We decided to get going before our second cup of tea, that is early for us! I started winching up the anchor when it came to a juddering holt, we hadn’t even got to the bridle, which is about 10ms out. Rowan jumped in to see what was going on and we had our anchor chain caught tightly around a big bommie at a depth of 20ms. We tried doing some manoeuvring, but just got more tightly wedged. It was a very high tide the opposite of when we anchored, so the chain had pulled even tighter. Rowan dived back in and managed to cut the soft shackle off the bridle to give us a bit more wiggle room but with a good bit of wind we could not release the chain. He had jumped in with no clothes and to add insult to injury he got stung on the bum by a bee!
He has a small gas tank with a BCD for just these sort of occasions, but found that the BCD air regulator would not work, so that was no good. He is a good free diver but this was way too deep for him. We then tried to call the resort on the other side of the island as they do diving trips. They had nothing to offer and suggested a little local dive shop further down the coast from them. It was difficult to get hold of these guys, so Rowan came up with some more cunning plans. We went out in the dinghy and threw our dinghy anchor over board to drag it onto the chain near the big anchor, to catch it like a grappling hook. Over it went, Rowan dived in after it, after agonising minutes Rowan discovered that was now snagged on coral, luckily we had taken a fender to tie it onto. So back in the dinghy back to PolePole to get our bigger dinghy anchor that lives on board, we returned to the spot where the anchor was, Rowan jumped in and then directed this anchor down to the right spot. But as our luck was proving today, that successfully caught the chain but there was no way he could lift it, with the weight of the anchor and the chain it could not be budged and too deep for Rowan to free dive down to. After exhausting himself, we went back to PolePole to work out what we were going to do.
By now it was 1:30pm. Rowan still could not get hold of the local dive shop, so decided the only thing to do was to dinghy there, a 7 mile trip around to the other side of the island. Finally around 3:30pm I saw him coming back, he had found the dive shop, two old guys were pleased to help and lent him gear but they had no divers. Rowan managed to get two tanks and a BCD. We were now rushing against time as it is dark by 5:30 and we had 3 anchors to rescue! We got him into the dive gear only to find the tank was leaking, thank god he had brought two tanks, so we swapped it over and Rowan was ready to go. Because he couldn’t surface with each anchor, (not good to go up and down too many times when diving at 20ms) I went out in the dinghy and held on to the rope of the first anchor, when I got three tugs from Rowan I knew it was free and could get it back onto JeldiJeldi. We did the same with the second anchor. Then Rowan stayed down and moved PolePole’s 57kg anchor to give the chain some slack, he managed then to free the chain and have it all clear, it had got into a real tight tangle so took him a while to get sorted. He jumped back on PolePole and we started lifting the chain immediately, it all went well for a while, so close to the end when it got stuck again, we tried going over it but could not pick it up and we were reluctant to keep straining the poor old windlass (anchor chain winch). Poor Rowan, down he went again in his diving gear this time with the leaky bottle as he knew he would not need to be down long. Turned out it was barely caught and we were being too cautious! Back on board we got the last of the chain up with the anchor just before 5pm.
Now we had to move anchorage as we were not risking that bommie field again! We moved back down the coast about 4miles south, where we have anchored twice before and knew exactly where to go. Safely anchored Rowan had to return all the diving gear in the dinghy, at least now he was only 3 miles away and got back just as the sun was setting.
What an extremely stressful day, when nothing seemed to be going right. We knocked back a bottle of very nice wine to celebrate Rowan’s achievements! With a nice NZ steak on the BBQ it was a good evening after all. Early to bed as Rowan was absolutely knackered, sunburnt and coral scratched!
Red cross is our anchorage where we got stuck, blue dot is our overnight anchorage and the yellow marker is where the dive shop was. You can see how far Rowan had to go in the dinghy
Rowan marking the first anchor with a fender
The lovely anchorage, a minefield of bommies
High tide you cant see the coral at all that was exposed yesterday at low tide
Wonderful starry night
Caught the new moon just before it sank below the horizon
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