Thurs Oct 31 - In which we learn when not to anchor out

Little Alligator River anchorage to Belhaven, NC anchorage

Remember I mentioned the word ‘worry’ and the word ‘drift’?  Well there is an app for that, because of course there is!  You start it when you drop the anchor and, depending on how much chain (rode) you let out, you tell the app the circle in which you will be safe and the app alerts you when the boat strays from that circle.  This allows you to feel safe and drop right off to sleep….. until said app goes off unexpectedly (and for no clear reason – except, possibly, operator error) several times during the night – the ensuring and accumulating anxiety then making it increasingly harder to get back to bed…  It was awesome.

As we left our anchorage the weather turned threatening and we were hit with a number of rain showers.   I retrieved the anchor (in the rain) and Rick (warm and dry under the Bimini top) did his best to navigate back out of the anchorage to the main channel.  By the time I was done washing down the anchor (ultra muddy bottom), I was as wet as if I had gone overboard.  On the other hand the boat had a nice bath.  Once the rain passed the sun came out for a beautiful, partly cloudy day that went from hot to cool depending on how the wind was hitting the boat.  The next planned stop was at Belhaven, where we expected to anchor out in an area protected from wind on both north and south.  We cruised across Pimlico Sound and through another long canal to connect us to the next sound/river segment.   We thought the anchorage would protect us but BOY WERE WE WRONG.  The wind was strong from the north (25 mph) and as expected swung around to the south at about 2 am and seemed to increase. The boat bucked like a wild pony and, between THE DAMN ANCHOR ALARM and the pitching neither of us got much sleep.   Bless the little anchor, though – it held through it all.

We learned that we should not anchor out unless well protected especially if the wind is above about 10 mph.   It may be that our Blue Horizon has a lot of windage (surface affected by the wind) as it is so tall.  We seemed to move around much more than the sailboats.  I’m all for learning new things – but there seems to be a lot coming at us at high speed EVERY DAY.  No wonder we fall into bed when the sun sets.

Happy Halloween.  We are dressed as exhausted, stressed, exhilarated boaters...

Sometimes we have to yield to the bigger boat