Sleepless in Palm Beach

It was an uncomfortable night all right. Once an anchor doesn’t completely hold then you are anxious about it for sometime until the confidence rebuilds. What is that saying?? “One oh sh-t wipes out 1000 at a boys!”

I don’t think the problem yesterday was just short scope. Another boat came in late and anchored near where we were yesterday morning. First thing this morning they moved to another spot – could be holding is just poor there.


It blew strong all night and this boat wants to “dance” around the anchor. In other words the boat will swing to one side of the anchor and catch the wind broad side until the anchor pulls back, then it swings to the other side and repeats and this oscillates at about a 4 –5 minute period thus putting a lot of stress on the anchor.

Well the holding and scope worked well and we had no problem over night or through the even stronger winds that came late morning into early afternoon 25 – 30 kts. Once the cold front passed at around 2:30pm the wind clocked to the west and dropped to about 10 kts along with a 30 minute shower. It is quite comfortable here now and should remain that way until Sunday. Unfortunately no good window to cross to the Bahamas until maybe middle of next week.

I had one problem today – the wind generator. It was working just fine and gen’ing a lot of amps when suddenly it got noisy and more vibration. I realized it was spinning faster but only outputting a couple of amps. I turned it off at the switch which usually stops it but it just kept spinning at HIGH revolutions. I had to carefully reach behind it and grab a control line and spin it so its back was facing the wind. The blade slowed down to a near stop and I could grab it and put a line on it. Apparently the high winds caused the internal coil to get so hot that it tripped some thermostats that allowed it to go free wheeling – not a good design.. Anyway once it cooled down it worked fine again .

The other things that worked well last night was stowing the dinghy and motor. No worries about the painter separating and it wasn’t bumping into the stern or ladder all night – pretty quiet back there. Unfortunately I spent the night on a couch in the main salon to listen for strange sounds and make numerous checks on our position throughout the night. Well that new mattress pad is working because my back ached today. I should be back in the main bed tonight with these mild conditions. Putting dual snubbers on also made a difference. The boat did not rock fore and aft as much as it did the previous night so the sloshing of the partial 120 gallon water tank was not as noticeable.

Somethings work – somethings don’t.