A night to remember here.....

In the cruising guide, the author recommends this island as a nice and secure anchorage.... well....

This island is surrounded my coral reefs, and one of the bays has a sandy section that you can duck into and anchor. So I followed the book and anchored in this sandy stretch, outside of the coral... All's well.

Later that night I calculated the amount of water under the boat at low tide (this being 2am at night)... seemed OK... plenty of water... I sat upstairs at the helm for a little while, and as the boat swung on the anchor (it was very windy that night) I noticed that sometimes we swung into very shallow water.... oh poo! This meant that at 2am, if the wind would blow us around we would hit the coral.... this is definitely not good..... (one of the rules of boating, do not hit the coral reef at 2am in the morning...!!!)

So I started the engines, and pulled up the anchor and tried to find another place to anchor. It's dark, very dark, so I am fully on instruments... plotter, radar, forward looking sonar...etc..etc...

I decide to move to the next bay, north of where we are currently. As it turns out it's less protected... I decide to go back to the previous location.

I anchor further out from the island, and therefore I have plenty of water under the boat. Problem is I also have plenty of chain out.... Because it was so windy, and the wind tends to swirl around, the boat is continually swinging on the anchor.... The chain would occasionally scrap on fringing rock and coral, which is transmitted very well up the anchor chain and amplified through the hull of the boat....

I was up and down wll night until after 2am, keeping an eye on the depth. As it turned out, everything was OK, but we decided to get out of there first thing in the morning....

Frank, out