Windy Night and Day

The wind backed to the Northwest last night and gained some strength. At about 10 PM there was a series of 20 kt gusts so I climbed out of the bunk to have a look. I was back down at the navigation station to monitor the numbers when I heard shouting. A Moorings 37 charter boat was slowly dragging anchor and coming down on another boat named "Tatoi" whose crew were shouting and illuminating the dragging boat trying to rouse its crew. I could see the boat moving slowly but steadily down wind. I got out my much brighter spot light and flashed it across their windows. After about ten minutes the man and wife crew woke up and were soon running their engine and weighing their anchor.

Arnold and I had watched this boat arrive in the late afternoon and instead of anchoring on the fringes where there was plenty of room they had decided to drop anchor in a small pocket which very obviously made the skipper of a Scandinavian boat named "Dana" very nervous.

After weighing their anchor they motored around the front of "Dana" and from the sound of chain it appeared that they were planning to drop their anchor directly upwind of Pachuca just about where her anchor lay 38 meters away. It was time to dispense with civility and decorum. "YOU ARE RIGHT OVER MY ANCHOR!" I shouted several times. They then kept moving in a semicircle closer to the shore and dropped their anchor still upwind of Pachuca but clear of my anchor.

This was not good. It was 11 PM and I had a proven anchor dragger just upwind of me in a rising wind. I watched in the moonlight for a while then Arnold had the bright idea of using the radar. He switched on the radar, which was overlayed with the chart on the plotter. Then he reduced the scope of the chart until it did not even show the shoreline. We put the range rings on and the first ring had a diameter of 188 ft, the second 377 ft, and the third one 564 ft. We could clearly see every boat within 1/8 mile of Pachuca and we could tell within 10 feet how close they were to us. The offending boat was 230 ft away and until midnight I watched the radar screen while listening to ABC radio on the short wave set to make sure that the boat got no closer.

Shortly after midnight I set the alarm for 3 AM and went to bed. If fact I was up every 2 hours or so checking the situation, and Arnold did the same thing whenever he woke up. The boat did not drag anchor again and by dawn the wind had veered to the north putting us out of danger. And thanks to Arnold I had a powerful new tool for the future.

I have sympathy for the couple on that boat because I know what it is like to be uncertain about where to drop anchor and have the anchor drag in the middle of the night. But I would have been so worried and embarrassed by such an incident that I would have moved well clear of everyone else, even if it meant deeper water. While our friends were back in their bed snuggled up and snoozing away it was I who had to stay up and watch their boat.

Don Anderson's wind report this morning predicted northerly a wind strengthening to 20-25 knots in the afternoon and going all night, with some relief the following day. We could see that the San Jose Channel was full of white caps and tellingly, none of the fishing Pangas went out. It was a day to stay in and Arnold and I decided not to go ashore. Several boats did leave the anchorage - one of them that Moorings charter boat - but they were all headed south with the wind.

And needless to say, we had made a very wise decision to sail the passage from Isla San Francisco to San Evaristo while the going was good.

By nightfall the wind had calmed to 12 knots. We ate our dinner in the cockpit then made plans for watching a movie in the evening.

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