I had only anchored a few times before I met Indigo. Never having anchored overnight, I was excited to take her downtown and have a romantic night anchored off of Waterfront Park. Perfect wind! Too bad we had to drop sail for the bridges.

After waiting patiently for 4 bridges to lift, we made it from the Columbia to the downtown waterfront on the Willamette. In the calmest, most protected spot a sailor could find, I threw down our little danforth. I had read briefly about scope and knew to let out more than the depth of water we planned to anchor in…. but what was that ratio again? Ehh, 10 feet of water, no wind, calm river, 25 ft. should do it, right? WRONG!  Displaying a level of confidence befitting an old salt, I let out 25 ft of rode and reversed on it until I felt we were securely in the ground. After a wonderful dinner and sunset, we headed below for a sound night of sleep. In the morning I awoke to a large wake rocking the boat and hopped out of bed to see a police boat roaring out of sight. After a quick check of our reference points, I was overjoyed to see that our anchor had not moved an inch. Our first night at anchor had been a success! About 10 minutes later, we were interrupted from some morning “activities” by a slow, knocking sound coming from our stern. I leapt up…naked, my heart pounding, and saw, to my horror, that we had drifted into another sailboat and were gently knocking hulls, the sound being magnified throughout our fiberglass shell. Apparently, a 2:1 ratio is not sufficient if the water you’re in plans to move at all.  The wake had lifted our anchor right out of the soft ground and left us adrift until it wrapped into the stern anchor line of our only neighbor in the anchorage. We were just upriver from the Burnside Bridge, who’s height was less than the height of our mast.  If we had not caught on this other boat’s anchor line, we would have surely drifted into the bridge and possibly lost our mast, resulting in a much more terrifying sound than the knocking of two boats.  Hastily putting on pants, I went outside to amend the situation. After an exhausting effort from Indigo and I, we were able to free the anchor and head over to the public dock. Luckily neither of our boats were damaged and we were able to get a hold of the skipper later to explain what happened. Fun fact: that stern anchor that held two boats was a homemade contraption of his, consisting of sections of rebar shoved through a 5 gallon bucket filled with cement. This was a hard way to learn an important lesson but after a lot of research and practice, we are happy to report that we’ve had hundreds of carefree nights at anchor. Other than dragging anchor, there are various things that can go wrong at anchor. To hear about our first hand experiences with some of these less expected incidents, stay on the lookout for Fair Winds Ahead!