First Sailing Trip – Day 2 – The Great Anchor Debate
Sunday we woke up for our first full day of the sailing and headed up to the store for Coffee, fishing license, and a crab pot buoy. Then we ate bagels and packed up to head out. We motored for a while north along the east side of San Juan Island, about half way up the island we broke out the sails and managed 4-5 knots in what appeared to be about 6 knots of wind. It was a great, relaxing sail. After about an hour we lost the wind and motored into Reid Harbor, just north of San Juan Island. We set anchor, used the dinghy to drop the crab pot about 50 yards off the boat and settled in.
Reid Harbor is beautiful but very crowded with boats. There was a Hunter 36ish footer anchored a ways from us. A couple hours later as the winds shifted, all of the boats rotated around their anchors and this Hunter came very close to us. I began to let out more anchor line because any more swing and he would have run right into us. The Hunter obviously had tons of line out. Later they came back to their boat and we talked briefly with them. They had 150 feet of anchor line out to get the optimum anchor angle which is 4:1 for them.. Comparing their Anchor line angle with other boats it was clear they had WAY more line out than anyone else including us. I let another 30 feet out so we’d swing clear of them. I’ve read about optimum anchor line length, etc but I honestly don’t remember all the rules. What I do know is that they had more out than any other boat in the harbor and were swinging REALLY wide.
Oh yeah, the Dinghy motor died while we were out in it and Devon rowed back. I couldn’t get it started despite the full tank of gas. I’ll have to play with it later.
It’s Chili night!!! It’s amazingly beautiful out here.
Another thing, down South there are really big brownish colored Jellyfish which are kinda cool… But here in Reed harbor there are these little clear Jellyfish that are much cooler. You can see all of the insides and they like to bump off the surface of the water.
