Anchor Upheaval

A few days ago, we had just arrived at a bonfire on the beach and were standing around chatting with a few of our friends when our boat neighbors pulled up in their dinghy, yelling for us. As they were getting in their dinghy to head to the bonfire, they witnessed a boat anchor in front of us, back down until they were practically on top of us and then pull their anchor back up - only their anchor had hooked onto our roll bar and they had pulled up our anchor simultaneously! We jumped back in the dinghy and rushed back to our boat. As it turns out, there was a small boat that had anchored right off our bow, and in the process of anchoring, his engine had given out. He was drifting right towards our boat, so he just threw the anchor overboard to stop himself. When he got the engine back up and running, he was going to reanchor and had hauled in his anchor. Only, to his surprise and all the boats around us, I am sure, our anchors had become entangled and he had brought up ours as well! He did the only thing he could and quickly threw our anchor back in the water. One of our other neighbors quickly came over to make sure that he got his anchor set and that our boat wasn't dragging. By the time we made it back to the boat, the situation was under control and we only had to back down on our anchor to insure that it was, in fact, dug in and secure. We spoke to both neighbors and the situation was explained, apologies doled out and then we headed back to the bonfire. It was quite an experience and certainly not one I want to repeat! Thank goodness for our awesome new Rocna anchor that held the boat steady even while sitting on top of the sand - the situation could definitely have been worse!

Georgetown Synopsis

4.9.13 Since it has been awhile since I've updated this, here is a synopsis of our stay in Georgetown thus far. We have been playing fun volleyball on the beach everyday at 2pm with about 20 other folks. It is an easy game, nine people on the court, hit it as many times as is needed to get it over. We have met lots of new people there and are enjoying our days in the sun. We hike Koa over to the ocean side of the island every day or so and let him run free - he loves it! We had our friend, Eben on Necesse, repair our mainsail and aso do a few small repairs on our bimini. He did an outstanding job and went above and beyond for practically nothing but the price of friendship. Brad has been playing poker twice a week and although he has made it to the final table multiple times, the win has been eluding him. We tend to spend our evenings at home, as cruisers midnight is right around 9pm. But we did attend a night of drinking and music across the harbour at one of the local bars. It was mostly cruisers and mostly people we knew so we had a blast. There have also been a few bonfires just up the beach from us that have been a great time - one of which was organized for Brad's birthday. We had a cake and everyone sang to him and made a big deal about him turning 30 - it was a blast! We moved the boat across the harbour this week to get protection from a strong front coming through, with possible 50 knot squalls. But, thankfully, the squalls never happened and we only got a bit of rain. We provisioned in town and then reanchored our boat right off of Chat and Chill Beach. Chat and Chill is a little bar with the worst service in town, but it has a huge beach and everyone gathers there everyday around 2pm to socialize, drink, swim, and play volleyball. We had anchored farther away before and just dinghied over, but we wanted to be right there for all the action. We finally got an invite to play regulation volleyball this week. This is for the more competitive people around and we play real volleyball (with rules) and only have 2-4 people on the court. We played for three hours yesterday and we were exhausted! We were the youngest on the court, but we were the most out of shape! It was fun and we held our own and got a great workout! For competitive people like us, it is much more rewarding than fun volleyball! The harbour is getting thin here with anywhere from 5-10 boats leaving daily. We are sad that we missed the regatta and all the madness that it brings, but we have had so much fun with the few cruisers that are here and we practically have the run of the place. We are having a transmission issue so we will have to use our engine sparingly when we head back home. Unfortunately, this means that we will not make it any farther and will leave in the next week or two to head back North. This trip has definitely been trying on our soul and our pockets and we are frustrated to not have made it any farther. But it has fueled us to head back, get jobs again for the summer and come back and do it right next year! We are looking forward to another week or so of entertainment here and then we will head back up the Exuma chain for a few weeks before finally plodding home.