Nonsuch Bay, Antigua

[Kevin's Post]For the past three days we have been anchored in the southernmost corner of English Harbour tucked up as close to the beach as we dared. English Harbour is rapidly becoming an anchoring circus as race week approaches and more and more boats try to cram themselves into the tiny harbour. We had not been anchored more than an hour when the games began. While I was at customs, a small monohull named Leeamus dropped his anchor about 20 feet from ours and then tied off 90 degrees to us (and the wind) with a stern anchor toward the beach. Great. Not only is he right in the middle of our swing circle, he has two anchors out so there's no chance he is going to swing with the wind. I wasn't in the mood for a fight, so we just set a stern anchor out ourselves to make sure we didn't get too close to him. I figured if it wasn't him, it would be somebody else. . .and as it turned out it was him AND several somebody elses.

So picture this: We are anchored with a bow and stern anchor parallel with the beach about 100 feet off. Leeamus is about 100 feet in front of us anchored perpendicular and stern-to the beach. The following day a 65-70 foot wooden monohull (with an inoperable engine) came in and tried to anchor between us. With the aid of several dinghies, they set out their primary anchor and then ran a line to shore with a dinghy between Leeamus and Solstice. They then tried to winch their stern around and tuck up in by the beach. They didn't have any lines long enough to do this, so they tied a couple of shorter lines together. They apparently remembered they had a 12 foot draft as they hit the bottom closer to the beach. And at about this time the knot they used to join the lines came undone. So now they are swinging a huge circle through the anchorage and would have hit at least 3 boats, except one of their crew was in a dinghy fending them off. They eventually decided they weren't going to get the job done with dinghies and enlisted the help of a powerboat with larger outboards. They repeated the whole procedure and finally got tied off to the beach only to be towed into the marina a few hours later.

Day three arrived and I woke up to find that Leeamus was gone and that we gleefully had our spot all to ourselves again. But before long, a Sunsail charter catamaran also noticed Leeamus had left and they wanted a piece of the action. They took Leeamus's old position only slightly closer to us. Great. Within a few hours Leeamus returns from a daysail and anchors again as close as they could get to their original spot and promptly leave the boat. Within a few minutes we hear whistling and shouting and observe Leeamus has dragged and is now resting against the Sunsail charter catamaran. For the first time in my life I was glad to have a charter catamaran anchored too close to me.

As Leeamus was re-anchoring I saw the stern of a gigantic 60' catamaran heading towards our bow with the intent of squeezing into the 100 foot space between us and the sunsail catamaran and anchoring stern to the beach. Now let me pause for a minute to give you some background. French captains are notorious for anchoring too close (and conversely not caring if you are anchored too close to them). The 60' catamaran had a French crew. The Sunsail catamaran had a French crew. When the Sunsail crew saw what was happening they started screaming at the 60' catamaran. That should give some indication for how insane this little maneuver was. The Sunsail boat was yelling at them in French, I was yelling at them in English, they were just ignoring everybody. They could not be reasoned with and our well-practiced stink-eye was completely ineffective. When they finally got settled, their bow was about 30' from our starboard side and they were oriented 90 degrees to us with a massive bowsprit aimed right at the middle of our boat. Their forward anchor was feet in front of our boat and tied off to their starboard bow, and their stern line was tied off to their port stern. So their two lines were making a diagonal through their boat which is just a bizarre arrangement. I was extremely pissed off and yelled to their captain that our boat would swing side to side and we could hit even if their boat didn't move. No response. Amanda was busy taking photos for our imminent insurance claim. By now it was about 5:30 PM and we had dinner plans with Meggie or I probably would have just moved the boat. I grabbed my mask and snorkel and dove on their anchor to make sure it was set and then I swam to shore and checked on their stern line. I wanted to be damn sure they knew how to tie a knot and we didn't have a repeat of the day before. I think I kind of scared them when they saw me swimming toward their boat. I hope so. I can just picture them talking to each other, 'Zee crazy Ahmeerican - ee is coming for us'. Meanwhile Leeamus is still looking for a spot to reanchor and eyeing the area around our stern anchor. We breathed a huge sigh of relief when they finally anchored far from us.

This morning as we hauled up our two anchors to get the hell out of there I wanted to give the French crews some advice on anchoring etiquette in my best French. But, I could tell it was going to sound something like 'Pardon my French, but [expletive] you [expletive]' so I just kept my mouth shut. Now we are anchored over in the enormous Nonsuch Bay and don't have another boat within 1000 feet. For now.

Where we are:
Location=Nonsuch Bay, Antigua
Lat=17 04.540
Lon=61 40.268