What would happen if your anchor started sliding in the middle of the night? 

No. Me neither, until I had completed the Sunshine Sailing Australia course a few weeks ago.  Well, training turned into reality…

What follows, most mothers don’t want to read about, but it’s is true. It is as much a thank you to John, Carl and Elliot from sunshine sailing school as it is a story of our adventures for our friends…

Que music: Rob Stewart singing I am sailing

OK… Martin and I decided to move our boat a 34 ft Duncanson “Phoenix 7” from Newport (North of Brisbane) to the Gold Coast City Marina (South of Brisbane).

Up until this trip, the sailing we had done on Phoenix was straight out of the Marina mucking around in the wide-open waters of Moreton Bay. Nothing but open space and plenty of deep water. 

So, pilotage and planning was not really necessary for an afternoon of sailing.

Having recently completed the RYA Day Skipper Theory and Practical Course through Sunshine Sailing School and were actually planning an over-night trip that required navigating through channels, shallows, ferry’s, fishing vessels, and an increasing number of jet skis the closer we got to the Gold coast, we did our pilotage plan and prepped for our voyage. Our adventures follow…

Our friend Rob kindly dropped us off at Newport Marina and stuck around until we cast off. Perhaps with the view to video us stuffing up reversing out of our finger and heading out the marina. No problems there. Elliot you taught us well.

We set out to sail more or less south…OK, we knew we were going to have strong winds in the afternoon. And we were both comfortable with that so we planned to sail with only the headsail. At that time we were doing 6-7 knots most of the way and really enjoying surfing the waves on Phoenix…

We were very disciplined in recording our position, direction, wind etc and checking in with our next way point on the hour every hour and dropped a mark on our Garmin (GPS navigational device). Not sure how to retrieve it yet but it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Fade music…

We were enjoying the sail so much we missed our planned turn.

Our depth finder reflected the shallows we were starting to cross. We needed to turn into the wind quickly.     I mean very quickly.    We turned the motor on and hauled in the headsail. For the non-sailor, this process transitions from a smooth and quiet ride when sailing to a very loud and rough ride as the sail flaps rigorously as Martin hauled in the headsail.

It all happens very quickly. A couple of minutes tops.

And your feel like you are now in a different universe. Same winds, same seas. The only difference was direction. We motored west with the waves smacking our side for a short while until we could turn south again and motor with the waves on our stern. All in all we had sailed and motored for approximately 6 hours.

We did not want to sail to far or be too tired.

We decided to anchor south of Peel Island to have overnight shelter from the Northerly’s. Sounded like a good idea at time. We checked the weather and we know the wind was going to do 180% turn during the night. We know it would be still be strong, but …

We anchored, after a couple of attempts. It was hard to get the anchor to get a sound hold. Again, great teaching Elliot. We set the anchor alarm. I took some photos of the various vessels around us to use as checks if we were drifting. We settled in – cooked a yummy dinner and a nice hot cup of tea and enjoyed relaxing on the water and the night lights of North Stradbroke Island and the mainland. It was a very dark night. About 10pm I went to bed. Martin was going to sleep in the cockpit “in case anything happened”. 

Que music, Little River Band singing I feel a cool change arising.

At 12.30am Martin woke me up and said, something is not right. It was calm, dead calm. He put the kettle on, and we were going to sit and talk about, the “Calm.” We check the weather report, no different. We had turned 180 degrees as expected. Our stern was now facing the shore. I checked my photos and we had not moved. 

Fade music

All I can hear it the intensity of the wind and the waves…

Then there was a Pan, Pan (this is like a May Day, but no danger to people or vessel) from another yacht.

They had been next to us and had drifted. They could not get their motor started. We later learnt that they had only entered the bay as they had engine trouble. They were grounded. We jumped on the radio and offered if they wanted to come aboard Phoenix they could. They chose to stay on their yacht.

The next thing we noticed was about 4 or 5 smaller motor craft had lifted anchor and headed out of the bay.

Then a yacht on our starboard side started sliding towards the coast very quickly. We could not see anyone on deck or cabin lights on so we could only assume they were asleep, I grab the horn and tried to get their attention. It was very dark… and we could not read their vessel name or see them on the nav system. 

By this stage Martin had started our engine and had it in neutral, “just in case”. The seas were huge, and it was rough.

And then… our anchor alarm went off and we were sliding towards the shore. 

The anchor itself was still “anchored” but is was dragging due to the force of the winds and water. I went to the bow of the boat which was challenging in these seas and scary. Because in the moment I could not find the safety line to clip myself on to the boat. S##T

Side note: 1. Safety line must be immediately handy (in the cockpit) 

Side note 2. I realised later the safety line was not on the boat.

Why, because we had stripped the boat when all the reno work was done and it was now looking like the safety line was safely on dry land in my car and accidently got left behind with a bag of books I was planning to take. Bah, humbug!

So, imagine this – hanging on, it is very dark…. looking for the angle the anchor is at…

…to give Martin direction as to which way to attempt to manevour the boat (weather permitting) and giving instructions with my arm directions. Holding a torch instead of my head lamp (also not on the boat). This took some time and coordination.

The anchor was coming up… we were getting there and then the anchor chain got caught.

Unbelievable right…  I did not know how to un-catch it.

Believe it or not it is simple – and obvious – I should I have lower it a little. Not so obvious in the moment and if you have not done it before.

Anyway, back to me hanging on for dear life. Martin and I swapped positions. He said, don’t worry about me if I fall over-board. At least you know I will end up on the shore. Ha, so not funny. That might fix one problem, but I would still have to handle the Phoenix on my own…

Yeh success… anchor is up

We are under power and we head out of the anchorage. Martin is on the helm and I am looking at the charts of the nearest sheltered spot we could get to. 

We decide to head to a small anchorage on the north-west side on Russell Island. It is about 2.30am. Did I mention it was dark? It is dark. There is no moon. And the seas are big. There is no rain, just big seas and winds…

We approached our potential new anchorage and we know it was shallow. It was not really well lit and we know there were rocks in a couple of locations… We did not feel confident going in. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it was the unknown etc. As I write it does not make sense why we did not go in and have a look but it was really hard to see anything. Rocks are not a good look… and low tide was at 4am. When we decided on a new beginning and going liveaboard we had not ever experience anything like this before and had to get through the night.

We knew we have plenty of fuel and decided simply to motor up and down a recommend small craft channel and planned to go into the anchorage at first light. Which we did. We were frozen. I made a lovely hot cuppa tea. Followed by an omelette. We sat down with our cuppa and watched the sun rise. It was beautiful and calm…

The day was calm, flat beautiful… 

Again, no music… I was loving the peacefulness and calm… Even if we were a little tired…

#Ilovesailing #Liveyourlife #Iamsailing #Coolchange #Whatareyouwaitingfor #Liveyourlife