By Rich

We had a couple of nice days in the outer anchorage of Vineyard Haven last week – apart from the ferry noise and wakes beginning at 6 am every day. The forecast for Friday night, however showed a strong breeze building from the east-northeast. Looking at the way the harbor is oriented, we figured we would have some beam swell from waves hooking around the shoreline but nothing worse. The forecast was off, however, and in reality we had 20-25 knots of wind from the north northeast. It was a sleepless night capped by by a 3-4 am anchor watch to be be sure the swells didn’t yank our Rocna out of the bottom. Here were the conditions when we got up, which had lightened considerably from the 3-4 am period:

Realizing we weren’t going to have a very good day for napping, we decided to pull into Lagoon Pond. Here were the conditions in Lagoon Pond:

Lagoon Pond was crazy scenic too. Lesson learned! No more outside anchorage for us at Vineyard Haven! Other lesson learned: our Rocna kicks ass.