18 May 14

The wind piped up about 05:30 to N 15 - 25. We heard the anchor chain rattling across the bottom, but did not worry about dragging and promptly went back to sleep. I got up about 06:15 for a bit of relief and as I was standing there doing my business, I looked out the port side window and saw one of our neighbors from the night before (dragging past me at about 0.5 knots); he had been 200 m to the north of us last evening. I jumped into the cockpit, but he was already past us, setting out a second anchor. Another close neighbor - “Circe” - from the night before was not where he was late last night; we found him a few minutes later about 250 m to the south of us, hard aground. The tide was running out and after watching the crew of “Circe” fool around without result, I could not stand it any more and jumped in the dinghy to offer assistance/advice/moral support. By the time I got there, they had already retrieved their plow anchor back onto the bow roller and were being held in place only by the keel in the mud. I suggested setting out a kedge anchor attached to the main halyard to heel the boat and pull it off the bank, but the captain was not happy with this plan, as his boat has a wing keel. So, I helped them reset a Danforth anchor off the bow roller and we tried to pull off using the rode led back to a deck winch (they had no anchor windlass). The anchor set well, and we tensioned the rode up to about high “A”, but although we pulled the bow around about 45 degrees to face more or less into the wind, we could not dislodge the boat from the bank. At least they were being held from blowing further up on the bank. They had already called TowBoatUS, so we called it quits and waited for the cavalry to arrive. When TowBoatUS arrived half an hour later, their 300 HP engine finally managed to dislodge the boat, but they did have to yaw around for 10 minutes before it broke loose. Altogether, quite an exciting morning. Lesson learned: no matter how confident you are of your own anchor, it is best to check those anchored upwind of you if the wind freshens and changes directions.  We were lucky two boats dragged on either side of us, missing us completely.

After breakfast, we pulled in the anchor and moved over to Urbanna Town Marina to water, provision and do laundry.