Ñandú

After several days anchored in Manjack Cay it was time to leave, not because we had run out of places to explore, but because the Manjack anchorage was not a good place to receive the upcoming strong west wind. Just the usual drill.

The next morning started relatively calm. We had not even started to think about weighing anchor when we were hit all of a sudden by a 50-knot microburst ahead of a squall. The burst came from a wide angle with respect to the wind that had been blowing, which caused the anchor rode to go slack and the boat to gather speed until she reached a far point of her swinging circle and was stopped by the anchor… or so one would have hoped. Our trusty Rocna is a good anchor but it’s not a magic one. If you want to upset your anchor, that’d be the best way: a sudden load from a different direction. So, no, the boat didn’t really stop. At least not immediately. She just slowed down her approach to the nearby rocks. We dragged the anchor for about 200 feet (60m), just enough not to hit the rocks, and it happened so suddenly that there was little time to even understand what was going on, let alone to do anything about it. The first thing I managed to do was to turn the engines on. When you are on the verge of panicking the last thing you need is high-pitched alarms but that’s what I got when I turned the electronics on. They dutifully and loudly reported what I already knew. Beeeeeep! You are dragging the anchor! Beeeeep beeeeeep! The water is getting shallow! Beeeeep beeeeeep beeeeeep! Do something!

It didn’t help that the tide was at the lowest and the bottom didn’t provide the best holding. Thankfully, the anchor bit the ground and held us with about a foot of water to spare under our rudders. My concern was that if the wind direction changed just 30 degrees we would swing too close to a rocky point. Since the wind had dropped to under 30 knots, we decided to retrieve the anchor and get the hell out of there. Did I mention that by then water and electricity were pouring from the sky as if there was no tomorrow? So, yes, precisely under conditions when it’s advisable to stay in the cabin Kathy went to the bows to guide me towards the anchor as I drove the boat and pulled the chain in with the electric windlass. Loud noise from wind and thunder, low visibility, stirred waters, heavy rain, the wind forcibly pushing the boat to one side or the other while I wanted to go straight and slowly… it was not the best environment for coordinated and smooth maneuvers. I heard an ugly noise and the boat shook under my feet. I wasn’t sure what was going on. Kathy came back to the cockpit. Did we touch bottom? Did a propeller hit the anchor chain? The fact that we were now broadside to the wind a waves—which by then were getting quite large—was a strong hint that perhaps the chain had wrapped around the daggerboard. Seeking more evidence we tried to winch the daggerboard but it refused to move up or down. Suspicion confirmed. We are in trouble.

The anchor was holding, but the situation was very chaotic with the waves hitting us on the side. We heard the pile of dirty dishes in the galley falling to the floor and Kathy successfully sprinted down the stairs to save our precious batch of kombucha from getting spilled on the floor, scoby and all. She has a good sense of priorities: Oliver, kombucha, the rest of the universe, in that order. That’s why I like her.

I had no idea how we were going to get out of that tangle. Dangerous as it was, I decided to take a look to better understand what was going on and perhaps devise a plan. When lighting started to subside I got my snorkel and mask and dived in. It was scary both above and underneath the surface, but in different ways. Above, the boat moved up and down wildly, the waves slapped on the hulls, the wind howled and the rain hit my head. Below, the water was gentler and the noise was muffled, but it was dark. Still, I could see half a turn of chain around the port daggerboard. The chain had started to saw through the trailing edge of the daggerboard. It didn’t look good, but it wasn’t a disaster either. Just one extra item in the repair list. A plan didn’t immediately come to mind but at least I had the clarity of knowing what not to do: I wasn’t going to risk my limbs trying to dislodge that chain. I climbed back to the boat and soon after the wind decreased some more and the boat somehow freed herself.

Dripping salty water I took back the controls, we finished the interrupted maneuver, and left the anchorage wondering what the other two boats thought of the show.

In between bouts of strong west wind we spent several days in a cozy anchorage between Manjack and Crab Cays. We had nature trails to hike, mangrove creeks to row, sandy beaches to comb, sunken barges to explore, a swimming pig to feed, bucket loads of rain to collect, and thousands of mosquitoes in alliance with other blood-sucking critters to fend off.

We took Oliver to the beach, and, as usual, his curiosity took over his fears as he slowly came out of his carrier.

He got more and more confident and explored, sniffed, and rubbed every new thing he discovered, until he started showing signs of discomfort. “Can we go home now?”, he seemed to be saying.

We put him back in the dinghy, but he was so impatient that he preferred not to go into the carrier as usual; instead he took position on the dinghy’s bow as a figurehead.

We were approaching the big boat and then the unexpected happened. We were still two dinghy lengths away but Oliver apparently couldn’t wait anymore, and he just jumped into the water! He disappeared underwater for a couple of seconds, which was enough for Kathy to jump overboard as well, with hat, glasses and all. By the time Kathy reemerged, Oliver was swimming towards Ñandú’s transom. Even though it’s the lowest part of the boat, he was unable to climb and looked terrified until Kathy pushed him up.

I didn’t react fast enough to take pictures, so the next day we brought Oliver back to the beach hoping for another cat overboard drill. We wanted him to learn how to climb back to the boat by himself, and we had previously hung a net from the swim platform to see if that would help. I had the camera ready… but Oliver preferred the standard way of disembarking this time.

Yes, some posts are going to be short.

Hope Town, on the northern end of Elbow Cay, is a picturesque little town with narrow streets where only bicicles are allowed, and meticulously maintained, pastel-colored old houses.

The most recognizable feature is its kerosene-fueled lighthouse. It’s one of the last two (or three by other accounts) manually operated lighthouses in the world. Its mechanism has to be hand-cranked every few hours, as it has been for over a century and a half. It’s interesting to note that back then the population of Hope Town opposed, and even tried to sabotage, the construction of the lighthouse, because they benefited from the frequent wrecks in the treacherous Elbow Reef.

 

The well-protected small harbor provided a great respite to our hectic life of lately. We just grabbed a mooring buoy and relaxed without even looking at the weather forecast for several days. Of course, those where exactly the mellow days when no protection was needed, and the good spell ended the day we left.

Perhaps the only downside of Hope Town is that it’s too pretty and accessible, attracting not just cruisers, but resort-dwellers and day-trippers from other islands. Still, I could imagine ourselves living here and increasing the population to 460.

Hope Town is in the northern end of Elbow Cay. On our way there we stopped at Tahiti Beach, at the southern tip of the Cay. The beach ends in a sandbar that gets covered at high tide.