Three Strikes

Just after a lovely lunch at La Vena in Tenacatita as we were changing our tattered Canadian courtesy flag, a 90 foot power yacht dropped it's anchor a little too close given that there were only three boats in the anchorage. It's like surfing or skiing, everyone follows the crowd. The woman on the bow of the yacht was yelling and waiving to her husband at the helm that she couldn't stop the anchor chain. Apparently she was having trouble with the windlass. As is common, panic ensued. Why, I don't know. Who cares if you lose your anchor chain in 20 feet of water, dive down, attach a halyard and winch it up. So now husband and wife are yelling at eachother on the bow (which is also, common) about the anchoring situation. Unfortunately, the boat was still in gear at about 5 knots and heading straight for Lost Elvis mid-ship. A local ponga full of tourists stopped to watch. I started yelling to him that he was still in gear. Randy ordered all of us to prepare to abandon ship so we scrambled under the life lines, stood on the rub rail and prepared dive in and swim as fast as we could. Just as we were about to dive in, the captain of the yacht looked up in shock, ran to his helm, which was quite a distance, slammed the vessel into reverse and stopped about 20 feet away from us. We were shaking. I'm sure the panga would have plucked us out of the water but the woman would have been launched through our running rigging, Elvis would have been demasted and likely sunk. All for a few hundred feet of chain.



To take our minds of things we resumed working on the Canadian flag. As Randy was hoisting it, the radar deflector fell on my head. It shattered my plastic hair clip and gave me whiplash but other than that I was OK. If not for the hair do, I would be in the hospital, or worse.



Randy paid a visit to our new neighbours to have a de-briefing on what just happened and how we could all learn from it. After much blame, it was agreed that the Captain is ultimately responsible for the vessel and crew. The yachties invited us for cocktails and snacks so we could all come to terms and get over the unnecessary adrenline hit we all felt.



That's when they tried to kill us a second time, with Captain Morgan rum. Randy and Paul were rather ill the next morning. After we pulled up the anchor, they both went back to their bunks and I took old Elvis back to Barra. She, as well as the rest of us are very happy to be here.

If any provisions are needed while in Tenacatita, La Manzanilla has fresh fruit and vegetables on Thursdays. There is a little deli and fish market operated by some gringos. Most items are frozen but that works well for us since we don't have to run our freezer for ever to freeze it ourselves. Gasoline for outboards can be found in a little mechanic shop on the way to the highway. Take a taxi to the garage where instead of a hoist, the owner has a pit, and instead of a gasoline pump, he stores gas in plastic soda bottles.