Central America Cruise Summary Day 2
Tuesday, 18 July. After waking up so many times I stopped counting, I was glad to see the dawn so I could get out of this spot. Now I’ll tell you why:
I had gone to bed by 20:00 hours, having spent more than an hour futzing with anchors and snubbers.
Dauntless was as disheveled as ever. I had to clear a line thru containers and chairs that had moved around the salon. The stern deck was a mess also.
When I first put out the bow anchor, it was obvious the Krogen would not lie into the wind, but perpendicular to it. Probably caused by currents in the bay, but it made the rolling even worse than it had been the previous 12 hours. But the next anchorage was 35 miles away, another 7 hours. I could not go on, I had to make this work.
First, I tried attaching the snubber like to the midships cleat instead of the bow as is normal. I also put out another 50 feet of chain after the snubber. My idea was to put some pressure on the side of the boat to try to hold it into the waves better. (This may have worked better had I connected it to the stern).
An hour later, I realized this was not working. I started the engine briefly to get us into the waves, then threw out the stern anchor on short scope, hoping this would hold us in the right direction.
For about 15 minutes it seems to significantly reduce the roll. I had made a pot of beans, corn and hot dog.
That was my no so healthy dinner, but as I told Trinh, I hadn’t passed any gardens today. Besides humans can live a long time on a single food. It wouldn’t kill me to not have balanced meal for a while.
I tried to go to sleep, but the boat had this terrible movement. There was a rolling oscillation that would get worse after about 4 rolls, then die off for about 30 seconds before doing it again. No way could I get to sleep with that. I got up numerous times to see if we had moved. We had moved but the bow anchor was doing fine.
I decided to move the snubber back to the bow. That helped the motion a bit.
Then an hour later, hearing a big bang, I jumped up to make sure we hadn’t crashed into the small fishing boats about 500 feet away. No, we hadn’t. But I then proceeded to pull in the stern anchor as I thought it must be contributing or causing the unnatural corkscrew rolling of the boat.
It seemed to work. Now we were just held by the bow anchor. Still rolling around and swinging on the arc from the anchor, I decided to brace myself in bed and just not worry. I’ve possibly only dragged once with this anchor, so go to sleep.
That I did by about 01:00. As the dawn broke a little after 5, I was up. I decided not to deal with the mess in the salon until my next stop. But within minutes I found myself moving containers, chairs, getting the restraining straps and bungee cords and making everything snug. A sweaty 20 minutes later, it was all done and I felt so much better.
Looking at the actual winds, they were easterly at 4 knots, so decided to press on and get out of this hell hole. Clearly, I’ve been in worse anchorages, the ones you must leave sooner rather than later. But this one was pretty bad.
Got underway, 342° at 35 miles. Should be there in 6 hours. No need for paravanes, as the wind is out of the east (direction of the coast, about 6 miles away) the seas are relatively flat, with just the SW swell at about 2 feet and 10 second period.
And the second day ended as well as it started. Oh, we had more anchoring follies, but isn’t that why we pay the price of admission?
Day 2 Summary: Engine Start 06:08, stop 12:00; uw 5:52, 34.3 nm, avg speed 6.6 kt.
Anchored in 21 feet water with 100’ of chain out.
Dauntless at Sea 