How Our Neighbours Ripped Their Anchor Windlass Clean Out and Were About to Abandon Their Anchor, but We Saved Them.
“Pull the green line! Ease it! Chain up! Ahead! Stop! Astern! Pay out the line! Pull the line!”
The captain, in scuba gear, is calling up from the bottom of the Pacific. Nastya and I are sprawled across the netting of the big catamaran, playing tug-of-war. First we haul on the line, scraping paint off the hull, then on the anchor chain—by hand. The catamaran’s captain is at the helm, while the first mate makes sure the windlass doesn’t get ripped out again.
Good thing we’ve got biceps trained by hauling in a giant marlin. Who needs an anchor windlass now? We can stop a galloping horse with our bare hands—well, you get the idea :).
Neighbours and Manoeuvres
As we’ve already written, a second yacht appeared at Easter Island: a 15-metre catamaran from England. On board were a father and his daughter, about 30 years old—not a married couple, as we’d mistakenly thought at first. Jonathan and Jemima arrived on the south side of the island the day after the storm.
The following morning, we noticed the neighbours making some strange manoeuvres: either they were weighing anchor, or shifting position, or...
Taking advantage of the brief lull before the next wind shift, our crew quickly lowered the outboard into the tender and dashed ashore to visit the Rano Raraku volcanic crater and Tongariki, the largest moai platform. Our young sailor and the captain first went off to reconnoitre: where was the fairway through all those sharp rocks? On the way, they also dropped off a coconut for the neighbours.
And the neighbours said:
“We want to cut the anchor line, leave the anchor and chain on the bottom and mark them with a buoy. Then we’ll try to get to the village and find a diver to help recover the anchor. Because it’s stuck on the bottom. A wave hit while the chain was partly out, the cat jumped—and the result was grim: the windlass was ripped clean out of the deck... Looks as though we won’t be staying here at Easter Island. We’ll head straight to Tahiti for repairs.”
“But I’m a diver—here I am!” our captain responded joyfully, assuring the stricken sailors that in about three hours we would be back from shore to rescue them.
No Admittance Without a Ticket
On shore, we were told that we wouldn’t be allowed onto the Tongariki platform without a ticket, and tickets had to be bought in Hanga Roa. In a little nook where, just as in the main village, boats are parked on fore-and-aft moorings, a fisherman all but promised to take Andryukha fishing. Lada quickly made a new friend, Lehe, whose parents gave us a bag of avocados and lemons.
Since we weren’t allowed to touch antiquity, we tried to find a cave that was definitely supposed to be somewhere around here. But our young sailor had tea and a snack on her agenda. And caves aren’t really her thing (end quote). So we had to stop for a picnic on the way, with a view of the statues, cows and horses.
In short, the volcano and the most gigantic moai never did get to see us—but not so much because of the forthcoming anchor-rescue operation as because of the weather forecast, which promised a shift to a 20-knot onshore wind.
So when we returned, our captain gathered up his diving gear, armed himself with drill bits, an adjustable spanner and a piece of thick marine plywood, and departed for the catamaran accompanied by the youngsters.
I stayed behind to dry the mattresses on the boat, managing, whenever rain clouds rapidly swept in, to throw everything back inside and dog down the hatches, then eight minutes later do the same thing in reverse. It’s important to catch every ray of sunshine, because the boat is soaked through—we don’t want moss growing in it )).
Enjoying the solitude, I cooked a big pot of shchi for the crew and got ready to be picked up myself at any moment—there was Nastya already racing over in the dinghy.
On the catamaran, Andrei found the following scene:
The anchor windlass, secured with four bolts and rather flimsy washers, had been ripped out of the deck. Where the bolts had been, ragged wounds gaped in the deck. Using whatever materials they had to hand—a collection of assorted washers and a template drawn on a 5 mm chopping board—the crew were trying to reinforce the mounting and put the anchor windlass back in place, at least temporarily.
The 2 cm piece of marine plywood brought by the captain impressed Jonathan, and for the next forty minutes, having transferred the template from the chopping board to the plywood, he cut it out with a jigsaw. They fitted the assembly beneath the deck under the windlass mounting, tightened the bolts with hefty washers and breathed a sigh of relief: the anchor windlass was now secured more solidly than when it had left the shipyard.
All that remained was to sort out the situation on the bottom.
Chain Reaction
Andryukha donned his diving suit and splashed into the sea. As the swell built, our captain discovered that at a depth of 18 metres the anchor had buried itself beneath some rocks, while the chain had wrapped around a large coral head.
Andryukha pulled the anchor out from under the coral, attached a buoy line to it, surfaced and began acting as a floating pilot, guiding the catamaran along a winding route around the huge coral head in which their chain had become tangled. One moment he would put his face into the water to assess the situation, the next he would surface with another command to accelerate, stop or turn.
The cat spins around in the swell, the lines refuse to cooperate and keep trying to wrap themselves around the hulls, the chain and our and Nastya’s hands. And whenever the 15-metre catamaran powers ahead, Andrei hastily gets out of the way.
All the manoeuvres took about an hour. In that time, the rain started and stopped, and Nastya dashed back to Lady Mary to dog down the hatches, then returned...
More tug-of-war and more commands from Andrei the diver...
Another quarter of an hour, and to triumphant cheers from both crews, the anchor was hauled onto the deck. Meanwhile, little Lada was trying to bounce on the trampoline, nearly flew over the guardrail, and retired to the spacious saloon to draw our yacht against a backdrop of Rapa Nui statues.
Victory! Hip-hip-hooray! Cries of joy rang across the gloomy bay.
Happy aboard the anchorless catamaran, we quickly drifted a very long way from our yacht. The guys brought us closer, we all hopped into the dinghy and headed home to warm up with showers and tea, watch a film over dinner, and sleep on a bed pitching and sloshing in every direction.
The happy catamaran crew (catamaran maniacs), expecting an onshore wind and unsure of their anchor, hurried away to the northern side of the island. We’ll ride out the wind here. It’s only 20 knots. We should manage!
In the morning we would have to move again: whether from the south or the north, an easterly was due to arrive for twenty-four hours and drive us westwards, towards the village.
And in the morning... in the morning, after a night of bucking and jerking on the chain, we began weighing anchor...
Our home-grown diver swam down to investigate... He came back.
And then it was our turn to realise that we were well and truly stuck...
To be continued!