Well, the waterspout was just the prelude for more “interesting” things to come. During the day the wind behaved as forecast, giving us confidence in our anchorage. That changed when the wind clocking around to the West and began building, reaching a peak gust of 47 knots. As cousin Johnny says about hurricanes, “it’s not the wind that’s the problem, it’s what’s blowing in the wind”. In this case a lagoon full of water, miles of fetch to absorb wind energy and subsea terrain rising into the anchorage, resulting in breaking waves. Participants on the evening SSB net couldn’t even hear my efforts as net controller, likely because of the monster storm that was almost upon us, and all I could hear was static, and Christine on SV Sugar Shack had to take over.
When the swell began to build and JollyDogs started pitching up and down we made preparations to get underway. The other boats in the anchorage were doing the same, and we were the last boat to depart, raising the anchor with waves breaking over the bow. We got the anchor up without serious mishap and began motoring through the swell towards a safe part of the lagoon, when Isabel shouted something about the dinghy. I looked around and realized a shackle on a lifting block had failed and the stern of the dinghy was dragging in the water. Isabel took the helm while I wrestled with various lines, and soon the dinghy was detached from the davits and safely in tow with a second painter attached in case the primary one parted.
We motored out into an area of the lagoon that we believed to be well charted and began a back and forth course over the same safe subsea terrain, trying to keep the wind and seas at about 60 degrees off the bow. Not quite lying ahull, that still resulted in a fairly comfortable ride and the dinghy seemed happy enough to stay in position. Nearby SV Ari-B and SV Long Temps were doing pretty much the same thing. In deeper water the seas were fairly short and steep but there were no breaking waves. We reckon we departed the anchorage a little after 1900, and about 2300 the wind had abated and the seas calmed so that the two other boats returned to the anchorage for some rest, with the hopes that this storm had finally passed. We did the same, arriving last and feeling our way around to find a sandy spot to drop the anchor. The water was really churned up and Isabel struggled to see the bottom even in 4 meters depth, but we found a place and got a good anchor set. As soon as we had about 13 meters of chain deployed we swapped places and she took the helm while I moved to the bow to install floats on the anchor chain. Soon I had the bridle installed, Isabel pulled down with both engines at high rpms and we were safely anchored. Isabel went for a hot shower while I set the anchor drag alarm on our AIS, then I soothed my own nerves with a hot shower and we crashed.
Well that didn’t last long, and about 0300 we were awakened by “freaky storm part deux” with winds strengthening again from the West and a building swell. This call to action was enough that we got the anchor up and moved out into the lagoon once again, joining Ari-B who had departed the anchorage about an hour before. Long Temps elected to remain at anchor and simply post an anchor watch. At sunrise the VHF crackled and Long Temps announced that they had safe routing data from a previous journey over to the #7 anchorage on the West side, and we were welcome to follow them over to seek protection from the West wind. Both we and Ari-B joined them and in about 2 hours we were safely anchored underneath sunny skies in beautiful calm blue water, celebrating our close call with disaster aboard Long Temps with fresh fruit, cake, and a shot of rum. The strongest friendships are made from these sorts of shared experiences.
Cheated death again.
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