CURRENT LOCATION: Anchored in Marigot Bay, near the entrance to the lagoon
18 03.937' N, 063 05.796' W

Here in the Eastern Caribbean, they have what are known as the Christmas Winds. This year, those winds are right on time. Forecast for Christmas Eve through the weekend: Winds continuous at 27 knots, gusting to 40, with seas topping over 15 feet.

The bulk of our day Monday was spent at the French bakery, taking advantage of free internet and free electrical power. You see, many of the businesses on the island lure customers in with free internet (provided you make a purchase), but then charge you by the hour to plug in your power cord. I suppose that this is their not-so-subtle way to keep you from doing what we did: Stay for several hours getting caught up on all our e-mail, posting blogs, and doing a bit of on-line research. Unless you are willing to pay for power (which we are not), you are limited by the strength of your laptop battery. Thank goodness for the French bakery, where we can stay as long as we need.

With the forecast predicting rough weather through the holiday weekend, the mass exodus from our anchorage began on Tuesday. We started the day with over 50 boats anchored in Marigot Bay. A half dozen or so lined up to go through the bridge and into the lagoon during the scheduled morning opening of the bridge. Another twenty boats were lingering in wait for the midday opening, and during the evening opening we watched another five or six trickle in. A few departed the bay going the opposite way, presumably rounding the outside to anchor in one of the Dutch anchorages on the south side, with better protection from the predicted north swell. Of the remaining boats, most jockeyed for position up closer to the marina and ferry dock, behind the protection of the breakwater.

It was early in the day when we made the decision to stay put. Why, you may ask, did we not wish to seek better shelter like nearly all of the boats around us? Well, mainly because of all those other boats. We have quite a bit of confidence in our own ground tackle, and are fairly certain that we can stay put in a 40-knot gust. We are not so certain that all the boats around us will do the same. Therefore, whenever possible, we try not to have other boats around us. Especially when they are packing into 'protected' areas in ever-increasing numbers.

In addition, although the lagoon would offer the best protection from the swell, we would have to pass through a rather narrow bridge:



Way back on the afternoon of November 29, 2007 we waved goodbye to our last opening bridge in Florida and it was a very happy day for Team Prudence. Our boat, which is woefully underpowered for its weight, is very difficult to handle in close quarters and there is generally a meandering, unpredictable crowd of boats waiting for a bridge to open. The boat is heavy enough not to stop quickly, and hard to get moving again once it does. And, of course, if you move too slowly you no longer have the ability to steer the boat. Factor in the tidal current which is usually amplified to a crescendo right around the bridge and you have the recipe for a white-knuckle experience. Do we want to pass through into the lagoon (only to eventually have to pass out again)? No thank you.

Our plan, instead, was to fortify our ground tackle. Since our arrival, we have been swinging on our 60-lb CQR, which is sunk in 9-feet of water, and connected to the boat through 110 feet of heavy chain and a 20-foot rope snubber (with adequate chafe gear). Although that is already overkill on all fronts, we decided to rig a second anchor as a backup. A Fortress FX37 and combination chain/rope rode reside in our cockpit locker and we figured that the Fortress would dig nicely into the sandy bottom found here in the bay.

I dug through the cockpit locker then assembled the Fortress on the foredeck. It was time to deploy. Marigot Bay is a wonderful spot for working with ground tackle. The water is crystal clear, the bottom is sand, and the depth is under 10-feet. This would normally be an occasion where I would swim the Fortress out to where I wanted it, plant it, then swim out the rode and connect it underwater. Unfortunately, the only downside of this anchorage from a swimmer's perspective is the high-speed boat traffic. There is a lot of it, and with the current choppy conditions, it is unlikely that they would see a swimmer on the surface ... even more dangerous when the job requires time underwater.



Therefore, Plan B for secondary anchor deployment was enacted. I climbed into the dinghy and Sheryl handed the anchor and chain rode down to me from the bow of the big boat. If there was any doubt about how rough conditions had already become, this transfer abolished those thoughts. It was quite a challenge to simply pass a heavy item down when Prudence was bobbing up three feet and Patience was falling down into the valley between waves.

