![[>>]](../../../images/next.gif){kind=small}
In cartoons, when one wants to anchor a boat, one just drops an anchor. You can be anywhere, you just drop anchor. That's not really how it works, I found out. The Island Dream had two anchors. (It probably still has them, thanks to Jessica. But I'm getting ahead of myself.) The idea is that you went several yards away from where you wanted your boat to end up anchored, and dropped one anchor. You again moved your boat past where you wanted to end up and dropped the other anchor. You then adjusted your position so that your boat was between the anchors. I think the reasoning is that the anchor isn't solidly lodged in the ground. If the anchor chain was pulling straight up on the anchor, then every time the boat was moved by the waves, it would move the anchor, and the anchor would thus do no good at all. So you want your anchor chain to be at an angle. Everytime the boat moved, it would pull the anchor at an angle, and the anchor would have a chance to drag along the bottom and get stopped by friction. You wanted to have two anchors to make sure that your boat stayed in the proper position in respect to the anchors themselves and in respect to cliffs and boats and beaches and things. This was the theory.
We got in close to the beach, and dropped our first anchor, and discovered that our boat didn't have sufficient reverse engine power to back up towards where we wanted to put our other anchor, so we turned the boat around so that we could motor forward.
We motored forward, and as we were adjusting our position to drop the second anchor, it became clear that we'd somehow managed to get our first anchor line tangled up and jammed on some mechanism on the underside of the boat. We tried to work the line loose, but couldn't. It was getting dark. Okay. In the morning, when it was light out again, someone could swim under the boat to free the line, or if that proved impossible, we could cut the line and pay for a new anchor. For tonight, that jammed line wasn't actually doing anything bad to our anchor job. So we could let it sit. We dropped the second anchor. Tim started to fire up the barbecue. We were ready for dinner.
There was a shift in wind, there was a shift in waves. We had anchored ourselves well; this was proved by how little our position changed. Unfortunately, the neighboring boat was not so well anchored, and was being pushed towards us. In fact, it became clear that one of the boats was going to have to re-anchor, or else there would be the risk of a collision overnight. Unfortunately, the rules of sailing stated that whoever had anchored first had the right-of-way, no matter how poorly they had done that anchoring. So we would have to change position--with one of our anchorlines under the boat. So we couldn't really move that anchor. Hmm... We cranked up the motor. Going forward to pick up our second anchor, we actually had to fend off our neighbor's boat to avoid a collision.
We picked up the anchor. There was some tricky motoring, in which Piaw managed to get the boat in position to re-drop the second anchor, accounting for currents and a not-so-precise engine control system. We re-dropped the second anchor, and got into position. Further from the neighbor boat, but closer to the cliffs. Our neighbor jokingly called to his neighbor, "Can we switch places?" as if we were some kind of menace. Perhaps we were. Maybe his anchoring job had been quite reasonable. Maybe it was typical for boats to drift as far as his had. Maybe we'd had no business anchoring so close to him in the first place. But somehow I doubt it.
We were so close to the cliffs that we would hold an anchor watch all night. This meant that people would stay awake in shifts, watching the cliffs to make sure that we weren't getting too close to them--and also watching the neighbor's boat to make sure it didn't decide to drift some more and shove us into the cliffs. I didn't mind the idea of staying awake. Though I was feeling less seasick than before, I was certainly not at ease, and I knew that sleep would not come easy this night. People were eating down below, but I stayed up on deck and ate just enough corn to give me some sugar energy to get through the next few hours. Just because I was recovering was no reason to give my stomach ammunition for another outburst.
I volunteered myself for the second watch, determined that I would stay awake for the first and second watch, then use the slingshot of exhaustion to send myself to dreamland at 3am that night, finding sleep despite the boat's lurching. Tim figured similarly. We'd make a good watch: neither of us could sleep, and Tim had decent night vision.
'Rayne and Christina were scheduled for the first watch, but Christina was asleep. Since 'Rayne and Tim and I were awake, we figured that we might as well let Christina sleep. Piaw showed me how to use the gas lantern three times (I got it wrong the first two, putting it out), and we were all set. We sat in the cockpit of the boat, gathered around the table. We talked about how 'Rayne had ended up teaching in Japan after getting out of troubled times in Hawai'i. She was sorry that I'd had such a bad time in Japan, since she'd had such a good one. Huh? I'd had a bad time in Japan? I tried to remember what I'd said about Japan the night before. I couldn't.
