When we dropped anchor in Naxos Harbour the harbourmaster pointed to a spot to drop our anchor so we would be away from lines and chains and he said when we left to be careful not to ‘drag’ the anchor, but lift it straight up, so we wouldn’t catch it on anything on the bottom.
We were also really tight between two other boats. We literally had 10 cm on each side, our bumpers were squished, but I wasn’t so worried about that.
Before we left, Victoria and I discussed how we were going to leave to make sure the anchor came straight up: Victoria would be on the front, I would move out slowly straight ahead, and Victoria would pull in the chain when it was hanging directly down.
We had moderate winds from the north on our nose, but that was fine. We released all of our lines and moved slowly out. The chain ended up pulling us a bit to the right (since it was set 45 degrees away on the right from the nose) and that almost caused an issue with us turning too soon, but we managed to get out ok. After we were fully out and over the anchor, Victoria announced that we had caught 2 lines and a chain on our anchor! We had a trifecta! The winds were blowing us away from the boats in front of us, so we didn’t need to worry about them but we had to get the lines and chain off. Victoria suggested lowering the anchor back down and driving over it which we did and I think it released 2 of the lines but not the chain. We could raise the anchor just out of the water so we could see the chain. I went to the front with a boat hook thinking I could pull the chain off the anchor but it was too tight for me to budge…..so I thought I could hold it up with the boat hook. I hooked it with the boat hook then told Victoria to lower the anchor….and the chain was too heavy! I lost the boat hook in the water! Luckily it floated. Victoria and I switched places and Victoria managed to grab our big heavy wooden boat hook with our light plastic boat hook so we didn’t lose it, but we still had a chain on our anchor.
I remembered a chain hook I had attached to a line last year (I had wanted to use it as an anchor snubber but it sometimes came loose so now I use a knot instead) and I had the idea of hooking the chain hook on the chain, tying off the line to a cleat, then lowering the anchor below the chain. It worked!!!! We got the anchor up, released the chain. I then started to bow-thruster our nose away from the boats so we were pointed out of the harbour when Victoria started yelling that we had caught something in our bow thruster. We didn’t know what was caught, but I stopped using it and slowly tried motoring away. When we had moved maybe 20m someone was yelling that we had caught someone’s anchor line. The boat beside us had used an anchor buoy on his anchor (not really necessary in a harbour) and I had backed over this while sorting out the anchor issue and had caught his anchor buoy line in my bow thruster. I had dragged his boat sideways which I’m sure was not fun for him. Luckily there was a diver in the water who saw this and started to swim over to our boat. He said he would take a look. I asked him ‘How much?’ expecting to be gouged a bit, but he said ‘Fr@ck You!’ which I took to mean don’t worry about it… Anyway he told us about the tangle, we gave him a knife and he cut the line and then we were loose. I tried the bow thruster and it seemed to be not working which made me very sad…..I love the bow thruster and it is going to be expensive to fix. Also, we were in a very dangerous part of the harbour. I had boats right behind me and rocks right in front of me and I had no bow thruster, and this time the wind was blowing me towards the rocks. I carefully went forward, turning, then backward turning the other way, then forward and turning and did a nice 180 degree turn almost in place and then we were free!
We were heading to Paros, which is where we are now, very happily anchored. Victoria wants to stay here forever, which I take to mean at least 3 days. We visually inspected the bow thruster and tested it, and while it sounds a bit different, it seems to work. There is a small chunk out of the propeller which might explain the different sound. Hopefully I didn’t partially strip the gears inside as that will be an expensive fix.
Always an adventure!
Adventures on Spruzzo 