expect the unexpected
29 October 2010
There has certainly been some adventure and hair raising moments so far, for example a couple of nights ago the forecast was for SE 25 Kt , and people were talking about it as if it were a huge storm. We were on a mooring at the SYC and sure enough the wind picked up, it was bumpy and rolly but not really windy, stayed up late watching DeadWood and got into bed around midnight fell right asleep but was woken about an hour later by some bigger gusts, Mikes' "spidey" senses started tingling and when that happens there will be no sleep, up and down every 15-20 minutes checking this and that, climbed out on deck around 3:30 am just in time to see our buddies on Marimba II drifting down on us. After the second hearty yell the skipper appeared on deck as Mike fended off their pulpit. He sprang into action and fired up the motor, cut the mooring lines and sped off into the darkness to anchor safely across the channel. The mooring they were tied to drifted onto the beach and was recovered the next day. They were inspected in 2008 but there were links on this chain that had wasted down from half an inch to something like 3/16 and the weird thing is that many links look like new there are others that are almost gone! This is a good lesson and we will never tie to a mooring unless we know exactly what is down there - a lesson we already knew but temporarily put out of our minds, seduced by the short row and free showers at the club!
At dawn the wind really started to pick up so we let go our mooring and had a go at anchoring in a near gale, but the mud here is like jell-o and our plow-shaped anchor dragged through it with ease. Also we had run out of propane and not wanting to suffer too much decided to head into the fuel dock to fill up, We made a good landing and did not even scratch the paint, there was a guest dock available and that sounded better than rolling around at anchor all day so we peeled our selves off the fuel dock and made our way around the marina healing 15-20 degrees in the gusts, It took two passes on the lee side to land and unfortunately the bow line snagged on top of a stanchion with both of us pulling as hard as we could Picara reluctantly started to come back to the dock though not before the weld at the base of the stanchion broke clean off ! Luckily all of the parts stayed onboard. We finally flopped into bed after being awake for about 28 hrs. The next day was sunny and calm of course and as we have a beautiful little welder on board (Thank you Bruce!) Mike was able to zap said stanchion back in place and we are good to go.