anchor recovery

After a slightly early dart from work, we made it down to the boat at a sensible time, and set to in getting her ready for our weekend visitgors, my parents, whoi haven't sailed for many years.... my father was as excited about getting afloat again as a small kid. They arrived at 20h00, and he proceeded to tell all the stories about me being afloat at 3mths old... clearly he was enjoying himself, and we hadn't even left the marina! The tides were unfriendly times, so we decided to kick out the following morning.... By 08h30, we had breakfasted, and were ready to depart.... couple of drop outs from the planned meet up at Stone Point due to weather making a beat from Burnham look unattractive, and a case of baby teething problems! However, we locked out, and set off down the Orwell... it was sxomewhat windier than forecast, and with my mother described as a nervous sailor at the best of times, I decided that we should motor after seeing the anenometer reading 24kts in one gust.... Clive called to say that he had departed from SYH, and by Pin Mill we had bumped into him, and while he sailed, and we motored, we carried on down the river towards Harwich.... By midday, we had made our way into the Twizzle, and soon dropped the hook.... all was well, we were holding nicely... With a heavily laden tender, we set too the beach, with everything bar the BBQ food, and enjoyed a very pleasant afternoon in the sun... despite it being really quite windy, we were out of the wind on the beach, and it was very hot... About 16h30, SWMBO and I set off back to the boat to fetch the BBQ food. When we got back to the boat, it was obvious that the large metal boat of around 60' next to us was going to be a problem. While we were laying to the wind, he wasn't, and we were going to clash. I strung a bucket on a warp off the stern to try and get her to settle a bit more to the tide, but she wasn't having it, and before I knew what had happened, we were pretty much touching.... I was now worried about our anchor chain going under his keel, and so with the other boat owner, we decided to take my anchor line, and make it off on his boat until the tide turned, and we could easily retrieve it, and we motored off up the river and grabbed a buoy. Before too long we were back on the beach complete with BBQ food, and we had a grand meal courtesy of Clive's rather splendid BBQ. The tide was now in full retreat, and rather than have to wade through acres of mud, we decided to head back to the boats.... Clive decided given the solid F6 blowing to pick up his anchor, and come and grab a buoy near us... About 1 hr before LW, I motored over to the metal boat in my tender to agree with him how we were best recovering my anchor..... I made it alongside him, and then managed to get my painter around my prop... God only knows what he thought about the 'eyjeet' he was dealing with!... it did untangle easily enough though........ As it happens, things were easy with the anchor too.... it was laying out from his boat and anchor at 45 degrees, and so he slipped the chain over his windlass, and it dragged out easily.... We soon deposited it in the bottom of my tender... I once again, proffered my apologies, and set back to the boat and the anchor was soon fully reunited with the anchor locker. We spent a lazy evening tied to the buoy, and slept very well, albeit a little sunburned!

Miles logged 9nm
Miles this season 333nm
Miles since this blog started 1,114nm