A couple of weeks ago we were awoken at 4 a.m. as a cold front swept through the anchorage. Larry pushed aside one of the cats, crawled out of our cozy berth, and popped his head up out of the companionway to check up top.
“Get some clothes on Sue, and come on up top.” Larry cried down to me as I lay cozily, fighting to stay asleep in our berth. Feeling guilty that he’d already been the “responsible one” making sure everything was OK in the anchorage, I forced myself to leave the warm covers and get dressed. As I made my way to the cockpit, I was thinking “Must be some draggers.” Then I giggled as I remembered that we were in Key West. Having just spent the previous day on Duval Street watching numerous flamboyant drag queens, I figured dragging must be the theme of the week.
Once on deck, Larry directed my attention to the problem. Just off to starboard a brand new 46-foot sailboat that had dropped the hook a couple of days earlier was dragging with remarkable speed and was about to bear down on two smaller boats. As we assessed the situation, we could not see any waking life aboard any of the boats involved in the impending collision. I grabbed an air horn and blew it repeatedly, hoping to wake up the crew on each boat.
The decks remained empty on all boats involved. Within minutes, the dragging sailboat crunched heavily with the first of the two smaller boats. It was from this boat that a lone man’s head emerged with a look of horror on his face. Running to the bow, he tried to keep the two boats apart—an almost impossible task for a single-handed crew. To make matters worse for this man, it soon became apparent that the dragging boat was unoccupied, so there was no help coming from that direction. Before long, the smaller boats anchor had been tripped by the dragging boat and the tangled two collided with yet a third boat, which was unfortunately also unmanned.
Meanwhile, Larry and I were working as fast as we could to remove the rudder and tiller from our sailing dinghy. Although our dinghy is usually ready to go at a moment's notice, that evening we had decided to leave the dink rigged to sail so we could toot around the harbor the next day. We had to, at least, remove the tiller so that we could clamp the small outboard onto the transom and once again turn it into a motorized dinghy. It was then that we looked up when we heard another midnight rescuer approach the troubled boats in his dinghy. Larry called him over to pick him us since our dinghy transformation was going slow given that the pintles and gudgeons stubbornly refused to part ways in the bouncing waves and semi-darkness.
With three able hands now working together at sorting out the snarled and intertwined mess of anchor roads, they were soon able to get the smaller boats free. The man in the first boat that had been hit had to let go completely of his
anchor rode to free himself. By tying a float to the bitter end, he was able to retrieve it later. Larry found a second anchor in the anchor locker of the 46 footer and set it, finally stopping the boats meandering path of carnage. After letting a couple of boats that were still downwind of the dragger know the situation, the guys returned to
Serengeti.
By now it was 5:30 a.m. We invited our fellow rescuer aboard for some well deserved coffee and sat below discussing the scene over and over again. We speculated on how surprised the guy who owned the boat that had dragged was going to be when he found it in a different location with two anchors out, not just the one he had set.
As it turned out, we happened to be on deck when the owner returned to his boat the next day via the Harbor Taxi. He jumped on board and immediately started looking all around, scratching his head. He walked to the bow and saw that an additional anchor had been set. He strolled to the stern and salvaged a propane BBQ that was bent and hanging loosely over the rail. He checked out the scratches down the side of his hull.
Soon he started his engine and began raising his anchors. We sat back figuring he would soon motor around and ask some of the other boats whether they knew what had happened and whether his boat had caused damage to any other boats. But much to our dismay, as soon as his anchors were up, he headed straight out of the anchorage and toward the channel.
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| "How could this man just leave, knowing there must have been at least one other boat that was also damaged? " |
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How could this man just leave,
knowing there must have been at least one other boat that was also damaged? He knew that someone had to have boarded his boat in the middle of the night in order to set a second anchor, and if he looked downwind, he would have seen the heavy concrete seawall that was where his boat would be if that anchor hadn’t been set.
Larry was incensed! He tried calling him on the VHF radio to tell him he needed to talk to the other boats that he damaged, but he got no reply. He tried calling the other boats involved in the tangle but also got no answer. Feeling helpless, we decided that the guy from the first boat that was hit at least had the boat's name and would be able to follow up if he wanted to.
We learned later that day the reason why this brand new boat had no one aboard that night at anchor. The previous day, the man and his wife had dinghied ashore in their brand new inflatable. When approaching a crowded dinghy dock like you find in Key West, FL, it's common practice to stop and manually work your way into the dock by separating the sea of dinghies.
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Well, this cowboy had a slightly different approach. When trying to work his way into the dinghy dock, the man gunned the outboard engine in an effort to power through and separate the dinghies already tied up. As soon as his bow made contact with a sharp metal bolt on the dock, the inflated hull of his dinghy exploded. In a comic yet dangerous event, both husband and wife literally went down with the ship with the outboard engine still racing on the transom. All reports from the dockside open-air watering holes indicate that the wife stormed off declaring to never set foot on the sailboat again. It was reportedly quite a sight.
Nobody in an anchorage gets mad just because another boat drags anchor. It’s happened to all of us and will most likely happen again. What does and should make other sailors angry is when a boater arrives on the scene and blatantly disregards safety, common sense, and the law. This type of action is contrary to the essence and spirit of the boating community that we are pleased to be a part of.
The sailing, and particularly the cruising, community is a tight one where people look out for one another. If someone’s in trouble, you help them. You don’t ask for anything in return because you know if one day you need assistance, you can count on others for help.
