Running out of water

"Get up quick, it reads ZERO beneath our keel!" bellowed the Bloke. Not a cup of tea in sight. This must be serious. We knew when we anchored on Australia Day (Sunday) that the forecast for Thursday with a NE morning breeze would coincide with an especially low tide meaning that we would swing into shallower water towards the beach. Scrambling topside, the morning beach profile rendering up its weed beds and a small boat mooring now at rest on a cushion of seaweed said it all - A Very Low Tide! Wowsers!

We don't talk about the weather to pass the time and after almost 37 years together we hardly have a need for small talk but we talk about the weather all the time now. We'd discussed our options for when the wind swung to the NE because this is the wrong anchorage for a Northerly or North East wind. It would put us on a lee shore AND not give any protection. There would be plenty of fetch from across the bay. To top it off  we'd swing into the shallows: and now we had. We were out of water beneath our keel. In the words of King Julian of Madagascar it was time to 'move it, move it'!!

In case you're wondering why we didn't anchor in deeper water in the first instance, the answer is the the blue spot. Our marine sweet spot equivalent. The holding on weed is very iffy and we'd located a blue spot indicating a small sandy patch ... anchoring nirvana. There were not many blue spots to choose from and annoyingly the best and biggest happened to be near a couple of half abandoned looking trawler-like boats. Think -African Queen. They were too close to these floating obstacles to be useful. Darn. As it was, we hardly knew what the cats would do when they anchored as we seemed to have taken the biggest available sand patch. Our 'blue spot' would do nicely for 4 nights in any case, so we grabbed it while the going was good.

Moored on a blue spot and too close to another one. MV Passport AKA The African Queen. Tabletop Is visible at the back

The depth gauge screamed "Your time is up"! I heard the Bloke sigh with relief over the headsets once I'd confirmed that the anchor was up. We were free. Time to go to a new neighbourhood while we contemplated the next jump to Middle Island.

Urchin had given up on Nares Island the night before. We'd had a boisterous afternoon with strongish wind in the East also delivering an uncomfortable fetch. Messages bounced around the anchored boats. "How are you coping over there?". Tucked up closer to the Island than the others and not having an anchor drag during the preceding days made us feel 'not too bad'. At dusk Urchin suddenly dragged (as you do) and had had enough. They made a bolt across the bay to anchor up in the lee of Tabletop Island, just the spot to hide from the Thursday Northeasterly.  Brrrrooom, brrrrooom, brrrrooom. We motored across for shelter and more water under our keel.

What a pretty spot! No sign of blue spots though. The anchor would have to go down in the ribbon weed. It seemed OK. We did our due diligence. Found objects on the shore to line up on, set the anchor watch program etc... Once settled I persuaded the Bloke that sleep was essential and I could be trusted to call him if needed.

Tabletop Island isn't actually totally disconnected from the shore. There is a sand bar that can be traversed enabling people to wade across in calf deep water and climb up the Island which is a bit like a mini Ayres Rock. A lovely aspect with the white sand, azure water over the sand and partly vegetated reddish rock wall and the sun was shining. What could go wrong? Altogether a better combo than the preceding day. Easy Tiger came across too and anchored once, twice, three times at least before settling for the morning.

With 2 other boats nicely aligned closer to the shore, I had a good indication which way we should be swinging. But not us. We were on a merry-go-round. Bullets of wind were snatching at us from either side of the giant rock and swells were curling around to pat us in opposing directions. The presence of the sand bar created something of an eddy and we were caught in it. So round and round we went. I was feeling giddy. This is a screen shot of our track. Nice donut!

Anchor icon is in the middle and the blue spot is the boat. Dotted line is the boat track. A bit twirly.

By late afternoon we'd had enough twirling. Nares Island was by this time going to offer some protection again. Time to 'move it, move it' through the swell  in search of our blue spot which by now would have enough water around it. The anchor was landed plumb in the middle and we had a lovely night.