Scary night at anchor

Post date: Aug 04, 2015 6:15:44 PM

My first night at anchor in Fishguard and I slept fitfully. The wind was strong all night and my boat swung from side to side and the wind howled in the rigging.

At one point I woke up and decided to check my position by popping my head out of the deck window in my cabin. Shock horror, there was a steep cliff not 50 meters away. I looked the other way and the same. My God, I must have dragged my anchor all the way up the ravine which is the “Lower harbour” of Fishguard. I didn’t actually believe it and thought it must be a dream so I shouted out loud “Wake Up!”. Several times. But I kept seeing the same thing. I dived back down to check my position on my phone (I keep a track of my position on my phone) and sure enough my position had moved. This is ridiculous, I thought. It’s got to be a dream as I appear to have dragged my anchor towards the wind. I got right up on deck and started pulling on the anchor rope. Ben’s weight which I had attached the night before to the anchor rode came up easy but then the rope itself was firm and the anchor was clearly dug in

But this was a scary place to be positioned. The ravine looked very gothic and threatening in nature. I tried to tell myself to wake up again but to no avail. Despite the inexplicable situation I had to resign myself to this not being a dream. I went back into the main cabin, turned on the navigation equipment power and switched on the chart plotter in the cockpit to see what that was showing. For some reason I could not make head or tail of that. I then found myself back in my cabin and I turned over to pick up my phone and checked on my position. I hadn’t moved an inch. So I went back to sleep.