I guess it was just a matter of time before it happened: dragging anchor. Probably the biggest worry in cruising, because of the likelihood of it happening and the associated risks: your boat (which is also your home) ending on the rocks, and possibly crashing into other boats much more expensive than your own.

We moved from the mooring jetty to at anchor about two weeks ago. We were actually enjoying life at anchor which has a different feel than being moored. The anchorage here in Walvis Bay (the yacht anchorage that is) is quite shallow: we were at 2.4 meters at low tide. And there are a lot of other boats, mostly in permanent swing moorings nearby, so not a whole lot of space to anchor.

The anchor dragging incident: we were on the boat luckily and sitting in the saloon when we heard a loud bang. When we went out we saw we hit the catamaran moored behind us. Wind was quite strong: gusting to 30 knots (55km/h) in SSW direction and it was high tide. That lady matters because depth at high tide was about 4 meters which meant a less favourable chain length to water depth ratio. The short of it is we were dragging anchor and needed to kick into action.

Kay and I are quite proud of our reaction speed and decision making in an emergency. We turned on the engine, tried to position fenders between ourselves and the cat and got out of our predicament. Unfortunately motoring up above our anchor to pull it up so we could move and re-anchor wasn’t an option. Possibly our anchor was fouled on the cat’s swing mooring and we couldn’t position our boat above our anchor because we were hitting the cat.

Quick decision was made to get rid of our anchor and chain and attach a fender to be able to retrieve it later. I won’t get into to miscommunication and shouting that accompanied this, I’ve asked Kay to write a post about that. The short of it is we left the anchor and now needed to move to a mooring ball (permanent swing mooring) or moor at the jetty.

Since mooring at the jetty in this wind seemed like most complicated option we manoeuvred the boat to where there were free mooring balls. By the third attempt to moor our boat at the swing mooring (Kay got hold of of the mooring ball on the second attempt but couldn’t pull it up enough to attach it to a cleat on the boat) a motor yacht was circling us and telling us to go to VHF channel 66.

As usual in sailing one mishap accompanied another and our VHF radio was not receiving although the other boat did hear us. He suggested we follow him and move to the other side of the anchorage that was protected by the jetty. At the same time he was filming us with his phone camera.

Manoeuvring in the relatively constricted space between the jetty and the shore was not ideal especially since the wind was pushing us towards the rocky shore. With the help of a German cruiser who’s been moored there for a while now we managed to moor our boat, downwind from the jetty so relatively protected even though waves where splashing over the jetty by now.

Crisis averted and back at the mooring we left a few weeks ago. The man on the motorboat showed up on the jetty and informed us it was his catamaran we had crashed into. We had a strong suspicion of that by now and also that he possibly thought we were trying to flee the scene. We informed him we had insurance and agreed to complete formalities the next day.

Lessons learned: always make sure you let out enough anchor rode (I think we had 1:4 which clearly was not enough for these conditions) and make sure you have space to let out more rode when needed (we were too close to other boats to be able to do that). Also: don’t rely too much on your anchor alarm, ours was set but did not sound. And always have your radio on channel 16 when anchored, we might have figured out earlier there was an issue with our radio.

All in all the damage to either boat was not that bad: a few scratches on the cat and some damage on our boat which should not be too hard to fix and not too worrying. The insurance company might not be impressed as this will be our third claim already (after loosing our dinghy’s outboard and breaking our backstay) but the cost should not be excessive. All and all not too bad for dragging anchor and another thing checked off our list of cruising calamities.