Our first night on Anchor

This post is probably a bit overdue but as we sit here outside of the town of Palamós, Spain waiting to cross to Tuloun, France, I thought it would be a good time to share the story of our first night on anchor. I also feel like enough time has passed for it not to spark any lingering PTSD.

When we moved onto the boat in July, we still had 3 weeks left in our berth in Cartagena marina which we had already paid for. However, 1 week in and we were bordering on dying from heatstroke, the heatwave had hit Murcia hard, reaching more than 40 degrees everyday and it was even hotter inside the boat due to the insane lack of breeze in the marina, which I suppose is the whole point of a marina, to be sheltered from the weather. Deciding to forgo the already paid safety of the marina, we established we needed to get out as soon as possible, before one of us actually gets ill and before we start hating boat life so much that we quit. I mean at this point, we had gone to the museum opposite the boat for the AC so many times that we had memorised the exhibits. We sailed down to Las Chapas, not far as our primary goal was just to escape the heat.

Setting the Scene

Allow me to set the scene, in Las Chapas there are 3 (ish?) bays which are only accessible by boat or a very long hike. They’re pretty far away from any infrastructure making it really tranquil but also very very dark. There are small cliffs surrounding these small bays, meaning the boat is surrounded by rocks.

We had the most amazing day, finally being able to jump into the sea off of the boat and we had a breeze! We were no longer going stir crazy, feeling dizzy most of the day and life was good again. We had a wonderful dinner and stared up at the sky for ages watching a meteor shower, we were so excited at the prospect of this now being our life.

Although we were a little on edge going to bed, thinking that we were going to drift into the rocks or another boat, we managed to fall asleep with the comfort that we knew our anchor had held all day, why would we start moving in the middle of the night?

Important note: We had one other boat that was staying the night in the bay with us, a Catamaran probably a similar length to us with 4 middle aged Germans aboard.

Charlotte sitting on the deck of Wonderer

3:00 AM

After a few hours lying awake we finally both fell asleep. It was at 3am that Sakke jumped out of bed (literally) and sprinted outside screaming ¨we´re on the rocks¨. Charlotte woke up to the kerfuffle and the boat shaking as if it was in an earthquake. Running outside to join him, after a couple moments, we realised that we hadn’t moved at all, we were fine, the boat was fine and our life plans and savings weren’t destroyed by the cliff face.

So what was happening? What we can only guess now was approx 50knts+ of wind was coming down the cliff and circling the bay. Things were everywhere, towels, cushions and coffee flasks were rolling around the cockpit. Even our full 1L metal water bottles had been blown off of the table. The main issue was our bimini, not only had 2 out of 3 zippers been torn open, it had actually ripped from the other side aswell and was flying around acting as a mini sail. It took some battling to get it stowed away before it got any worse.

In all of this chaos, in the pitch black at 3am, we realised our neighbours had come out with massive torches and were dealing with a much bigger problem than a ripped bimini, one of their 2 headsails had become unravelled and ripped and was flying all over the place. What I didn’t mention before is that in true “Germans on holiday” fashion, this boat of 4 middle aged sailors preferred to opt out of wearing clothes. No judgment at all, you do you but as scary as the situation was and a pretty devastatingly expensive one for them, it did make it 10% funny to look over at them battling with this sail in gale force winds in the middle of the night wearing absolutely nothing, yelling in German to each other.

After a bizarre, I’m going to say hour(?), the winds calmed down, everything was stowed away and we went back to bed. We didnt sleep, but we went back to bed.

The Aftermath & Lessons Learned

As this was our first ever night on anchor, we were convinced that this was a regular occurrence, what made it even more scary was that there had been virtually no wind all day and night with nothing on the forecast. It had truly appeared out of nowhere, making it impossible to predict when it would happen again.

It’s now been 3 months since then and we are yet to experience anything else like it, it definitely took some time to relax again and realise we must have just been extremely unlucky for that to have happened on our first night.

Things we did learn from this ordeal though:

our anchor ( & chain) are obviously amazing at their job, we have a lot of peace of mind now, knowing that if it held that night then its likely to hold in other similar conditions. We have a 25kg Rocna anchor, and apparently they do really live up to the hype. We also have a handy 80m of chain, of which 40m is actually laid out right now holding us in deepish water outside of Palamos.
You should stow things away at night and secure everything, even if the weather looks fine.
It’s nice to not be the only boat in the anchorage just for some reassurance that you’re in the right place and some company even if you don’t acknowledge each other but its important to be a decent distance away from them. This is something we are probably quite over the top about, and I think it stems from that night, but seeing how much the boat can swing, I hate being near anyone else.
Don’t take sleep for granted, there’s been quite a few nights on anchor that we’ve not slept or got very little sleep. Either because of swell or rough weather, sometimes you’re just a little on edge. We’ve learnt to take advantage of calm conditions and get as much sleep as we can when we can.

Charlotte & Sakke