I don't want to see your woodie ever again !!!
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| Goodbye Origo! Next stop Panama |
Solution- we've chosen to anchor about a mile away from the town in fairly deep water. Normally, people who rent boats or are inexperienced try to get in close to the town. Because St. Pierre is dwarfed by the [hopefully] still dormant volcano and other hills, the wind swirls causing boats to spin in all directions at night. Result- if you anchored near another boat you might hit him. We wanted nothing to do with this after our recent experiences so we believed that being this far out was safe.
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| Scene of the crime - so peaceful today |
So Saturday night, the anchorage started filling up........and up, and up, and up. People even anchored in our vicinity. A few boats looked like they were going to anchor too close but they responded well to my invective and peculiar ability to curse in most of the languages white people speak. So far, so good.
About 100 meters ahead of us was an old, large wooden ketch called Origo. An old Norwegian couple piloted it, and seemed to be competent based on the combined age of them (150) as well as their boat (50-80). Even the dinghy davits were wood. In the morning, Kirstin and I went to shore, did some shopping, and started back for the boat. In sailing, because of the distances you are viewing as well as the waves and swell, often times you experience optical illusions. Two islands merge into one......a bay that looks crowded with boats is actually 2/3 empty, etc. So as we were heading back to L'ORIENT, this large wooden boat (Origo) looks really close to us. No big deal, the illusion will right itself as we get closer, right? Wrong. Origo is actually dragging its anchor and has begun smashing into our bow and port side. Ahhhhhhh !!!!!
Kirstin and I quickly dismount our dinghy, she starts the engine while I run to the front of our boat. Because of the light wind, I'm able to actually grab Origo and push it away from us. Origo's wooden davits are actually inside our rails threatening to rip everything out, including our rigging. But a good push creates some distance and I walk Origo down the length of our boat, give it one good push, and it starts to move away from us, then safely behind us - still dragging. Now quite a few other boaters are watching (I must look like some kind of superhero able to push a 20 ton boat out to sea.......don't mess with the Tominator).
A German guy on the boat near us comes over as we are pulling up our anchor and slowly motoring away. He inquires as to if we're all OK and all of that pro-forma good guy stuff. He then asks if Origo is still dragging. "Yes, I think so......and he's about to get into deep water where he'll accelerate out to sea". The German guy asks me what I'm going to do about that. I level with him that I'm pretty angry about being hit and as far as I'm concerned the Norwegians can go FUC_ themselves. He grins as I've confirmed most of his stereotypes of Americans. I'm aware that the etiquette would be to go over to Origo and see if I could attempt to anchor it properly after we re-anchor far away. But I think a good teaching moment would be if the old Norwegian couple had to dinghy a few miles out to sea to fetch their ketch (that just came out.....pretty good!).
After cooling down a bit, I did dinghy over to Origo, now properly re-anchored by the German good samaritan. Everything was fine and luckily L'ORIENT had escaped damage (miraculously - if we had been 15 minutes later in coming back this story would end differently).
So the Norwegians come back in about an hour and, of course, notice that Origo is not where they left if. They stop at the German boat (he's not aware there is no damage to L'ORIENT). The look of horror on the Norwegians as they see me standing on the bow motioning them over was priceless. They were very contrite and correct, apologizing profusely. I inquired how much anchor chain they have on that heavy wooden boat and the old man confessed to having only 50 meters. That's like driving a car with only one working brake for your 4 wheels. I made him promise to anchor some place where I couldn't see him and they quickly packed up their boat and left. "Get that woodie out of here".
The series of near misses we've had in the past two weeks has left us shaken and paranoid.....after a rum punch and the passing of 24 hours we calmed down but we are hoping this streak of meeting dangerous boaters passes. I'm honestly glad we have no weapons on the boat as I might have fired at the waterline of Origo to try to sink it. If I missed, I'm sure my wife would have taken the gun from me and pumped more shells into it. Cheeseheads are calm, friendly people until they aren't.