Anchors are a bit like teenage sons. When they’re out of sight you have no idea what mischief they’re getting up to and your mind starts running over all sorts of ghastly outcomes if things go wrong. So when the wind gets up and the water’s too deep or murky to check that the anchor's properly hooked, we get ready for yet another sleepless night on anchor watch.
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| If only it was always this quiet at anchor.... |
It blew 30 knots in our little anchorage in the Ayvalik archipelago one afternoon and all night. The couple on the only other yacht there had gone ashore when the wind got up. They got soaked getting back in their dinghy and no sooner were they onboard than their boat started to drag. When they hauled in their anchor it came up tangled in what looked like an old bike frame. We watched in horror as the wife struggled to control the boat to stop it from being swept sideways onto the shore while her husband in a fit of madness took to the dinghy to hack away the lump of scrap metal swinging beneath the bow. As we watched the wind carry them out of the anchorage, we dreaded the thought of going through the same nightmare.
As it turned out, we needn’t have worried - that time anyway. When we came to leave, the bugel took some lifting because it was stuck fast in the stickiest mud we’ve ever come across, even better than Vliho’s. But the next time we came to leave……the anchor brought up with it a coil of thick rope - we think the remnants of some old mussel beds - still attached to the seabed. Thankfully it was easily sorted out, but you just never know with anchors - or with teenage boys for that matter.
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