The St Mary's River is the border between Florida and Georgia. The town of St. Mary's, on the Georgia side, is said to be the second oldest town in what is now the USA. It is a small, quaint town still showing many colonial influences in its architecture. It is also famous amongst cruising boats for providing a wonderful Thanksgiving lunch. The story goes that some years ago a few boats were stranded in St. Mary's over Thanksgiving due to bad weather. The townspeople got together and provided Thanksgiving dinner to the cruisers, and it has continued that way ever since. The town provides turkeys and hams, and the cruisers bring along the side dishes and desserts. The lunch is held in a local hotel, and the attendance is growing every year. Four years ago there were 40 boats in St. Mary's for Thanksgiving. This year there were over 100 and more than 250 people attended. Unfortunately it ended up not being the happy, relaxed meal everyone had planned. The weather had other ideas.
There is a strong current flowing in the St. Mary's River, and it is particularly vigorous close to the town where the river bends around. The wind was also blowing hard today, unfortunately against the prevailing current, and the wind against tide effect caused some boats to drag their anchor. We thought that we had seen the worst of these conditions early in the morning, but shortly after most people had finished their meal some calls went out to boat owners that their vessels were dragging. One of these calls came to Ed & Benia, our new friends on Sea Angel who happened to be sitting at our table. They immediately rushed back to the dinghy dock, closely followed by Dave who had offered his help. It took some time to get Sea Angel safely back on her anchor, but Dave eventually came back to the restaurant. The conditions were worsening and he suggested we get straight back to Magic as a precaution.
We collected up our things and once again headed for the dinghy dock. As we were approaching the dock someone called out to us "Are you on Magic? There's a boat dragging down on to you!" In the short time it took us to get to the dock we could already see that 3 other dinghies were around Magic fending off the intruder. We could also see the owner of the offending vessel who unbelievably was shouting at us that Magic had dragged down on to him! Dave calmly suggested that he might want to get back to his own boat (I was inclined to make other suggestions to him) so that we could all get our boats safely secured again. We jumped in to our dinghy and flew back to Magic. Together with the help of the other cruisers already lending a hand, we got the boats separated and the other smaller vessel back securely 'on the hook'. Fortunately there was not a scratch on Magic and although it had been a tense 30 minutes or so, all was well.
Suffice it to say that the remainder of the evening was spent paying close attention to all the boats in the anchorage. We were not disturbed again, although a little further up the river boats again dragged during the night. One pleasant reminder of the day was the way that people on cruising boats are always so ready to help out another boat in difficulty. Of course there are always exceptions, but the vast majority of cruisers we have come across have been more than willing to offer advice or extend a helping hand. It's nice to know there's help available when it's needed.