Bad stuff

Had the experience that proves once more that you are safer on a boat in the middle of the Ocean than near land.Thursday afternoon I was at the Yacht Club shooting some pool, when the sky turned dark.  There was a squall coming our way, I hesitated to go to the boat before it would hit.  But since I was able to see the mast from the yacht club, I decided to stay where I was.This squall turned bad very quickly, thunder, lightning and horizontal rain.  And within minutes the seas built up to a row of breakers right in front of the Yacht Club.  With James, someone I met here from the Solomon Islands, we were keeping an eye on my anchor light.  Suddenly it started to move backwards, bad.  

So I drop all my stuff, and scrambled to get in my dinghy.  But the seas were so bad, there was no way of fighting my way through it.  Gave up on that and pulled the dinghy back on the beach.  Someone (don’t remember who or where from) had ran to the Yacht Club to warn about an boat that broke its anchor loose.  And I knew that was my boat.  So I followed him barefoot on the street to the nearby Police dock.  From there we had to run along the bush behind the concrete wall to get behind my boat.  I scratched and hurt myself but just kept running.  The concrete are some huge T shaped octagonal structures dumped on top of each other.  Had to climb across those and jump in the water.  Big waves coming over and just swam through them under water to get to the boat.Someone had already gotten to my boat, to try to help.  When I got on board the boat was pounding hard on its keel on the concrete structures.

 Got the engine started to try to motor off.  But there where still two stern lines attached.  Told the guys on the shore to untie those, but I am not sure if that all got through.  We tried to heave up anchor, but I could not find the windless handle (which was right there) so did that by hand.  Got clear of the shallow, but it was all still chaos.  We gave a line to two guys in a hard dinghy that were going to pull us.  Then one of the two stern lines go into the prop, the line was still attached to shore.  So it was stopping us from going anywhere.  So I jumped in the water and in the dark (with no mask) started untying the rope from the propeller.  Seemed to take forever, and the boat was rocking wild and I got bumped and bruised all over.  But finally got the line out, and we got the anchor up and then things where under control and I went to pick up a mooring across the harbor.  

Stayed there for the night, with little to no sleep.  The swell was terrible, and the mooring (a large thing) kept bumping into the hull.  In the morning I tried to anchor somewhere else, but no holding. Then I noticed the bow roller was bent.  No clue how that could have happened, those are two parallel stainless plates.  Anchor did not hold, so picked up, and decided that it was probable best to go back to my old spot.  From my neighboring boat someone came over to help me get the stern line back on.  The other line was gone, until someone showed up with it, he apparently had been there last night and got it on shore and kept it for me.  Once we had both lines set properly I was just talking to this one guy who had been helping me when I noticed that the teak rail on starboard was chafed and cracked over two stretches of two meters.  How could that have happened.

Then my helper tells me he things the freighter that was next to me the day before must have hit me.  They had arrived Thursday morning, but when I got to the boat (in the squall) they had left (but of course I did not know when).  Then he tells me that freighter (a small freighter used for inter island freight) broke its anchor loose first.  So, they hit me, and that impact, or later when they picked up their anchor, pulled my anchor out.Friday morning in the yacht club I met some people that know someone from the company that runs the freighter and they said they would get in touch with me.  Friday evening someone came talk to me, and he said someone would come by Saturday to have a look at my boat.  Well, that did not happen, but I am still hopeful that they will come forward with some cover of the damages.

Saturday I snorkeled under the boat, and the bottom of the keel (which is fiberglass) and rudder, has been scraped severely.  Not alarming, but definitely needing a repair before continuing.

There are three boat yards on a nearby island.  I am going to start calling around on Monday to organize things.