Picture: Honeymoon's Port Rudder after the grounding.

On Tuesday we dropped our normally reliable anchor (a 55 lbs Delta and 5 lbs swivel) into 8 feet of mud and pulled back on her to help it set. With over 70 feet out we had more than enough scope and we felt a firm hold so we settled in for the night. In the morning the winds picked up to 20 knots and we stayed on board until noon, at which point we finally left the boat for our daily excursion into town...

Unfortunately, the very minute we left the boat it started to drag anchor. Although we had been in that spot for more than 15 hours and knew that the anchor had been set, we were not more than 20 minutes away when I got a call from someone in the harbor that our boat was on the shore. At first it was too hard to believe and we thought they might be mistaken. What were the chances that our boat would drag the exact second we left it? But as we hurriedly returned to the boat we saw the truth. In a very un-familiar sight, our boat was up on the beach, stern facing the wind and our American flag pointing toward the bow.

We were pinned on the shore and needed outside help - immediately. We hailed our friends on Victory Cat and Nemesis and VC arrived first to pull us off. To help protect the rudders, we threw them a 50-foot dock line tied to our stern cleat to pull us off backwards, and without much of a pull at all we were floating again.

We quickly assessed the condition of the boat as we motored toward a nearby anchorage. The steering felt normal. We checked for leaking water into the bilge and for a trace of oil in our wake. My worst fear was that our sail-drive transmission had been knocked free and that we were pumping transmission fluid into the bay, but miraculously the rudder helped protect it. After re-anchoring I dove on the bottom and surveyed the damage with a camera.

Although it could have been worse, the damage was significant. A rock must have hit the rudder as it has noteworthy scaring in the gel coat and the rear corner has been shorn off. The keel looked better, but also had a quarter sized knick in it and a few other scratches. Thankfully the hull itself looked to be in good condition and although a repair would be needed soon, it was not going to require an emergency haul out. I spoke to the new owner about what happened and thankfully he is a man of patience. I'm not quite certain I would have been as composed as him upon learning that my new boat had been washed ashore, but he's a very nice man and felt confident that we would fix the problem before final delivery (which of course, we will). It's going to be expensive, but thankfully no one was hurt, nothing outside of our boat was broken and the damage to our boat was nothing to warrant immediate concern.

The only thing still troubling us is just how exactly this happened. We have thoroughly examined what we could have done to avoid this, but nothing comes to mind. I guess we could have put out a second anchor as a security back-up, but in a year at sea this had never happened. The anchor is over-sized for our boat and a trustworthy design. We had more than enough scope out and the wind direction never changed. Perhaps this is the most unsettling part of all - we have no idea why we dragged, we just did. I guess there is such a thing as luck and our just finally ran out.