Unexpected Event

Wednesday is half price vegetarian at our favorite Irish pub here.  Finnegan’s Wake puts out some great food.  Rob swears their “Beast of Bourbon” burger on a pretzel bun is the best burger EVER.  I’ve been drooling over the veg menu for a couple weeks now and waiting for half price night to keep the budget on track.  Wednesday was to be our beach and dinner out day with not much really expected from the weather.  So when the wind started kicking up and the sky started changing Wednesday afternoon, noone had any idea what we were in for. 

The beginning of the storm

Thankfully we had not managed to head to the beach yet when things started changing.  To make a VERY long story shorter – within hours we had sustained winds of 40mph with gusts to over 55mph and waves in the harbor of over 4 feet!  We were rockin’ and rollin’ and watching all of the boats in our anchorage bucking in every direction.  Boats were dragging and then totally losing their anchor hold and then at about 5pm, we lost ours.

After several attempts to reset in the huge waves, we realized there was no way it would happen and the sun was setting fast.  We headed back around Fleming Island to try to settle in on a mooring and made it to the field just as the sun dropped below the horizon.  In the fading light we made over a dozen attempts to hook a mooring ball – all to no avail.  With the high winds and waves and current, Rob just couldn’t get a hold of a mooring without it ripping out of his hands before securing it.

Beauty despite chaos!

Next attempt, we try to set anchor off the mooring field.  You guessed it, no hold.  We dragged our fancy, expensive, highly rated anchor hoping for a grab for about ½ mile when something lodged in the prop and seized the engine.   Now we have wind/current/no anchor hold/no mooring and no engine.   This is always when Rob’s super powers kick in.  He ran below, threw the v-berth apart retrieving the secondary anchor.  Flew through the cockpit with this 40 pound hulk, attached the line and threw is overboard.  We came to a dead halt within 15 seconds!  HOLD!

After a near sleepless night, we suited up in wetsuits as the sun rose preparing to remove the miscellaneous polypropylene lined wrapped around the shaft, retrieve the “big deal” anchor from it’s useless spot and finally pull up anchor #2 (the new anchor #1) to move back around the island. 

The weather service says this is “an event”, some crazy combination of circumstances that bring about totally unpredictable conditions that isn’t repeated but every 8 – 10 years or so.  I say this is coming to be less of a surprise and almost the expected . . . welcome to the cruising life!