Dragging anchor.

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DRAGGING ANCHOR

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PU. TULAI, Malaysia East coast

July, 1998
We anchored in the NW bay, 02 º54.86'N, 104 º06.12'E, fifty feet deep where we put the anchor down swinging to 15' closer in. There are two mooring buoys, which were both taken by tourist boats when we got here, both left by 1 p.m. A huge lizard comes down to the beach after the day trippers have left. It’s a beautiful bay, but we dragged onto the coral shelf when a squall came out of the west. Nasty, though mostly our pride was hurt..

We must be getting complacent. We know that the squalls come out of the West, but when we were in Juara Bay there was a nasty squall out of the East. The bay was so lovely, and I wanted to snorkel for another day, since we hadn't covered the whole place, so we stayed on our anchor. We discussed pulling the anchor and going onto the mooring, but inertia kept us from doing that. This turned out to be a wrong decision by Watermelon.

We had dinner, and were about to go to bed early when the sky started lighting up with lots of lightning in the West. We decided to sit up to see what happened. Peter fixed the towing bridle to the dinghy, just in case, and we settled down. Well, about midnight in came the storm, blowing about 30 knots. There was a fishing boat deep in the bay, and suddenly he put his light on us. We checked, and we had dragged into the coral. Just as Peter went below and turned on the instruments we could feel the keel hitting the coral. Peter hit the engine and I started trying to get us off and out of the coral. The depth sounder, which is well ahead of the keel, showed maybe six inches of water under our keel straight ahead, but we were bouncing hard, and it was a falling tide, so we had to get out of there quickly or we wouldn't get out at all. With the nasty chop coming in, it was unsafe to try to haul the anchor, so Peter put a float on it and dropped it.

After what seemed like an eternity of pounding, but was probably no more than 15 minutes, we were off the coral and back into 50' of water, but the fetch was nasty, and the wind kept pushing our bow over. The bay is narrow and we couldn't afford to let down our vigilance for a minute. It was also pitch black out, and seeing the land was more a guess than a sure thing. All I could do was steer the boat a compass course of 270º, which kept us facing into the wind and on a clear course out of the bay. We really didn't want to go anywhere, because in the dark, and with our antennaes disconnected, we couldn't see the rocks that ringed the entrance to the bay, and couldn't run the GPS to help us, though I would not have wanted to have to trust such fine navigation under these conditions anyway. The boat jumped, and when the wind caught the bow and pushed her off the wind she would run beam to the wind and seas and roll sickeningly. I would then gun the engine and get her facing back into the wind and start the whole process over again.

Our only consolation as we tried to keep minimal headway, was that these squalls didn't usually last very long. We kept watching the wind speed, and it would drop from 30 knots to 20 knots, and we would feel reassured that things were easing up, and then there would be another gust of wind, a breaking wave on our bow, and the roller coaster ride would pick up again. When the wind dropped to 15 knots, gusting to 20, Peter wanted me to turn the boat and get back into the bay a bit. But the dinghy was a liability, slowing us down and slamming into the stern when the wind or waves took an odd jolt, and so I wanted to keep on our course out of the bay, though I knew that eventually I was going to have to turn and run back in, because there were some hard lumpy things out there that we really couldn't count on missing. Finally the wind dropped to 10 knots and I felt that I could turn downwind back into the bay. But because the seas were still rolling in, the dinghy would slide down a wave and run into our stern, and our wind vane. Too many hard hits and something was going to break, but we had to reestablish our position to get some clear maneuvering room.

So down we ran, as I worked the throttle to try to keep us ahead of the waves and the dinghy without going too fast and losing track of our position. Peter kept watch over the dodger, so his eyes weren't as affected by the instrument lights as mine were, and he would tell me, "turn left", "turn right", "you're right in the middle". I ran down until the depth sounder told me we were inside the bay but not yet too close to the coral. There was still too much wind and waves to risk going too deeply into the bay and not being able to turn back out before hitting the coral shelf, and so I turned when the depth showed 60', and went back out. This time we got out a lot faster, because the wind wasn't slowing us so much, and we had started from further out in the bay. When we got too far out, the swells would roll the 'Melon sickeningly. We would hold on for as long as possible, then turn and run back into the bay. The third time we did this, the wind was down to about 8 knots, which made me feel a bit safer running deeper into the bay, where the roll wasn't so bad. But I was getting exhausted.

