We had an early start yesterday morning when our mooring broke and we drifted about a mile down the lagoon in a big nasty choppy sea before we even realized we were loose. All is fine now, and it's become just another story to tell.

We had lots of squally weather during the night, with wind gusts to 40 knots and above, causing us to miss a lot of sleep. Bryan normally gets up at 6:30 am so he can begin downloading weather information to give the weather report on the daily cruisers' net on the radio at 7:30 am - and I stay abed. But today I got up at 6:30, and Bryan begged for 10 more minutes sleep. It was still howling outside, so I went up top to take a look around - Bryan had done that duty several times during the night and I figured it was time I took a turn.

The wind was still blowing 25-30, and not as it usually does out of the east but out of the south instead. This meant that instead of the nice calm lee we're generally gently swaying in, we had a mile or so of fetch giving us a chop of a foot or more. Our foredeck awning, rigged to catch water, was going wacko. At least one of the bungees holding it in place between the foreward lifelines and shrouds was gone, and it was flapping like crazy. It appeared to be acting as a sail keeping us almost broadside to the wind rather than pointing directly into it. As I hollered for Bryan to come up to help me take it down, I noticed a large dark object maybe � mile behind us that I didn't recall having seen before. A minute or two later when Bryan came up to help me, I looked back again and the large dark thing was a large ship mooring buoy and it was right behind us. We were obviously moving and moving fast and no longer safely attached to the bottom!!! We were blown along and up against the buoy, but just suffered the cosmetic damage of a glancing blow. Our dinghy, tied midship alongside was streaming forward from its cleat, and looked like it might get fouled on the big buoy, but when it got there it just did a little skip and jump and went right over it, landing nicely in the water downwind of the buoy.

I went forward to try to get the awning down while Bryan got the engine started. I took a look forward and realized that our 3 mooring lines (one for either side of the bow plus one extra "safety") were all streaming forward from the bow as we were swept backward down the lagoon. I yelled to Bryan that they were there, so he wouldn't start the engine and drive over them and risk getting them wrapped on the propeller. All this time the awning was flapping up a storm and I was most anxious to get it down as I figured it was speeding our downwind travel. I tried and tried on one knot before realizing that I really needed a knife. When I stepped back into the cockpit in search of a knife, I realized that Bryan had the engine going full steam ahead in forward gear. Sh......! Didn't he hear me say we had mooring lines streaming off the bow? Turns out he thought I meant that I'd seen lines on the big mooring buoy that we'd bumped into. He ran forward to pull the lines in while I stood by the helm, now in neutral. He couldn't get the lines in, there was just too much resistance, and he had to cut them loose. Thankfully we hadn't wrapped the prop, and were able to motor back to the mooring area. In the meantime friends arrived in two dinghies to help us out in response to a call I'd put out on the VHF when I first realized that we were probably in trouble. They helped us get hooked up to another mooring and Bryan ran down to get his weather info which he was only slightly late reporting to the fleet.

We're still not sure how the mooring broke, but the best guess at this point is that the huge old ship's anchor that was the mooring's ground tackle parted between shaft and flukes, and we dragged the shaft and attached chain with us as we went gallivanting out into deep water. Or perhaps a shackle broke, but the divers who maintain these moorings had just checked all the gear a month ago and doubt that could have happened..

We then spent the next hour watching two dive boats with 4 divers and 4 helpers upright a dive boat which had turtled at its mooring during the night's winds. They're working on the engine now, but I don't know what the chances are that they'll be able to use that big monster after it was submerged for several hours.

I finally got my computer fixed today - I've gone a long time with no working sound card and finally found a guru who righted the problem so we should be able to start using skype - which means we'll be able to have conversations over the computer and hear all the friendly voices we miss so much. With phone rates to the states over $1 a minute, we've had very few conversations with loved ones for a long time!

I'm going to be headed home August 6 to Grand Rapids, Michigan to visit family and catch up on medical checkups. Because of the limited availability of seats using frequent flyer miles, I'll be there for the better part of August and September, rather than the few weeks I'd rather be away from my dear hubbie. But that just means I'll have lots of time to catch up with family and friends, so if you're going to be anywhere in the neighborhood, please let me know!