Second Chance 42: The fun of a new boat...

Time for an update. Kurt and Eva have returned home, just in time before the "bad" weather started. Bad weather meaning wind from the North, quite cool (23C), overcast, some rain. But I'm enjoying the life on board regardless. After Kurt and Eva left, we reconnected with the couple from South Africa that we met the morning of the Next Life catastrophe, Glynn and Peter. It's always fun to get together with them.
Anyway, I wanted to write about the "fun of a new boat". Things break, of course. On a boat you can bet that something different breaks all the time. For weeks now we have been waiting for replacement parts, among others for our fresh water pump. While it's still working somewhat, we know it's only a matter of days before it'll give up completely and that would mean no more running water and thus no more showers. Please no!
But, the most amazing thing for a new boat happened the other day: We were about to set anchor at Sanddollar beach across from George Town, not having left this general area since we arrived. There's no need, we like it here. The water at Sanddollar beach is slightly deeper than in all the other areas of the Bahamas we've been to so far, so we not only needed the full length of the anchor chain, but also part of the rope that's attached to the anchor chain. When we had set the anchor, I looked at the splicing of the rope (where it attaches to the chain) and it didn't look good. Rolf check it out, too and agreed, but there was no way he could fix it the way it was at that point. For that, we needed to take more chain back in again. Long story short, that's when the rope detached from the chain and all we were able to do was watch the chain disappear in the water ... Now we were floating without an anchor, the heavy chain 5m/15feet below us attached to the very heavy (and nicely set) anchor. Great! Rolf wanted us to try to rake up the chain with the little dinghy anchor to pull it back on board, but that didn't work. By then we had been floating in circles for some time and other boaters became aware that we were having some kind of problem. Mind you, we do have an extra anchor for the boat, but you don't just give up on the real thing. Anyway, we got some help, two guys started snorkelling back and forth over where our chain was supposed to be while their wives directed their dinghies around the area. It took about an hour (at least that's what it felt like) before they could locate the chain, even though we had set a waypoint to mark the spot where we lost it. The water was kind of murky and the sand here is so soft, the chain had already partially vanished. Long story short, they were able to pick up the chain, bring it back onto the boat where Rolf now spliced the rope to the anchor the proper way. It'll hold now, I'm sure. Later that day, we invited the helpful couples over for snacks and drinks. That's when they told us they couldn't believe when they saw what we were doing: They had missed the start of the action and actually thought we were trying to anchor our big catamaran with a small dinghy anchor! They said to themselves that, yes, it looks like a new boat and those guys might be a little inexperienced, but they cannot possibly be that dumb. They must be stoned or drunk...!
So, that's the fun of having a new boat (guess it'll be the same for an old one, but it would just be more likely I would think...). Anyway, got our adrenaline up, got it down again and spent a really nice evening with the couples from Freebird and Runaway. Thanks, guys!