Things that go BUMP in the night....

Feb 5 - I'm falling behind on blog updates. It's getting difficult to find internet access... but I'll try to get a few posts done tonight while I've got some access. We are actually in Marathon, between Key Largo and Key West. HUGE storm expected tonight, high winds, but we're actually in a marina tonight, pretty well protected. I'll be down below writing all evening.

January 30, 2010
Hi 72 Lo 64
Lat/Lon 26 7.6 N 80 6.2 W

We entered the Lake Worth Inlet, which is basically Palm Beach, at about 3:00pm and began looking for a place to anchor. We were with our friends Glen and Pam from the Blue Pearl. We weren’t more than a few feet into the designated anchorage area, when we quickly discovered how shallow is was on this side of the channel.

Glen and Pam did a quick about face and headed back the direction we’d all come from. They went out around a break-water to enter the anchorage area from the back side. We tried going the opposite direction, and WHUMP!, Poor little Quest found the sandy bottom with her belly. Uh, Oh! Well it wasn’t the first time we’d touched bottom on this trip, but this time, we were stuck!

“Oh, that’s bad.”
“No, that’s good!” See, as luck would have it, the tide was coming in, so all we had to do was just sit calmly and wait for the tide to lift our little boat off her belly and allow us to float again.

“Oh, that’s good!”
“No, that’s bad.” Because by the time we got off the sand bar, and around the break-water to deeper water, most of the anchorage area was full.

“Oh, that’s bad.”
“No, that’s good.” We just let out a little less anchor chain than usual, and cozied ourselves in between a couple of other boats.

“Oh, that’s good.”
“No, that’s bad.” See, with less chain out, our anchor was able to drag during the night. And Quest slid right over to visit with a little trawler named The Lisa Morgan. And that’s when things went BUMP! in the night. 4:10 am to be precise.

Well, I’m tellin’ you,… you’ve never seen a man move as fast as Sid did, flying outta that bed and up on deck to separate the boats. I had to run along behind him, trying to hand him articles of clothing. I figured the owners of the trawler had enough of a shock to get run into in the middle of the night, I didn’t figure they needed to also be greeted by a naked man.

“Oh, so that IS bad!”
“No, it was good.” The boats just barely bumped, no damage done really, a slight scratch to the trawler, but nothing serious. It could have been much worse. The owners of the Lisa Morgan were very nice about it. We exchanged names, and found we were both going down into the Keys. As we pulled up anchor, to move way down the channel to anchor elsewhere, they said they hoped to run into us down in Key West. We’re hoping we don’t!