Time 2 the rescue again
Lynn & Mike ..around the world
Mike Drinkrow & Lynn v/d Hoven
Sat 4 May 2013 17:28
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TIME 2 the rescue
again:
Yesterday morning we got a call on our
radio from the only other cruiser at Manihi - a British yacht called
Seventh Heaven that was anchored close to town. They had their anchor
stuck and although some locals had tried to dive it out, the anchorage was too
deep and there was no SCUBA gear to be found.
The previous evening we had discussed the
need to re-fill our dive tanks and do some diving - so we agreed to help and
starting getting all our equipment out. When we took out the Bauer
Compressor, Mike discovered the injectors were gunged up due to old fuel and so
that had to be serviced. We then had to fill some tanks and test our
equipment which had also not been used for a while. Eventually after about 2.5
hours we were ready to set off to help. By this stage we had found out
that the anchor was stuck in 30 - 35 m of water, which is a lot deeper than
either Mike or I are certified to dive. So we agreed with Paul, the yacht owner
that we would dive down as far as we felt safe, and see what the chain was doing
and then give him instruction on how to maneuver the yacht to get it
un-hooked.
However, as we went down visibility was
not as clear as we hoped, and we went right to the bottom, down the anchor
chain. What a mess! This was not an anchorage, it was a rock and
coral head maze, with the chain tightly wrapped around a number of
different rocks. We then unwound the chain and laid it on top of the rocks
as best we could. Its very hard work moving things under water where you have
little resistance and you need a lot of air. We also attached
a line from the surface to the chain about mid-way along the bottom.
Finally we found the anchor, wedged inside a hole in an dead coral
head! At this point I checked my air and it was getting low, I signaled to
Mike that we had to get out... NOW! In a few more seconds he managed to
wrench out that anchor, place it on top of a coral head and we could
head back up. Slowly we went up the chain - as we had not
checked our dive tables, and neither had either of us ever dived that
deep, to play it safe we took a longer than needed safety
decompression stop at 6m. As I was hanging there, watching our tanks
empty, the reality of the danger we could have been was settling in - a
very deep dive, after quite a long time of not diving, on an island where there
is no decompression chamber...mmmmm I was very happy
to eventually get back into the sunshine.
We then got on board Seventh Heaven to now
hoist up the anchor. Paul then tells us that not only is his windlass
broken (from his earlier attempt to pull up the anchor), but his electric winch
was also on the blink. So this meant winding up the chain on a hand winch,
length by length, with a line, attached to the anchor chain with a
shackle. Mike took charge and we began.....every 8m or so we had to wedge
a screwdriver to lock the chain, undo the shackle take it to the front of the
boat, re-attach to the chain and Paul had to start winching again. Mike
was also directing his wife, Anne to move the yacht with the engine/
bow-thruster to ensure that the chain came up straight, without getting stuck
again. I was keeping pressure on the line we had attached to the
chain on the bottom, as a safety line. At one point the shackle on
the anchor chain sprung loose and the chain, like a wild beast, started running
across the deck and back out - luckily no one was hurt, and thank goodness
for that extra line which after about 10 meters held the pressure and we could
re-attach the shackle.
Eventually we got the anchor on board and
a very grateful and exhausted Anne and Paul could be on their way. It was
slack-tide and they had to get going just about immediately to get out of
the cut, but not before they gave us a gift of a lovely bottle of aged
Portuguese port.
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