It was too dark to see the daymarks, but we were in an area where missing the channel meant a high probability of running afoul of fish stakes, grounding or both. Not knowing where the channel was headed, it was hard for me to buoy spot. I pulled up the charts on Chris’s phone in the vain hope of finding an anchorage, and as luck would have it, someone had marked a spot just to starboard. There wasn’t a ton of space between the channel and shoaling in toward shore, but given the conditions, we decided to go for it.
We turned out of the channel and crept into the anchorage with the wind howling. We usually use hand signals when anchoring, but these were yelling conditions. We didn’t dare get too close to shore as it shoaled quickly, but we wanted to make sure we were far enough outside the channel, so we crept forward a bit and dropped. We could have gone in a little farther, and in hindsight I think we both wish we had, but at least the hook was down.
If ever conditions called for an anchor watch, these were those conditions, and since Chris has been good enough to take two watches a night on both the Cape May and Norfolk runs, I chose to take the 9-12 and 3-6 anchor watches. Just after Chris went to bed, the second wave hit along with torrential rain. I sat huddled under my rain jacket under the dodger, but even then I was getting rained on. Once the rain started pooling on the cushions, I retreated to the companionway and stood on the ladder.
At times the rain was blinding and I started to lose sight of the more distant lit channel marks, and the wind howled and jerked Silent Sky back and forth. That first hour of my watch was probably the longest hour of my life. I kept imagining we were dragging, and the only thing that gave me any reassurance was the relative position of lit green 135 when we’d swing to a certain position.
When my watch finally ended sleep was far from a reality, especially since we saw an approaching tug on AIS. Chris radioed to let them know we were there and they passed without incident – we were, in fact, outside the channel with enough room for a tug to pass.
By the time I came on deck for my second watch, the wind had settled, the clouds had all blown out, and the night sky was stunning. The almost-full moon was starting to set and Orion was overhead keeping me company once again. By this point, we were feeling pretty confident both that there was no further traffic headed our way and that we were far enough out of the channel, so around 4am I headed to bed for a cat nap before checking everything again at 5 and finally getting up at 6. We had a peaceful sunrise, and our anchorage turned out to be a really pretty spot.
