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boutny · 1 year ago

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Anchor'dventures

The view from Boutny's deck, drying out at Point quay

The lessons have been accumulating, and I have not been good at logging them. There was the spinnaker left too long to fly in the early crossing of Biscay; the gib that came out of the furler reel a few hours later; the lesson that I will learn one day, to reef early and reef often; the auto-pilot that broke down ... all fine until the wind dropped and the shipping lanes filled. There was dragging in Camaret, there was chicken with cargo-ships in a storm, there was setting course for the harbour entrance buoy at Falmouth and almost hitting it at the end of a long night. There was dragging at Trefusis Point, and not having a starboard engine that idles correctly. There was the storm on the buoy in Falmouth and bad innovations in my bridle ... There was trusting my depth sounder and running a-mud when it showed 0.6m ... there really are many lessons to catch up on, and let this list be a reminder for some winter postings.

This lesson is fresher than the others, so here goes. It is my third anchor drag. First lesson: I really must work out what is going wrong with my technique. From no drags on the sandy Mediterranean and Algarve, Brittany and Cornwall, with their powerful winds and tides, their complex bottoms, have brought the average of drags per anchorage to an uncomfortable high.

Here is how the weather turned out last night, and it was more or less as forecast.

I had just spent three wonderful nights - the first good weather in weeks - at the beautiful anchorage in front of Trelissick House.

The forecast was for 30+kts, with gusts perhaps to 40+, from the South West, so best to move across the river to find protection for the night.

I got there early, together with a handful of other boats. I came in closer than anyone, around high tide, taking advantage of Boutny's shallow draft and her ability to sit even on the ground. The obvious point of greatest protection, in the shallow tongue on the east side of Turnaware Point, was occupied, so I picked a place on the point.

The wind during the afternoon was not strong, and the rain was bucketing. I took a stroll along the gravel beach, shingle and kelp with occasional concrete blocks from a feature that Navionics has as a WW1 embarcation dock.

Ah... now I remember another and separate lesson: I tied up my tender on returning from the beach, and settled down to continue writing the report that is taking up my attention right now, when I heard some shouts from shore. My dinghy was drifting down-river with the tide ... How could my knot have come loose? Why hadn't I done what I usually do - have two separate lines to secure the tender? So ... a subsidiary lesson for the day - don't slacken on old rules of thumb, just because your feeling confident.

Andy, from a boat next door, shouted that he would go and get her. How attentive and kind. He came back to Boutny towing my tender, and we talked of the night to come.

"Who will drag, I wonder", he asked. I agreed that we'd all have to look out for each other. I did not think that anyone would drag onto me - if they did, they'd be heading straight onto the beach. I felt quietly confident, though I said that I should probably go and dive onto my anchor to have a look. He talked about adding a second anchor in a V configuration, and I told him I might put one in front of the other, as Jean-Yves had recommended.

I went back below. I felt tired and the words weren't flowing for my report. I ate some left-over pasta and lay down with American Pastoral and was dosing by about 6pm. I had, however, set my anchor alarm properly, this time, after the Cameret lesson. Around 8pm I got up to have a look around, and saw with some satisfaction the waves and white horses on the North bank where I had come from that morning. The trees at the shoreline to windward seemed to be protecting me from the wind, though an occasional gust would come around the point and yank at Boutny's bridles. I turned on my masthead anchor light and returned to my bunk.

The anchor alarm woke me at 10pm. I got out of bed, silenced it, and looked at the track. Perhaps I had set it too conservatively and I was in fact holding. I went on deck and checked my distances. Storm Betty was at full power, by now, and the wind was regularly coming around the point and pulling at Boutny's tethers.

When the alarm went off again at 10.30, I finally took it with the seriousness it had originally required. Another little lesson here, though it feels like a repeat: resist wishful thinking, and do not lie in hope without having tried to fix the problem or properly gathered evidence that there is none. I was seriously drifting, and was now level with the old ramshackle ketch with the 2 noisy wind generators.

Adrenalin gets you moving fast. I started the starboard engine to get some sort of directional control, even with the 30m of chain and anchor dragging. One I was headed towards open space - more or less straight for the Northern shores - I went to the foredeck and tried to get my windlass to bring the chain in.

I have been having connection problems - known about but unfixed - and my remote also stopped working after I started playing with the batteries in A Coruna ... However much I pressed the red button, I could not get the windlass to turn. I am afraid there is an obvious lesson here - fix problems when you've noticed them, not after the crisis when you wish you had fixed them already. ("A stitch in time", and all that...)

