Is That The Sound Of 300' Of Anchor Chain Rushing Off The Boat??

Saturday June 2nd, Great Harbour to White Bay to Norman Island (13.2 miles)

Josh, Pam and Cindy went to breakfast at Corsairs at 8am while I stayed behind. I was still feeling like crap but better then the night before. I decided NOT to eat, as eating seemed to make matters worse.

The crew returned about 9:45am with 3 bags of ice and raved about their breakfast...fannntastic. I had a protein bar and warm glass of water.

Anyhow, while they were gorging themselves, I prepared the boat for anchor retrieval and our trip to White Bay. This consists of running the starboard (right) engine for a hour or so to charge the cold plate refrigeration system. Earlier in the trip we had lost a threaded pin that was used to connect the dinghy davits (lifting system) to the dinghy. We had to cannibalize some hardware that was part of our anchor bridle. While anchored in GH, we moved the pin back to the anchor bridle and now needed to remove the bridle so that we could raise the dinghy for the trip to White Bay. So I took care of that, and warmed up the port engine when I saw the crew in the dink returning.

Once the dink was up, we focused attention to bringing up 150 ft of anchor chain. The anchor windlass (the motorized devise that raises the anchor and chain) takes a ton of power/battery juice so it's important to keep the revs up on the starboard engine and steer towards the anchor as the chain comes up with the port. Josh does a good job of pointing in the direction of the anchor as we don't want to move the boat forward by pulling on the anchor. It's blowing near 15 knots and it's a bit tricky to keep the boat into the wind and toward the direction of the anchor. Eventually I get the anchors up hand signal, and begin to power forward when all of a sudden, I heard a "bang" followed by the unique sound of 300' of chain rushing out of the anchor locker to the ocean floor. I run up, look at Josh...the sound is deafening and ask the proverbial "what happened!?" He yells back, "dunno!". We look into the locker to be sure that the bitter end it as least tied to something...it seems to be. What was probably 90 seconds, seemed like forever. Eventually, there's another "bang" and then silence. I attempt to keep Kokomo into the wind with engines in gear just enough to keep her in one place. Meanwhile, Josh attends to the windlass. I'm fearing something went bad with the windlass and now we have to manually pull up the anchor and chain. We find out that the chain jumped off the windlass cog and that the windlass still works. So we repeat the process, and several minutes later we have the anchor up and are on our way. With a total trip picture count of 1800+, you'd think we would have had at least 1 of us scratching our temple as the chain rushes off the boat...but noooo.

We motor around the corner and take the right channel into White Bay. It's blowing like stink and there are 3 balls left. I eye one close to the beach. I look around, as I always do in a crowded area with winds blowing 15-20knots and notice a power cat bearing down on our stern close enough for me to read the model number on his anchor. Whatever, I keep my coarse and rotate Kokomo into the wind right as we came upon the ball....Josh scoops the pennant and hooked...high five!

We take a dip in the crystal clear water first thing. A couple rain showers blow through. Then we dink in to the beach. This is the first and only "populated" place without a dinghy dock. We grab some beers from the self-serve bar at Ivans.

We try to name the famous people pictured with Ivan that are framed all over the bar. I date myself by recognizing Walter Cronkite. Ivan tells us that "happiness" cures everything, so I ask him if it works on empty wallets and sick stomachs...he says, "yup", with a smile.

We get back in the dinghy and dink over to the other side of White Bay. We do the beach bar crawl, stopping at Soggy Dollar first to get our free Painkillers, drop ridiculas money in the store, play wall hooky and chill in the shade.

My stomach was feeling better, but not great and decided to hold off on the libations. A bummer, because my crew was entering Phase 7 out of 10 and I wanted to be with them. We continued the bar crawl down the beach, stopping at Jewels, One Love and I forget the 3rd. Even though I wasn't drinking I could so stay and chill in a beach chair or stand in the water for the next 4 hours, but unfortunately we still had to make a 13 mile journey (into the wind) to Norman Island before dark.

We drop the ball at 2:33pm and set course smack into a 20+ knot headwind. We motor along at about 4-5 knots, the seas aren't to bad, but once we round the West End it's armageddon. Josh is "napping" in the cockpit and the girls are reading/listening to iPods on the tramp as we round the point. The seas really begin kick up. I'm not a good judge of wave height, but lets say they were big enough to bring Kokomo's bow up out of the water then in return smash through the next wave. In an instant the girls were SOAKED. For the next hour, Kokomo chugged along at 3 knots riding up one wave and then burying the bow(s) under water on the next. It was a 'lill nutty.

We arrived at Norman at 4:47pm and there were plenty of balls left. If I remember correctly, i think I counted somewhere in the neighborhood of 90+ balls in The Bight....In the words of Forrest Gump, "That's olllot".

On our way into The Bight we watch with curiosity a 40ft monohull come into the mooring field under FULL sail. It was blowing a steady 20 with gusts hitting 25 knots. At first, I was giving the guy a thumbs up for coming in under full sail, but after a bit I'm thinking this guy is stupid nuts...why isn't he dropping the rags? I could see he had serious weather helm as he zig-zaged through the field. Eventually he sailed right over a moored boats pennant line dragging the moored boat around 90 degrees as the moored boats crew look on in bewilderment while relaxing off the stern on rafts. Obviously this guy is in trouble, and ends up hitting a large cat broadside, then bounces off and is pointed at the shoreline rocks about 20 yards away. Within seconds a powerboat sped over and seemed to try to pull up next to the boat to do god knows what, but the monohull fortunately missed the rocks when the captain brought her around into the wind. About this same time I could see thick black smoke coming from the mono stern as if they were trying to start it or were over revving the engines to get out of the precarious position. I don't know the story, wish I did, but I'd assume the captain decided to be a big man and sail into the mooring field without first starting the engine. I got a feeling the engine wouldn't start when he wanted to, for whatever reason (can it be hard to start the diesel when the rails are in the water?? -don't know) and he quickly found himself in a serious situation. I only saw 2 people on deck including the "captain". Why didn't he furl the head sail to get the boat under control?? Don't know. I had my own 25 knot winds to deal with while pulling up to the ball, so I couldn't pay much attention after I noticed he missed the rocks....Gotta love the entertainment in the anchorage/mooring fields.

My stomach was feeling pretty good during our 2.5 hour crossing, so I consumed several adult beverages, while the rest of my crew slept off theirs. This however, would soon change.

We grab a ball between Pirates and The Willy-T, then dink in to Pirates for dinner. Unfortunately, dinner isn't until 7, so all they have are appetizers. Once again against my better judgment, I eat.

We stick around for a while, while the crew drinks I hang out by the water in a lounge chair feeling like death.

We return to Kokomo around 7 pm. I retire to the "tramp", while the rest of the crew eat boat food and clean up. I'm really trying to get it together so that I can go out for our "last hooora". I just can't do it as I feel worse then before. Cindy decides to hang back with me, so we chill on the "tramp" until the gusting gets to annoying. Josh and Pam head out to Pirates and Willy-T in the dinghy. I actually get a little concerned because the dink's fuel tank is 'bout empty.

I wake around 3am, pop my head out of the hatch to see if the dinghy returned, but see Josh sleeping in a pretzel formation in the cockpit...apparently they made it back ok.

~Bryan