So many anchor mishaps & disasters averted!
What a stressful night 😱 
Regarding the 5th lesson - at least your clothes will be self-cleaning if you fall overboard 🤦‍♀️

If we thought the previous incident was lucky, this was something else.

Around 7am there was a huge gust and a much louder sound of the anchor dragging.

We entered “Quick Emergency” mode, the culmination of a ”Slow Emergency” that had been building since we arrived late to our anchorage the previous night. 

Tom and I ran from the bow cabin to the helm and got the engine running and anchor coming up.

It seemed like we were stuck, but we started moving forward only 2m from the rocks.

We noticed that we could step off the boat at this point.

A decision was made to leave the long lines behind, so we could move forward on the anchor.

Ironically, the anchor slipped onto a disused mooring buoy and got stuck. Many failed attempts later and we requested help from a scuba diver, who freed us 30 mins later.

Don’t worry - both lazy lines and anchor were recovered.

Crisis averted.

A gentle broad reach sail on just the Genoa and we reached a bay to recover and have breakfast. Sadly it was too deep to anchor. After finally finding a great spot at 35m deep, we were unable to get the anchor to hold.

On picking it up it escaped the windlass and we had to improvise a rolling hitch/winch solution to feed it back through without tension.

3 for 3 on anchor fails. We moved to our evening spot on a restaurant’s pontoon.

It’s only midday, 22hrs after departing base, but feels like 6pm on our final day! 

Time for a few beers and dinner!

Lessons:
- don’t skimp on 4x depth anchor chain
- in high winds on anchor, set a 30min alarm to check and ideally have constant anchor watch rotation
- make sure everyone knows what to do when we slip: engine on, stern lines slacked, anchor up
- don’t let out the last 10m of chain, just in case it leaves the windlass
- don’t put shower gel in a bag of clothes that might get squashed 😬 



That’s where the mooring buoy was

Crew

Crew Logs

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