I awoke just before 8am to the sound of a seaplane landing in the bay, buzzing loudly on its way through the anchorage to load/unload passengers at the dock. No noise restriction enforced, I guessed, so after breakfast I cranked up my generator to charge batteries. Eventually I got bold enough to get out my orbital sander and kicked off some varnishing projects with an hour or so of obnoxious power sanding.
Having sufficiently disturbed the peace in the anchorage, I hoisted the hook in early afternoon and headed to Princess Bay on Wallace Island and my first shot at stern tying in a crowded bay. It was less than successful.
I put my engineering mind to work trying to anticipate how to do this thing. It would have been straight forward if I hadn’t been by myself and there hadn’t been a moderate breeze working at cross-purposes, but I proceeded as if I could either figure it out or brute force my way through the process.
There was another boat departing a prime spot, so I waited for them to leave and dropped my anchor about where they’d had theirs, figuring I would run my stern line to the same tree that they’d used. Well, the first part was routine, so easily accomplished. Then came the hard bit. Safely anchored, I got into the dinghy with my stern line in hand, but the wind had swung Mabrouka’s stern farther from the intended tree than the line would reach. After tugging and pulling unsuccessfully with the dinghy for a while, I gave up in favor of a place further down the island that I actually could reach, at least with the end of the line.
The point, though, is to double the line and resecure it to the stern of the boat so that, upon departure, you can just let it go, pull the loop back in, drop the anchor and set off for the high seas. Even with all my engineering and sailoring tricks in play, I just couldn’t pull Mabrouka’s stern far enough up wind to double the line up. The guy on the next boat finally stopped being entertained by my antics and came over to help, but even so we could not overcome Mabrouka’s weight and windage and I decided to give up and wait for the wind to die down a bit.
Several boats came into the anchorage after that. I soon became worried that all the anchoring spots would be used up and implored one of them to send help after they got secured. Mike and his son, James, showed up about half an hour later and, with their help and guidance, we got Mabrouka secured at the inner end of the bay. Whew! It’s simple when you have enough hands for the chore.
