Mother Theresa and the Barbarian
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sat 13 Feb 2010 11:54
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Saturday February13th 0645local (we think) 1045UTC
(we're sure)
11:55.36N, 066:44.06W
We arrived inside the reef and island bound
anchorage in Noronquies yesterday morning expecting to stay for a few hours and
then move on to some of the other islands. We were the only boat in this amazing
place surrounded by reefs with crashing waves and beautiful beaches on the three
small islands, so we decided to spend the night. We are not sure if we will
spend three or four nights in Los Roques. The view right now from my navcom
station, where I am writing this, is spectacular, with a huge orange sun just
lifting up over Noronqui Arriba directly in front of me. At anchor in these
parts in front of you almost always means East.
Everything here is eyeball navigation, you can
forget charts for the detail. In fact it is possitively dangerous to concentrate
on your electronic charts on the way through these reefs, they simply confuse
and put doubt into your mind when you need maximum concentration. We have a
forward looking sonar on the boat which would be very helpful in these
situations but unfortunately it has never worked and is something else I need to
get fixed. The whole point of having it was to use it in these situations. So in
place of the forward looking sonar we have Trish up forward standing on the
pulpit to get a view and to direct me - "left a bit - right a bit" with
hand signals only. All communication from forward, because we are about 55
foot apart, has to be by agreed hand signals. This is always good practice to
agree hand signals even if you are in hailing distance.
Our anchoring technique has so far proven
successful though I dont recall a night with much more than 25 knots at anchor -
so time will tell, but here is how we anchor. First, I choose a spot. In the
past and with other boats I was always keen to get right among the pack or even
inside the pack(other boats) and get tucked well under the lee. However, we are
much larger now and draw 2.7 metres and we have all the ground gear we need so I
choose a spot which allows me plenty room to swing as I always like to put out
lots of chain - its a cheap insurance and an excellent sleep remedy. The depth
is estimated from the chart and the approaching depths, and I start to shoot my
chain on approach which is of course directly into the wind. The idea is to have
just short of the right amount of chain in the water when we reach our chosen
spot when the boat will have come to a stop. I then engage neutral and pay
out the chain continuously with the boat blowing back from the anchor.
This often means blowing back sideways, but that's fine, until I have four
times the depth out. I will then stop and allow the boat to swing into the wind
and fall back on the chain. I will then engage reverse and bang the anchor well
in watching for the boat springing forward on the chain once reverse is
disengaged. I will then lay another one two or three times the depth weather,
bottom type and space depenent.
On the foredeck we have an anchor chock which
allows me to lock off the chain for the night taking all load off the winch. We
also have the choice of using a "snubber" - a heavy nylon line which you shackle
to the chain and cleat off forward. This, as far as I can tell serves three
purposes: it takes the load of the chain off the winch, preventing it letting go
in strong gusts, it helps take the "shock" away from the anchor by putting
some stretch into the rode and also it keeps the noise down at the stem head
fitting when the anchor chain may otherwise crunch and grind away. We tend not
to use a snubber beause: we use the chock to take the load off the winch, we put
enough chain down so the cateniery takes the shock load off the anchor and
as far as noise forward is concerned I sleep over 60 foot away from
there!
Our ground gear consists of a 50kg Delta anchor on
a very large (perhaps oversized - but that's OK) Kong swivel, on 100m of 1/2"
short link chain with a chain to warp splice onto 100m of 24mm 8 strand nylon
warp. So for those reading this while not quite awake we have 200m of rode. I
also have another 200 metres of heavy nylon aboard which will be used for my
canal lines but could be brought to use if neccessary (highly
unlikely!).
However as anchorages get tighter we will
need to consider using a snubber but more importantly a second anchor, for which
we have a transom mounted Fortress FX85 which we have not tried
yet. As always if you can get enough chain on the ground
then anchor choice is almost incidental but our 50kg Delta has so far been very
good. However I feel holding power is much more about how well the anchor is set
and how much chain you get on the ground rather than anchor
type.
Yesterday we decided to dingy over to an island to
have our sundowner. This was a beautiful beach in the lagoon. It was full of
sand crabs, hermit crabs, lizards and birds. While studying the hermit
crabs of various sizes Trish wondered how they found new shells for themselves
when it came time to upgrade the "house", noticing there was a distinct lack of
empty shells nearby. So in a Mother Theresa moment, while walking along the far
shore she collected a selection of the type of shells they called home and
scattered them amongst the hermit crabs. My god, I was mortified, but thankful
there was nobody else around to notice this futile meddling with nature.
Personally I was more interested in finding a hermit crab big enough so I could
eat it.
This command economy type act is likely to cause
turf wars and bloodshed amongst the crabs who were otherwise happy with their
lot. "Property" prices are likey to fall sharply as the pent up demand is
suddenly swamped with new, and cheap, supply thereby impoverishing, at least on
paper, all of the crabs on the beach. I say let the market do its
work!
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