Once we managed this rather awkward hand-off, I motored the dinghy out away from the bow, while Sheryl fed the rope rode out to the 150-foot mark. Speed was off the essence here, because we needed to get the anchor into the water before any high-speed boats came through the area. With dry rode, it may take a few moments for the rope to settle and sink into the water. In the meantime, we have stretched a 150-foot clothesline which could catch any fast-moving motorboat before we would have a chance to flag them away.

Although I wasn't in quite the location I wanted, a boat came zipping around the corner from the lagoon and turned in our direction. I immediately dropped the anchor and chain over the side of the dinghy. Fortunately, it sank quickly as I guarded it by closing the distance between the drop site and Prudence. Now, on to Phase II of Plan B. Sheryl cleated off the anchor rode at the bow and joined me in the dinghy, bringing along my snorkel gear. We motored back out to the drop site and I jumped in. With Sheryl acting as my lookout and guard against accidental interaction with fast boat propellers, I was free to focus on the underwater task at hand.

In the clear water, I could see that the CQR had done a nice job of burying itself in the sand over the days since our arrival. This is another reason we opted not to up anchor and move. Time is often a critical element to establishing a well-set anchor (something all of those newly anchored boats may discover when the winds pick up). The Fortress and chain had landed in a lump not far from the CQR, so I was going to have to do a little bit of relocating before I set the second anchor. I was not aiming for a specific angle of separation between the two anchors, because no wind shift was anticipated. Instead, I just wanted to get enough space between the two so that they would not foul each other.

I am not able to swim both the anchor and the weight of the 30-foot chain at the same time, so I took several turns moving first one (take a breath), then the other (take a breath), until I had about 40-50 feet of separation between the CQR and the Fortress. Then I dove once more to pull the rode straight, and a final time to push the flukes into the sand. Meanwhile, Sheryl putted lazily around my area (not too close, for fear of hitting me with her own prop), making sure that any boat traffic would veer away from my location.

Job completed, I swam back to the boat and Sheryl followed in Patience. We snugged up the rode and pulled it tight for a few moments while the bouncing bow buried the Fortress even further in the sand. We loosened the rode slightly, since it is only intended to serve as a backup. Then we lashed the rope rode to the lazy chain, aft of the snubber, from the primary anchor rode and fed out a little more lazy chain. This second loop of chain will hold the rope rode from the Fortress down in the water (like a kellet) so that any high speed boats passing too close to our bow (and they do pass too close) will not catch our rode in their prop.

Now we sit, doubly secure on our ground tackle. Each system is independently capable of holding us under the expected conditions. Any failure in the primary anchor will be met with an immediate employment of the secondary anchor.

So, we turned our attention to Patience. Cruisers without stern davits to lift their dinghies out of the water will generally leave the dinghy on a strong painter trailing behind the boat. This is where Patience usually rides while we are at anchor. Most other cruisers, though, have RIB dinghies where the heavy solid bottom keeps the boat settled. Our very light inflatable (with a wood floor) dances across the waves as it anchor-sails on its painter. The combination of big chop, big swell, and big wakes from passing boats often results in some very pointy waves. Several times I feared that our dinghy was going to launch into the air and land upside down. Not a big deal for the dinghy itself but this would be bad for the engine. Very bad.

So, we hooked up the lifting harness to a halyard, attached a second halyard to the engine (still on the transom of the dinghy), and planned to lift the dinghy to the level of the toerail near the bow and secure it there. Once we had it in place, I knew that we had a problem. Already, the motion of the boat and the size of the waves were causing the occasional slap along the bottom of the dinghy, even at this height. And, the forecast called for conditions to get worse. I suggested to Sheryl that we lift the dinghy even higher and place it over the deck of the boat. She was a little uncertain of the wisdom of performing that operation in these high winds, but I managed to convince her that we could do it slowly and safely.

Once suspended over the deck, we secured the painter to a forward cleat, and tied off the stern end with several lines so that it could not move side to side or forward and aft. I watched its very slight motion for a while, and although there was no evident cause for concern, I just didn't like the looks of the engine suspended (with the prop just inches above our precious deck) off the transom of the dinghy. We decided to remove the engine, lie it down, and secure it to the mast. Now we were truly ready for what Mother Nature planned to throw our way.



