Sunday, August 17, 2008

Meydenbauer Bay to Andrews Bay – South Lake Washington August 8th, 2008

We left Meydenbauer Bay and headed further south to an area called Andrews Bay. It was very peaceful and we anchored out along with about six other boats. About an hour later the number of boats anchored has increased significantly and there must have been around twenty boats anchored by the time the sun set. In the wee hours of the morning, we had another experience of things going bump in the night. About 3am I heard a noise off our aft port side. It sounded like when the dinghy runs into the swim deck if we have any wind of current and have tied the dinghy to the stern of the boat. The only problem with this noise is that our dingy was up on the boat out of the water. I threw on my PJs and headed up to the salon, I opened the side door on the starboard side and did not see anything so I walked around the front deck over to the port side and saw a small 20 foot boat drifting away. It seems they had glanced of our stern, as they were drifting by. I went on the aft deck to grab the boat hook in case I needed to push them away again. Now, I am thinking I could use some help so I pounded on the aft deck above our stateroom to wake Alexus and Bruce. Bruce was up first and the small boat was about 15 feet off our stern. We tried waking someone by shining flashlights through the windows, but to no avail. The boat began drifting further away, fairly quickly, and we were concerned it would run into four boats that had anchored and rafted up nearby. Somehow, it managed to miss those boats but kept drifting. We were not sure who to call as it was an inland water and earlier we had seen a Seattle Police boat on the water, so I called 911 and asked for the Lake Washington Marine Police. They transferred me and I gave the best description I could of the vessel and they took our phone number to have someone call us back. They did call back and we gave the description again and said they would launch a boat. We continued to watch the small boat drift further and further, by now it was ½ to ¾ of a mile away. We saw the police boat with it’s red and blue flashing lights come onto the lake and make its way toward the drifting boat. By now all three of us have been up for about an hour and were wondering if we would be able to get back to sleep. As the drifting boat returned to the anchorage area Bruce and Alexus tried to get their attention to be sure they would still be there in the morning so we could see if there was any damage to NuMoon. The folks in the boat were pretty rude and moved further south into the bay to re-anchor. We all decided after all that excitement it was too early to be up and retired to bed. The next morning we checked NuMoon and did not find any marks or damage. It was a fairly small boat and the current is not strong enough to generate any real speed, but you can still drift quite a distance when being blown by the wind.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

More excitement! It seems to go on and on! :-)

Mom