05 May 2012

Anchor blues


After a stopover in Montserrat we are in Guadeloupe! It's amazing: beautiful, great food and great people. Just that thing with the right anchor spot is a pitty....

Since we arrived after dark we anchored a bit outside the bay to avoid any collision with unlighted vessels. And it had many of them - guess French laziness. Yesterday morning we finally anchored in the middle of the bay - it was a perfect spot. After immigration we had a coffee in one of the pitoresk restaurants on shore. Just to realize that another lazy French catamaran was anchoring in the meantime very close to us. When we checked it out our vessels have been two (2!!) meters apart. And he was obviously fine with that as he was not on board anymore. Did I mention that we  expect some blow the next days.....idiot!! So we changed our anchor spot again - closer to shore and closer to one of the many fish trap buoys. Anchor maneuver two of the day. 

Later that evening we had some fellow cruisers on board for one of those famous boat cocktails. Just to learn that this unmarked fishing buoy is actually a buoy to tie up the local diving catamaran. So we had to move again! And that's when the real story began:

Our main anchor, a Manson Supreme, always got into the ground the first attempt. We never had to set the anchor again. Not this time: The left over anchor spots have been so covered with a thick layer of seagrass that we could not get that damn anchor into the ground! We circled the anchorage for one hour and I guess we dropped the hook another ten times before we finally found good holding ground again. And this with two guests on board. And like in real life, cruisers always love to watch others while doing maneuvers: I think it's fair to say they had VIP Lounge seats with free drinks ;-)

We're now in deeper water than planned, but it has its advantages as well - we got free internet again and while having coffee Rahel is trying to convince one of the many turtles around us to give her a nice picture. That's amazing isn't it? Almost as good as sea turtle for breakfast...

1 comment:

  1. Why do anchored cruisers like to other cruisers anchor... its is always so. Nice ones give you VHF guidance and help others just watch. This is the anchor dance..
    Hayden

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