[Rhodes22-list] my overnite shakedown that shook me

[petelargo]

Two weekends ago I did an overnite sail to see what that was like. This was
my first intended overnite. I had another nite I spent out in the Florida
Bay backcountry but that was unplanned. Interestingly it was in the same
area as the Flying Pig grounded, off Content Keys. Thats another story. 
This plan was to leave saturday around noon , but trips to the store and
back to get this and that ran the leaving time to around 3:30pm. I had to
find kenyon canisters for the gas stove and wanted to upgrade to a 6 gallon
gas tank as I was having air flow issues on the factory 3 gallon.  We loaded
everything into the v berth for clothes and bedding and got the food tucked
away and took off out of Plantation Key Colony mile marker 90.  Winds were
10 kts out of NW and switching to NE later that nite. We sailed up to
Mangrove marina in Tavernier and picked up a friend living on a houseboat
and did a sunset sail that was awesome. I decided to just stay in the Marina
and throw anchor. The winds did switch and I kept checking the anchor. I
found it hard to sleep as the winds picked up and I was fishtailing like
crazy. I keep thinking that it might loosen the anchor.  But I kept checking
and we were ok. I finally fell out hard around 1am. Suddenly, around 2am my
wife pushed on me and said we banged into something. Well I jumped out onto
the deck faster than superman and sure enough we had slid about 100 ft into
an underwater mangrove tree that was sticking out of the water about 1 foot. 
I am sure I woke up quite a few people with some cursing and slamming into
shrouds etc. I finally got the engine started and we could not pull the
anchor up so forward I went and dragged that baby back to where I was
initially located. I knew that I would not sleep at all that nite. So, we
called our friend on the houseboat and asked if we could tie up to her. I
was far too awake at that point with my adreniline rush and thats when I
found out that due to the caprock, the mud and turtle grass lots of people
have anchor problems in that marina. The houseboat had 4 anchors set up
including two mooring anchors and one tied to the mangroves. She said she
didn;t sleep well for the first month she was there. I felt better.

Next day I talked to my sailing buddy who said that the dingy sailers in
europe use a V method off the bow with two anchors and that eliminates 80%
of the fishtailing. I know there was a anchor discussion here recently which
I will read as well.  But I don;t mind telling you that I would consider a
"sneak" anchor that ties off to the mangroves by adding a line half way up
the rode and using that to tie off to mangrove root while anchor weights it
down so as to be unseen. (illegal I believe)

So another anchor is on the shopping list with a few other items that we
determined would make life easier after this first test. Let's hope for some
sleep on the next outing. And yes I have my first solid scratch mark on the
port side. Damn.

Pete
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