Boriken Adventures!
04 August 2015
So, we have been slowly but surely stretching our boat out, still sticking to motoring for the time being as we master the systems and navigation (and the intracoastal). Bridge navigation is now a fully developed skill and I can pretty much pull it off without giving it a second thought.
My Father visited last week and I took Monday and Tuesday off so we could go out on a couple of excursions, just day trip things and we decided to go to the overpopulated Haulover area (in the intracoastal) and I had found an anchorage at Oleta park with a great view of the baking humanity that clings to the sand bar. We anchored and I started to put some prep on the hotdogs and the grill so we could have a tasty lunch (why DO hotdogs taste sooooo great out on the water? They do!). Was just chilling out a bit and trying to "sense" any anchor drag action and I wasn't picking up on any but it does preoccupy my mind too much and will surely drive me insane when spending nights in crowded anchorages so I need to get over that a bit. Anyways, a 28 to 30 foot or so cruiser with a husband and wife came into the anchorage and parked what I thought was way too close for comfort upwind of us on our bow. I commented that "this idiot is an idiot" or something to that effect and went back to my hotdogs. Anyways, as the afternoon passed by the weather started to get a bit cloudy and windy and an obvious storm cell was set to pass by and I thought this would be kind of cool to be sitting in the air conditioned yacht, watching the weather outside all dry and warm and safe and also a great opportunity to check for any more window frame leaks. Well, the first rains started to come and the wind picked up a bit. I still was in tune with my anchor and our position to make sure we didn't drag. I came out of the cabin and looked to our bow.......and guess what I saw heading our way......
The idiot and the idiot's idiot wife were dragging anchor and were about 10-15 feet to our bow and closing in fast. Time sort of slowed down a bit here and I grabbed for my F-you horn and I gave them a couple of blasts to alert them but I saw them scrambling around in their cockpit and I saw the anchor was still down but dragging, they looked at us and seemed to understand that they were possibly going to hit us. I saw smoke billow out of the engine and for a brief second I thought perhaps the boat would be able to move forward and not hit us......I was wrong.
With what felt like a mighty crash they drifted against our poor firmly anchored Boriken, somehow didn't cut or get prop tangled in our anchor line but dangerously after the initial impact (I now ran to the bow in the pouring rain) - the anchor line on their boat was now keeping them from powering away from us and instead was now a pivot point that was causing them to close in on our bow again - I deflected 90% of the second hit by pushing them off as they approached - they now pivoted around and started to approach our port side - ready to sideswipe us. My poor wifey was now the one pushing them away as I repositioned and the idiot's wife and my wife and I tried as hard as possible to keep us from clanging into one another about another 2-3 times. The idiot's wife kept yelling at her idiot husband to "raise the god damned anchor" - "raise the ANCHOR" - "RAISE - THE - ANCHOR!" she kept repeating........the idiot let OUT more anchor chain by accident and the idiots now were ready to ram us broadside from farther back. We again deflected them and FINALLY the idiot listened to his idiot wife and raised the anchor and was able to get away. They pulled to the other side of the anchorage and the Mrs. Idiot jumped in the water to check out damage to their boat. I suspect a rental cruiser to be honest. No name or FL #'s that I could see but they did show "Boca Raton, Florida" as their hailing port. My father took photos of their boat as I did a survey of our boat (as much as I could see). Anyways, somehow we only had the smallest little paint thing (no holes, no glass damage) and we got off very lucky. Anyways all of this was in the torrential rain and we decided it was getting worse and we had better GTFO of there as the 2 boats that were a ways off of our starboard stern had now cut loose and were drifting (apparently unmanned) towards the "beach area and rocks" that ring much of that anchorage so we decided to haul ass and start to get back home to Loggerhead Marina in Hollywood.
The rest of the drive home was wet, cold, and of course we were still shaken up from what had gone down. We got home and had a fairly crappy docking attempt (my fault) in our tiny marina (way too crowded and dangerous for a newbie like me to master very quickly.
Anyways....in the final analysis - no damage.....
This last weekend we decided since we had a concert to go to at the American Airlines Arena (Chayanne) that we would live out a dream I have had since I worked there back in the 80's of parking Boriken at Bayside Marina! So we arranged for a slip and spent an excellent time with friends on the boat, had an excellent docking attempt - no issues at all. $107 was the total bill which when one considers concert parking and what not we really didn't spend a lot of money for the night. Electricity and water included so I clicked on every system and deck light on Boriken and got the air conditioning freezing cold for the first time! Actually too cold :) - had a GREAT night and when we headed home on Sunday (up through DANGEROUSLY overcrowded Haulover again) we had a B+ docking attempt back at Loggerhead which was only mildly terrifying for a split second or so. All was good....Boriken is ready to be SAILED and we are talking about the appropriate weekend to hire in our Captain in waiting to help us learn how to unfurl :)