Patching Patches
Where Next?
Bob Williams
Sat 23 Feb 2013 08:59
Wind: North East F5 strong breeze
Weather: mostly cloudy, cool
The trouble with small harbours is that they are generally crowded with moorings which leave very little room to anchor. Grassy is such a case. I managed to squeeze in between a few moorings to drop the anchor yesterday afternoon, but could only put out a limited amount of chain because of the moorings and boats that surrounded us. Even so, if we experienced a significant wind shift Sylph would have run afoul of something. But I knew that the wind wasn't going to change direction so was not too fussed about that. What did concern me however was the limited amount of cable I could lay out, which in turn meant that there was an increased chance of dragging the anchor. I watched our position closely last night until I went to bed, and up until then we had not moved. However when I woke up this morning and looked outside it was apparent that we had dragged about fifty meters during the night. I was grateful it was not further. I continued to monitor Sylph's position during the day and it looked like we were ever so slowly creeping backwards in the gusts. By midday we were almost alongside a vacant mooring which lay about fifteen meters on our port beam. Concerned about a couple of fishing boats that were moored astern of us I flashed up the engine and manoeuvred Sylph over so I could pick the mooring up. I have passed a line through its picking up rope so that if we do drag any further I can take the slack out of the picking up rope and lay to the mooring. I do not normally like using empty moorings in harbours. One never knows when an angry owner might turn up, nor, perhaps more importantly, what condition the mooring might be in or what sized vessel it is intended for. I contemplated resetting the anchor but that would have been a lot of work and I may just have made the situation worse.
As a consequence of anchor worries I have not bothered to go ashore today. Instead I broke out the antique hand-cranked Singer sewing machine and repaired the spray cloth that was rent asunder by a few heavy waves yesterday. This particular spray cloth now consists predominately of patches. In fact I am not even sure whether there is any original material left in it, even the patches have been patched. Not to worry, when I get the chance I will buy some canvas and replace all of them.
Apart from that I enjoyed a quiet day of study. Tonight I may watch a video.
All is well.