Al's old business partner Chuck and his wife JoAnn happen to be at their condo in PV, and we decided to meet them for dinner. We took a taxi to Home Depot to check out some chairs for Chuck and then made our way to Old Town. Chuck and JoAnn are so nice and their condo is lovely.
We walked down to the malecon and ate at one of Chuck's favorite shrimp places. We had a nice, early dinner and then walked down to another place for live music. As we were walking, a storm came up and we could see it was dark down by the anchorage. Mike and I were worried but we had decided to move Pangaea before we left so we were not too close to anyone anymore. That and we just purchased a new Rocna anchor, supposedly the best holding anchor.
One margarita in, I thought I felt my phone vibrate. It had. It was an incoming message from Kathryn saying that a boat that sounded like Pangaea was dragging in the anchorage. Were we on it?
As quickly as we could hail a taxi, give Chuck and JoAnn hugs and some money, we were off to the anchorage. We were trying to imagine how she could be dragging, and the only boat close to us was a big tug boat. That wouldn't end well for Pangaea. Panic was getting the best of our imaginations. The weather forecasted potential weather coming in that night, but not until after midnight. We went for an early dinner thinking we were ok. Normally we don't go that far away from Pangaea in an anchorage. Shit. Shit. Shit!
By the time we got to the anchorage, the storm was over. The drama was over. It was dark and we couldn't see anything except I was down one Lucy light. We would have to wait until morning to find out what happened.
We awoke and saw our neighbor wave. We jumped on our paddle boards in the light rain and paddled over for some answers.
Our nieghbor, Nancy and her husband Steven saw Pangaea start to drag as a squall came up suddenly. Mike on Avatar and Steven boarded Pangaea and let out rode until her anchor grabbed again. Apparently the wind had come up to 50-60 knots suddenly and whipped everyone in a different direction. Our boat and another boat dragged. Somehow, either as we were dragging or as they let rode out, Pangaea got hung up on another boat's anchor chain in a t-bone, our starboard side to their bow. In that moment, our stainless rail and solar panel were bent/smashed. In some miracle of miracles, the other boat had minimal scratches. We offered to fix their scratches and they said they had some gel coat and would do it. No problem. We gave them the best bottle of wine we had to apologize to them for the incident and thanked them for being so nice!
We learned many lessons today. One, we live in a community of lovely, generous people who came to our rescue selflessly. We are so fortunate. Two, we need to make it a rule to never be more than a short dinghy ride away when anchored anywhere. Three, even the best new anchor with 5:1 rode to depth ratio isn't fallable. Four, bad shit happens to good people. Don't judge.
With my tail between my legs,
First Mate Kate
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