Water rage?
Imagine waking up at 7:00 AM because you hear a boat’s loud engine growling. Groggy eyed, you look out the hatch in your berth and you see this, only feet away, reversing directly at you at 4-5 knots. What would you think? What would you do?
The boat in this image is not the exact one in my story, which is why I edited out the name. To be honest, the one in my story is quite a bit smaller, but I when it’s close by and moving towards you, it seems this big!
I posted this on our Facebook page but thought it was worth adding it here too, mostly because I am amazed that someone could own and operate such a large vessel and still be so stupid!
Thursday evening Rebecca and I were enjoying a beverage in the cockpit in a relatively uncrowded cove. Into the bay comes, what we consider to be, a pretty large motor yacht (large for this area anyway). With an abundance of places to anchor the yacht’s captain decides that directly in front of us is the one and only spot available. When we determined his intentions we went up onto our trampoline and watched as he and his friends dropped their relatively small anchor right off our bow. I say dropped because using the phrase “setting their anchor” would be far too generous. I’m not sure how much rode they put out but is wasn’t much. We had 150′ out at the time and still only had a scope of 5:1. After messing about on the bow for a moment or two these guys cut the boat’s engine. That was it. No backing down on the anchor. Nothing.
Into the water go 5 of the 6 people on board but after a short swim, they restarted the engines. We thought “great, now they are going to check their anchor by backing down on it.” Nope. What did they do? They proceeded to run their engines for the next hour to hour and a half, just off our bow. After 30 minutes I was pissed off enough that I would have picked up our anchor and moved but we couldn’t as their boat was sitting directly overtop of where our anchor was lying. That is, it was overtop of it when it wasn’t swinging in the wind through an arc of at least 90 degrees. Any attempt at getting our anchor up would have been dangerous. So what did we do? Nothing, except hope that when the wind did pick up a bit as forecasted, they would drag into the large metal barge beside us and not into our boat!
End of story? Nope. Remember how I started the post? At exactly 7:00 AM Captain Clown fires up the engines. Only minutes later I heard the engines getting progressively louder so I went to the hatch to take a look. That is when I see that not only has he retrieved his anchor but he is reversing directly at us. Not just at our boat but exactly where we are in the boat! I stared in disbelief for a few seconds as he just kept coming. I was climbing overtop of Rebecca to get up on deck when this guy finally threw the boat’s engines into forward. He started to move away from us when we was not more than 6 feet from hitting us. Had he not been leaving I can’t say what I would have done. Water rage? Perhaps.
Captain Clown: If you are reading this come and look us up. We’ve got a complimentary jiu-jitsu lesson waiting for you!
All’s well that ends well though. Our boat is still in one piece!
I feel your pain…
Sadly, as you work your way down the East coast …Bahamas…Caribbean..Further, you will find no shortage of idiots of this ilk who are clueless about anchoring and the etiquette involved.
I find a couple of Marshall stacks on the foredeck and an endless loop of Captain Beefheart’s greatest hits is about the only thing that will make them leave… Well to be truthful a cannon just might work…
My friend suggested a torpedo. We did consider the music option but given that our stereo is a little portable ipod player, I figured that he would answer that by blasting country music on a 1000W system. 🙁
An really loud megayacht air horn, something that will leave them needing a change of underwear, is available from Kahlenberg
http://www.kahlenberg.com/yacht.html#ultimate1
Download their PDF files of specs till you find the model of air horn that leaves you with an irresistible grin of anticipation, then get that model installed at your next port of call.
Oooo John. They look nice! Good suggestion.
Worse, they might decide they LIKE the music, and break out the beer. Drunk AND stupid is a REALLY bad combination! Too bad there are so many like Captain Clown out there!
Agreed. Drunk and stupid = bad!
Twice I have bumped into boats in the night that anchored too close (arrived after us) and then swung with wind changes. Both times I could not move, because someone had settled over our anchor.
Both times I had put fenders over the side before going to bed. No harm.
But it is bloody annoying. I know that I have moved on, to other coves, a number of times when I felt that anchoring would be either dangerous or rude. The only dependable method, as you work down the ICW and Chesapeake, is to anchor in shallow water, near the edge of the cove, often placing a second anchor nearer the bank just to keep your boat out of the fray. There are no rocks – only mud – but do be ware of tide.
It’s no different on the water than the road. Same folks.
We have fortunately not had to deal with this too often although we have had people anchor unnecessarily close a couple of times recently. I’m sure it will get worse as we move southward.
friends of mine decided that…..it was time for some sun bathing….without the tan lines! They rightly figured that their 70+ year old beautiful bodies wouldn’t be appreciated, and they were right. The offending yacht moved away very quickly.
I know you don’t have their ability, but something equally offending to others might be warranted. Just check local laws prior to actions…
We sunbathe naked so perhaps that’s why people want to be close to us. 😉
Just kidding.
Our friend just sent us MULTIPLE emails with numerous accounts of even greater anchoring stupidity that he has personally witnessed. It makes me want to have crash airbags installed all around our boat!
Welcome to the world of anchoring etiquette and anchoring fools! There is precious little of the former and way too many of the latter.
FWIW, the French and French-Canadians are well known for their desire to anchor too close (tros pres, or something like that). Having a Rocna and a good windlass are great tools to combat this, since it is easy to pick up and re-anchor.
We have found that IF we are around when the too close offender shows up that the following steps are pretty effective:
Bitch wings – you get to control how much wing flap to use!
Hailing – “Excuse me, but if you’re planning on anchoring here, you’re about to create a dangerous situation!” (Depending on how close determines if you have to use the VHF, or just step over the lifelines onto their boat)
Dinghy consult – ride over on your dink and have a “discussion”
The flip side is to be aware when you’re late to an anchorage and have to anchor close to someone else. We make it a practice to ask if the other boat is comfy with our position.
A quick aside on two anchors. We used to do it a lot before the Rocna, now almost never unless we are in a tight little creek without a lot of swing room, or where everyone else is on two.
Fair Winds,
Mike
Hi Mike
Thanks for the post and your thoughts. We have yet to use 2 anchors at the same time but I’m sure the time will come when we’ll need to. I’d like to see the mess these fools create when they try to set more than 1 anchor!
Anchoring is one of the parts of boating that most people learn(or don’t) by trial and error,mostly error. Just watched another “throw the anchor ” technique,Sat night at Put in Bay. Bottom is rocky,and poor holding,and about on third of the boats were dragging,during the evening. I backed down on the anchor(Fortress) three times before leaving the boat . One boat owner apparently didn’t ,and we had to call the harbor patrol to “rescue” their boat,as it cruised off without them.
If someone drops the hook too close,I’m not bashful about telling them it may be a problem.
Honestly it doesn’t seem like rocket science to me. I’m not sure why people have such problems.