Oh, what a blow!!
11 May 2015 | Feydhoo, Maldives
Bill/ Cloudy
Let me start out this post with saying "I LOVE MY ROCNA ANCHOR"!!! OK, just about everyone loves their anchor. If they didn't they would change to something someone else recommended. Let me tell you about last night and why "I LOVE MY ROCNA".
The forecast for Sunday and Monday was for winds in the 20 to 30 knot range, all from the west to southwest. We'd anchored accordingly just off Feydhoo Harbor here in the Adduu Atoll in the south end of the Maldives on Saturday morning even before we knew that the blow was coming. Saturday night in another blow, our anchor slid off the shelf at the reef and plunged from 50 feet to over 110. This dropped my scope from 3 to 1 to less than 2 to 1 and yet the anchor held once it hit the bottom of the ledge. I'd let out about 180 feet of chain. Yesterday(Sunday)during a calm bit, we pulled up the anchor and again dropped it at 50 feet and let out 220 feet of chain and really set the anchor by pulling back on the chain with Zephyr in reverse. I added my super snubber(see previous post) and settled in.
All day Sunday, the winds were just fine. Ten to fifteen knots out of the west to southwest. We held fine. By nightfall, the winds had dropped to next to nothing(calm before the storm?). Both Tracy and I went to bed feeling just fine but we did keep the anchor alarm on just incase. Just after 0100, IT came and IT came with a vengeance. Zephyr swung around on her anchor and we were suddenly on a lee shore. Being on a lee shore means that there is land right behind you and if you anchor drags, you could go ashore and not in a good way. The wind had shifted and was suddenly coming out of the NORTH!!! We were both out of bed and in the cockpit fast to see what was going on. Code Zero, another boat in the anchorage was behind us now instead of beside us on the port side. If we dragged, we would hit him! We immediately started the engine and turned on all the electronics. We wanted to be prepared Now earlier in the day, before the rains came, I'd put up the canvas side panels on the bimini/dodger to keep the rain out of the cockpit. Because of that, we were sitting in a nice dry cockpit with the winds howling around us. With this wind came rain and lots of it. We sat and watched it blow and rain seeing the other boats nearby--Code Zero and Evita. All of us were getting pitched by the 2+ meter swells that were coming in from the north. I picked up the VHF radio and made a call out to see who might be listening. Both Code Zero and Evita came back. Both were sitting in their cockpits watching and waiting to see what was going to happen. All of us were suddenly put in the position of having the shore behind us.
We watched on our IPad, a new program we bought called "Anchor". It shows a Google Earth shot of the anchorage with marking on the screen of where we are anchored and a ring I put around the boat that should we pass it(the anchor dragged), an alarm would go off. I'll attach a screen shot later to the post. We watched it through the night as the wind shifted and our position with regard to Code Zero kept changing. We'd started with them off our port side about 80 yards away and now they were off our stern about the same amount. That short a distance doesn't give you much time to react should something happen.
Our Rocna held just great even with the bow pitching up and down putting strain on the chain and anchor. We didn't move and I'm glad for that. Our snubber--Mantus Hook and Line Master rubber snubbers and ¾ inch line made it though the night just fine taking all the stress off the bow roller. Having two lines to the chain off the bow helped keep us relatively into the wind.
It was truly a strenuous night for all of us. Today, the forecast is for more winds, again out of the west to southwest. Guess we will see.