When I finally woke the early afternoon, it was obvious that I had indeed anchored too close to other boats for comfort. And, if the wind blew from the right direction, I would likely swing into the channel itself. I needed to move. So, I weighed anchor and slowly motored down the line of boats until I found what seemed like an acceptable place. It was way down at the eastern end–far away from the city’s dinghy dock–but it would have to do. The moderate wind and a strong current coming from opposite directions and close vicinity of two other boats made setting the anchor very difficult, but I finally got it after a couple tries.
But, I was glad to now finally be able to really relax and recuperate for as long as I needed (or just wanted) to. I spent the rest of the day in a sort of zombie state. Not eating people, but just sort of numb and incoherent and exhausted. I took a few naps.
Eventually, I inflated the paddleboard (which I had stored below for the passage), paddled down to the town’s free dinghy dock. Beaufort is a very cute town, with a friendly reputation, especially to cruising boaters.
I found the bar that Nicholay and I and our buddy-boat friends had visited on the way south in December which had a beer that I liked, then had dinner at a good Mexican restaurant. Despite things just picking up in town on a Friday night, I was too tired to do much else, so headed back to the boat for an early bedtime.
The next morning, I woke around 5:30 am, pretty wide awake, and thought I would pack up the computer and paddle into town to hit a coffee shop to catch up on the blog. The only one Google found was about a 1/2 mile inland, so I slid the laptop into a big ziplock bag, stuffed it into my backpack, paddled ashore, and then enjoyed a nice, cool walk through some very old, but beautiful Beaufort neighborhoods. It appeared that every other house was a historical landmark, with their names and date of construction on plaques attached to their facades. Most were built in the mid-1800’s and had been kept in pristine condition.
They brought forth visions of antebellum southern living, plantations, etc.
After working on the blog for a few hours at the coffee shop, I walked back into town, and continued blogging in a small cafe while having lunch. Then it was back to the boat for an afternoon nap.
However, just as I was falling asleep, I could hear the clank-clank-clank of the anchor chain of the catamaran next to me being brought in; it was obvious they were weighing anchor to depart. No big deal. But, I kept hearing the chain being let out, then brought back in, then let out. Since it was keeping me awake, I decided to see what was going on.
It was obvious they were having some kind of difficulty. A woman was at the bow with the windlass control in her hand. The husband was back at the helm out of site. I watched for awhile, then saw a huge hunk of rusty junk rise up to the surface of the water. Their anchor was evidently fouled on what appeared to be a big mass of long-abandoned anchors and chain. As I watched, the husband joined the wife, as did a boy, as they were reaching over the bow trying (in vain, it appeared) to untangle it all.
I knew that if they had been ready to depart, their dinghy was probably secured for the passage, and so they didn’t have an easy way to get to the mess from the water. So, I grabbed my paddleboard and rowed over to see if I could help.
And what a mess it was! On closer examination, the blob appeared to contain two abandoned anchors on the top with not only their chain, but a bunch of really big chain from who-knows-where tangled in. It also appeared that there was some other large anchor hanging underneath all that. And somewhere down below, still on the bottom, was their $800 spade anchor. Their anchor’s chain had somehow gotten itself wound through the whole mess. The mass was so heavy that their windlass could not lift it any further out of the water; the circuit breaker kept blowing.
We introduced ourselves and I found out they were an Australian family with three kids, and we set about trying to figure out a way to untangle it all. In the meantime was difficult for me to hold position on the boat on my paddleboard due to the current.
It appeared that the top two anchors were just sort of laid over the top of the whole thing and might be able to be lifted off and around, freeing up much of the mass. So, I reached over and grabbed a hunk of chain, but as I began lifting it up, it somehow freed up the entire mass which, with a big splash, instantly slid down their anchor chain all the way to the bottom, with me following. Since I had been using the glob of stuff for support while I tried to pull the old chain out of the way, when it gave way and went to the bottom, I fell over, head first, right after it. As I was plunging into the water, all I could think was “Is any of this chain touching me right now? Am I caught in it?” I felt free of everything and so swam back to the surface, now about five feet downstream of their bow (and underneath their catamaran in the space between their pontoons.) Whew!! I let the current bring me to their stern and then just climbed back on the paddleboard, which had been tethered to me. The wife was back there to meet me and make sure I was okay.
They were freaked out! They, like me, had initially thought that I was getting dragged down to the bottom with the couple hundred pounds’-worth of junk. It was a scary thing. We all took a breather and vowed that from now on, we would use a boat hook to attempt any further untanglements! I joked that they would have been like, “Dang, now we are fouled on three anchors and chain and a dead guy! Great!” Later that evening, Adriana (the wife) joked that she had seen my life flash before her eyes before I finally popped out of the water. lol
We continued working on the glob for another couple of hours with little success. At one point we had gotten the glob loosened up enough for their chain to run through it somewhere, but that only caused their anchor to break free and their boat to start drifting downstream. So, for about an hour, one of the two of them had to remain at the helm using the engines to keep us from drifting while the other three of us (spouse, 11-year-old son, and I) kept troubleshooting. We finally decided that it was hopeless, and there were only two solutions left: Cutting their chain (which would mean loosing about 20′ of chain and an $800 anchor), or hiring a diver to go down and either untangle everything, or at least disconnect their anchor.
