Sun 10 Jun

We had a very eventful start to the day, and didn’t up in bed until gone 3am. It started at 11pm with a spectacular lightening show which we watched from our cabin. Tom drifted off to sleep and about 10 minutes later the rain started lashing down and the wind whipped up. I got our of bed and stuck my head up through the main cabin hatch. It was looking pretty gnarly so I threw on some clothes and headed into the cockpit. The wind continued to build and across the anchorage everyone was up on deck staring nervously at their anchors with flashlights. With the wind at 40 knots boats started to drag, the most worrying being a big 50ft yacht which came to rest besides a large catamaran. After much shouting, pushing, shoving and engine revving they managed to free themselves. We were getting pretty close to the yacht in front of us, their stern to our bow, so I headed forward to talk to the guy who was up on deck. We figured that for now, we were both stationary so I went to wake Tom.

Poor Tom woke up from a very deep sleep and was completely disorientated. So much so that when I called him he got up in a panic and zoomed straight up to the cockpit. This would have been find had he not have been completely naked! I sent him (still confused) back down to put some clothes on, and I headed back to the bow. Our anchor was holding but by now even more boats were dragging through the anchorage, and even some who weren’t (but must have thought they were) were pulling up to find a different spot. Reading this now it doesn’t sound too scary, but imagine it’s close to pitch black, there are shallow patches which need avoiding, it’s pouring with rain, you’ve got little to no steerage because you’re being blown all over the place, and damage is expensive. It’s horrible.

All we could do was sit it out. Eventually after about 30 minutes the wind dropped and we thought it safe to head down to bed. As we turned in Tom saw that one of our friends had tried to call about an hour before so we called back. They’d been anchored in a bay just around the corner when they were hit by the same weather. They opted for the safe option and headed out into open water, then and came by the entrance to our anchorage which from the outside looked packed full. From the inside we saw a couple of decent spots so armed with all the flashlights we could muster we guided them in and they anchored, exhausted but safe.

Needless to say the rest of the day has been pretty slow. We started by cleaning the boat. The rain brought with it the usual red sand which is really nasty. We then chatted to the Aussies on the boat next to us, triple checked our anchor and did a few small jobs. One annoying thing is that our water maker although working is spitting out rather salty tasting water so we need to figure out what’s going on with that tomorrow. Also our inverter (which allows us to charge things like laptops when we’re not in the marina) has packed up so until we can get a new one we’ll be on phones only. As I’m writing this we’ve just come back from our friends boat where we had a few drinks and it’s now thundering, pouring with rain and the wind is building. We could really do without a repeat performance 🙁