The Dark Side of Cruising - Day 1

Traumatic Adventure – Day 1

The adventure begins:

We are recovering from a couple of pretty traumatic days.  Read this, if you think that all cruising is like it reads on our Blog.  There are downsides.  For example:

Day before yesterday – we pulled into Islamorada in the Florida Keys, off the ICW on the Florida Bay side. 

Our buddy-boat ran hard aground coming in, on sand, in a place where the charts showed at least 7 feet of water (they draw five).  TowBoat US pulled them off; the Florida Police were not happy, inspected their boat and the sea bottom, and would have had them pay for any repairs to the sea floor.  Fortunately, all the coral is on the ocean side, and a sandy bottom didn't need any repairs.  Well, that's how the afternoon started.

Following them, we got out of there and set our wonderful (soon-to-be-ex) Rocna 33# anchor – with 50 feet of chain and 50 feet of line, expecting strong winds that evening. Went below to take it easy.

SUDDENLY, our boat felt like it was hit with 10-foot waves – it was getting pulled and bounced and I thought a freighter had run into it!  We ran up on deck to see that a big motor yacht had caught our rode while motoring by us too closely!  We yelled and they stopped.  Now we had 2 boats tied together (rode wrapped around their prop), and no anchor set on either.

We quickly dug out our spare anchor (28# Bruce clone), 20 feet chain, 150 feet line – and I took the dinghy out and set this.  We now had 2 boats (one very big) hanging on one anchor.  And we were hundreds of feet away from our initial anchor point.

The guy in the other boat [more about what I think of them, later] dove under his boat and confirmed that our line was cut, and our anchor and chain were gone – forever, since we don't know exactly where we were when they cut us.

They called Towboat US, who eventually cut us free from their prop.

Our main emergency spare anchor (28# CQR-German clone) and rode (50 feet chain, 200 feet line) was buried deep under the V–berth. Ilona tore everything apart to get them, and I set a second anchor (needed for the evening's expected high winds – and because I didn't know how well the Bruce would hold after what it had just gone through.)

Our boat's insides, by now, are a complete mess!  Everything is thrown everywhere.

Well, Ilona called the nearest West Marine (Key Largo, about 25 miles away?), and got them to get us another Rocna anchor, chain, and line.  Whitney, a woman who works there, volunteered to drive the stuff up from Key Largo to the nearest restaurant, about a mile or two from us by dinghy. 

The other boat called West Marine with THEIR credit card – this cost them over $1100 for the replacement anchor and rode.  I cheered when I saw how much it had cost them, and would have been happier if it was even more.

By now, we have been working for several hours, and are beyond exhausted.  We still had to go ashore to meet Whitney and the equipment.  We gobbled down a couple of burgers at the Lorelei Restaurant, Tiki Bar, and completely jammed outdoor restaurant (amplified obnoxious music, of course). And we waited for a couple of hours for Whitney and the stuff.  Couldn't even have any drinks, since we still had to load over 100 lbs of stuff into the dinghy and motor it back for  a couple of miles in the dark, to our mother ship.  THANK YOU to marinebeam.com who had sold us a LED bulb for our masthead anchor light – so we could find our boat in the dark in the anchorage (25 boats?), since we had the brightest light.

Back on board by 9 or 10 pm. More exhausted.  Got some sleep.  I was worried about the winds coming in, and how I was going to get the Bruce up the next morning (it sure must have been pulled in deep by having two boats on it). The CQR, fortunately, by now was rigged on our windlass.

Diving for the lost Rocna anchor was out of the question – it was too rough, didn't know exactly where it was, we were too tired, and stronger winds coming in overnight.

More in the next Blog entry – it ain't over yet!