Day 290, Tuesday April 8th - Green Turtle Cay

Day 290, Tuesday April 8th - Green Turtle Cay

We wake up to some wind in the harbour and decide we had better do anchor watch today.  This is unfortunate as today was the day to go to town and get a few last minute items we require food wise for our crossing.  Oh well maybe tomorrow.  We were also going to meet up for lunch with Pat and Diane Sharpe, but we had to cancel that also. 

Kevin and Julie on the Boston Whaler

Dawson does manage to go for a run, while Julie starts her tax preparation, and does her Rosetta stone lesson for French.  Dawson then changes out the fuel filters on the engine and does an engine room inspection.  We both eventually go to shore together around 4:30 to meet up with John Spencer and Brenda for drinks before heading to Catherine’s at Lo Key cottage for dinner.

We have a good chat with Brenda and John and are amazed to cross each other’s paths.  We are at Catherine’s promptly at 6:00 for further cocktails and are joined by local Kevin, and Catherine’s sister Leeann who is visiting.  The 5 of us head out for a boat ride in Kevin’s boston whaler and go visit Gerry Rose the painter and his wife.  Here is a link to Jerry's website http://www.jerryrosepaintings.com/www.jerryrosepaintings.com .  They are from Maine and here in the Bahamas for a vacation for a couple of weeks.  They come here regularly.  Sunset was just okay tonight as there were clouds in the sky.  No red sky should have been a clue into what was to come.

Back at Catherine’s we chow down on a fabulous meal and take our departure by 9.  Of course on our way back to the boat we meet up with Mandalay, Silver Maple, and Miss Ellie in the dining room at Green Turtle (we were just passing through), so stop and chat for an hour or so.

Julie and Kevin in his "wheels" (aka golf cart)

We are finally back at the mothership and sawing logs by 10:30 or so, only to be awoken by wind and rain at 1:00 a.m. and then all hell broke loose.  As we were securing the windows, we were suddenly heeled over.  We did not understand why, but turned on electronics and went on deck and the squalls had the winds clocking about 50 and we were loose and heading for shore.  By the time we realized what was happening we were about 20 feet from shore.  Dawson started the engine and with 10 feet to go, Julie roared the boat into action.  Little did we know that another 8 boats were also dragging.  Windward beside us was underway trying to get control.  Luckily we had turned the electronics on because you could not see a thing.  The rain was pelting down in drops the size of quarters, and the cloud cover prevented any moonshine.  The noise of the wind took away any communication.  Dawson was on the bow trying to get the anchor up as Julie was driving to keep us off other boats, and the shore.  We managed to set the anchor but it did not stick, so we tried again.  This time it seemed to hold.   Wow how scary!

Dawson on the Boston Whaler

No sleep in our forecast as the winds were still howling.  This anchorage is known for having bad holding, but Dawson had dove the anchor and the blades of the anchor were dug in, however it is just not good ground in most places.  There are isolated sand patches that are better.  We had earlier been criticized by another boater for putting out 90 feet of chain which gave us the 7:1 ratio of chain to water depth at high tide.  Because the anchorage was crowded, latecomers wanted to “fit in” so wanted many of the early arrivers to shorten up scope so that when we swing around we don’t need as much room.  Well they should eat their words because we could have used even more scope.

Our track from GPS as we dragged and re-anchored

Julie could not sleep so she took the anchor watch by literally sitting at the helm staring at the shore that was only about 40 feet away (1 boat length), so that the minute we dragged if we did, we were ready.  Windward was also closeby and we would drag into her quite easily as we were swinging a bit and they were right behind us sometimes.  Sure enough at about 4:15 a.m. a sustained gust pulled us free again.  We fired up the engine the second we started to drag and repeated the reanchoring process again.  This time it seemed like we were the only boat in our corner to have dragged.  This time we re-anchored in a bit better spot and did not drag again.  We did however stay up until dawn, when Julie slept on deck while Dawson took watch.  There were 2 large catamarans upwind of us that we were concerned about as they had a couple dragging episodes in the night.  We also had been watching through the binoculars at some activity near the channel as there were lights shining over there, but you could not make out what it was all about.  Once some daylight came we could see that 2 boats had run aground.

Turns out that a large catamaran dragged into a ketch and got tangled up and once they got loose from each other in the howling wind, the ketch then tagged into a large power yacht and the catamaran went on to get tangled into a Canadian monohull.  The original catamaran that started the whole pile up and the Canadian monohull (named Imagine), ended up stranded sadly at high tide on the sharp jagged shore.  (see tomorrow blog for details).

Cheers

Julie and Dawson