Captain's Post #11 - Anchors Away! — INDEPENDENCE CHRONICLES

By Larry McCullough

It was a dark, stormy, rainy night, the visibility was down to 100 feet, the wind was blowing maybe up to 45 knots, the anchor dragged…

The night did not start out that way, quite contrary as a matter of fact. The wind was supposed to blow about 12 knots from the East to South East for the remainder of the night. We were in the bay at Black Point Settlement which provides excellent protection from winds coming from the East or South. The bay also has an excellent bottom for anchoring. Things were looking good for getting a good night’s sleep.

Earlier in the day we had heard about a storm ripping through Florida but it was not supposed to move as far east and south to where we were. At about 9:30 in the evening I started to get ready to go down to our stateroom and I noticed lighting way off on the horizon, many miles away. Still nothing in the reports of it coming this way. The wind was still coming from the south east, the boat pointed towards shore, all looked well.

I like and need my sleep. Jamie decided it best to sleep in the salon to keep an eye on the anchor watch. The distance evaporated over the hours and found it’s way to Black Point. I was sound asleep when I could hear Jamie come down the steps to our room, I could sense her moving quickly, I knew something was amiss*, she tells me we are dragging the anchor. As I said, I was sound asleep, I did not hear the thunder and the pounding rain. I ran up to our salon and looked at our Furuno screen and the boat had left the “Anchor Watch” (an alarm we set that lets us know if we leave a set radius that is set when we drop the anchor and activate the alarm) area and dragged, setting off our Anchor Alarm. I looked at the screen and we had totally changed direction, we had done a 180! We were now pointed to the North West with the very rocky shoreline now on our stern.

No need to splash cold water on my face, the rain was pounding outside and felt like needles poking at my face as Jamie and I ran to the bow to let out some more chain while hoping the anchor would reset on her own. The Anchor grabbed after being pulled out and I am sure the extra 40 feet of chain didn’t hurt. We now had about 140 feet of chain out now in about 10 feet of water, a very nice ratio (scope). Independence stayed clear of other boats, and them of us even though you could barely see them in the horizontal rain, thankfully.

Time to reset the snubber and get inside and dry off. I spent roughly the next hour staring at our screen and watching to see if the boat was holding via the GPS, it did. The winds calmed down and the squall/storm passed.

Later we heard some horror stories of boats hitting others and anchor lines being tangled and even a boat being grounded. Reports of the wind speed we heard were gust to 45 knots! I got back to sleep though for a couple of hours, that surprised me almost as much as the storm.

· Had to throw that word “amiss” in. Years ago a friend called me and told me to watch the “10 O’clock” news that night, he was going to be on it. We watched as he told the story of how he witnessed many police cars and an ambulance pull up to the house next door to him. But, he told the interviewer, “I knew something was amiss when the coroner pulled up”. Ok maybe it was the timing, either way I got a good laugh out of his description and usually that word brings a smile to my face.

The arc to the right is our original anchor swing. After the drag and reset you can see the new swing pattern