I thought crossing the ocean would be the scary part of this sailing adventure, but it turns out anchoring in the Caribbean is much scarier. We had an early morning encounter with the Sea Legend that left us shaking all over. I am not talking about some mythical sea creature who swallows sailboats whole, I am talking about a very real threat to cruisers that is  currently roaming the Caribbean. Sea Legend is a 115ft motor yacht with a scarily incompetent captain and crew, that nearly ploughed into us TWICE while we were at anchor this morning. They  were anchored next to us overnight, then when the wind picked up in the morning, they swung around, coming to within ten feet of hitting our bow. All they had to say  to me was “get out a fender”! When it happened a second time, we shouted at them. The captain assured us there was no need to get excited, he was a qualified 50-ton captain and he had it all under control. To which all we could say was “if you have it under control, why are you within 10 feet of my bow, AGAIN! Fortunately, we weren’t actually hit, but we watched vigilantly as they executed the sloppiest departure we have ever seen.

This is what Sea Legend is supposed to look like:

And this is what she looked like to us when we were standing on our bow:

Way too close for comfort!

(note: photos are from their website – we were too busy saving our boat to take our own)

And that was our second near-miss encounter with a charter yacht this week. While we were anchored off Anegada, a large catamaran came charging into the mooring field after dark,with all their lights ablaze, including the ones in the cockpit. We were sitting quietly in our cockpit enjoying our after-dinner drinks when we realized he was headed straight for us – did he not see us? Our anchor light, high on the mast, was on, but no interior lights as we had been sitting up in the cockpit since before dark. As I saw his navigation lights bearing rapidly down on us I jumped up and turned on our cockpit lights, at which point he executed a sharp  90 degree turn, narrowly avoiding us. That captain had obviously not seen us, probably blinded by his own lights. Another close encounter with a scary sea monster, a.k.a. Charter Yacht. 

Cruisers Beware!