In the meantime, that had to try to reset their anchor. At this point that was impossible since the big glob was now on top of it, fouling it. So, they just plopped it all back down and hoped that the weight of the entire mass would be enough to hold them in place. It was now after-hours on Saturday, so too late to call divers. So, the decided to just give it a rest and worry about it tomorrow. They invited me aboard for a beer; I readily accepted.
It turned out they actually had three kids! Two of them (Augie and June) were “out of the way”, haven been given the rare privilege of unlimited iPad use while the parents and the older boy (Clancy) dealt with the anchor issue. But, as the anchoring project was done–at least for now–the other kids soon appeared, as did the beers.
This was what I had been looking forward to for so long: socializing with cruising families. It was actually one of my prime motivations for embarking on this lifestyle. We had homeschooled our boys for many years, and even put in place plans to go world-wide cruising back in the mid-2000’s. But the housing market crash had squashed those plans, and a subsequent divorce had finally killed that dream once and for all. But, we had owned, and coastal-cruised a Catalina 30 sailboat for a couple of years as a test-bed, and had met many cruising families during that time. They were “our people”. Same sense of adventure, same philosophy about raising kids, same laid-back attitudes about life. I wanted to be part of that community again.
So, it was wonderful, after five weeks of pretty much being alone on my boat and alone when going ashore, to actually be socializing with a very cool and fun family. My first clue that I would like these people was when, in the midst of the most stressful parts of it all, Robert, the husband, would still have the patience and love to answer Clancy’s questions or listen to his suggestions–a situation in which most parents would have told their kid to just go do something somewhere else and quit bothering me! Yes, these were my kind of people!
After about an hour of us reminiscing about my near-death experience ;-), up showed a man and a boy in a dinghy, whom Adriana and Robert welcomed aboard. I was introduced to Mikkel and Villum, a Dutch father and son from a boat anchored on the other side of me, Tempo. They had all spent time together in the Caribbean and had ended up in Beaufort at the same time (which happens a lot in the cruising community), so were old friends. It turns out that Mikkel and his wife, Camilla, had three kids, too! More of my kind of people! So, the eight of us hung out until dark, with Adriana and Robert still undecided as how they were going to proceed with the anchor. I told them I was willing and able to assist if needed.
Around 11 am the next morning, I popped my head out of the cabin and could see that Mikkel and Villum had returned with their dinghy and were at work on the anchor mass (which had once again been pulled up to the surface). Andriana saw me and yelled at me to “come on over and play” and said something else very excitedly, but I couldn’t hear her. So, I paddled over to join them only to see their big (expensive) spade anchor sitting on their deck! Huh?
She then told me that they had been unsuccessful at contacting a diver (because it was Sunday?), and not knowing what else to do, they decided to just start tinkering with the blob again. Imagine their surprise, when, as it approached the surface, they could see yet another anchor on top of the pile! But, when it got closer, they could see that it was their anchor! In some inexplicable way, during the night with the shifting currents, their anchor had worked its way to the top of the heap! So, they were able to just unshackle it from the chain and pull it aboard.
Now they were simply trying to salvage as much of their chain as possible by threading it out from the blob. Just as she was explaining this, there was big splash, as very similar to my incident, Mikkel had freed something up enough that the entire mass slid down their anchor chain all the way to the bottom. And since their anchor wasn’t on the end of it anymore, they just pulled up their chain! They had everything back! All they had to do was re-shackle the anchor to their chain and everything was back to normal. Unbelievable! I told them they must live a very pure life!
Of course, now the hunk of junk would be waiting for the next unsuspecting boat to get tangled in. But there was nothing to do about it except put out a notice in the cruising apps, which they did. It turns out that the catamaran on the other side of me had also fouled their anchor when trying to depart the day before, so I am a bit worried what I am going to experience when I eventually attempt to weigh anchor.
They were so happy that they announced a celebration party on their boat later that afternoon to which we were all invited. They wisely decided to re-anchor further to the west, and so repositioned their boat closer to the dinghy dock.
It turned out to be a very fun evening as we were joined by the entire Dutch family (Camilla, Georg, and Soes), so eleven us on a 40-foot catamaran. (There is soooo much more room on a cat than a monohull!) I spent a lot of the time hanging out with the kids and learning from them about many of their adventures all over the world. I also got many good tips from the parents, especially on the social aspects of cruising, and about an app called NoForeignLand which is used by most cruisers these days to keep track of each others, communicate about things ashore (or about bad anchoring areas), etc.
As the wind had picked up in the face of an approaching cold front and my boat was a long way down the line now that Cirrus had repositioned, Mikkel and his family were kind enough to give me and my paddleboard a tow back to my boat. It was a wonderful evening, and a great re-introduction to the social part of the cruising lifestyle. I was honestly a bit worried about how, being single, I was going to break into it. But, now I think it’s not going to be a problem!