As we used to say in the Navy, ?belay my last�. It was not an uneventful night in Solomon?? s Island. In fact, it turned out to be a genuine, four alarm, man the special sea and anchor detail, full on emergency! And I?? ll tell you one thing for sure, in any emergency I?? ll take Kay any time for a partner. She is cool under fire and makes great decisions as well.

I?? ll start where we left off last night. We went to bed about 2300, after first checking the anchor holding and lining up the anchor bearings I had taken earlier. About 0100 I awoke when I felt the boat swing wildly and jerk on the anchor. I knew it had broken loose. I flew on deck and started both engines, we were loose and dragging the anchor towards a pier full of boats. It was cold and 30 knots of wind was howling when Kay shoed up in her PJs. She quickly took over steering ZT up over the anchor and keeping us off the pier while I raised the anchor so we could get under way. At that point we had very view choices, non of them good. There was very little chance of re-anchoring safely in that much wind, and because of the wind and ZT?? s high freeboard she was very hard to control in the confines of the small harbor. We both decided that the only safe maneuver was to clear out of the anchorage, head down the Patuxent River, and get some sea room in the middle of the Chesapeake.

The above was much easier said than done. While I struggled to get ZT under control, Kay went forward with a flash light and guided me off the local boat docks and the small island that had to be avoided in the exit of the harbor, which by the way is only about fifty yards wide.. Fortunately, I had been there before and had a pretty good understanding of the local water. However, I was totally blinded because I had the GPS plotter on and just couldn?? t get it into a night mode and control the boat at the same time. Therefore, I was required to just ?fly� the chart plotter and navigate blind. Kay could see the buoys and channel markers and kept me straight while I navigated by instruments alone.

We managed to get out of the harbor and into the river, finding the channel that would take us to the bay. We figured that we could avoid all the crab and fish traps by heading to the center of the bay and steaming down the deep water channel taking our chances dodging merchant ships and tanker, which we could at least see on radar before they became a threat.

The sea state was just plain awful, four to six foot waves, with some higher and thirty knots of wind with higher gusts. We were safe in ZT?? s enclosed cockpit, but cold and worn out from the effort of escaping the lee shore in Solomon?? s.

There was an almost full moon giving us a good horizon until it set about 0300. The ride was wild. At least we were running with the wind, surfing the six to eight foot waves, making the autopilot all but useless. We couldn?? t use the sails in all this big wind because it was not safe to go out on deck. We blasted along south at seven knots under bear poles, maintaining control with the engines. This wild ride lasted until after lunch when the wind finally dropped to a manageable 15 knots, and the seas calmed down to three to four feet. Kay went below and fixed us a tasty sandwich for lunch. Our breakfast, at dawn, had been a shared cup of soup left over from the previous dinner.

After lunch, I put on a life jacket and rigged a jack line incase I was knocked overboard, and went on deck to raise the sails. As soon as we had some canvas in the air the ride got a lot better, but even so, we had no complaints on ZT?? s handling of the situation. We were safe and dry all night, and never felt threatened, just trapped, knowing there was nothing we could do but ride it out.

By 1300 the seas had calmed and Kay spelled me at the helm to get a quick cat nap. She had managed to get a few winks prior to lunch. By the time I woke up, the bay was back to normal and we were making seven knots on an almost flat sea, as comfortable as the back seat of a 57 Chevy.

As we entered Hampton Roads, and headed down to the Norfolk waterfront the weather had turned to an absolutely beautiful Fall afternoon. The wind was perfectly on our starboard beam, the water was flat, and we sailed gracefully down that famous roadstead as peaceful as a Sunday afternoon sail.

We docked at the Waterside Marina, where we had spent much of August, and quickly disembarked for a quick walk to get our land legs back. Another great soup dinner warmed us up, and after a glass of wine we were ready for some good, uninterrupted sleep!

Once again, we were lucky to learn some hard lessons, and were able to survive a bad situation by depending on each other and working together. We are grateful that we escaped with no injuries or damage, and happy that we can depend on each other to face such difficulties without panic. We had a good debrief, and talked through all the good points, and the ?other� points as we used to say at Topgun. We have about 850 nautical miles to left to our Winter berth. We both hope we have used up the adventures, but are realistically thinking that we have been well tested, but probably not passed.