Would you want to to sail around the world with your family on a sailboat?

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

"Good deed for the day" or "how to get a free meal"

Well we had some excitement today. Our friend's sailboat dragged his anchor while a squall piped up this afternoon. He was on shore looking for a place to watch a baseball game, When a thunderstorm started building. We were rushing around rolling up the sunshades when Arthur said, "It looks like someone's boat has broken free." Sure enough it was free and it just happened to be our friend Paul's boat and it was quickly drifting into the main shipping channel. Arthur, Stephen and I quickly jumped into the dinghy and took off. Arthur climbed on and threw down the extra anchor with all the scope it had. With all the huge military and commercial ships that come through, the channel is at least 50 ft deep. While we were trying to secure the boat in 30 plus knot winds and choppy seas, Arthur noticed a very large barge and tugboat coming our way. With the winds howling and the boats bucking like broncos, we abandoned his ship, jumped back into the dinghy and raced out of the way to see what would happen. Thank goodness the second anchor sort of held and the sailboat didn't keep drifting in front of the barge. About that time we started to get pelted with rain. We went back to the boat - this time keeping an extra careful lookout for traffic- and tried to start her. Later we found out that this didn't work because Paul disconnected the battery to charge it. While we were trying to decide what to do, we were slowly dragging towards a big dredging operation. We didn't want to sail it in those blustery conditions into the wind if we didn't have to. Especially with Arthur's weak recovering arm. About that time, a tug from the dredging operation came and gave us a tow to the anchorage. By the time we got back to MG, we were soaking wet and Stephen and Arthur had stinky river mud on them from the anchors. Our friend finally got his message from 45 minutes earlier after everything was safe and secure.

Well we did get dinner out of it and it taught us that it's a good idea to pass out your boat card when meeting people. You never know when you'll get that emergency phone call.

Sorry for any typos. I'm trying to post this from my little phone screen and it's hard to proof read

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