A One Star Day - Tara Escapes her Chains

We got up around 9 am and decided that since the wind is shifting to the NE we will move the boat to the other side of the bay. It was pretty windy, but Marina did a great job of keeping us into the wind and away from the other boats. I initially let out 25 meters, we held, then we let out another 15 meters. The water is a little deeper here, around 8 meters, so we aren’t really all that extreme with 40 meters. Apparently it is going to blow hard this afternoon — like 25, so we need to make sure we’re dug in deep. 

Was that foreshadowing or what ... We went to town to buy a few things, nothing important. We were out for quite a while having left the boat around 2pm. We missed the stationery store's opening hours so we sat down and had a beer and waited until 17:30 when it opened again ... turned out it opened in the afternoons only on Mon, Tues and Thurs and it was Wednesday of course, so ... missed it. We then tooled around the rest of Corfu town and found another stationery shop and bought a couple of binders and pens and stuff. Marina finally found her mechanical pencil — woo woo. It is now around 18:00, and we had spent from 16:00 to 17:00 watching Tara from the bar ... we we were coming back from town and the wind blowing 25. Holy crap  ... is that TARA a boat length from that 100 foot powerboat?!? 

Naw. It must just be the perspective... but we ran down the stairs at NAOK, jumped in BB2 and roared back as fast she’s would go back to TARA. When we got there we were only a boatlength away ... we had made it just in the nick of time. Our luck was holding. Phew.

Tara is moving backwards fast but no problem, we're pros at boathandling. Marina jumps downstairs, throws me the key, disaster averted ...YAY. Turn the key. Nothing. The engine that has worked flawlessly for 4920 hours wouldn’t start. ... correction, wouldn’t turn over. Nothing, nada, zero. 

!#*%!, this is now a real problem. I pull out the generator. Marina is hauling the anchor up using the windlass and it draws 100 amps, and without engine power it causes a low-volt on the windlass that trips the breaker. We get the genset running and the anchor windlass is working ... slowly because its hauling a 20 ton boat upwind. This buys us another boatlength or two, and gives me time to try to get the engine working.  Marina was waiting for the boat to ‘sail’ up the anchor chain and tack and she would reel in the anchor while it was loose — relatively speaking.  I’m quickly doing PD on the engine. I’m trying to short out the starter motor but its so deep in the guts of the Yanmar it’s almost impossible to see let alone get access to. I get the starter drive to go — whirrr — but the Bendix drive isn't engaging so the engine isn’t turning over. All we need is a momentary crank because this Yanmar runs so well it will light right away. I’m running out of time. Marina yells that now we’re really close ... like going to hit close.

Gotta stop screwing about with the engine. Plan ... what the eff’s the plan now???

Lya, from Slovenia. 

Marina yells to pull out the jib and try to sail away from the other boat up-wind.  I simultaneously pull in on the jib sheet while easing the furling rope and steering with my knee/foot. Careful not to let too much jib out .. we don’t want to have an even bigger problem with 70 sq meters of jib flogging about. I pull out about 2 meters worth and  we are able to sail away a bit .. basically giving us some forward momentum to help pull the chain up. 

The anchor windlass, oops, better clean up the oil
(spills out when strained)

As I had feared, due to putting too much strain on the battery it goes low voltage, which causes the resistance to increase, Ohm’s law and all that jazz ... anyway the anchor windlass trips the breaker and Marina is now pulling up the last 20 meters of chain by hand.  Click 6 inches, click 6 inches, click 6 inches ...  Marina reckons the sailing creating more problems than it is solving ... so she tells me to  roll up the jib again ... now the boats are really close. They come together and we have 3 massive round fenders in place but a wave hits ... we’re OK ... except the BBQ hits. I think it bent our pushpit a bit. S&*t ... ! Did we scratch the chrome on that lovely boat? The boats tack away from each other,* we only have another minute or 2 before we come together again.

*(You may not know it but in wind over say 10 knots for a boat our size, the boats tend to tack up the anchors chain ,,, the wind pushes the bow one way ... the wind causes the boat to sail maybe 100 feet or so, and then the anchor pulls the bow the other way, and you go the other way for a 100 feet or so. Marina calculated the math and it is a significant distance ...)

Meanwhile, Marina keeps lifting the anchor ... inch by inch, Oh no! It’s caught In the 100 footer's anchor chain SHITBALLS. We’re in real trouble now. Marina looks in exasperation at the guy on the other boat who raises his hands in agreement that the anchors are now at risk of hooking up. Somehow, after a few minutes of tacking up the anchor chain it seems to free itself. Marina yells that the anchor is now clear of their chain and is up of the bottom. With the anchor off the bottom we’re doing 2.5 knots in whichever way the wind is blowing and, thank the gods, it was blowing from a favourable angle. We glide by the other boat at a 90 degree angle only 5 feet off the side of their boat with transom facing them. Phew, we could have left a 90 foot scrape on the side of their boat but ... disaster averted for the time being.

