Scribbles

Two years ago, we moored at the Bitter End, in Virgin Gorda – British Virgin Islands. A nice anchorage in which we took one of the outer mooring buoys.

Late one evening, we were sitting on the aft deck, having a drink, looking at the night sky, counting the shooting stars. It was new moon, so the sky was dark. Pitch dark… While watching the sky, suddenly, the corner of my eye caught some movement ten yards from our ship. I pulled myself up, and saw the dark mass of a big catamaran moving silently past us. No navigation lights, no cabin lights, nothing… It was too dark to see if anyone was on deck, but I presumed they were going for a night sail, and had forgotten to put their lights on.

For at least an hour, we watched that ship making all kinds of strange twists and turns. Sometimes it would go even backwards, all without any sails nor lights on.. “Really weird”, we thought, “Wonder what those are up to?”…

It was a few hours later, about 1 am in the morning, we were already in bed, I was awoken by a dinghy racing by and circling around our ship. I got on deck, but could not see very well what was going on. I could only hear voices of two men in the dinghy, with one of them shining a small flashlight to and fro onto the water. During one of the times they passed close to our boat, I could clearly hear one shout to the other: “But I am sure we left it here!”. I did not think much of it. The guys went back ashore, and I went back to bed.

Two hours later, I heard a call on the marine radio: ‘Salvation One, this is Salvation Two’.. “Salvation” is a call sign often used in a rescue operation.. I got curious and listened into their conversation. They were clearly two vessels in a rescue operation, looking for a ship. A catamaran. Apparently I was not the only one listening in, as I heard a fisherman breaking in:
“Are you guys looking for a white catamaran?”
“Euh yeah!”, answered one of the salvation vessels.
“About 45 feet long?”
“Yeah!”
“White hull?”
“Indeed”.
“Well, I know where it is”, the fisherman answered, clearly enjoying himself: “I see it drifting onto the reef, and according to my calculation, it will crash onto it in 15 seconds!”.

There was a weird radio silence that followed.
Half a minute later, the fisherman came onto the radio again: “Ok, you should no longer hurry, it just crashed onto the reef !”.

What had happened? Some guys had moored their catamaran onto a buoy, but clearly not fixed the lines properly. While they were partying on shore, their boat drifted away, by miracle missing all the other boats at anchor, and drifting gaily downwind, towards the reef several miles further.
When the guys came back with their dinghy, they did not find their ship, and warned the authorities. While the drifting vessel missed our boat by ten yards, it had hit the reef bulls-eye.

I guess these guys will take some courses in making knots when flying back home!

UPDATE: I just found this video. Something we witness every day in the Caribbean: a certain nationality typically thinks they can sail a yacht because they went out on the water a couple of times, charters a big catamaran, and then hope for the best..

More about sailing on The Road.

The principle of mooring, “fixing a yacht to a mooring buoy”, is pretty easy: A rope with a loop sticks out of a floating ball. The rope is connected to a chain anchored onto the sea bottom. The skipper approaches the mooring buoy against the wind while someone stands on the bow (the front end of a ship), to grab the loop with a boat hook (a long stick with a plastic hook on it). A rope is pulled through the looped mooring line, and both ends are fixed onto the bow of the ship.
All in all, if well prepared and executed, it takes two minutes to moor a yacht. If well prepared and executed….

There is a secret, sarcastic joy to be found in sitting on deck of your ship at sunset, with a drink in your hand, and looking, judging how well the others are doing, mooring their ship…
When you are on the other side, and you are the one arriving late at an anchorage, you know a lot of more people are watching and judging you. That is the point where the most inexperienced skippers get really nervous: the point where a lot of shouting goes on between the guy at the helm (steering the ship), and the poor person (often his wife), trying to grab the mooring line.

Two years ago, we were moored at Anegada in the British Virgin Islands, and watched some Americans (I am sorry, but in the Caribbean, American bareboat charterers are amongst the worst sailors!) approaching a mooring buoy.
It was almost a recipe for disaster: the ship approached the buoy with the wind in their back, a definite no-no in the “yachting for dummies”-course: even if the skipper halts the ship close by the mooring buoy, the wind will push them past the buoy… So we already smelled some trouble, especially as they had three people on the ship’s bow. Tine and I looked at eachother: “Novices!”..

Sure enough, the boat approached too fast. One of the guys hooked the mooring buoy, but the wind pushed the boat forward. The guy who held the boat hook, the long stick with a hook at the end, tried to pull as hard as he could to lift the mooring loop.. Of course, the ship, a good 30 tons of dead weight, moving at 5 mph, would not stop, the wind pushing it gently forward. The only thing the poor chap could do, was, with the hook in his hand, and the mooring buoy at the end of the hook, walk alongside the ship, towards the stern (the back of the ship).

Loads of shouting, and orders flying around… Unfortunately, the guy reached the stern in no time, still pulling onto the boathook like there was no tomorrow, but standing at eh very back tip of the boat, he decided to let go of the mooring ball. Unfortunately, the boathook did not unhook from the mooring ball, and fell into the water.

Loads of cursing of the captain made the guy decide “Oh shit, now I’d better get the boathook!”, so he jumped into the water, to get the boat hook. “Cool stuff”, I thought, “Not only did they miss the mooring buoy, had a boat hook in the water, but they have a man overboard too!”.

It only got better. With one of the crew in the water, the skipper panicked and turned the boat sharply to starboard, forgetting he was still going downwind, in a real busy and crowded anchorage. The boat turned right in front of another moored yacht, so its keel grabbed the mooring line of the second ship. I saw the boat jerking to a sudden halt, pulling on the second ship’s mooring line. Now the ship was dead in the water, the wind pushed the yacht against the second one, and all the crew was ordered to hold off the ship with their bare hands. There they were: all hands on deck holding off a ship pushed by the wind against another boat, one crew in the water, and a captain frantically trying to rev up the engine to get the keel untangled.

To make a long story short, it took them at least half an hour to unhook their keel, by which time, the guy in the water – with the boat hook – got onto the ship.

They went off, with red cheeks, to anchor somewhere far away from all the other yachts. They did not even come on land for dinner, probably avoiding the snickering from the crew of the other yachts who witnessed the whole endeavour.

More about sailing on The Road.

Drawing mooring buoy courtesy RYA