Read on to find out about "Saving Ladybug"
More about saving Ladybug, below...
Our reward for the rescue (read on for the story)
Probably would be fun, but we can’t get ashore. We can’t even launch the dinghy it’s so windy. I have to admit there are some “not fun” cruising days. This has been one. Memorable, but not fun. Exciting, but not fun. We keep repeating the mantra my sister sent a while back; “The difference between adventure and ordeal is attitude”. We’re keeping a good attitude, but it’s not all fun 😉
Let’s take a look at where we left off yesterday: ” Tomorrow: Our nice friends who invited us to dinner so we didn’t have to cook after our tiring passage and the huge supply ship that comes in here and misses us by about 70 yards in the dark”. Ha! That’s nothing compared to today! But let’s talk about these before getting to today.
It was soooo nice when we got in here on the 12th after what turned out to be almost 24 straight hours including the last couple of stressful ones, to get a call on the VHF right after we anchored with an invitation to dinner-and by the way; “don’t bring anything, we’ll take care of it”. Hallelujah! Our friends Don and Deb on Buena Vista and Michael and Barbara on Astarte knew we were exhausted and came to the rescue. Great job guys and thanks! That meant we were able to take a quick shower (i.e. jump in the water, get out, soap up and jump back in, then a rinse with some fresh water to get the salt off), have a bite and get a couple hours of much needed sleep. And I might add dinner was great and we had a wonderful time with really nice people.
About that supply ship. It’s ironic. The name “supply ship” makes it sound like this is some huge port or something, but on these islands, the supply ship is the only means people have for fresh supplies and other stuff like mail, fuel, etc. There is no “Port” in the usual sense. These ships are what you might call tramp steamers. They don’t need a port, they just come in through the reef passes and maneuver into what we all call the dinghy docks. It’s literally where we tie our dinghies during the day, and they are bringing in 200 foot ships. They have their own cranes to offload stuff and do an amazing job of pulling up to the tiniest quays where there’s suddenly lots of action. Pickups show up and the cranes offload directly to the pickups and off the stuff goes. When the ship is gone-it usually is only around for an hour or two at the most-you’d never know there was even a place for a ship to dock. It’s back to mostly beach, coconut palms, and jungle with a street or two and some huts, a couple restaurants a store and maybe a post office.
Anyway, the entry through the reef is very narrow and there are about 20 boats anchored in here just inside the reef, which is close to as many as will reasonably fit. After our engine experience we were too tired to do a lot of due diligence over where to anchor, we just took a likely looking spot behind one of the other boats. Unfortunately when we anchored we dragged a bit before the anchor caught and since then the wind has come up to almost epic proportions (we saw a 37 knot gust this afternoon and 25 knots seems “calm”). The combination has our anchor rode stretching out into the pass in the big gusts. The pass is pretty narrow, so when a large ship comes in, it’s a very close fit between Charisma and the other side of the channel which is a reef with 4 foot depth. We’ve had three supply ships come by in the last two days.
Now you might ask; “how did you anchor in the channel, dummy?” Well, that would be a good question. However, it’s not hard to do since there is no channel marker on the port side of the pass where we anchored. And there were a bunch of other boats here, so we just came up behind them and dropped the hook. It was only after the first ship came past and I almost fainted as I looked up 50 feet at the bridge and waved to the officer who was looking down at me, that I looked at the GPS and saw that there SHOULD be a port side marker. It’s on the chart, just not in the water. We’re anchored just inside of it. Whoops. I thought that first experience was bad until later last night the inter-island ferry boat came in. He was clearly miffed that we were in the channel and “brushed us back”. On purpose. He did the same to about five other boats up the way as well. Basically we saw him alter course towards us as he came up the pass and miss us by, oh, about 30 feet. Sounds like a lot until you consider he’s 150 feet long, 50 feet high, weighs about 150 tons and is powered by I don’t know how many thousand horsepower engines. We call him the “Bad Ferry”.
Problem right now is that it’s blowing so hard we don’t dare move for fear of dragging on a new anchor setting like our neighbors did yesterday and our new neighbors did today.
And did I mention, it’s been windy. Let me describe exactly what that means: -The boat is constantly tipping over 20 degrees and we don’t have any sails up! -You can’t stand up on deck without holding onto something to keep from getting blown over the side -You live in constant fear that someone up wind of you is going to suddenly come loose from their hold and drift down and hit you, or… -You will come loose and drift onto the reef which is downwind And did I mention it rains a lot in the squalls?
Dragging anchor happens very quietly (at first) and suddenly. Yesterday the couple was down below in their cabin, probably having breakfast and the boat just started floated away. Unfortunately for them they really didn’t know what they were doing and had a terrible time re-anchoring which I described yesterday.
Today however, our good friends on Ladybug II were right next to us and then they weren’t! It was early afternoon and they were ashore-their boat was NOT occupied. Ann and I were playing a game of cribbage while having lunch. We finished the game and I got up to look around and to my surprise Ladybug was not where she should be out our starboard cabin porthole. I went up into the cockpit and whoa!, there she went. Since Chris and Rani were ashore, I quickly called Don on Buena Vista and asked for some help. He came over in his dinghy (ours has still not been launched due to the high winds) and we both went over to Ladybug. Mike from Astarte jumped in his dinghy as well and came over. We three “captains” all got on board and talked about what we should do. (Later, after all was settled down there were many jokes about three captains all disagreeing on what should be done) In the real life situation though, we decided pretty quickly that rather than “hold the fort” and wait for Chris and Rani to be found, we should probably raise the anchor and move the boat. Not a simple thing since all our boats are pretty different. Sometimes you can’t even operate the starter switch on someone else’s boat. But between the three of us we each were familiar with a part of their boat and were able to sort things out and move the boat to a safer place away from the reef. Fear of dragging is one of the reasons I’m not being quick to re-anchor. There are so few good spots left, our current spot has been “bomber” in some huge gusts and the wind today has not let up. Hopefully tomorrow we can re-anchor as both Ann and I are getting tired of waiting for the Bad Ferry to come back. I did call the most recent supply ship on the VHF when he was a couple miles out and advised him that we were infringing on the pass and unable to re-anchor from our spot on the north side of the pass and he was very nice about it. It’s still unnerving though seeing that huge thing bearing down on us through the pass. Even when you know they know you’re there and they are keeping 50 yards off-it’s still a huge ship relative to us (AIS said he was 210 feet)! We are hoping tomorrow brings lighter winds. Today’s winds have been consistently 25 knots and above. We almost don’t even jump to look at the digital read-out any more because the big gusts are no longer unusual. Barbara and Michael on Astarte invited several of us over for a Bastille Day celebration this evening (“Let them eat cake” – and so Barbara made one to celebrate) that unfortunately has been postponed to tomorrow. They realized many of us would be nervous about leaving our boats, even while staying in the anchorage, so plans were shifted.