Where yachts disappear during your lunch hour!
A couple of fisherman dragged in a yacht that we thought had set sail a few hours ago. There was no sign of any crew onboard even as it entered shallow water. We had seen the two older gentleman owners earlier and thought that perhaps they had had a serious piracy issue. The yacht was towed up to the shoreline and out of our view. We were concerned at the mystery and things didn’t look right.
The mystery revealed itself when a cat appeared about 100m behind us heading out to sea. The crew of superyacht Andrea Cay had tendered over and were banging on the hull but nobody was home. They then went into ‘salvage’ mode and were making great efforts to sort out the hanging anchor and to get a tow line. We had been sitting in the cockpit and not even noticed this yacht drifting past and out to sea. And it was beginning to gather pace as it made for Central America.
As the drama unfolded at the sharp end we could see the charterers in their dinghy motoring down toward us. I am sure I parked it here?
It’s a long ride now.
And there must have been much relief at the recovery
We looked at our own situation and when we anchored we dropped 60m of chain in 12m of water. The wind had been onshore. Now it was offshore and we were in 20m depth. It looked possible that we may have dragged about 30m over several days so we set up more alarms and put out another 10m of chain.
Talking of yachts going missing there was a collision involving two cats east of Montserrat on Saturday night, about 48 hours ago. One sank and two people were recovered but there is still an active Mayday in place for the second cat which is missing.
