Since we know it'll be at least a couple weeks before the New Zealand trip becomes feasible, we decided to sail on down to Makogai for a few days. The weather isn't ideal at the moment for this trip so we just sailed to Cousteau's resort and dropped anchor there for now until the weather clears up. It is much easier to leave from anchor than it is from a dock and this will shave a half hour from our trip to Makogai.
When we arrived at Cousteau's, we were the only boat in this big beautiful bay. However, shortly after some complete jackass motors up and drops his anchor right beside ours. He was close enough that we could speak without yelling. This is similar to walking in on a bathroom from full urinals with one guy using one of them, and you step up and use the one right next to him. It's also really dangerous because boats swing around their anchors in a circle with changing winds/current. Boats of different sizes/weights swing at different speeds, so obviously they can collide.
We yell over to the guy to move his damn boat, but he responded that it's okay and that he'll keep an eye on everything, then proceeds to crack open a beer and put his feet up. It was an old, salty, white guy with a big beard and a bunch of local kids. Also, he dropped his anchor upwind of us, so if his anchor slipped, he'd come drifting right into us.
Well it wasn't long before the well-forecasted storm hit us (this guy obviously didnt check the weather). Winds were hitting up to 30 knots and the calm bay turned into a wave pool. The wind was changing direction wildly too, so this idiot's boat was swinging around like Miley Cyrus on a wrecking ball and coming within 10 feet of our boat (ours is much heavier and so was moving less). In addition, his anchor chain wrapped itself around a chunk of reef and was stuck. So there he was desperately trying to pull his anchor up on the bow while he's got some little girl behind the wheel trying to avoid colliding with our boat while unwrapping his anchor chain from the reef. It looked like his windlass was broken too, because he appeared to be pulling the chain up by hand.
I am up on the bow this whole time in the rain and gusting wind with a boat hook in one hand and a fender in the other just waiting to fend off his 15 ton boat if it ever did collide with ours. They kept giving me these stupid smiles and waving at me as if everything was alright.
He eventually got the anchor up and took off with no damage to our boat. We all slept more soundly that night knowing he was gone.
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