Double Trouble
Monday January 25, 2021
As part of our preparations for departing Marathon tomorrow, we took a trip to shore to get a few items of shopping, take showers and retrieve our bikes. To facilitate an early start, we decided that we should pull up the secondary anchor that we had set on the first day. Mike hopped into the dinghy and tried to pull the fortress anchor up by hand. That didn’t work at all. He became convinced that the two anchor chains were twisted together. His efforts to pull the secondary anchor could potentially lead to the primary anchor coming loose from the bottom. This was particularly troubling as a catamaran that arrived yesterday seemed to be shockingly close to our bow now that the wind was more southeast. We decided to have some lunch and think things over.
Fortunately a boater in a dingy came past the catamaran and told the owners he thought the cat was dragging its anchor. This prompted that boat to re-anchor giving us the opportunity to have another go at our anchor “issue”. We got the engine started in case both anchors pulled and Cotinga started to drift. Then Mike pulled in the line to the secondary anchor. Once he got to chain, he attached a rope to the chain and ran that line to a winch. Progress seemed very slow. Eventually, he shouted to me that he could tell that the chains were tangled. We tried motoring forward gently but that didn’t seem to help much. Were it not for our friend Glen, we might still be struggling with big anchor knot. At some point the two guys were able to get the fortress anchor near the surface of the water. Then it was possible to see the way that the main anchor chain was wrapped around the fortress. They managed to get a “snubber” line attached to the chain so they could take the weight off the secondary anchor and the tangled section of chain and with great effort it was possible to untangle the flukes of the secondary anchor. Our final position on the primary anchor (now with a decent amount of scope out) was too close to a powerboat astern of us. So we had to pull up the primary anchor and re-set it.
Thank goodness for Glen coming to our aid. I can’t imagine how we would have solved that problem without his help. I’m pretty sure that if we had left the two anchors until the morning, we would not have been making an early start! It might be a long time before we choose to set two anchors again. Glenn told us his technique was to set the two anchors 30 degrees apart, but in my mind if you turn 360 degrees around the anchors during the course of weather changes then the two chains are still going to get tangled!
Gloria
24 42.220 N, 81 06.131 W
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