We moved 30 miles up the coast to Bahia Honda State Park. We were anxious to do the cruising thing. Anchor out. Subsistence living. Explore. Experience Nature. That kind of crap.
Halfway to Bahia Honda, nature experienced us. We ran over a crab pot. Or maybe it was a lobster pot. We can’t tell the difference.. Whatever kind of pot it was, it wrapped twice clockwise round part of our prop and the prop shaft. We were lucky to have been sailing at the time, so the wraps were minimal.
You may be asking yourself why we were so specific about the wraps. It’s because we got to dive the boat and free the wraps. This was not nearly so exhilarating as the cruising books would have you believe. It was frigging terrifying. Imagine diving overboard into cold water, to swim beneath a lurching, plunging boat. With a knife clenched between your teeth. If you go too deep, you cannot reach up to the prop. If you go too shallow, the boat falls off a wave and hits you in the head. If you’re not careful, you will cut yourself with the knife or worse – damage the boat. Oh. And you only have 10 or 15 seconds of air per dive to work on the prop. And the visibility could be better. And there might be things in the water and well… you get the idea.
Some of you reading this will snicker and think to yourself, “15 seconds, hell. I can hold my breath for two minutes.”
Let us let you in on a little secret. We can hold our breath longer than you. We still hold the Texas A&M Water Polo team record for distance swum under water – 85 yards. That’s right. You read it right. 85 yards. We can do things in the water that you will never understand. Well, maybe 0.000001% of you. Most of you though, fuggitaboutit.
When you are cold however. And the boat is moving. And you fear for your mortal soul. 15 seconds is max. Max man. Max.
After that little adventure, anchoring the boat was relatively easy. We tried 7 times to get the anchor to hold in the designated cruising anchorage off the park. We were to learn later that the area has notoriously poor holding. So bad, in fact, that many cruisers refuse to even attempt anchoring there. Not us. We were going to conquer it. Tonight.
Our anchoring futility became so bad, at one point, that a helpful soul living aboard a 26 foot McGregor sailboat came rowing out to tell us specifically where the holding was better. some of you will recognize the irony here. The new place was no better.
We need to work on our anchoring technique. Some couples anchor professionally and smoothly, slowly backing down and applying increasing pressure as they back down. The person on the pointy end generally has his hand on the anchor chain, sensing from the vibrations whether the anchor is dragging. Other couples, like us, are a bit noisier. We have a simple system of hand signals, but no set of hand signals can possibly cover every anchoring situation. Like for instance how do you say, “I told you THREE times the motor is IN REVERSE. YOU ARE AN IDIOT.” with only hand signals? Or how bout “If you let the stern swing to port one more time I’m going to come back there and… well, do something.” You just cannot say some things with hand signals.
Our anchoring technique is a bit different from most cruisers. It involves a lot of prayer. And some luck. But mostly prayer.
We drug three times the first night. With a lee shore about 100 yards away. The second time, the GPS anchor alarm did not go off. Or maybe we didn’t hear it. Or maybe we accidentally turned it off and ALMOST LOST THE BOAT. So we set the anchor alarms for both the primary and secondary GPS. Then set our watches on 15 minute count down repeat. Yep. We woke up every 15 minutes. All. Night. Long.
Oh, this cruising thing is nice. Try it. You’ll love it.
We switched anchorages the next night. To the south side of the island in white sand. And slept for almost 8 hours straight. Then made breakfast and continued up the east coast of Florida.