So ... it was dark, wet and I was heading into the path of Betty's full force, dragging a lot of chain and stuff. Urgh. I stood astride the windlass and pulled chain in at whatever rate I could muster, all adrenalined-up. I rounded the elegant yacht with the blue ensign that had confidently anchored in the windy channel, having hauled most of it in, relieved not to have become tangled with hers. Lesson: you got away with it, but counting on luck is a poor strategy.

What now? Just as I was considering the question, a voice on my port stern said: "Are you alright, Tony?"

That was it. The hallucination that comes to so many in situations of crisis. Mountaineers talk about the figures who appear, seeming entirely real, from their imagination to help them through tough passes. I had wondered whether any such figure would appear when I solo'd those last crossings. Although I occasionally mistook the creaking of a beam for a voice that spoke, no one had come.

But it really was too real. I went to look astern, and there was Andy in his tender, doing what he'd said he'd do, looking after whoever it was who'd need it in the night.

"Go up river, after the pontoons ... there's a small creek where you should be able to lie alongside the trees, protected. Do you want me to come with you?"

Better than a hallucination ... Andy had local knowledge.

"Thank you, no. I'll be fine and follow your advice. You return to looking after your boat."

Another lesson, a big one: try to be as kind and helpful as Andy. How very reassuring it was to be offered advice in that moment.

Betty's power was in my stern, and I made my way quickly past the pontoon. And there was the micro-creek, that place, right up in the top-right of the Navionics screenshot, that thing that looks like a thorn on a rosebush:

And here it is in satellite view, perhaps more telling for the account of the next 3 hours I spent in the creek, St Just-in-Roseland, Google tells me:

There was a party on in that house behind the trees. Lively. I thought at one point they were calling out to me, but they weren't. I wonder if they even knew the micro-drama yards away from them.

I placed my anchor about where I have the marker. It was the most protected corner, and the northern shore was windy. There was enough light to see the great branches of the overhanging trees swaying and waving as gust upon gust came down or around.

But how much chain to put down? Too much, and I would be pushed into those trees. Too little, and it would be unlikely to hold. I tried 10m, I tried 20m, I tried putting here and putting it there. I tried both anchors. But I never felt confident the chain would keep me away from the banks.

I remember Olivier talking to me about anchorages slipping in strong wind: "If you have to, if your anchorage isn't holding and you've run out of options, you'll just have to keep on your engines, drive onto the chain, relieve it, adjust your position. You'll have to keep going all night if you must. But just don't give up. Remember that you need to save your boat from the shoreline. That's your priority".

So that was now my plan. To use the engines to stay in the right place, to avoid hitting the sides of the creek. And here starts the next lesson ... a rather unsurprising one about tidying lines and fouling an engine prop.

I often find the mainsail sheet - it is very long, and needs to be - dragging in the water. This time, however, it dragged and tangled in my starboard prop. OK, there were odd clicking sounds, some coming from unusual places, but rather than stop the engine and check what was up, my priority was staying clear of the banks, I thought, so I kept revving. Until the poor engine cut out.

Then, in a lull, I opened the hatches and looked at what was up - it would be prudent to have two engines working in these conditions. And here is what I found - the ugly bundle that Anna and Esme, the artists who came on board the next day, immediately called "Misericordia":

This, sadly, is the line that used to go through the triple block on the main sheet, and the rotations had pulled it quite tight around the prop, and had stretch the clew to the point where the tension in the foot of the sail stopped it going any further.

The conditions felt stable enough, so I stripped down and put my wingfoil board into the water, paddled under the boat with my Opinel, and cut through the mess. The party was going full pelt, and I was, at some level, loving the cold lashings and adrenaline of it all. And, of course, the pride and comfort when the motor started again.

By 1pm, Betty, still powerful, was losing some of her peaks, and the tide was low. I might run aground in this minuscule creek, and I would have to watch like a hawk the moment of refloating. So I headed back to where I had originally slipped, dropped my anchor, dried out, and woke every 20 minutes after 4am to catch the moment the tide would float Boutny again. I was worried both that I might drift up the beach and not refloat, and that if I did, I would swing on an untested anchor hold and into my neighbours. I dropped my spare anchor off the stern to avoid the first problem, and waited for the waters to rise to avoid the second.

I was asleep again at 6 and woke, somewhat refreshed and with slightly surreal memories of the night, at 7.30, ready to catch high tide to collect Anna and Esme from the quay at Point.

Many lessons in all that. Keep the lines tidy. Properly check anchor hold, not just with a big reverse thrust. Give up on wishful thinking. Be as kind as Andy.

But maybe another one too. I hadn't checked out the "escape routes" from a dragging in the hours before the storm. If I had, perhaps I would not have gone to the mini-protection of the microcreek. Perhaps I would have pressed on and found easier protection and a better night's sleep upstream:

#sailing #boats #adventure #travelling

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