Photo: Waiatt Bay. The sailboat Allie Rose and two powerboats whose owners stopped Allie Rose and Osprey from dragging.

We emerged from the forest after a hike to Small Inlet and scrambled down the low embankment to the beach. Looking out over Waiatt Bay, I could see Osprey and the sailboat Allie Rose rafted together on Osprey's anchor.

"Did we drag?" Sara, one of the owners of Allie Rose, asked me.

Startled, I reflected on this. The boats did seem to be farther out than I remembered. But surely we couldn't have dragged. We had set Osprey's anchor well and the wind had been less than 15 knots.

"Maybe it's just a different perspective," I replied. We'll see when we get out there."

Steve and Charley joined us and the four of us piled into Osprey's dinghy for the return trip.

"Do you still think we dragged?" I asked Sara when we got out to the boats.

"I think so," she said. "I don't think we were this far out."

I looked at a clump of rocks just off Osprey's stern. "I don't remember being this close to those rocks."

Then Sara pointed to Allie Rose's bow. "Look we must have dragged, somebody put Allie Rose's anchor down!"

Where before we had been riding only on Osprey's anchor, we were now riding on two.

We were pointing out the anchor to Steve and Charley and discussing what to do when two men in an inflatable zoomed up to us.

"We saw your boats dragging and thought you would hit the rocks so we put your other anchor down," one of the men explained. "The boats were doing fine for quite awhile and then all of a sudden just took off. At first we thought we would have to tow you and use our dinghy anchor, then we saw your other anchor and put it down."

We thanked the men for rescuing our boats. They replied, "It was nothing. You would have done the same for us. We boaters have to help each other. It's how we manage."

We pulled up the two anchors and anchored separately near where we had been before. When Osprey's anchor came up it was covered with mud and looked normal. We don't know why we dragged. We had plenty of scope out and it's a 60 pound anchor that has held more than two boats in higher wind.

The incident made me glad we'd pulled the Ching Shih off the rocks in Hevenor Inlet. We'd done our share and had collected a favor in return