We’ve had an absolutely amazing last couple of weeks – the weather was spectacular, our first charter guests of 2016 were awesome, and general Caribbean living isn’t bad – who would really want anything else? We’ve also been in the process of getting to know the boat more, how she performs and lives day-to-day, and any needed work. A few minor things here and there to address but mostly nothing that’s not easy to fix. You know – broken hose on the kitchen faucet, plugged heads, dead batteries, stolen dinghy plug (why on earth??) – the usual stuff that needs addressing 🙂
Enter today – we are out doing some further location scouting and familiarizing with different anchorages, and we anchored overnight in our favourite place – Grand Case, SXM. It was a bit windy when we arrived and we picked a spot slightly more north of the usual place assuming the wind would die off here first and leave us softly drifting on the water over night. We were right and by 20:00 the winds had calmed and we were bobbing effortlessly on the anchor. During the night there was a fair bit of circular motion likely due to our position behind the mountain and some current. No problem whatsoever, the anchor chain should unwind with each successive rotation and we’d wake up ready to go sailing. The sailing gods however didn’t see it this way.
During the night, we picked up an absolutely massive discarded anchor in our anchor chain. It spun itself into an ungodly mess with our rode and upon retrieval in the morning, before destroying the windlass pulling it and our own anchor, we realized what had happened and placed it back. We’re currently awaiting our friends at Octopus Diving, and the owner Chris, to come take a dive and see if we can undo the rats nest this has become. Suffice to say, we aren’t looking at much sailing today unfortunately. Hopefully the beers stay cold enough to celebrate later!
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Chris and Sally have been and gone and we’re free. According to Chris is was a disaster down there and took two people under water, three people above, a 2000lbs lift bag, a ton of experience and risk, and a dinghy to free the rogue anchor and move it out of harms way. Suffice to say we’re thankful for knowledgable, kind, willing, local friends. If you dive, you need to dive here with Octopus Diving – they are professional, experts in locations, and extremely caring, as we’ve found out many times. Thanks guys, you bailed us out huge.
Time for a beverage…Caribbean style