Waiting it out and dodging bullets
Weather.
Really, everybody talks about it, but nobody ever DOES anything about it! So here we are, waiting for it.
When we arrived here in Tarpon Basin, off Key Largo, we’d chosen it specifically for shelter from the strong cold front that was expected to come through Florida, and sure enough, it was a doozy of a “Norther”, as we call them. Characteristically, Northers come with a major wind shift, often nearly 180 degrees, and such things are hard on anchored boats. When you set your anchor for, lets say, a southern wind, and then the wind suddenly starts blowing hard out of the north, the anchor has to either turn around (unlikely) or pull out of the ground and re-set in the opposite direction. And it’s that re-set that’s often the problem.
In the case of last Wednesday, about 11:30 pm, Sionna had no problem. Our “old fashioned” CQR anchor either turned or reset and we never moved from our spot.
Not so, one of our anchorage neighbors. (Sorry we have no photos of the exciting part – we were kinda busy.)
I never did get the boat name, but it was white with a red stripe, and missed us by MAYBE 3 feet as it slipped by, anchor dragging merrily across the bottom. And that was a worry too, because if his anchor had dragged over our chain, he would have hooked us loose too, and then there would be two boats drifting through the anchorage.
The term “Fuster-cluck” comes to mind, and it’s happened many times in many anchorages – though never to us. Yet. (Never say never!)
It’s also interesting and pleasing to me that Nicki answered the sub-conscious call from a sound sleep, suddenly waking with an uneasy feeling, and she got up to take a look around, in time to see the dragging boat headed our way, but still a ways off. She called me to put another eye on the situation, we confirmed he was getting closer, and then the drill kicked in: I dove below for warm clothes while Nicki started the engine and began trying to move us out of his direct path, pulling our anchor chain along the bottom a bit without disturbing the anchor itself. Soon as I was back she jumped below for clothing, turned on the GPS chart, depth sounder and radio and got out the spotlight and binoculars (surprisingly useful in the dark, actually), while I sounded the “Danger” sound signal (five blasts on the air horn) to alert the rest of the anchorage to the situation, and kept Sionna moving away from his path.
As for the dragger, it took those poor folks over an hour to get things cleaned up and get anchored again – this time way back downwind of everyone else. In the dark of a new moon, that is not a fun job, let me tell you. We sat in the cockpit the whole time, watching the boats around us, of course, but especially the three that were upwind of us, but nobody else budged as far as we could see.
So now it’s Friday morning, we’ve been here almost two days, and it feels like time to move along a bit. North is the goal, and north we shall go. Sunday the winds are forecast to go south and southeast, which will be our opportunity to cross the very wide and very shallow (which combination can stir up some wicked chop in a north wind) Biscayne Bay toward Miami.
Now our original plan had been to go around the Miami-Ft.Lauderdale area completely, go outside on the Atlantic for a night run up to Lake Worth, FL, and skip about 30 draw bridges. But looking at the forecast, there just isn’t a weather window to do that with any hope of a reasonable ride, so we’ve resigned ourselves to doing the bridge dance for a few days as we work our way slowly north. Here’s hoping we can hold on to our sanity for the next week while we get this stretch behind us!
Meanwhile, here’s our destination for today, which, with a name like “Long Arsenicker Island”, has a lot to live up to. And it’s depiction on the chart is, honestly, a giggle waiting to happen. Sometimes it’s the little things!
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