one anchor or two?

One Anchor or Two?

 For those sailors who have suffered through my blogs this past winter while I blog about visitors, snorkeling and fluffy stuff here is a blog just for you.!  Sorry about the long wait but I am back to my roots of sailing with the winds, with the tides and with my trusty first mate by my side. (not that I did not love all the visitors. You all know I love you!)

Sea date: 4-16-11

N 25.44.687 Lat

 W 077.49.9 Long

On the east side of Great Harbor. In a bay near the Beach Club.  The charts read do not anchor here in North or East winds, what it does not tell you is that it is horrible holding. I told you that story already.

This story is a boring day in the life and times of Captain Pam and Benjammin Joe; that is if you are a land lover but if you are a sailor you will appreciate this amazing day.

We tried to wake up at nautical sunrise (which is about one hour before sunrise) but oh well, we made the regular sunrise at 7:00am. We thought we were going to travel 30 miles to abaco, Cherokee island but the night before we did our true calculations and we were off by … oh 25 miles or so…always good to check twice… we changed our plans the night before so there was no real hurry to hit the waves before 7am anyway.

Ben muscled up the second anchor, then got up the primary anchor and away we motored out of the bay. 

It was my day to set the sails – since we have had so many guests… I did not want to take away any of their new fun of doing all that work for them… plus Ben is better at explaining how to set the sails than me.  For someone 5’1” and so many little pounds it is much tougher for me to do it anyway, but still I like to make sure I can still do it.

I pulled the main halyard as far as I could get it then winched it the rest of the way. (there is no shame in winching:) 

As I said, “You can fall off now” I was reminded of one of our guests who was quite concerned when the words came back, “Fall off”.. whos’ falling off and why? There are other funny words we use that I don’t even know I use them… Like, “turn on the anchor light.” There is no light on the anchor… so where is the light and why do we say turn it on?  All so fun… The anchor light really is at the top of the mast as a light for other boats to see. Or “Pull in the sheets”, I thought the sheets were on the bed? Or maybe the sheets are the big sails that look like sheets. Sheets you all know are the lines (or ropes but you can’t use the word rope on a boat or people will know you are green.) the lines connected to the sail’s clew.

I digressed for those of you non-sailors.

We set sail and the winds were a fine 12k and under full main and jib. The wind was a little ahead of our beam, actually 60 degrees off the bow to starboard. The waves were behaving themselves to 2-4 feet.  The best part was that I did not have to work or email  anyone and Ben sailed all day while I luffed and loafed and laughed at what fun I was having. The makings of a great day of sailing were at hand.

Only a few short hours of sailing and we set anchor… tried to set anchor… This stuff was even worse than the last stuff.  This bottom was tricky, cuz it looked like sand, and it was sand but when we dove to the anchor, it was 3-4 inches of sand and the rest under it was all hard pan rock! So the options were, try to set in the root-mingled weeds, or try to set in rock, or leave, or see what the weather will do… The weather was going to be southeast at night winds only 9-11knots.  We are in the wide open cuz we could not get close to the shore but we are not fully exposed to the wind… unless Windfinder.com is wrong and the winds shifts a little to the south, then we would be exposed.

Sailing in the Bahamas has done wonders for one’s knowledge of the anchor and how it works.  Ben can motor above and I can be in the water watching how the anchor moves and shifts or how it digs down to hold tight.

We chose put a second anchor down… the winds are not that strong… our anchor chain is so heavy that when we are in those winds the weight of the chain with the anchor is many times enough to keep us in one spot.  So mighty strong Ben set the second anchor by brut-force… even more than last time.

This time I lifted the anchor over the bow and threw it in the water… YUp just pushed it over near the bow.  I did however tie a line to it. Ben dove down 10 feet grabbed the line, came up (of course with snorkel and fins and mask) and he swam holding on to the line pulling the 35 pound anchor behind him. He dove down again and tied it to the anchor chain. He dove a few times and then set the anchor prongs into the sand into the rock.

Even though I know the winds were not so bad, and I knew that if we did drift we would wake up with the anchor watch on…even still, I could not sleep well.  My subconscious does not like a poor anchor setting and she will keep me up all  night…. EVEN though I know it is fine! Silly her!

Sailing in the Bahamas is a mixed bag of water… You sail either in shallows for miles or thousands of feet for miles depends on if you are in a sound or in the bank.  If you are in the Bank then there are less waves, less wind, but more areas you can’t just sail in cuz of the depth.  In the Sound it is wide open and deeeep! The waves can get big… one day NOAA said the waves were 11-16 feet in the sound! Needless to say we stayed put that day and I never told our guest that just on the other side of this cute island lies 11-16 feet of ocean waves! There are things one needs to keep to herself.

Our next sailing spot I told Ben, “I just want a good anchorage with tons of sand so I can get some sleep.” Since we have had 3 nights of 2 anchors and weeds and rock.

WE combed the charts, and Cherokee island still looked good although.  One chart read, this is a beautiful anchorage with lots of sand to anchor in, not good if seas are southwest. The other chart guide said, this is a beautiful anchorage good for day anchoring and no one would be caught in there for over night. 

OK who’s right? I vote for sand and lots of sand.  We know that if our anchor is stuck strong in sand we have been in 35k and have not budged a bit. I don’t mind waves for sleeping… dot dot dot … until now!

We set our anchor, only needed one. We dove down and it was buried deep into the sand.  Ahhh I thought a good night of sleep finally!!!

Only to be woken up by our boat sideways to the waves. Now we are rocking side to side… seems the same… nope! Wrong! Weird too! The boat rolls hard over then rolls back. For some reason this configuration is so annoying! The boat is built to rock forward and backward like a saw horse.  It has a nice slow curve slowly forward and slowly backwards. BUT now we are like out in the ocean when the boat heels way over, but this time it immediately heels right back as far the other way. Add to this each and every floor board SQUEEKS! And I mean loud! Each cupboard groans with each roll over and roll back again. The sounds were all new and deafining if you ask me.  Well Ben actually got up (he can sleep through any noise – except this – so you know it is loud!) he stuffed paper in each of the cupboard and tried to move the floor boards. He tried to put oil under one floor board that had a beam crossing over.

No sleep for us.  The anchorage was so beautiful and the town was as neat as a “new-pin” is what the book said. The chart guide was right. The town and area was so inviting and the anchorage was secluded (hard to find with all these boaters except for that past few places we have gone have been the less traveled trails).

We stayed one more night… thinking the winds are less and we are so tired we should sleep through anything!

I wedged myself into the sitting area near the table, so as to not roll on the floor. The night before I moved from the bow berth to the stern berth so I could move 90 degrees when needed, but still it was hard to get used to. Ben had another night of poor sleep (wow two days in a row) while I slept pretty good considering. Anyway I knew we were in tons of sand.

WE have now moved to a peaceful anchorage well protected and calm! WE both took naps and slept well over night.

The end of a long blog!

Pam