Saturday morning, March 20, we were sitting around at anchor over near Pine Island having b'fast when a sailboat larger than ours just goes drifting by within 50 feet of us and a half dozen other sailboats that had spent the night there along the mangroves. It looked like it was dragging its anchor badly, so we tried to hail it . . . no answer; no one appeared on deck; and there was no dinghy attached. Nan & I hopped in our dink and chased it down. I climbed on board after banging on the hull for a minute or two. The cabin was open and I discovered that its anchor rode had been severed, so it was indeed drifting for disaster. I quickly deployed a secondary anchor that they had on the bow. Not wanting to go down below and discover a dead body or something, we copied the pertinent info off of "Gypsy Star's" hull and reported her coordinates and the situation to the US Coast Guard by radio from our boat.
We're really not claiming salvage rights, even though we could. We were just doing something that we'd hope other sailors would do for Summer Breeze under the same circumstances. We called the Coast Guard later in the day to see what was happening. They weren't willing to say anything except that they're taking care of it. I was hoping that John & Moppie were snapping pictures of this epic sea rescue in progress, but alas, the only pic we have is post-rescue.
Now that's a fun breakfast!
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