16/02/2014 – Another Day… Another Rescue
Our first morning in Streaky
Bay began quietly enough. We had arrived the night before, approaching midnight
when the sea rescue guys dropped us off in the middle of the bay. Then we just
sat for a few hours numb from exhaustion and having spent all our nervous
energy on the excitement of being towed into the bay until we eventually fell on to a bed.
We woke at about 9.00am to find ourselves out in the middle of Streaky
Bay. The bay is about 2 or 3 nautical miles across, with the town’s buildings
lining one shore and rolling hills of pasture lining the other shores. Again,
we sat staring without words as we were still recovering from 6 days of
adventure a minute.
About an hour later, Leanne summoned enough energy to do a cooked
breakfast for each of us and I moped around the back deck putting away some of
the debris from our bight crossing.
I checked our anchoring a couple of times during the next few hours.
I found that we seemed to be anchored in the dreaded weed again, but conditions
seemed fairly calm. In order to move over to the town side of the bay to be
near Urchin and Zofia, I would first have to get the port motor going.
As I had the Port motor’s fuel system in bits, Murphy, or the
chinaman, or whoever controls the nasty coincidence side of things, dealt another
hand. The wind picked up in the space of ten minutes from a gentle zephyr to 30
knots of fierce energy. Easy Tiger swung from side to side on her anchor chain.
The anchor wriggled free from the mud and weed it was dropped in and all of a
sudden we were headed across the bay at a rapid rate.
Our three anchor drag alarms went off simultaneously. Easy Tiger
swung side on to the wind, pulling the anchor chain along for the trip, but
that was now under the port hull where it could easily get caught on the keel
or worse, the rudder.
I started the Starboard engine and threw it into gear to try to get
the boat under some control. I then had to run up the front to get the anchor
chain bridle off anyway I could. This would allow us to release more chain,
giving us a better chance of the anchor digging in on the bottom.
Leanne had acted very quickly also. She had taken over the helm, and
then called Sea Rescue on the VHF. They would be to us in about 45 minutes.
With Leanne steering on the helm and working the throttle on the
starboard motor, I managed to manhandle some chain and got the bridle released.
I then hit down on the anchor witch which of course was in no mood to help out.
I then grabbed the chain and wrenched
it off the anchor winch, allowing it to free fall off the front of the boat.
Fortunately the anchor grabbed the ocean floor and this gave the chain a moment
of hanging loose. I took that opportunity to thread it back on to the anchor
witch.
Now we seemed to have stopped travelling backward across the bay.
However the full force of swaying side to side, as we were again, meant that the
anchor could let go again at any moment.
To try and steady the sideways swaying I sent the message to Leanne
to power up the starboard engine until the boat came up on the anchor chain.
Then back off power until it came nearly tight again, then power up to make
sure no tension on the chain. We kept that up for the next 40 minutes until the
rescue boat with three guys on board arrived.
As they arrived, a lady
called up on the VHF to say that they had a mooring we could use.
The rescue guys attached a tow rope and the pulled this way, that
way, back the other way again as I worked the Anchor Witch and Leanne steered
Easy Tiger.
We were almost up with the anchor when we found that no forward
progress could be made at all. The anchor chain disappeared underneath the
boat, back towards the stern into the mirky water, but tight as a drum. Oh No I
thought it is caught under the keels. The only way to fix this is to dive
underneath the boat and manually unwrap it form the keel.
I got every one to stop and wait for the wind to pushed us
around I little, I had another go at manually pulling the chain up. I was
actually quite relieved to see the anchor break the surface. Then I saw the
problem. The anchor was caught up in some metal frames, chains and mesh,
probably the left overs from an old oyster farm.
Hanging upside down off the bow of Easy Tiger I could just get a
boat hook on to the offending metal and with super human effort powered by
adrenalin, I managed to free the anchor.
The Sea Rescue guys then towed us over to Heather and Geoff (killa)
Georgiou’s mooring and saw us tied on. We then put our anchor out as well, just
for safe keeping.
Finally, feeling a secure in position, yet exhausted again from
another rescue, we just looked at each other shaking our heads.
The rescue boat driver came around after gathering his towing ropes
in, As I thanked him again for his marvelous efforts, he said “no worries, see
you tomorrow”.
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| Half an hour after our rescue, down it came. This is Zofia and Geoff and Heather's Catalina in the rain. The heaviest fall in Streaky Bay for 40 years |
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| Urchin takes a shower. |
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