Allergic to Cities: It Was a Dark and Stormy Night… (good grief!)

Our good friend from Steamboat Springs, Jeannie Berger, departed after a good long visit with us on Tuesday, February 20th. We had such fun with her initiating her to our sailing life with a few big crossings from St. Lucia through Guadeloupe, Martinique, les Saintes, and on into Antigua. The seas were quite high and we always had to sail double reefed to handle the continuing higher winds. She handled the rougher water like a trouper, never complaining, but surely wondering, at times, why we thought rough weather and tougher passages were “fun”. We arrived in Antigua safely after the roughest passage and settled into on of our favorite anchorages, Jolly Harbor. The wind continued to howl for several days but we made the best of it with some beach time, an excursion to St. Johns, the capital city, and a night up to Shirley Heights to hear the big steel pan orchestra (20+ players!) and to enjoy the big BBQ party there.

This is the steel Drum band, though it's when Ellie and the girls saw it, not when Jeannie saw it. Sadly, her time with us came to an end and we bid farewell as she taxied off to the airport for her flight back to the states on Tuesday. After an evening catching our breath, we set about prepping for our next guests, daughter Ellie and our two lovely grand daughters, AJ and Liv. Our youngest daughter Ellie and her two young girls (7 & 4) arrived on Wednesday at the St Johns airport. We made arrangements with a taxi driver to transport us to pick them up and we arrived in plenty of time to welcome them as they passed through the customs gates. We all came back to the bay by dinner time to Jolly Harbor and they got their first taste of boating by getting a wet dinghy ride out to the good ship A2C with the luggage and five people weighing it down. They laughed all the way out to the boat so I guess it was OK by them.

We grilled some chicken, allowed them to get settled in and then, after they had been traveling for two days, they crashed into their beds for the night. As the wind continued to howl, the boat was constantly straining on the anchor set and our double bridle and the motion of the boat in the waves was very rough. The girls all did well when outside the boat but had a bit of queasiness when down below. Since it was bedtime anyway, I advised them that laying in bed with their eyes closed was the easiest was to get through a rough patch and that seemed to work well for them. I also had advised the kids that there would be many odd and unfamiliar noises throughout the night but that they shouldn’t worry as those noises were just new sounds to them. Some would be waves against the sides of the boat, some might be from the rigging “singing”, while others could be from other boats in the area. They seemed to understood my explanation and settled in to try to get a good nights rest. The wind had not abated since before they had arrived and we were still at anchor experiencing ongoing wavy conditions with high wind chop from the 20-25 kt sustained winds. That night while sitting in the cockpit after the girls went to bed, we even turned on the wind gauge to see how big the gusting was and saw several times that it rose well above 30 kts.

By 9:30 that night, everyone was finally in bed and ready for a good rest. Although a rough, bumpy night, all seemed well until 4:30AM when a very loud crunching sound emanated from directly outside our bedroom window. Rudely awakened, we hurried to the deck to find that, as feared might happen, our anchor had slipped from it’s previous 6 day hold and had allowed us to bump into the boat anchored behind us. Rick jumped to the controls and quickly got the engines running, while Suz hurried to the fore to attend to the anchor chain. She was able to pull the anchor under some very rough conditions while Rick held our boat as steady as possible to allow the anchor to be lifted. We had tried so hard to maintain a quiet environment for the kids to sleep through the night and here we were, starting engines and banging into neighboring vessels. We re-anchored after moving back into the previous position and only then could we somewhat relax and watch the anchor continue to strain to perform its duty. During the anchor dragging “fire drill” Ellie had come up to see what was going on and we assured her that all was fine and apologized for the noise. She checked the girls and they were not concerned as they said they were just laying there in bed trying to imagine what each new different noise was. To be doubly safe, Rick decided to maintain a watch to be sure we didn’t drift again as everyone else settled back into bed to try to regain some sense of sleep pattern. The rest of the night went without incident and as dawn came, we noticed several other boats had experienced similar difficulties during the night. What a crazy welcome to the sailing life for Ellie, AJ and Liv! The next day, we thought the girls might need to get some beach time so Rick dinghied them all ashore and returned to the boat to stand watch again, as the wind and wave action had actually increased some since the previous night. While the ladies played on the beach, went to the market and did some simple sightseeing, Rick found his decision to stay aboard to be the right one. After about an hour alone on the boat, a call came in from a neighboring vessel announcing to Rick that from his perspective, there appeared to be some difficulty with our anchor bridles. He had not heard or felt anything alarming but went forward to inspect and found one of our 1" bridle lines had broken clean and the other had somehow come loose from its chain position, rendering it inoperable. We were simply banging back from the anchor chain alone. That was a testament to how hard the wind and waved action was pitching the boat around, as one couldn’t feel any difference from a working bridle and no bridle at all!

Rick had to do some shorthanded rework on the bridle set up by rigging a temporary new bridle line for the broken one from an old halyard line and reattached the one that come loose back onto the anchor chain. A pretty exciting half an hour for this old boy, but it got it done without an additional incident. After all of this excitement, Rick decided that maybe a new spot for the night might be prudent. A call the harbormaster to see if there were any available slips or mooring balls proved the right decision. The mooring balls were all taken but they had an available slip in the marina, so even though we hate marina life, we bit the bullet, for our guests comfort. After retrieving the girls from the beach, we then headed into the marina and a settled spot on the pier. After a quiet night on the dock, everyone spoke of a very good nights sleep and obviously, a much more pleasant night's rest. Now, however, we will likely have to do some slick talking to get them off the dock again and back out on the anchor when the wind finally subsides. We don’t want them to think that all sailing life is about rough weather and bumpy nights at anchor. In the meanwhile, beach time seems to satisfy their time in on the island.