Harbour Rats To The Rescue

It's blowing a hoolie today. The cold front that is plaguing the whole east coast arrived here this morning, bringing gale force winds. Thank goodness that the warm gulf stream current moderates the temperature, although it is only about 60 degrees out at 3 PM.

The wind makes it really noisy on board and throughout the harbor with sailboat halyards banging, waves slapping on hulls, and wind whining through the sailboat rigging. New Horizon sets up a resonation as the wind howls past the flybridge.

As we were working on inside projects, I heard someone calling us on the VHF radio. It was our neighbor Chris from Sunday, who asked if Dave was available to help him rescue a small sailboat that broke its mooring line, and was now aground. Always up for adventure, Dave jumped at the chance and off the guys went. Ben from Belinda B was listening in on our conversation (a Harbour Rat must-do), and he joined in the rescue.

The guys managed to pull the boat off the shoal, tow it back to the mooring, and hook up a second line to it. After the boat was secure, Ben climbed on board to retrieve his line that he used and suddenly the owner came out to find out what was going on. He slept through the whole ordeal! Talk about a rude awakening. He was lucky that the Hope Town Harbour Rats are always at the ready.

Next came the man overboard drill, or more like the hat overboard drill. I wanted to get some good pictures of the rescue, but there was a boat between us and the happenings. I tried going up in the flybridge but still couldn't see. I climbed up onto the TOP of the sundeck...bad idea in 35 knot winds. Immediately my hat flew off. Bye, bye expensive sailing club hat.

Amazingly enough, we spotted it floating with the brim up, about half an hour later. Saved!

Later in the day, Ben also had to rescue one of the ferry boats, as it lost steering and was drifting through the harbor at a fast pace. Just another windy day in Hope Town!