The immediate crisis was over and we have a few minutes again. Marina hand winches the rest of the anchor chain back on board. I didn’t notice until she was almost done that she was using the clutch to lift the anchor and had to remove and re-insert the handle each pull ...  instead of the manual lifting system that has a ratchet in it and would have made it much easier and faster. Oh well, heat of the moment and she pulled in 40 meters of 12mm chain, half by hand, in a 25 knot breeze in crisis conditions. Did I marry well or what?!

Now we are past the 100 footer and we’re drifting towards a 250 footer .. you know the kind worth say 50 million euros. And 5 million more for the Eurocopter parked on the top. Marina gets the anchor all the way up, we’re a sailing boat again. This we know how to do. We pull out small amount of jib.  Get on beam-reach and start reaching out of the harbour. We don’t put out very much, we want to keep the boat going slow but under control. Heart rates are probably a little high, we’re just trying to get our feet back underneath us. A few deep breaths, alright, let the dinghy out a ways so it doesn’t swamp. Get the boat sorted, tie the cushions down that the wind is trying to rip off the boat, take the generator off the front deck, put the crap away. 

Deck cushions all tied down. 

Tara is moseying along under control at 4 knots or so. Marina has the conn ... I go work the engine problem again.  I reckon it might be the relay between the key switch and starter motor. I had to replace that once in Preveza when the original Yanmar part packed it in. I replug the connections ... yell to Marina try it now ... the engine lights instantly. Ok, now what about the windlass? I check the windlass breaker. It had indeed tripped. So, motor running, windlass operational, time to go set another anchor.

We drop anchor (we really dropped the anchor this time not the metaphorical anchor) fairly close to where we were originally, but behind the 100 footer. Marina thought we had dragged the first time we set it so , we reset it, backed it down twice. At dusk we decided to let out another 10 meters of chain so now we have 50 meters out. It would be like parking your car, putting it in park, emergency brake on, blocks under each tire, and tying the bumper to a nearby tree. We were safe.

BBQ slightly off kilter and lifelines at right are a little loose. 
Nothing compared to what could have happened. 

Man I feel like having a rum drink now but our hearts weren’t really in it. Marina re-heated the Lithuanian soup we had left over and made a very nice Carprese salad. 

We  then debriefed on what we could have done better and have some new rules:

1) we dig the anchor in hard every time. 

2) if it’s blowing 20+ somebody should be on the boat at all times, 

3) I put together a quickie manual on how to fix stuff under pressure — jump-starting the motor, fixing the windlass if it blows the breaker, if we spring a leak, how to winch the anchor in if the power side of it blows ... just a few things that Marina needs to know while I’m off in Germany with Ross, Philip and Christian testing the limits of my beer drinking and pork eating capacity.

Emergencies Manual

Now ... wouldn’t it be nice if the evening ended there ... but it didn’t. Two more things: 

First: another 100’ boat decided to anchor right beside us literally 100 feet away. We could tell they were a bit nervous too but still stayed there for about an hour and a half before the lifted up at around 23:00 and moved to a few hundred meters behind us. Maybe they could tell we were rattled a bit, might have been me throwing the fenders over the side. I stayed up until 00:30 serenading the harbour and when the wind subsided a bit more I went to bed. 

Second: At around 3:15 am the second thing happened. Corfu’s Mandraki harbour, that I really love, is open to the east and cruise ships, freighters and ferries all go by in the middle of the night. This one must have been big and since the wind had stopped, we were directly broadside to the waves. The boat started to rock really hard — like 20-30 degrees in each direction and I start hearing dishes rattling — we didn’t put them away after washing up after our dinner, and then the full bottle of rum I had bought the previous day fell onto the floor, breaking into a million pieces and spilling a litre of rum on the floor (at least it was Baccardi). Great! Marina got our trusty Dewalt shop-vac out and we sucked up most of the glass and rum and finally called it a night. And did I mention that it appears that our freezer has packed it in. ... yikes, what a trip. I gave this evening in Mandraki one star — because we cannot go into the negative 👎.

Our "track". Top left is anchoring and falling back to settle in the blob of yellow.
Wind comes up and the straight bit in the middle is a solid drag.
Some "sailing" while dragging follows that.
At least we now know what it looks like.

The next morning we powered by the 100 footer and asked them if there was any damage. They said there was a small scratch on their chrome but not to worry .... we apologized profusely ,,, Marina then hopped in the dinghy and delivered a bottle of Stoli to them. They were very gracious and I hope the next time this happens to us, that we can be as gracious as they were.