Whoa

Whoa! What a day. Got a call that no cruiser ever wants to get.

Background: Rob and I came back to the boat last night to find someone new anchored WAY too close. I talked to him and explained how the currents and wind often fight each other here and the boats do not swing how you would expect, thus he was too close. He seemed to think I was overreacting and I should just pull up some of my rode If I was worried. He was also leaving for Islamorada and wouldn’t be around for a few days. Some great maritime etiquette on display. Asshole.

I adjusted my anchor in the morning. Fairly confident that we would be ok with today’s light winds and set off. Met with some CYC friends for lunch (Hi Leif and Laura!) Had a fabulous Cuban lunch with all the fixins. Rob and I then took off to meet some new friends on their boat at Stock Island Marina. 90% of the way there I got a call from someone in the mooring field (always leave your number on your hatch boards 😉 ) that we were colliding with this guy’s shitbox boat. A neighbor came by and dropped a few fenders for me, but the shitbox had already done some damage to my otherwise clean and well-conditioned topsides. NOT HAPPY.

My anchor line was completely under his boat, so getting that untangled was my first adventure. I ended up just letting my rode out all the way to the bitter end, and that was enough for the line to drop then float free. Now I needed to get my anchor back and go find a new spot as there was no way I could stay with 200’ of rode out. This was a moment I was thankful for the wireless windlass switch I installed before the trip (Thanks amazon!)

Got the rode almost all the way in but was then very much stuck on something. My efforts to free it were futile. So back to letting it all the way out to drift safely down current. Once I was confident I was in a temporarily, marginally safe spot for a few min, I whipped out my dive gear and went in to investigate. Luckily to took the extra 20 seconds to grab a gopro… I figured I could mark the anchor with a dock line and a brought along a square throwable cushion, this proved to be an excellent idea… Descending on the line to the bottom I quickly found the source of my issue. A 45-50ft Sunken fishing vessel had ensnared my rode and anchor! I said I wanted to do a wreck dive this week, but this was not what I had in mind…

My triple-braid rope was wrapped around the windshield, and the anchor chain was around the hull. Whoa. This is going to take some effort. So I tied my marker line off to the wreck and surfaced, figuring I would have to go back to land and retrieve Rob for help. Not wanting to leave the boat on 200’ of anchor rode swinging around I opted to just let the rope completely go and temporarily tie off to a pylon with a sign marking the Navy’s exclusion zone around Fleming Key. Another boat has spent all week tied off to a similar post so I figured I could make it a few hours before they trained a 50 cal on my hull and let it rip.

I Dinghied back to shore, collected Rob, then dinghied over to my marker to start untangling my rode. I had the go pro with me, but disappointingly it shut off after I entered the water! Bummer. There was some pretty cool proper mariner underwater work happening down there. Luckily my fully inflated BCD was enough to get the anchor moved on the bottom, but it was very silty, and as soon as you touched anything poof visibility went to 0ft. All my training in quarries and murky harbors paid off.

Once the rode was freed from the Wreck of the Basenji-fitzgerald (How it is now marked on my chartplotter) I tied some bowlines and attached the floater to the end of the rode.

After we both got back on board and freed ourselves from the pylon, we went and retrieved the rode and anchor back onto the boat. Woof.

The whole thing happened so fast, but it reminded me how thankful I am for my years of experience in ridiculous marine situations, mostly thanks to the dumb dumbs that rented boats from me and did stupid things over the years at Chicago Sailing. The solutions to each problem came almost like second nature, I’m ticked off the go pro died the second time. It would have been some pretty great footage.

In all the excitement I did take a moment to appreciate the fact that this wreck, which couldn’t be that old based on the condition it was in, was offering itself up as a home to several new baby corals! I thought I was filming them on the second dive (stupid gopro), but there were several young, healthy SRAD corals on the hull and structure! Seeing that almost canceled out my anger at the damage to the boat. It’s so amazing to see some healthy corals that were not planted by humans populating still in the keys, especially in an environment as hostile as this very crowded anchorage.

We have now moored again for the night but will look for a better location tomorrow. Frustrated but happy that 1. no one (two legged or four) was injured, 2. The damage is purely cosmetic, and 3. I got to see a new wreck AND some healthy natural corals.

To quote Captain Ron Rico: “I’ll have a margarita!”

Video of the first dive in the comments since FB won’t let me post photos AND videos in a post.