After a glorious day of sunshine today, relaxing under our home-made sunshade, a very strange cloud formation began developing rapidly at around 5pm. John and Joyce from FAIR ENCOUNTER, a Westerly Corsair, were due over for drinks at 5-30pm. The wind started picking up and backing to the north west, the sun shade started flapping violently, and within 15 minutes, we were being subjected to 30 knot winds, gusting to 35 knots on occasion. At this point the sky had become jet black and a wall of white water was hurling its way towards us at a scary speed. Torrential rain started falling and QUASAR IV started bouncing up and down and swinging hard around the anchor. The other 500 boats in the anchorage? No idea; we could see nothing past the bow of our own boat! Within a few more minutes the wind was raging, the driving rain continuing and we finally saw another boat, PARAGON, our neighbour. Unfortunately, the visibility was the same which only meant one thing... Yes, their anchor had dragged and they were moving closer to us by the second. Luckily, the crew were on board, had the engine running, as did we by this time, and they managed to hold PARAGON parallel with us at about 4 metres away. Our fenders were already down the side and we were just waiting for an impact, but all was well while we sat in the cockpit riding out the squall. Others were not so lucky. Two very expensive boats moored behind us were no longer there when the visibility cleared, but had dragged backwards, anchors entwined, bows connected, and heading straight for the concrete jetty of the Port de Plaisance Marina. With no crews on board, some quick-thinking by the crew from some of the superyachts moored in the marina, five RIBs were speeding over to endeavour to sort out the mess and prevent a catastrophe. Meanwhile, further behind us, another French steel boat had dragged over 100 metres, had its anchor wrapped around a mooring buoy, and was connected at the bow to a very smart looking Halberg Rassey, a quality yacht indeed! This is shown in the picture above. Looking further around, we saw no sign of FAIR ENCOUNTER where she was anchored and curious as, surprise surprise, they were late for drinks... A call over the radio explained that they had dragged several hundred metres and were now in the French sector of the lagoon, engine running, desperately trying to stay in one place until the storm died down. After a full 30 minutes of chaos, the weather calmed down. Boats were being untangled, re-anchored, and made safe. Dinghies were being emptied of gallons of water which had filled them, and numerous boats had full waterproofs hanging out to dry in the rigging. QUASAR IV stayed in the same place throughout the storm, although the drenching we got was unbelievable and we were both soaked through to the skin within seconds of getting on deck to wrestle with the sun shade which was acting like a big sail, which we managed to get down about 5 minutes into the storm. By 6-30pm, all had died down, John and Joyce had re-anchored, and were aboard QUASAR IV enjoying a well-earned rum punch. The block of concrete that they had been anchored to in the Dutch sector, was now in the French sector! The storm made us realise how scary a hurricane passing through would be with wind speeds of 150 knots. In 1995, a hurricane swept through St Maarten and between 300 and 600 yachts were sunk in this lagoon. We are moving on shortly...!