We were going to leave but…
You know what it feels like when everything seems to come together? That’s what we felt like yesterday. The company we ordered our refrigerator part from, Boatersland Marine, came through as promised. They got the evaporator plate that we needed to us in only 2 days, quite a feat in my opinion. Yes, we paid extra for 2-day shipping but in my experience, that doesn’t always count for too much. They came through though. Thanks guys.
Big thanks also to Rita from the Sunset Sunrise Bar for allowing us to have our package shipped to her place.
In addition to that, I was finally able to extract the bolt that sheared off from our jib traveller. Applying a bit of heat from a little butane torch that I had on hand seemed to help. Not only that, but I had in our supply of spares the exact bolt that I needed to repair the traveller. It is now as good as new and ready to go sailing.
With all that going for us, it should come as no surprise that Mr. Murphy was feeling a little left out. How did he make his presence known? By apparently wrapping our anchor chain around something in the water under our boat.
At 6:25 AM we were all ready to move on when in the midst of pulling our anchor up, it stopped. The windlass makes this really nasty groaning sound when it meets with big resistance and we learned early on never to try to force something on a boat. What next? We first cleated the anchor off again and tried to use the boat’s engines to break us free by motoring forward. This often works if it is just really stuck in the mud but had zero effect here. Step two was to put on my mask and snorkel to try to dive down and see if I could solve the problem. With my limited diving skill and the fact that visibility was only about 1-2 feet, there was no way I was going to fix it. Our friend Jim to the rescue. He is obviously a much better diver than I am as he had no problem getting down to see what was up. And what was up was a boat! Our anchor chain was wrapped, I mean really wrapped, all around a wreck. There was no way that even he could stay down long enough to deal with it. Enter our new friend Dave on s/v Promise. He and his wife Colleen fortunately carry SCUBA gear on board and he answered our radio plea for assistance. With SCUBA gear, Jim was able to stay down long enough to find both ends of the rode, including the anchor. Unfortunately, there was still no way to free the chain from the wreck. This left only one other option, cutting the chain. Like the bolt that we just happened to have on hand to fix the jib traveller, we just happened to have a big set of bolt cutters that would make short work of the chain, even 12 feet underwater.
Huge thanks to our buddies for saving our asses, and for retrieving Rocky. Unfortunately, we now have to deal with the loss of a significant portion of our anchor chain.
For future reference, lest you too lose your anchor, do not drop your hook in the following position,
18? 01.4N, 067? 10.63W
You should be fine now, things usualy happen in threes and between the traveler, the evaporator and then the Anchor chain you should be in the clear for a while!
We’re actually at 4… the port engine stopped charging the batteries and we deduced that the regulator/rectifier is screwed.
You at least saved your anchor! It’s easier, I think, to replace a length of chain than an anchor!
Definitely easier.
As a great lady said on “the big bang” Holy crap on a cracker ! Have you tide a bottle to the wreck so it can be noticed ? & how old & how big was the wreck ? any luckys on it , there is so much $$$$ under water on those wrecks. I am keeping that following position, Glad your away again, & That box is big enough to hold a fridge never mind a part LOL
The water was very cloudy so exploring was not on the agenda. We did not mark it but as you saw, recorded the lat and long.
Thanks for the position. I assume anywhere else is good. 😉
Everywhere else in the big anchored “should” be fine. It was for our friends anyway.
I think you should just buy Mr Murphy a good rum drink and he will settle down quite nicely. Seriously, glad to hear your anchor at least was retrieved.
I hope he likes rum.
Note To Self: The next time I see a mini butane torch, buy it! Buy 2! I have come so close to taking the butane torch plunge but never quite made it. Now when it comes to spending money on wine, I don’t think twice. I have to change the way I think.
That is only the second time I have used the torch but when it’s needed, it’s needed. I’m glad we have it.
I’m somewhat surprised that it wasn’t possible to unwrap the chain from the sunken boat. I’d have thought that having SCUBA would have allowed this. Curiously, what prevented him from doing this?
I wasn’t the one underwater, my friend was. He told us that he had a difficult time even determining how the chain entered the boat as it appeared to come out of a hole. It seems that in motoring forward we may have ripped a hole in the fiberglass, wedging the chain in even further. That, combined with spinning 360 degrees with the wind shifts for several days just made it impossible to simply unwind it. Even cutting one end and pulling the other was fruitless. Oh well.
I didn’t mention, the anchor end of the chain was wrapped around even MORE debris… an old engine block!
Wow, what a crazy mess that was! Thanks for the explanation.
I’ve been lucky enough to have only lost one anchor (so far!) but that harbor certainly sounds like it was an anchor graveyard.