up to Anne that our neighbors boat was heading out of the anchorage "sideways!" Oh yea, the boat forgot her crew!!
So wanting to "help" I jumped into Nu-it and figured I would quickly get on board, reset the two anchors and someone can move it back into the correct location later. So.....I pull in the anchor lines and ha!!! The anchors decided to stay where they were. I just pulled in 30 feet of rotten anchor line that probably was last used during the civil war!
Quickly looking around I see three more anchors on the foredeck so "no problem". Yep, problem #2....all three were not attached to anything. But wait, I have two 30 foot lines ready to be redeployed so I tie one danforth to one line and over the side it goes.......nice, now we are drifting sideways across Barnes Sound tilling the bottom. So now the wonderful CQR goes next and after a moment we are now tilling two troughs for sea grass. Next the third anchor.....I look around and the only line on deck is a old ski rope......heck why not? So the third anchor goes over the side and as crazy as it sounds, it catches! The cat swings into the wind, I try to reset the other two and we are only a 1/4 mile from the anchorage. I come back to GH after finding (we'll call him Jorge) and he will take care of his friends boat.
A little while later Jorge goes out to get the catamaran, ties up a tow line and pulls the anchors up. Problem #3 is now set in motion.....his 18 foot powerboat only has 1/10th the towing capacity of Nu-it and away they go......further out into the Sound.
After a while we get a little concerned.....no more friends of Jorge are around, they (both boats drifting sideways, like all out of control boats do) are now heading for the channel and the Sound is about 5 miles across......a long ways! So off I go with Nu-it again to help.
Now Nu-it, at 8.5 feet long isn't the best for breaking waves and long journeys.....I think I tied a record for the farthest in a miniature boat and we'll be chatting with Guinness about that later but I make it out to them and try to help tow.......Nope! Jorge can't keep his boat running so I suggest anchoring again and through my expert Spanish we agree. I get on board again and of the three anchors on the deck and another I found in a hatch, only two remain......another two are visiting the bottom I'm guessing! No problem.....Jorge finds two more and after a number of attempts we get the boat stopped using: 1 danforth, 1 grappling hook with 4 foot of chained tied around it, 1 CQR with no chain and one folding anchor. Two of the four are using ski ropes an they are the ones that are holding! Now the long dink ride back to GH in decent size waves.
The story ended well.......Jorge finally got his boat running enough to tow the catamaran home with a Coast Guard escort and to thank us the boat was tied to two other boats directly in front of us!! At least we had something to think about all night........quite a nine anchor day!
NU-IT TO THE RESCUE!!!!!
2 comments:
Oh boy...
Three Cheers for NU-IT!
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