I took this photo a few days ago, looking straight down over the side. How deep do you think the water is? Just about five feet. Our keel is five feet, ten inches deep. Notice the black mark on the sand. That's paint from our keel.
We had anchored the day before in an unusual position. A broad, shallow sand bank blocked us from anchoring near a particular motu (a small peripheral island in an atoll). At high tide, the bank was just deep enough for us, but not at low tide. This bank dropped abruptly into very deep water, so we nosed over the bank at high tide, dropped the hook, and let the wind set us back into deeper water. These being the Trade Winds (i.e. pretty constant), and having checked the immediate forecast, I felt secure. What I failed to consider is that rain squalls can stop, or even reverse the wind briefly. Well, we had some showers during the night, and one of them reversed the wind at just the wrong moment as the tide was ebbing. I woke up about five a.m. to find us firmly aground and healing over about five degrees. Bother. You can't fry eggs with the stove not level. Oh, well, Robyn had made some banana bread the day before, and coffee doesn't require a level stove. Not to worry, we had just enough time for a crossword puzzle each before we floated off with the rising tide.
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