Doin' the Don Street two-step
'Sarf & West mate, Sarf & West'
Pete Bernfeld
Mon 7 Jan 2013 06:00
They all (three of them) knew that anchoring fore and aft wouldn't work, they'd all seen it tried before but as one said to me, 'nobody likes a smart-arse. We all knew it wouldn't work and now you do too!' How true! One suggestion was two anchors on one chain (Glen on the steel boat....don't really like that and I don't think my anchor windlass would either. Yes it still works but let's just say it's not an overly-enthusiastic participant in the sport of coarse anchoring).
Peter (no, not me) suggested a Bahamian moor, aka (in the Caribbean at least) the Don Street two-step. I'm not exactly a super fan of that either. The potential odds for getting in a simply HUGE tangle and being unable to raise either anchor in the event of wanting to leave the scene quickly are so great that they're beyond odds-on favourite, they're a bloody racing certainty, but it was either that or anchor further out and commune with passing ferries, jet skies and other strange forms of Australian aquatic traffic. No, a Bahamian moor it had to be.
One thing I'm having to come to terms with is at high water I have perhaps three metres under the keel and at low water around a metre. I don't need twenty metres of chain out but it goes somewhat against the grain to put out ten, which is still a 3:1scope and perfectly adequate. In fact any more and you get blown sideways and seem to cover about half the width of the river. There's a Canadian family who are thinking of making a travel video of their various meanderings whilst at anchor and no they haven't dragged!
So, with a suitable breath-bated audience offering advice, standing by to help if necessary and being Aussies doubtless running a book on the likely outcome of the exercise, I rigged the kedge ready to deploy from the bow then talked the windlass into raising the main anchor. Having repositioned to a suggested spot, local knowledge is everything in a situation like this, I mean you wouldn't know there was a sunken fishing boat here if you weren't told, I let out ten metres on the main anchor, set it then dropped back another fifteen metres or so. I then 'slung me second hook Jack' off the bow, gave it about ten metres scope and goaded the windlass into taking in some main chain. I may now be suspended between two anchors which are roughly a boat length apart. The advert says that this will reduce my swinging radius and I shouldn't wind up cuddling the stone wall in the middle of the night.
We'll see what exciting developments the next couple of tides bring!
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