Night fright, decaf, and Wallace & Gromit

Saturday, December 28, 2024

It was 1:30 am, rainy, and slightly windy. I thought I heard someone moving around on Braesail’s cabin top, but thought that, if it were Hans or Martin and they needed something, they would find a way to ask. It took me a long time to find my way back into the Land of Slumber after I checked the movement of our boat around its anchor using an app called WatchMate, and saw that things seemed well. Suddenly at about 4:30 am, I heard blasts on an air horn and sat bolt upright—WHAT?? Walt began to rouse himself and to get out of bed and into some clothes as Karen, who’d been sleeping in the forward cabin, hurried to our cabin to see if Walt were awake. Walt told me to stay in bed, but, after looking at my WatchMate app and seeing that the boat had drifted out of its “safe circle,” I decided that our anchor must have dragged and left Braesail, with Sagres attached to her hull, floating toward the boat behind us that Walt had thought had anchored too close to Braesail during the afternoon! But why had the anchor-dragging alarm not sounded (it was supposed to sound through Walt’s smartphone at his bedside, but it had been set mistakenly to sound instead through our stereo speakers, and those had been turned off)?

I dressed and pulled on my shoes, listened to shouts and rumblings and engine and anchor chain noise outside the boat, and saw flashes of light through the aft cabin’s windows as Walt and the skipper of the boat we were drifting toward yelled and tried to avoid a collision. Walt ran the windlass, the mechanism that lifts our anchor, Karen had climbed onto Sagres to make sure that Hans and Martin were awake and active as needed, and when Walt suddenly called to me to get on deck and into the bow to watch the anchor, I was mostly ready, but hadn’t put on my foul-weather jacket, only a heavy sweater over a lighter top; I was thankful that I had not followed his orders and remained in bed in my nightgown!

I scrambled outside in the wind and rain and stood in Braesail’s bow, trying to see where the other boats in the cove, and its shores, were, and feeling very frightened as cries of “Look out—we’re going to hit!” (that VERY nearly happened!), and “Turn—you’re going to run aground!” rang through the wet darkness. Martin, Hans, and Karen worked to keep Sagres safely lashed to Braesail’s hull, Walt motored around to what seemed to him to be a safer anchoring spot, the skipper of the other sailboat moved his vessel away, and I watched and relayed information as Walt let out 200 feet of anchor chain, and checked to make sure that our anchor had dug into the muddy bottom again by pulling on it.

By about 5:30 am, the drama was over—all the boats and their crews were safe, a new anchoring location had been secured, and Martin, Hans, and Karen on Sagres and Walt and I on Braesail were returning to bed to try to get warm and to get some sleep. The fear and cold kept me awake until after 7 am, and Walt checked his WatchMate app frequently to make sure that the anchor was in place before allowing himself to fall asleep.

During post-emergency debriefing, Walt said that he thought that he should simply have pulled up our anchor and moved to a different spot where he could lay out more chain when he and the skipper of the boat that followed us into the cove disagreed about what a safe distance between the boats would be in any overnight wind. Because the other boat’s anchor chain was probably lying on top of Braesail’s, Walt might not have been able to move our boat without the other skipper moving HIS. As it was, the direction of the wind changed (as predicted by the other skipper) during the night, that force pulled our anchor up out of the mud, it failed to turn around and dig itself back into the cove’s bottom as it’s supposed to do, and Braesail began to drift back toward the other boat. When its skipper somehow noticed this, he blew his air-horn to get our attention—and he succeeded! Walt has decided that he needs to buy an anchor of a different design that would function better in similar situations. I was just VERY thankful that no damage was done to boats or people!

Everyone finally fell back to sleep after the night’s adventures, and by about 11:30 am, we were all in Braesail’s cockpit preparing for our journey from Princess Cove to Ganges Harbour on Saltspring Island. I looked out over the cove at one point and saw a faint, misty rainbow–again I gave thanks for the safe outcome of the night’s “adventure!”

Hans chose to travel with Walt on Braesail, while Karen and I chose to join Martin in Sagres’ open cockpit on a beautiful, mostly sunny morning. The trip among numerous islands was a little chilly but very scenic; Martin was able to raise his jib-sail now and then for a little added speed; and we three glimpsed the base of a rainbow in the distance behind us–I gave more thanks!

When Martin guided Sagres into the fuel dock in Ganges Harbour not long before 3 pm, Braesail and her crew were there to meet us and to help to handle the dock lines.

It wasn’t long before Sagres was settled in the spot at the dock, immediately across from Braesail’s, that she will occupy for a week while Martin attends a “contact improvisation” dance workshop,

and we again assembled in Braesail’s main cabin to rest, read, and enjoy a “cheese hour” featuring several different cheeses and an assortment of crackers.

Following his afternoon nap, Walt provided us with an entertaining tasting of coffees decaffeinated by three different methods. We compared the decaf coffees to the regular coffee made from the same beans and roasted by the same company. We agreed that the coffee decaffeinated via the “Swiss Water Process” was the best of the three. Later, Martin experimented with the poaching of eggs for Eggs Benedict using a recently-purchased induction hot plate which he brought over to our galley. The experience proved instructive, and was ultimately quite successful, and the results were delicious!

Later in the evening, Hans played the delightful new Wallace & Gromit claymation movie, Vengeance Most Fowl, for us–it was a great way to end what had begun as a MUCH-TOO-EXCITING day!