Unforeseen Weather

2.7.13 Brad and I were up before the sun this morning, listening as the rain began to pound and the wind picked up around 4:00am. We stayed in bed until 6:00am and then looked outside to see what the day had in store. The wind, which was supposed to be a mild 10-15knots had piped up quite a bit and we could see that in the cut to the ocean, there were breaking waves. And there was of course the rain. None of this had been predicted and we both knew almost immediately that we weren't going to be leaving that day. We watched as another boat from our anchorage hauled up anchor and headed out through the cut. He was tossed around mightily and we just weren't up to that. So, we went back to bed and spent the morning being lazy, hoping the weather would clear up that night or tomorrow. Around noon, while I was laying in bed reading, I noticed a shift in the waves - they were coming in from the stern of the boat and hitting pretty hard. In a sailboat, this is nearly impossible at anchor since the boat always points into the wind (unless current is an issue) and therefore, the waves are always on the bow. Brad and I went outside to have a look and realized that the strong current in the area had flipped us around our anchor the anchor had gotten stuck under the boat and was now wrapped around our keel. We decided we needed to move anchorages anyway since the wind was shifting to the west and we were unprotected from the west. So we carefully put the mothership in reverse and slowly backed out of the anchor wrapping. After wrestling with the anchor for 15-20 minutes, we were finally free and headed to protected waters. To get there, however, we had to pass directly by one of the ocean cuts. A "cut" is a break in the land and reef that allows boats to pass through the ocean side from the shallower, protected waters. We saw the breaking waves just beyond where we were and noticed the building waves, but would not have predicted the large waves that assaulted us as we went by. The 7-8 foot waves were close together and hitting us directly on our beam (our side). We were reaffirmed in our decision not to leave that day, as these waves would have made the trip quite uncomfortable! They made us quite uncomfortable just for the 30 minutes it took us to pass the cut!! We finally made it to safer waters, anchored for the night and hoped for calmer, more favorable weather the following day.