Anchoring "all's well what ends well" stories

[Roberto]

I was at anchor one night, pouring rain, a bit of wind, not the nicest evening, no particular dangers though.

A 25' boat arrives at around midnight, flapping piece of mainsail, outboard engine, a hand torch with almost flat batteries, husband and wife both wearing a light raincoat, they try to anchor once but the anchor drags, voices begin to rise, becoming emotional, they really look not comfortable with the situation

I ask them "do you want to raft to our boat" and in a split second they were next to us with a cobweb of mooring lines and the widest smiles one can imagine; I just told them should I start to drag be ready to free all lines quickly or I'll do it

The man remained in the cockpit under the rain all night, just making sure everything was ok.

All went well, during the night I came out a couple of times to check things and he was always there; the following morning we waved goodbye.

 

[chubby]

I was at anchor in the fog off St Vaast one evening, waiting for the morning lock and saving a nights mooring fees, pre GPS days but we had Decca, when out of the gloom a french boat about 25 foot, came up to us to ask their postion: they had left Le Havre heading west but not enough northing to clear Barfleur and were uncertain of position, we asked them alongside to exchange positions and gave them a couple of bottles of french lager, shame it had Tesco written on the side but I am sure it tastes the same!

 

[Sans Bateau]

When we anchor up on the KIDS OUT day it is not uncommon to have several boats hanging on one, larger anchor. We know our ground tackle it over sized for the boat so it will easily take a bigger load.

One year SWMBO had to wait behind in the marina as we were waiting for a late to arrive school, she was to rejoin us, motoring down the harbour on a lift with a sport fishing type boat. When they got us we already had a 31 ft boat on our Stbd side, so the boat giving SWMBO a lift came in on the port side, but he rafted up with his stern facing forward, toward the anchor. Shortly a pall of his turned up and rafted to him, the right way to him. So we now had a 31 ft boat to Stbd and two wide, flat sterned boats facing the wrong way. This only became a bit of a problem only minutes after the last boat arrived, as the ebb gathered pace, the raft was skewed 30 deg to the anchor warp! The whole raft held well in the fast ebb running past East Head, when everyone had gone we had one hell of a job to disengage our anchor from the clay sea bed, it was dug in and some!

 

[shamrock]

Bit deep to anchor so we rafted up....

we were a hundred miles north of the Cape Verde islands, wind had been zero for the past 24 hours. We overhaul a catamaran motoring slowly, and they call us up asking if we know the weather forecast. We tell him what we know from the forecasts and grib files then his very french voice asks 'would you like to come alongside for some champagne?'

thus began one of the more surreal days in our atlantic crossing

I wrote up the full story here http://wardwideweb.blogspot.com/2007/11/cafiso-8859-1qe9-atlantique.html and we never saw or heard of them again. Hope they made it.

 

[Racecruiser]

Shamrock - that is the most delightful story I have heard for a long time!

 

[Sans Bateau]

Shamrock - that is the most delightful story I have heard for a long time!

Surreal indeed! An unbeatable story.

 

[AntarcticPilot]

we were a hundred miles north of the Cape Verde islands, wind had been zero for the past 24 hours. We overhaul a catamaran motoring slowly, and they call us up asking if we know the weather forecast. We tell him what we know from the forecasts and grib files then his very french voice asks 'would you like to come alongside for some champagne?'

thus began one of the more surreal days in our atlantic crossing

I wrote up the full story here http://wardwideweb.blogspot.com/2007/11/cafiso-8859-1qe9-atlantique.html and we never saw or heard of them again. Hope they made it.

You must carry a very long anchor chain

 

[zefender]

Hope they made it.

According to http://catamaran-hawadev.over-blog.com/categorie-10431073.html (in french) they made it to the Carib but sold the boat soon afterwards. There's a comment in there that they lusted after a large monohull!

 

[shamrock]

According to http://catamaran-hawadev.over-blog.com/categorie-10431073.html (in french) they made it to the Carib but sold the boat soon afterwards. There's a comment in there that they lusted after a large monohull!

Hey, Zefender, that's great - I think I'll drop the new owners an email and see if they know about our little part of their boat's history...

thanks again.

Nick