Bit of a blow
Moxie - Beck Family Adventure
Mike, Denise, Asia and Aranya Beck
Fri 25 May 2012 18:32
Last blog mentioned mentioned some inclement weather heading our way. We popped around to Palma Nova to ensure we would have calm sea and an offshore wind direction, the forecast was 3 days of 20 - 28 knots. Well we got more than we paid for, during Monday night we had constant 30 gusting to max 48. We broke loose from anchor twice, first at around 2 and then 3am, there was quite a lot of excitement getting things sorted in a freezing cold fresh gale. These stories best told well after the event when we can better laugh at them.
Our friends on Ocean Lady had an unmanned boat drift onto them and they were tangled up for a while and called the coast guard. Thankfully they managed to sort things out themselves and were back at anchor by the time the coast guard arrived. CG then went and retrieved the adrift yacht that was by now well out into Palma bay. Ocean Lady has a few battle scars from the incursion, I'm not sure how they will fare seeking compensation.
For you dirt dwellers 48 knots (89 kph), is the very low end of Beaufort force 10, a gale or whole storm. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort_scale. Thankfully I think there was only one gust at that magnitude. Next day the girls casually mentioned ' oh yeah, I heard you running the engine last night'. Lol.
We have today returned to Santa Ponsa, half expecting to see to grumpy farmers picking through Bavaria wreckage. Thankfully this is not the case, but on the subject I dissed the cqr anchor. Well, the bigger heavier boat to us (Emely) who lives here year round had a cqr and it held all night. I guess good anchoring is all about the operator when said and done. And another 30 metres of chain which did the trick for us, it's no use in the locker!
Panda, well 8 emails and 11 phone calls later FP have agreed to investigate. The manifold has been removed and sent to Germany today, now we wait... Again.
Planning to rig up the sailing dinghy tomorrow and also we think we have spotted another cruising family here this evening so will be following up on that too.