Caribbean Compass Yachting Magazine - December 2019

How Not to Leave a Mooring
by David Carey
As a family new to sailing, we learned so much in our
first year living aboard our 1984 Moody 47, ROAM, in
the Eastern Caribbean.
With three young boys aged under ten, and with very
little boating experience, my wife, Erin, and I sold all
our possessions in Australia, saved like mad, and
One of our more noteworthy learning experiences
happened in Clifton Harbour at Union Island in the
Grenadines. We had made the short trip from neighboring
Carriacou safely. ROAM had performed perfectly.
As we motored into the anchorage we were
enthusiastically waved in and led to a mooring buoy by
chris doyle
ible acrobatic skills. We enjoyed watching the kite
surfers do their thing, and my kids even scored a ride
on the back of one of these local thrill seekers as they
skimmed effortlessly across the water.
When our time came to leave the island, Erin and I
readied the boat as we normally do. Perhaps we were
overconfident or unaware, or maybe we just didn’t
take our situation into consideration. The wind had
piped up to about 20 knots. Usually, I work the front
of the boat, anchoring, snubbing or tying off/releasing
mooring lines, while Erin helms. As I released the
mooring lines, our inexperience showed. The wind
caught the wrong side of the bow and was now blowing
the nose of the boat in the opposite direction from
where we wanted to go.
december 2019 CARIBBEAN COMPAss pAGE 26
bought a boat, sight unseen, on the other side of the
world. We flew to Grenada, lived on the hard for six
weeks as I performed the necessary repairs, and then
triumphantly splashed her. Not wanting to let something
as petty as fear get in the way of a great adventure,
we dove in headfirst, learning how to motor, sail,
anchor, upgrade and repair our yacht. With any new
venture there will always be mistakes, and we made
plenty of them. From dragging anchors to overheated
engines, scrapes in gelcoat to flat batteries, the school
of hard knocks was in session.
one of the guys who help you pick up a mooring for a
small fee. It is possible to anchor here; however, there
was not a lot of room among all the other boats and we
were happy to take a ball.
Not knowing the anchorage, we were a little surprised
to be surrounded on three sides by shallow
reefs; the boat boy had put us on the outermost
mooring ball. The location was amazing, though.
Union Island is a kite surfing mecca; with beautiful
clear flat blue water behind the reef, many boarders
come here to learn the sport or show off their incred-
Above: ‘You can’t let a bruised ego get in the way
of a good time.’
Left: Protected by reefs, Clifton Harbour in the
Grenadines offers calm water and no lack of breeze.
This shouldn’t have been too much of a problem; we
would just have to reverse out of our position. As I
yelled to Erin to put the engine in reverse, we started
moving backwards a few metres under power. I was
hopeful we could perform a three-point turn and head
to safety — until the engine died.
For a second I froze.
The brisk wind quickly blew our boat into the shallow
water not far behind us. By the time we figured out
what had happened, turned the windlass circuit
breaker on and started to deploy the anchor, the boat
drifted onto the reef and we were aground.
—Continued on next page