Well, we won’t forget December 7th 2009 because on that day we were anchored in San Diego bay and experienced a huge winter gale. I will leave it to David to come along and tell the story of the storm. The quick synopsis is that there were 8 boats in the anchorage when it started and within 40 minutes 4 had drug anchor and hit the lee shore. We were among the other four–thank God and good ground tackle.

We had 16 hours of tense, tense anchor watching.

Before all the excitement, when the first boats started dragging I took a couple pics. This was all right before noon. The first one picture above makes me want to cry. It is a boat that the owner bought just 3 weeks ago to rebuild. He has been frantically working on it in these weeks. In the pic, you see the San Diego Harbor Police in front of him as he is being pushed by the wind onto the shore. Right before I took this pic, he was on the bow with a line to throw, begging them to take it. They would not–I called the harbor police dispatcher when taking the pic and he said they “were not allowed to assist” unless it was life threatening. They could not help save the boat. 20 minutes later, BoatUS Vessel Assist showed up and watched a power boat drag anchor into this one and then both go onto shore. It was so very sad to see two boats–the Vessel Assist tow boat and the Police boat both stand by and watch the boats go aground.

The second picture is of the big commercial ship Ocean Lady dragging her anchor towards the USCG station and the east end of our anchorage. She went aground just about maybe 60 ft further.

The photo below is of a boat that, with the wind shift from S to W right before sunset we ended up being 10 to 15 ft in front of for many hours-fearful that we would drag a bit and hit them. You can see the power boat that dragged anchor on the left.

Many boaters in the San Diego area were devastated by the winds. We are thankful that we came thru with only the loss of one life vest that blew overboard. Many others lost so much.

+++ edited to add this link to a different boat’s pics of the storm