17 November 2013
Ian helped us get into the
Knysna heads and helped us anchor and out on the bridle...the cursed bridle...and to make matters worse it is ours. Ian found a way to uncurse it by tie wrapping it on because it keeps falling off.
This was just one of the curses but what we do not know is that it moves up and down. I was writing my previous blog while my dad is working on the leaking motor and my mom is earning money on the internet while Rauen is playing on his phone when all hell breaks loose.
My dad yells to us to come out then a loud bang. We are all out there running, pushing kicking off a big boat, getting fenders down. My mom fends off the bow spirit when at full speed it smacks uor boat. While I am fending off the bow with my feet and every now and then kicking the fender down between our boat and the other boat, but still we were being scraped at the bottom of our hull. It seems impossible but the shape of the other boats bow was like a sword.
We screamed for help from a boat that came flooring past. We called the NSRI. The NSRI must have only taken a few minutes but it felt like 3 hours.
The boat boat that came flooring past did not hear us but another boat did and they gave us the idea to swing our back out. This was impossible because that would break our rudder.
They kept telling my mom to calm down. She was calm, I know when my mom is not calm and she was calm.
Another boat came and the owner of the boat we had smacked into came and they tried helping push the boats apart but our boat was stuck underneather their anchor bridle. By this time we had 2 fenders by the place where I was trying to fend off.
The NSRI came and to explain the rest of the story I have to expain how we were stuck:
The port side bridle was attached to the chain we were in the gap between the 2.What happened next is unexplainable to me but the NSRI went to fetch more men. They got back with more men and they dropped the starboard side bridle off the boat we had hit. This did not release us and they had to drop the port side bridle aswell. We were free!
But things got worse, we had no rudders and the NSRI boat got some ropes stuck in their prop. They solved this problem and asked us to release the rudders. We discovered the bridle was trapped in the rudders so they towed us to a mooring buoy.
The wind was blowing very hard and my mom and dad wanted more ropes on the mooring buoy so my dad and
Rauen got on the dinghy and my mom and I held the ropes and moved them around the boat to the front. Luckily we got that sorted without any problems. I realised that is the NSRI had only dropped the port side bridle we would not need to dive down to get the rope off.
We have been up all night taking shifts on anchor watch. A few hours later my dad and I are discussing how we dragged anchor. We got to the conclusion that the cursed bridle moved making our boat get hit broad side on by the wind and current and we did not have enough anchor chain down and did not reverse it into the ground when we dropped it.
We checked the damaged, the stanchion buckled, the targa bar cracked and we may or may not have rudder damage.
We went across to shore and docked, we went to Game stores. I walked down and up the escalator. When I got to the top Rauen said: "Thanks for the running commentary" because the lift tells you what it is doing.
We went to Spar then walked home, when we got to the yacht club a man waved at us and we sat and spoke the entire time. I had to leave because there was too much noise so I sat outside wondering what to do then I saw a blue swallow. I ran inside got the camera but when I got back the swallow had left. So I waited and took photos, after a while I took a picture of everyone and we left for the boat.
Getting back in the dark is also a task because the dock has holes. But we got back tied up, put our stuff down and went to sleep.
