Thanksgiving DAY - Thankful that no one was hurt.

November 24, 2011 – Thanksgiving Day

We indeed have a lot to be thankful for… but this was definitely not the typical St. Mary’s Thanksgiving!

OH WAIT…!!!! It was typical, in a way,…except for the timing of the weather pattern. It seems the NOW CUSTOMARY St. mary’s ‘dance of the boats’ happened right at Thanksgiving dinner time, and not the day before or the day after, as in years past.

For those not familiar with the ‘dance of the boats’… When a very strong wind opposes the tidal currents, you get some very weird resulting anchored vessel movements; … the reason being that sailing vessels can have very different keel configurations, and they are very different from the underside of power-vessels… and as a result the heavier boats with the larger keels react much differently than the others… fin keel sailboats tend to be fast under sail, and do the same thing at anchor (i.e. sail back and forth). Vessels like Autumn Borne (heavy with big keel) tend to be more stationary, and move more slowly…. (Power vessels.. with their relatively flat bottoms just zoom back and forth… “painting at anchor”).

Anyway… just as I was starting to cook the dish to pass for the thanksgiving dinner…the wind was kicking up something fierce and the radio became busy with notifications of boats dragging anchor, or nearly colliding with others as the normal swinging radius was affected by the wind opposing currents. (many boats were literally over or past their anchors, and with the rodes stretched tight backward under the keels).

Susan and I started our main engine, and let it idle… waiting to see if the boats next to us…would be a problem…. We decided that it was much too risky to leave Autumn Borne for a dinner in town. Our anchor was holding fine, and the AB wasn’t moving that much… but the catamaran to our starboard side was moving very differently than we were…and the double ender cutter to our port side was swinging wildly to a very long rode…. SO… No dinner!

But… I did complete the “dish to pass”…. And things did calm down a bit at one point… so we volunteered to bring our ‘dish to pass” to Moonshadow (who also decided not to leave the boat).

Just after my cooking was done, a large sloop dragged down on a small S/V on a mooring ball…and got the mooring pendant caught in the prop, and rudder. They called for assistance so, as long as Susan was comfortable with me leaving the AB… I took the dinghy down and tried to assist… but the 4 knot current…prevented us from separating the boat… and would make diving on the boats props…very dangerous… so we assisted in rafting the two boats together until the tide would change… That was ONE. Before I could get back to AB… the hand held shouted a call for help… boat aground near the main channel… I was close so I zipped over there…. YEP… they were beginning to heel over…with the outgoing tide… So I volunteered to take a kedge anchor out into deep water (channel)… so that when the water rose again…. They wouldn’t go farther aground, and could pull themselves back to deep water. Did that.

Then on the way back to AB (again)… I saw a Hylas collide with Brian and Sheila (Moonshadow)… and Brian’s secondary anchor was lodged in the stern pulpit of the Hylas…. I got there just in time to see the currents whip the Hylas forward and away from Moonshadow… but it did so taking Brian’s CQR anchor with him… so NOW they’re connected with Moonshadow’s 3/8” chain anchor rode…. Unreal…

So… I assisted the Owner of the Hylas (who, by the way was not on the vessel… at the beginning of all of this… but came after the first contact…. AND the Hylas was swinging to only 30 feet of chain, and a very, very large length of rope rode), in disengaging the anchor from the stern pulpit. Then I got on board Moonshadow and pulled the CQR anchor up… hand over hand… because the regular anchor was on the windlass…. And Brian said he doubted he could pull all that chain AND the anchor up without the windlass….

SO….end of story…. NOT on your life………………… I went back to AB to get the ‘dish to pass’…having just volunteered to bring it, wine, and Susan back to Moonshadow… as long as things were calming down…. Yeah Right….

Brian moved his boat back about 25 feet from the Hylas contact point… by the time we got back with dinner…. After dinner though…. the wind picked up again…and HERE comes the HYLAS again…. Twice it came bow straight for Moonshadow…. And twice the rode tightened and the stern swung clockwise and away from Moonshadow…. The third time the Hylas approached Moonshadow… bow on… the wind caught the stern of the Hylas…and whipped it COUNTERCLOCKWISE… and it spun right around and floated (with the aid of the 3-4 knot current) right down sideways beam-on onto Brian’s bow anchors, and bow pulput.

WELL… I want to tell you… the stern pulput of the HYLAS folded up, and collapsed like it was made of paper…. Not a scratch on Moonshadow….

The owner of the Hylas… (and I can’t believe he did this after the first collsion), actually went back to dinner at Seagle’s Restaurant, in town. How could you leave the boat under conditions when a good percentage of the boats are moving, dragging, re-anchoring in new spots….. etc. ???????

Anyway…. We couldn’t believe it…. This is three years , in a row, where friends have been involved in boat collisions here at St. Mary’s…

Vero Beach Thanksgiving, and their mooring balls are looking better and better!!!!

I did dinghy into the town docks, and go to Seagles just before sundown…and get a few left-overs…

ALL in all… the decision to stay with, or very near Autumn Borne was a prudent one. So it was a very strange Thanksgiving…. And we’re thankful that no one was hurt.