This boat seems to have a great deal of trouble anchoring. They have 4 or 5 people up on the bow and they drop maybe 15 ft of chain (just enough to touch the bottom). Then they power back without letting out any more chain until they back up about 25 feet then the person in charge of the windlass control lets go of about another 10 feet of chain while they are motoring back at quite a speed, then a tad more chain. They feel like the anchor hasn't properly set, so they then retrieve their anchor and try again... and again... and again. Actually I only saw them do it 3 times on this occasion (maybe they were practice runs?) and they decided the 4th time was good enough. They are off to our starboard but the wind could always shift so that they'll be in front of us... Oh no!
The other day there was a boat (might have been them) that did a dozen tries in a similar fashion, and then they tried another location and were happy after 5 tries there. Perhaps they are better at racing :)
While that fiasco was winding up, we had another boat (Moorings) anchoring to the port side of us. I took pictures in case of there being an interesting cock-up but they did OK. Good show! But just as they were tidying up and settling in, a Sunsail boat came directly in front of them and was going to place their anchor smack dab on top of theirs.... Duh!
The Moorings boat got their attention and said something and made gestures, so they abandoned that idea. It then seemed like they were going to do a little parallel parking maneuver directly behind the Moorings boat but then the wind shifted and changed the overall scheme of things and they moved on.
The couple on a non-racing boat that anchored behind us a bit this morning came out while the first boat I mentioned got a bit too close to them (with 7 or 8 people on the boat, at least one person should be looking in the direction the boat is travelling!) and stayed outside to enjoy the shenanigans.
Later, Dash... remember Dash? They returned the other day to find someone who was not at home squatting on their buoyed anchor... Well, they came by in a dinghy asking us if we had seen their fender which was attached to the anchor they left. I had noticed a small boat that was in their general vicinity that had a rope to their bow.
In fact, I was/am going to post their photo because I liked that they had so many fenders tied to both sides of their boat for protection. I quickly looked at the morning's pictures in iPhoto and told them the name of the boat who might have been the culprit. Hope they find their anchor.
Everyone play nice :)
Photos by Paradise Connections ©2009 - Please do not use without permission.
