By Hugh C. Howey
10/2/05
When you run a charter yacht, you go to bed tired. Not sleepy tired—just-climbed-Everest tired. My feet start hurting around 4 p.m. and I still have another 7 hours of toil. It’s amazing what you can push through. Hitting the bed, you don’t care that the AC unit in your room doesn’t work because of the parts you removed to fix a guest’s room. You lay in your own sweat in a bunk shorter than you are and you dream of your bed at home. The one that you slide down to hang your feet off of. The one that has a warm lovely just waiting to be snuggled. The one with a grunting, snoring, pushing, scratching, licking, smacking dog nestled beside you. That’s what you think about for the 5 seconds it takes to pass out.
Being this exhausted provides some good sleep. And you do NOT want to get up earlier than you have to. My alarm is set for 6:30 a.m. A little later than normal because the guests are sleeping in, and the boat doesn’t move ‘til 7. Strange, then, that I find myself wide awake at 5 a.m. Something feels weird. The wind is hitting the wrong side of the boat. There is a slight vibration somewhere, and the yacht is rocking side to side just slightly. The overwhelming urge is to go back to sleep. But some part of me deep inside—the part that formed in me while living on my boat and being at anchor for a year—is screaming at me to get up. I am an unthinking zombie rising from the grave. I stagger toward the wheelhouse.
Looking back I see how I was being cajoled and urged by my wakeful subconscious. It was tugging at my sleeves, poking and prodding me, saying, “See? See? Lookit!”. I went straight to the GPS. It said we were moving at 3.5 knots. Backwards.
Oh. No.
I pulled up the chart plotter which shows an overlay of our GPS position on the local waters. We were not where I dropped anchor yesterday. We were over a quarter of a mile from there. The anchor alarm was set properly, so I couldn’t understand how this was happening. There was no way of knowing the piezo buzzer in the alarm panel was out. This is why they teach you to test every single safety feature on a daily basis, as if you didn’t have anything else to do. All that mattered at that moment was out movement toward a rocky reef that seemed so lovely while we were snorkeling on it the day before. Now it was deadly.
Firing up the engines that early with guests on board is not something you take lightly. The severity of the situation was therefore evident by my utter lack of hesitation. Thankfully, they roared right to life. Dom and I had been having to prime the port engine from down below lately. I stuck my head out the top of the flybridge hatch to see what the wind was like. I knew it would be bad—I could hear the sheets of water slapping across the windshield and feel the vibration that the gusts imparted on the hull. Outside I found it to be worse than I imagined. 40kt winds? Rain like bullets. Our bimini top was loose, ripped and flapping with the sound of nearby cannon. It’s one of those collections of stimuli that I’ve had a dozen times before, and each time was as bad as the last. The nostalgia and feeling of dread were attacking me as I hurried back to my room.
“Dom. DOM!” I shook his knee, and hoping he didn’t drink too much last night.
“Wha?”
“Grab a jacket, we’re dragging anchor, need you up here now.” I wait for more movement from him. It comes after a pause, then jerks him up as comprehension sets in. I only wake him when shit is real bad. It courses through him like coffee and cocaine.
I teleport back to the bridge and start turning on various systems. I bump the engines ahead to slow our suicidal rush toward rock. The danger here is going forward too fast and running over our chain. It’s the only thing below us that’s harder than the rock I’m trying to avoid. With the wind, clouds, rain and hour… I’m blind. I’m groping about with the compass. It’s the only thing telling me which direction I’m pointing. At slow speeds, with heavy winds, the GPS thinks you’re facing the direction you’re moving. I wish the wind wasn’t quite this bad, I’d risk letting out more chain and seeing if the anchor resets.
