Yikes, it's Raining!

Weather: Holy cow, we haven’t had this much rain during the entire trip! It hasn’t been this cold either! Anyone want to head back to Marathon?

Comment: Reading and game playing were the order of the day. I read “Memories of Summer” by Roger Kahn, a nostalgic look at baseball in the mid part of the last century. It was light reading and perfect for a rainy day. Anna Marie was engaged in puzzles and solitaire. At one point, it got so cold and damp on the boat that we fired up the propane heater for an hour or so.

The anchorage now had ten boats with an additional three cruisers tied up at the town dock. There wasn’t any movement on the boats. Everybody just wanted to stay dry and warm. The rain let up a bit at around 1700 hours. We were able to hop aboard the dinghy and head to shore. We treated ourselves to dinner at the Bohemia Café. The crab sandwiches were adequate, but not spectacular. The crab cakes were overcooked and lacked flavor. Still, it was great to walk around. Eating out was a nice treat today!

Once back a the boat, we raised the dinghy back on the davits and prepared for an early departure tomorrow morning. We be hauling the anchor at 0500.

Earlier in the day, we were surprised to see several boats pull into the anchorage. One in particular, let his anchor away very near another sailboat. The captain of this other boat wasn’t on board, so there was no one there to give the offending captain the “evil eye” or to offer words of encouragement to anchor elsewhere. We both knew that if the boats did not swing in unison (they never do for long) trouble would ensue.

While getting the dinghy ready for hoisting onto the davits, Anna Marie and I noticed that the boats mentioned above were almost touching. Luckily it was relatively calm in the harbor. The couple on the bigger boat (that anchored too close to the smaller boat) were busy trying to figure out how to remedy the situation without re-anchoring in another location. Actually, the harbor was pretty full. There may not have been another place to anchor.

While they watched and waited, the smaller vessel’s anchor rode wrapped around the bigger boat’s keel. The Captain suddenly developed a sense of urgency and started barking out orders to the Admiral. Eventually, he boarded the other vessel. I heard him call for a knife. Aparently his strategy was to cut the anchor line. He apparently cut the bitter end of the anchor line from its attachment point to the boat. Now that he had access to all two hundred feet of rode, he somehow twisted and untwisted the rode until it was free. He cleated it off and piled the rode beyond the cleat it a “rat’s nest” on the deck. He then boarded his vessel and shoved the smaller vessel off.

He hauled up his anchor, motored around in a circle and proceeded to drop the anchor in virtually the exact same spot! It took another fifteen or twenty minutes for him to realize that this wasn’t going to work. He hauled the anchor again and this time headed in... our direction. Fortunately, he kept going, eventually tying up to a face dock in th marina.

He must have reported the incident because in a matter of twenty minutes, the Marine Police tied up to the smaller boat, looked around, called in the boats registration number to the dispatcher who reported the name, address and phone number of the boat’s owner. They then headed back to their dock.

Once we were ready for departure, we hit the sack. Tomorrow promises to be a long day. We just didn’t know how long!