Now I said that I liked Japan, but that the crises made for better anecdotes. I thought of something I'd liked about Japan, and was surprised when it turned out to be a Hello Kitty popcorn vending machine. I tried to explain why this had struck me, but failed utterly. I then pointed out that this proved my point: though I had liked this thing, I couldn't find a way to describe it in an interesting manner.
At one point during the conversation, Tim suddenly straightened up. "I suddenly feel good," he said. "I'm going to go to bed right now." 'Rayne and I congratulated him and wished him pleasant dreams.
'Rayne talked about her amazement in Japan, visiting buildings that were functioning, and yet were hundreds of years old. She'd known that she'd found her home. Her visiting USA friends didn't understand, couldn't understand how'd she'd given up the comforts of American living. But at the time, this old, old country had the stability she wanted. Maybe, compared to 'Rayne, I hadn't liked Japan that much after all. Nice place to visit, wouldn't want to live there. She had wanted to live there.
We talked about 'Rayne's dealings with the clueless lawyers at the firm where she was instructing. One of them had called her up to ask her why Adobe Distiller didn't come up when they double-clicked a PDF file. A bit of questioning on her part turned up the fact that the lawyer had pirated Distiller. Another lawyer wanted her to install a mail reader program onto a machine which it didn't, couldn't run on. Why did this lawyer want this particular mail program instead of the standard one at the firm? They'd heard that it might be better. Whatever.
Should I describe the scene? Actually, it was pretty. We were sitting on benches on either side of a table on the deck of the boat, a bright gas lantern in a little recess in the table. To one side of us was the cliff, and when I pumped up the lantern, I could see plants on its face, open in the night air. We'd watched the moon come up, glowing orange; it rose and became pale; now it was obscured by fog. The anchor lights of the neighboring boats glowed in the fog. Though the fog obscured the moon, all of the moon's light still seemed to reach us. It was glorious, glorious and for a while I think I understood all those people who talk about getting away from it all and just looking at nature. After a while, the gas lantern ran out of fuel and we sat in this fog that was gently lit by moonlight. Can I say "suffused with moonlight" without being cliche? Very well, then.
We shone a flashlight at the cliff every so often and tried to figure out if it was getting closer. Had people said whether gradual drift would be a problem, or if we only had to be on the lookout for an increase in waves or weather? How could one tell if a cliff was getting closer? You could try to figure out if your motion was moving a certain star out of your view, but the stars moved. Was that thing a star or a planet?
The first shift was over. Now it was officially Tim's and my shift. 'Rayne decided to stay up and let Tim sleep. She was in an awkward position, making this decision. She didn't understand the appeal of sailing. She'd come along, she said, on the condition that she wouldn't have to do any of the work of sailing. Staying up late for an anchor watch probably counted as "work," however. When she went SCUBA diving, part of what she liked about being on the boat was that when she was on it, there were other people to take care of all the boat things. I'd figured that she was on this trip to humor Mike, and this was something of a confirmation. Yet, even though she didn't especially want to be on this boat, and even though she knew that Tim had signed up for just this kind of thing, she still wanted to let him sleep.
She seemed kind of frightened by this idea. As well she should have been. Her conscientiousness made her the prey of the lawyers she was working with, it was keeping her from her sleep, it would make her shoulder burdens she hadn't signed up for, it would hound her all her life. She probably felt bad because she'd seen Tim working so hard while she sat idle, even though his hard work brought her no benefit--brought benefit only to those people who had wanted to go sailing, the people who'd talked her into this in the first place.
I said that I hadn't really know much about the sailing, but that I did know how to keep myself awake, and that it was good to have a way to let my skills shine. Ha. Normally, I'm in bed by 11. But I felt I had to say something silly. No one should be forced to contemplate the damnfool things their better nature forces them to do; it's easiest to look away with a laugh. Tim was pretty awake and alert the next day, which means that 'Rayne had chosen wisely her moment to compromise her principle of not helping out with the sailing. Is that a complicated sentence? It's a complicated idea. Sorry.