It was a glorious calm summer evening, and we headed for one of our favourite anchorages. All went well until the following morning, when the windlass flatly refused to lift the 20 kg Bruce. If that couldn't do it, pulling by hand certainly wouldn't work. Eventually, we managed to motor the anchor out, but still the windlass struggled to lift it, and when at last it broke the surface, we could see perfectly well why.
By a complete fluke, if you'll pardon the expression, we had managed to land the anchor right in the centre of an old van tyre, lying in the muddy bottom of the estuary. The tyre had clearly done service as a barge or tug fender in its time, because there were four neat round holes drilled in its wall, to take ropes. As we'd lifted it, one of the flukes of the anchor had caught neatly in one of those holes. And the tyre was packed full of mud. No wonder the windlass had struggled.
But what to do now? Taking the boat hook to the forepeak, Richard immediately realised that he had no chance of lifting the tyre free. It weighed far too much. We considered motoring back to the marina, a few miles, so that we could lower it on to the pontoon, and take it from there. But we concluded that it would do far too much damage to our beautiful dreadnought bow along the way.
Fortunately, the weather was still calm. Richard lowered the anchor until the tyre was just back in the water, so reducing its apparent weight, and after an epic struggle, he finally managed to dislodge it, and it disappeared once again below the murky water, to find another invisible resting place, and wait for the next unlucky anchor. I'm sorry, but there was absolutely nothing else we could do.
When we returned to the marina, the first thing we did was to visit the chandlery and buy a bow fender. Next time, we'll be prepared!
Sod's law of the sea, which decrees that when something can go wrong, it will go wrong, seems to apply particularly to anchoring. With our previous boat, which had a CQR, we managed once to land it right in the centre of an oyster shell. Its point cut a neat triangular hole in the shell, which became firmly attached, acting as a most efficient skid!
Again, the accuracy of the hit was incredible. You couldn't do it again, if you tried.
