Anchoring fun at Aitutaki
03 August 2011 | Aitutaki
David
Entered the pass at Aitutaki at 9:30am only to find a large catamaran had anchored poorly in the anchorage causing all the subsequent boats to position themselves in relation to him. So that means the harbor is full even though there are only 7 boats. Not only that, he has taken on the task of guiding all the boats in and telling them where they should anchor so it just keeps getting worse and worse. Now if some of the boats need to depart other boats will have to move to let them out. So we spent hours yesterday trying to secure ourselves properly outside the harbor as the port captain did not want any more boats inside. Basically manually tying ourselves to rocks under water as there is no holding in a 3" layer of sand over rock. After taking all day to accomplish that and not to my complete satisfaction another catamaran is directed to anchor out by us just before sunset. Of course it's even worse for him as he has no light so winds on top of some coral heads. In order to get him off he had to come very close to us and now the sun has set and one off his crew swims down to check his lines and reports back that the rock he tied the line to is no longer there. So I am holding him off the rocks that I am secured to with the dingy in full revs, the sun is gone and thankfully he makes the decision to abandon the idea of staying the night in that spot. So I let him hang on another line his crew had secured to another rock and went and asked some local guys if they could guide him into the harbor where he was not allowed earlier by the port captain but at this point it was becoming a real safety issue so the locals came out in their boat we just did it. Steve on Heatwave turned out to be a great guy and I hope any damage from the rocks is minor. Ashore last light we met some of the other boats at a potluck and they told us that they would defy the guy on the large cat and make room for us and Heatwave today. We shall see how they feel about that today after all the drinking that was going on last night.