Sunrise
At sunrise I woke and fired up the computer for another workday. I made a cup of coffee and went topsides to take a look at the anchorage. I’d woken up at 03:00 in the morning when the forecasted wind shift was supposed to occur, and I saw that the J57 with the same colour scheme as mine and a Swedish flag was very close to me. They were still up but ignored my call and I let out a bit more chain to avoid them hitting me. The rules are simple – the last one anchoring has to move if a collision is imminent and is at fault if one does occur. But I’d rather avoid having to deal with repairs and insurance companies, so I moved.
But at 07:00 when I did go topsides, I saw that now the wind had shifted further, and I was about to hit the mooring ball of the boat behind me. I couldn’t reduce chain, since then I’d collide with the Swedish boat! So, I had to weigh anchor and look for a new location. But the reason that the Swedes had anchored so close was because the anchorage was full, at least for boats like Zanshin with a deep draft. I knew that I was not going to find a spot to re-anchor as everything was taken by people escaping the nasty swell outside. I dropped anchor with 1 foot under the keel so I could wait until the 08:30 outbound bridge opening. I was on the edge of the channel and knew I couldn’t stay where I was.
I departed on the 08:30 outbound bridge behind Sea Owl. Even in the channel leading out to Simpson Bay I knew it was going to be uncomfortable as the swell was rolling in! Even the big megayacht was pitching a bit in the swell.
I found a slot close to the channel and the sunken dry-dock and anchored quickly, as I had a conference call to prepare for at 09:00. It was not nice, the wind was against the swell and poor Zanshin was rolling for a bit, then waves would slam into the stern with a loud BANG and the cycle would repeat. I thought about heading to Philipsburg, but the weather forecast looked like it was going to be bad there as well.
I had used the opportunity of having clean water outside the lagoon to run the watermaker, as I’d almost used up one of my two 300l water tanks over the past month. I had the engine running to charge up the batteries as well and after only a half-hour of runtime the alarm on the watermaker sounded off and informed me that I had to change the pre-filter. Once I removed both filters (5 and 10 micron) I saw how dirty they were, no wonder the watermaker was unhappy.
The waves soon subsided, and I changed my anchorage position to be closer to shore and found a spot that would be a bit protected from waves by that sunken dry-dock.
Evening
Not much to tell, I had two happy-hour beers while watching the antics of the crowd and returned back to the by 20:00 where I read a bit before retiring for the night.