We were all overly full from our lobster dinner, there was more drinking on the parts of some of our crew, and it was windy as hell. As I went to bed, I could feel the boat swinging back and forth in the wind. Occasionally it would go so far that the starboard hull, under our cabin, hit the anchor chain. It was not a quiet sound, quite metallic and echo-ey in the hollow parts of the hull. Nevertheless, I slept.
Until I didn't. It was about 1:30 in the morning, and this time the banging noise was different. Somewhere deep in my brain, I knew that, and I sat bolt upright. T woke up too. We sat for a minute, not sure what to do. Then I looked out and saw the rest of the crew. It wasn't just us who thought that was something different.
We headed up to the deck. Sure enough, it was so windy that we had dragged our anchor during the night and hit a coral reef. Oops.
We spent the next two hours running the motors and trying to get off the reef, deciphering tidal charts, obsessively watching the GPS, and listening to the keel scrape on the reef. (That's not a good sound.) Eventually we gave up and went back to bed. There was nothing to be done.
Day 6 -- Anegada (again)
At the lobster dinner prior to our run-in with the coral reef, our Capt. J had spent some time at the bar with his friends in the other crew, and the captain that he had hired for them. Their captain was female, probably close to my age, and had a bubbly personality. I didn't hear it, but T reported to me later that Capt. J came back to our table from the bar and mumbled that Liz "was not captain material."
Well, she came to our rescue the next morning. Liz called out some friends of hers in their dinghies in our first effort to try to un-beach our boat. The plan: rope the dinghies to the catamaran and, all together now, rev the engines and try to drag the boat off the reef. We tried, with me at the helm of our dinghy, but no luck. Without Liz and her friends, though, we never would have even been able to try.
Plan number 2: we have a secondary anchor. Run it all the way out as far as we can go, drop it, and try to winch ourselves off the reef. In the end, that didn't work either, but again, than goodness for Liz's local friend, who had more muscle than all of us put together.
The nuclear option: call Husky Salvage & Towing. It was going to be a few hours before they could come get us (they were very busy rescuing a sunken passenger ferry), so we listened to war stories while we pondered our options. Liz regaled us all with her sea tales. There was the time she lived for a month on half a can of beans a day because they lost their food. There was the time one of her crewmates went into liver failure. There was the time they had a suicidal captain who tried to ram their ship into every obstacle he could find. Every time she finished a story, T elbowed me: "'not captain material,' huh?"
Eventually T and I, along with J and R, packed up the vodka and cranberry juice and headed to the beach to spend the rest of the afternoon as one should when in the BVI. Three hours and a bottle of Grey Goose later, Husky showed up and I hopped back in the dinghy to observe their procedures.
Rescuing a beached boat is a pretty simple process really, if you don't mind risking a limb or two. One guy drives the tug boat. The other guy puts on a wetsuit and gets in the water. Guy #2 takes these giant, uninflated boat life jackets and (this is where the limb risking comes in) swims under and around our hulls jamming the life jackets (and his hands and feet and whatever else) under our boat wherever he can find any space. Once we are satisfactorily strapped with life jackets, he inflates them, and then his buddy on the tug boat goes to work. Voila, we are free!
Husky only hung around for a minute. Apparently a wrecked monohull which was taking on water (we were not) became their highest priority.
We got word from the marina that they wanted us back in port so they could see what kinds of damage we had done. It was late enough in the day though, and a long enough sail back to Nanny Cay, that we all agreed to wait until tomorrow. We had a delicious dinner of steak and vegetables on the boat that night, but I turned in fairly early (having also begun my drinking fairly early).
Day 7 -- Anegada to Tortola (Nanny Cay)
It's our last day on the boat, and it's a sad day. We're headed back to the marina so they can assess the damage we have done. As if that's not bad enough, we're being babysat by "not captain material" Liz until we get back into the Drake Channel. At least if we start to go down in the Channel, there are islands all around. Not so for most of the trip back from Anegada.
We reach the marina and spend a long time waiting to get to our slip, working to clean and unload the boat, waiting for them to put the boat in dry dock, waiting for the hotel to get our rooms figured out. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Not like we had anything better to do though. I decided to use the opportunity to finally get into one of the books I had brought along, and I made loads of progress!
We had dinner that nigh at Peg Leg's, which was pretty good, but really I think we were all in our own weird places about what had just happened. T was ecstatic to be off the boat. I was said I didn't get to spend more time really learning to sail. And none of us had any idea where we would be the following night, since the Nanny Cay Resort didn't have rooms for us.
Day 8 -- Nanny Cay to Road Town
We awoke at the Nanny Cay Resort and had breakfast in our rooms. (We had lots of leftover food from the boat and fridges to keep it in.) Alas, no worries, we found a hotel! I don't really remember how we got from Nanny Cay to Road Town, except that it was in a very crowded taxi. We were dropped at a lovely hotel, Maria's by the Sea, and I stuck my nose in my book while T handled the check-in.
Ahhh, what a relief! I was sad to be off the boat, but here we were, in a lovely, bright, clean, large! hotel room. We had a balcony which overlooked the ocean and all the meats, cheeses, and crackers we could eat. I walked around the shops a bit, and we all met up for dinner at a local restaurant across the way. I remember enjoying what I had, though I can't remember what it was, other than that it came with friend plantains. T and I headed a bit further down the road to get some dessert at the Pusser's pub, and then it was bed time.
Day 9 -- Road Town to St. Louis
All good things must come to an end, and this trip did on Valentine's Day. We reversed course: ferry from Tortola to St. Thomas, lunch in St. Thomas (picture), and flights from STT to Miami and Miami to St. Louis.
We were quite delayed in St. Thomas, but luckily had a long layover in Miami which allowed us to grab dinner even after the late arrival. By the time I got in bed, it was probably 1:30 in the morning. Despite all the fun and craziness, it was good to be home.
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