With no functional tender, thus began our time of quarantine on the Island of Prudence. Tuesday night brought higher winds and bigger waves, and sleeping became a challenge. Not only were we routinely woken up by the slap of a wave against the hull or a free-fall in our berth as a wave slid past the boat, but I began to have second thoughts about our decision to stay put. By the time the sun had set, there was only us and a 33-foot Canadian sailboat remaining out here in the middle of the bay. All other boats had sought refuge elsewhere. Do they know something I don't?

The light of day on Wednesday made the conditions a little less scary. The winds reached a plateau and the anchors held us firmly in place. We could feel a bigger swell begin to creep into the harbor, but the breaking waves were far in toward the shore. Life aboard was much like being underway in confused seas, but we felt safe and secure. At some point in the day, a message on the VHF radio announced that a 60-foot sailboat had broken free and was drifting through the lagoon. This bolstered our confidence in our decision to remain here.

We whiled away the day with our noses in paperback novels, each one that the other had recently read. Save for the occasional exchange of, "What page are you on?" or "What is happening in your book now?", the only sounds were the creaks and groans of our floating home as it was buffeted by the wind and waves.

Dinnertime approached, on this eve of Christmas, and just as Sheryl was about to dish the pasta into our bowls, the anchor alarm sounded! For the past six days, the magic number on our GPS has been 130 ft. This is the DISTANCE TO ANCHOR waypoint we entered when the CQR hit bottom. At the prompting of the alarm, I jumped up from my berth and looked at the new number ... 250 ft and climbing!! A trail was running away from the scribble that represented our previous anchor swinging position. I rushed past the GPS screen up into the cockpit and tried to determine what was happening.

It didn't feel like we were dragging anchor. I tried to judge our relative position to land and to the nearby Canadian sailboat. Nothing appeared to be changing, but were we really close enough to notice a shift of a few hundred feet? Sheryl was at the companionway and read the ever-increasing numbers to me. The GPS said that we were dragging, and moving pretty fast. Then it stopped. At a position over 250-feet from our previous swing pattern, we began to form another swing pattern. It appeared that we had stopped dragging.



Did we really drag anchor? Was there some sort of glitch in our GPS or perhaps in the GPS system overall? Only one thing would tell for certain. I donned my snorkel gear and went for a pre-dinner swim. While Sheryl spotted from the bow, I used my flippers to kick my way as fast as possible out to the first anchor. With these big waves, no fast boat had a hope of spotting me in the water. As a safety precaution, I stopped occasionally to look back at Sheryl to check about traffic conditions. On the first foray, she called me back when I was halfway out and had me wait at the bow until a vessel passed.

On the second attempt, I made it out to the end of the primary rode and dove. Only the very tip of the CQR was visible above the sand, and there was no disturbance anywhere behind or around the anchor. The absence of a tell-tale furrow in the sand indicated that we had not drug. I surfaced, checked again with Sheryl and upon getting the all-clear signal, I swam quickly over to the Fortress. It, too, was perfectly planted and had not budged an inch since I had placed it there the day before.

The mystery of the false anchor drag was not solved, but at least we knew that the problem was in the electronic realm, not the physical one. We have had this GPS unit on continuously for nearly a year now, and this is the first occasion to get any aberrant readings. After I took a quick shower to rinse off the salt water, I powered down the unit and we enjoyed our pasta dinner. Afterwards, I turned the unit back on and lo and behold, we were back at the magic 130-ft mark. Hopefully, this fire-drill false alarm will be a single episode and we can continue to rely upon our daily clock, night light, and position indicator going forward. It is amazing how dependent you can become on such a simple electronic convenience.

With the visible confirmation that our anchors had held firmly throughout the rough 24-hour period we had just experienced, I slept more soundly on Wednesday night. Visions of sugarplums gave way to the first light of Christmas morning. For Sheryl and I, every day is a holiday, so we don't pay any special credence to any given date on a calendar. With conditions still rough, we maintained our self-imposed quarantine for another day and busied ourselves with reading, writing, and making bracelets from hemp cord and beads. I will let you figure out which activity we both did and which ones were undertaken by specifically Sheryl or I.

Today, Friday, we decided to go to land. More accurately, I cried 'uncle' and begged to get off this bucking bronco for a few hours. Once we had the engine back on the dinghy and re-launched Patience, my first stop was the French bakery. Time to check e-mail and post this blog. It is a beautiful Boxing Day here in the islands, and we are hoping to take in a nearby beach before we battle the whitecaps to return to our home-in-motion.