The forecasted cold front sweeps through right on schedule. This morning, early, the winds shift to the West setting off AnchorKing’s alarm, even though the wind is still light. Along with the wind shift, seas start running over the reef directly into the anchorage giving us some chop and swell. By 9am the front is passing overhead with steady winds in the high 20kts, gusting 30kts, seas running into the anchorage have built accordingly. Interestingly this winter cold front carries very little rain and no thunderstorms, plus it arrives while daylight with the worst of conditions here mid-morning to mid-afternoon. Much appreciated. Nonetheless, it is a bit stressful, moderately swelly day. We regularly check mooring lines and the safely line. We’d already made sure the anchor is ready to deploy and engines ready to start.

The necessity of all regular safety checks and backup plans is reinforced when a monohull on a mooring buoy towards land from us experiences trouble approx 7:30am, before the front arrives; their mooring buoy pin breaks and they start to drift toward another boat and shore. Radio calls confirm they know they’re adrift. We all watch to see if they are able to handle the situation themselves or need assistance. Luckily for all of us in the anchorage, they do. They pull up their mooring line and safely line along with the severed pin; reset their line and catch another mooring pennant farther south in the anchorage. By then, the sea conditions are too rough to set a safety line so I’m sure their day was much more stressful than ours when the winds and seas picked up.

As night falls, winds and seas have calmed although still from a westerly direction; it’ll be tomorrow mid-day before that changes. We’ve been here in the West End in worse conditions lasting a much longer duration, nonetheless we are thankful for a safe, largely uneventfuly cold front passage today.

The forecast for Friday, the weekend, and everyday next week calls for abundant sunshine and easterly winds, making this anchorage again a slice of paradise.