Anchor drag at 25k in the dark at night... 4am.
Welp this time the anchor drag was not a drill.
There are three islands (Allen Cay, leaf cay and one more unforgettable now) that form a triangle, in the center are anchoring places with patches of sand bars the same sand bar we beached ourselves on in February. so I'm glad I somewhat knew the bottom terrain.
The current seems to swirl around cuz if you are on the west side of the anchorage the boats face the opposite of the boats just 200 feet on the east side, in between is one of the many sand bars.
It was late and strangely Ben and I felt the strong wind pouring in from the stern. A weird phanominon! We all know a boat points it nose into wind. We have been at places where the current pushes us sideways but never 180 from the wind. To top it off even more weird our boat was over the rode (anchor chain). The anchor was a stern pulling behind us. Not normal. Ben got up and pulled in the kayaks. Maybe those were pulling us weird. Nope. Then he moved the dinghy, nope that was not effecting our weird position.
He stayed awake and marked our boat on the chart plotter. We were dragging. Now if one drags you have a few options. First look in the direction of the drag, will we go aground? Run into a boat? Land? Etc... If no the let out more rode (anchor line) changing the angle of the attack helps the anchor to dig in.
In this case behind us were two things, first a sand bar and the tide was at high going to low, ( a terrible time to get stuck) if the tide was high enough and we dragged more we would run into a boat. So letting more rode was not the option.
We discussed these many options and Ben checked our drag and we had no moved 60 feet or so. I'll have to ask him.
We knew we had to pull up anchor in the winds in the dark near boats and sand bars.
I have to say now was a good time to pray. I just kept the conversation going with God as we tried three unsuccessful times to set the anchor.
I was so frustrated driving the boat cuz wind and current were so hard. I'd try to keep the boat straight and Ben needed me to fall off a bit so the anchor was not pulling so hard but once I did... Sure we would drift back, I would crank the wheel around then we would lose steerage and the boat would pull just as hard on the other side. So I'd drive up giving the anchor chain slack, then I'd go too far, stop, lose steerage, and the boat would end up on the othe side of the chain. I could not win. So mighty strong Ben (he's needed some exercise lately with all this dinghy-ing and not kayaking ha ha) It took us three tries before the fourth stuck in. How good it stuck we don't know. It took well over an hour and I want to say almost 2 hours. One boater got up and shined his light on us. Yup we did see him.
We have no clue why we dragged? I think cuz it was shallow and when our boa shifted 180 for the tide the anchor chain caught on the keel or belly of the boat and would not let us flip over? Sounds good but I doubt that was the problem either. Trying to explain the unexplainable! We will leave it up to God for those kind of questions.
Our guests were tucked in bed all snuggily!
Missing you all
Pam
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