Ooops!

We spent a couple of nights back in Road Town in an attempt to score my replacement RAM for my laptop. No luck once again. Tired of waiting I sent off a grumpy email to Dell and we prepared to leave the Village Cay Marina.

This was to be a new undocking experience for us as we were Med-Moored for the first time. I was familiar with the process of Med - Mooring (read about it) where you back in to a dock, drop the anchor a ways out and then continue backing in until you can step off your transom. The anchor keeps you off the dock and you tie the transom to the dock. In this case, there were mooring balls spaced every 30 feet apart, 60 feet off the dock. You use the mooring balls instead of your anchor to keep you off the dock. The only thing is there are no ropes on the mooring balls and you have to back in, stand on your transom steps down by the water and loop a line through the eye-bolt on the top of it. Then as the helmsman backs up, you walk the line forward and cleat it off at the bow.

Jen handled attaching the line to the mooring ball (fastest bowline in the west) and walked it forward as I slipped Mirasol back to the dock. It wasn't too shabby for our first time.

Leaving the dock was pretty straight forward. We freed all the dock lines from the transom and Jen ran up to the bow to free the bow line and walk it around as I brought Mirasol forward and then backed back around so she could untie it from the ball. That went off like a charm and just as I said "See honey? Easy Peasy!" I heard a very disturbing whackwhackwhackwhack noise coming from the port hull. I immediately stopped the port engine and we found what I feared was the case: I had failed to pull the port dock line all the way on deck and it got sucked down and into the prop. The whackwhackwhackwhack noise was the dock line whipping around with the prop, striking the hull as it went by.

Jen gave the fouled dock line a tug and found it was quite stuck. We were in the middle of two long docks with expensive yacht bows armed with pointy anchors on either side. The plan was to try to get Mirasol to turn to starboard and out of the dock area where we could drop anchor long enough for me to free the line from the prop. Unfortunately, the wind was blowing from the starboard side and getting a catamaran to turn starboard while only using the starboard engine is difficult. As we had no headway, the rudder was useless and with the wind on the starboard it was hopeless.

Another option was to turn to port, but there wasn't enough room to clear those pointy anchors. The last option was to try to back into a concrete dock with only one engine, and no dock hands. That being the only choice, I risked a worse tangle by reversing the port engine for just a second in an attempt to free the prop. Lucky us, when I went to test the line it came free with only a slight tug. I tossed the offending, mangled line on deck and ran back to the helm and drove us clear of the pointy anchors and out of the marina.

So as we were motoring out of the harbor, I was busy grumping about how I managed to leave the dock line trailing in the water, and not paying enough attention to the depth gauge. While I was in the marked channel, I was well on one side of it and grounded the starboard hull on a sand bar. Getting my head back in the game, I threw both engines in reverse and walked her back off the bar without too much trouble. Sigh.

With my head hung low I took us the rest of the way out of the harbor and pointed us towards Sopers Hole and said "Honey, why don't YOU drive!"

We made it to Sopers Hole without further incident, tied up to a mooring, rescued an errant dingy (not ours) and headed to shore for much needed sundowners.

We're staying here for Thanksgiving (Cornish hens instead of turkey) and then maybe off to Peter Island. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.