Thursday, July 25, 2013

One neighbour down...

We have just had a bit of excitement and not to spoil the ending but everyone and thing is safe and sound... For now, we hope!
We were called on deck by some shouting and went up to find that the unmanned 36 ft sailboat next to us in the anchorage  had come lose from its anchor and was drifting through the anchorage. In the photo, the loose boat has an orange mast and was initially anchored behind us. If you can zoom in, it is now behind the boat in the centre of the photo. 
It is an extremely windy day and the boat was just passing us when we saw it - aka we were in the clear. It only missed us by 10 metres (30 ft). Phew! We blew our horn a couple of times to warn others and jumped in the dinghy with fenders and lines to go see what we could do. We passed S/V Dema and found that they had already called the coast guard. The loose boat was magically managing to steer clear of all other boats so we went to warn the other boats in its potential path. It fouled (got stuck) in the anchor chain of another bigger boat which slowed it down and Paul (S/V Dema) jumped on board and tied the two boats together. I climbed on board the bigger boat to see if there was anything else we could do but there wasn't other than wait for the water police to arrive. We decided to come back to Aquabat to watch it play it from here though Paul is currently still on board the two boats which are tied together and the one anchor is holding them both for now.
There was a canal tour boat that was coming through the anchorage at the time and I'm sure that was more excitement than they bargained for!

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