Thursday, March 11, 2010 Little Farmers Cay

Little Farmers Cay anchorage.
(N23 57.219 W076 19.001)

12:15am: I was laying in the berth and heard a loud pop. I told Wayne that the mooring line broke and he thought it was just us going over the mooring ball as we sometimes do.

12:30am: thump, thump, thump…

We’re bouncing off the bottom and both jump up out of bed.
Instruments on.
We race up top, engine on.
The depth meter is reading 4.2, bump, 4.0, bump, 3.9, bump 4.2 and I see the shoreline lit by a crescent moon.
I now have us in reverse. The nose of the boat is pointed to shore; the waves are slapping us from the side. We’re not moving except for bump, bump, bump…
Shit, shit, shit!!!

Harder reverse, turn the wheel to figure out which way we nosed in when we came into shore so we can back out the same way. It’s so frigging dark though and with the wind whipping my hair into my face, blocking my vision, it doesn’t make it any easier to see. Winfield Lash is to our port, Madcap is to our starboard.

Both are further out than us and are away off the shore from our stern. I’m keeping an eye on them and on the shore. Something from my view is changing. My sight of land is getting a different perspective. That means we’re moving, if ever so slowly. My stomach is in knots as I picture all the derelict boats we’ve passed, shattered on the shore along the waterway and the other anchorages we’ve visited. I don’t want to see Kolibrie dashed on the shore, damaged on the rocks. I find I’m holding my breath as I keep playing with the steering and with the throttle in reverse. The depth sounder is now at 4.5, 4.7, 5.3, we’re backing and going sideways at the same time so I throw the throttle to forward and spin the wheel hard. We’re moving off of the sand and rocky shore! Wayne races to the bow to drop an anchor and we’re now sitting with the engine running and anchor alarm turned on waiting for dawn. Ahh living the good life! Yep. If the folks back home could see us now! I can periodically feel the tug of the chain and see the silhouette of Winfield Lash as we come closer to them. Then we’re closer to Madcap. We swing closer to one then the other. Now the stupid anchor alarm goes off… I can feel the anchor chain pulling as I type this waiting for the coffee to finish. Come on dawn! 2:00am – 4 more hours until daylight….

3:30am: We’re both sitting topside watching, waiting, listening to the anchor alarm periodically go off as we move 75 ft, 100 ft… Wayne lets out a little more scope. I come below and try to sleep. The chain keeps yanking us as we swing, and yanking hard. We must have snagged something which means we’re not going to drag. Sleep doesn’t come. To much coffee; to much adrenaline…

Come on sunrise… I’m laying in the berth looking at the stars through the hatch, listening to the anchor chain. Wayne’s is sitting up top watching our position in relation to the other boats, shore, and the chart plotter.

6:00am and our surroundings are visible. We contemplate taking the mooring that’s about 40 ft away from us and decide to wait until we talk to Terry at the Ocean Cabin. I don’t think it’s one of his moorings. The markings on it say “Call Ch 16” the one we had said Ocean something. I heard Terry respond to a caller and I hailed him on the radio to tell him we needed to talk to him. He said he’d be out in half an hour. When he showed up he had us give him a line and he attached it to his mooring line. He asked how we had tied up to the mooring line and we told him the bridle style. He said “oh the last person must have damaged the mooring line where you were attached and it sawed through”. Wayne showed him that the loop that we had tied to was still intact. It was the mooring line under the loop to hook our line to that broke through. He said “oh!”.

Anyhow he got the look bucket out and told us we weren’t going anywhere. Our anchor had snagged a rock head and we were wrapped around it. Sooo I got to maneuver around until our chain let go of the head then maneuvered while Terry and Wayne got the ropes attached to the mooring. Terry then took our anchor out and dropped it for us so we’re now on a mooring AND have our anchor set. So theoretically we’re set for the blow that’s supposed to come. The picture below is our mooring ball on the rocks...

I made more coffee – I was to wired to sleep - and read while Wayne showered then tried to get some shuteye. Windfield Lash came by to see if we wanted to go for a walk & we bowed out, telling them about our sleepless night. We talked about getting together for dinner later and were going to call each other on the radio. MadCap came by and we talked about dinner & happy hour (their boat) at 5pm. I hailed Ocean Club and made reservations for 6pm and told them that I wasn’t sure how many would be attending – from 6-8 persons and gave them our order for 2 cracked conch dinners. MadCap then radioed their order in and Solitaire radioed their order. I kept trying to hail Winfield Lash and couldn’t get a response from them. They made a reservation down the hill at Olley’s. Bummer…

Beth made an artichoke dip for happy hour that was delicious! I hope I can remember the recipe to write it down. It was tasty & I’ll have to try it out on the folks at home this summer! It was a nice evening after a dreadful start this morning. We had happy hour on MadCap with Solitaire and Winfield Lash, then dinner at the Ocean Club. I was only sorry that Windfield couldn’t join us. They wanted us to cancel our reservation at the Ocean Club, but after Terry’s help this morning and all I just didn’t feel it was right to do that. Tom joined our dinner table with MadCap and Solitaire. He’s an interesting fellow. They don’t finance house building down here. So he does a bit at a time (like we do at home) as he gets the time and money and little by little it’s getting done.

I watched Jim and Terry trying to put a ring on a hook on the wall while we were sitting around after dinner. Terry’s pretty good at it so after they vacated it I thought I’d try my hand at it. I managed to swing it on when nobody was looking. BUT! I did it LOL.

Tonight we didn’t get AS drenched getting back to the boat. We put the dinghies on the beach near the boat and walked to dinner then walked back to the dinks in the dark. The boats were closer to where we parked the dinks and it was kind of fun to walk back with Jim & Beth (MadCap) in the dark. The waves were still high but we only got half wet this time LOL.