Last night was one of those nights that get your attention and remind you that cruising has its ups and downs.

One of the “ups” is the friends you make along the way. We had a delightful evening with a boat couple (and their lovely six year old daughter Natalie) that we have paralleled over some of these past months but not had a chance to really meet. Dave and Angelina on La Fiesta had us over for a wonderful curry dinner.

But…the other side of cruising raised its ugly head about 0330. It started raining and we did the rain dance. That is, got up and closed all the portholes and hatches. We leave them open at every opportunity since it’s so humid, but when the rain hits, we have to close everything up. So, closed up, back to sleep. Not for long.

At 0400 the first big gust hit and Charisma heeled well over on her side. I knew that sign and jumped out of bed. No sooner had my feet hit the floor that the anchor alarm went off. This didn’t necessarily mean we broke loose and in this case, we didn’t, but it DID mean there was a 180 degree wind shift and instead of swinging 200 feet off one side of the anchor into deep water, we swung back over the anchor the 200 feet of rode, plus 200 feet in the other direction. With the wind gusts and the waves and all the anchor lights from other boats in completely different places then when I went to bed and the rain fogging my glasses, it was chaos. I turned on the engine first thing in case we needed to avoid other boats come adrift or motor off the reef the was now our lee shore. I concentrated on looking at the GPS, the depth sounder and the trees getting closer on shore. Through the rain and foggy glasses we looked like we were swinging pretty close. I dropped anchor very purposefully in water where I was pretty confident that we could swing and still stay off the reef, but you never know if the anchor is going to reset after the boat swings 180 degrees and pulls 200 feet of chain around. I was watching the depth sounder. We started in 50 feet. 40, 30, 20, 18, 17…I was getting ready to move. 17. 17…OK, looks like we’re stable for now and the anchor is holding. Looking around again to see if we might be the target for another drifting boat, we looked OK, but could see there was chaos over to the north of us. A number of boats had turned on their steaming/navigation lights and we could see they were turning one way and the other. So, we’re stable, no one is upwind about to smack us, we can settle in to anchor watch in case it gets worse. I was soaked and getting cold so went below to dry off and put on some foulies (heavy duty rain gear) and warm, dry clothes. You have to keep your brain warm or you can’t think clearly when bad things start to happen. Ann had a chance to get some foulies on, so she was elected (elected!!?) to stand watch for the time being. Engine still running just in case.

Turned out the front blew through from 0400 to mid-morning. We both stayed on watch with the engine running until daylight, then Ann went back to bed and I took the watch. At 1100 she got up and we had lunch after which I took a nap until about 1600. We turned the engine off once we could see that things were OK and by 0730 the winds had died down a bit, or at least they seemed to in the light of day. They were still gusting into the 20’s, but we could see that things looked stable.

I learned a couple more things last night. First, the never ending lesson of fixing things today, not “tomorrow”. We discovered a couple issues that by themselves were not huge, but combined would create an “accident chain” that could be a big problem. The first was that the windlass (that we use to lower and raise the anchor) wouldn’t freewheel and let the anchor out. I cheated it out, and was going to look at it “in a couple days” until I heard there might be a front. So I fixed that yesterday afternoon (turned out to be a jammed brake cone-the grease got used up and it seized). The second was I happened to just take a glance into the engine compartment “just to look around”. I happened to see that the bolt that holds the alternator bracket on was backing off. Another fix that took ten minutes to bolt it back down, but with the loss of that bolt not only would we lose the alternator, but the alternator belt also drives the fresh water pump. No belt, no cooling. We would have lost the engine. Third, I dove the anchor “just to check”. I was able to see that it was set pretty deeply. Not great, but in my opinion, would withstand at least 35 knots of wind and I noted the topography of the bottom around the boat. I had a really solid feeling for the slope of the bottom and the fact that it looked like decent sand on top of coral. Thus, when things went bad, I didn’t panic about the holding. I knew the anchor was set pretty well, that the slope was heavily up-sloping making the direction the anchor was holding when we spun around very favorable. This let me stay calm and wait for Charisma to settle down instead of doing something like cut that anchor lose and motor offshore when we swung into the shallower water.

So there we are. The good and the not so good. We might be into some more not so good tonight as it looks like there might be another front coming through.

Stayed tuned.