The wind finally dropped to about four knots, though the roll was still pretty nasty. Peter rigged another anchor in the cockpit, taking out our spare 30' of 3/8" chain that was stored in the bilge, and running our spare 3/4" nylon rode. We tried to position ourselves as nearly in the middle of the good water of the bay as possible, and he dropped the anchor. The wind was now back down to practically nothing, and so I had to back down on the anchor without running over our dinghy on the stern. The anchor held securely. The cabin was a mess, the cockpit was filthy from the spare chain and anchor rode dropping bits and pieces of debris, the cigarette butts and ashes from Peter's cigarettes. And it was still pitch dark. But we have lots of lights in the cockpit, and wanted to give everything time to sort itself out and then back down on the anchor one more time to be sure it was secure, so we started cleaning up. Hosed down the cockpit, picked up the stuff lying on the cabin floor, mopped up the floor where the salt water came in through the hatch in the head before Peter closed it. We then backed down on the anchor again - it didn't move, thank goodness, and then we shut down the engine and went below to get some sleep. It was six in the morning.

I didn't get too much sleep. At 8:30 I heard a loud engine, a local fishing boat, come into the bay and past us. Since our anchor was on a very conspicuous float, I figured I'd better go up to see what was going on. Sure enough, the boat had eyed the float and was headed straight for it, boat hook in the hands of the crew. Peter had heard me call out, so he got up and was ready to assert himself, but I yelled at them that it was ours, they looked at me and turned - picked up a fishing float that had drifted in during the night, and headed straight for us. Oh, boy, now what? But as they got closer, the old guy held up a large crayfish, probably about 3 pounds - “yes!” we said, and so they came up to the 'Melon. These fishing boats are massively overbuilt, their planks probably two or three inches thick, the garboard probably six inches square. The prow rises sharply from a very low freeboard, and as they came alongside, they rolled and threatened to snag our toe rail with the garboard. Here we were, fending off this friendly fishing boat and negotiating the price for the crayfish. Then the old guy held up a lovely silver fish - perfect size for two people. Yes! we said. We still hadn't negotiated a price, but they handed over the cray and the fish. He finally said he wanted enam puluh dollars (60 dollars). Don't get alarmed, everybody. Even though the Malaysian currency is the ringgit, everybody calls them dollars when talking to the white folk, so at current exchange rates it was about $15 US. I knew I was overpaying, but what the heck. We hadn't had any crays in more than a year, and the only fish we'd had were in restaurants. We were starved for New England seafood cooking, and any price was worth it, and when we paid and they motored off, they threw another fish into the cockpit as a bonus.

Because we had to deflate and pack up the dinghy before leaving, we wanted to stay another night and so we decided to pick up the mooring that the dive boats use during the day when they bring tourists out to the island, and stay the night. If another storm came up it would be a simple job to drop the mooring and head out. After the dive boats had left for the day, we pulled up our anchors. The Danforth was tough - it was well dug in, and the 3/4" nylon rode and thirty feet of 3/8" chain are bigger than our usual rode, and don't fit on the electric windlass, so Peter and I hauled it up by hand - it took both of us, with Peter providing the brute force, and I just added my weight and extra leverage. Once that was up, we would have loved to take a nap, but we had to pick up our primary anchor, a 35# CQR with 200 feet of 5/16" chain, that kept WATERMELON off the beach during Hurricane Hugo in the Caribbean. It has served us well, and we can't fault the anchor for our problems. Although it all came up easily on the windlass, we were quite close to the shallow coral shelf. We got out with no problem now that there was no wind or seas to drive us onto the beach. We then picked up the mooring, which is very close to the beach and would not be particularly comfortable in a big blow, but it is also easy to get off it. And the fish was delicious. I wish I knew what kind it was - had never seen it before, but if we ever have a chance to get more, I will jump at it.

Are there lessons to be learned? Yeah, I think so. First, the Malaysians will not get upset if you negotiate the price of the fish that they offer, and so you really shouldn't pay the asking price - you're ruining it for the next yacht that comes along. On the other hand, Malaysians aren't the hard bargainers that the Indonesians and Thai are, and thus we ran the risk of offending them, though they would have still sold us the cray and the fish - our hard cash was well worth whatever they could get.

Any other lessons? Well, yeah. We've got to stop trying to get into as shallow water as possible in these coral shelf anchorages. We've got an electric windlass, and so it's not so terrible to pull up all that chain. But more to the point, we were a bit leery of staying the night in the bay, and we probably should not have stayed - ignoring our instincts is a mistake. There was a better anchorage only about an hour's motoring away, and in hindsight, even though it would have meant turning around and coming back the next day, it would have been safer and less stressful than what we went through. But we handled ourselves well, and had a little luck in getting out of a sticky situation, and thus I'm not sure if we will pay attention.

This situation comes up infrequently, and it's really just bad luck. So many times we receive negative reinforcement for our actions. We behave conservatively time after time and the anticipated situation doesn't arise. And then we lose our concentration and that's when our personal Jumby decides to stick it to us.

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