There was one thing that worried me. During the anchor retrieval the day before, while bringing in more than 50meters of heavy chain, dangling under us, with two heavy archors, working with a feeble manual winch... I looked into the half empty chain locker and noticed that the end of the chain was welded to the boat.
This topic had been dicussed on board a few weeks before, during one of the Yachmaster instructions. The instruction books teached that anchor and chain should allways be sacrificial. That is, you have be able to let the hook go, if you must. A compleetely agreeable instruction, I thought. I had been through situations where it was best to strip a marker buoy to the cable or chain, let go, and pick it up again later.
Yet, he disagreed, and expressively warned us against that. I felt compelled to mention arguments that spoke for the instructions that were given in the book. He didn't like that, and, starting to put his experience into the game, he pointed towards the little bulkhead plate saying: "The Captain is allways right!". Accepting this clear argument, we settled it. The matter would come back to facts, eventually.
And, as allways, the sun came back, and suddenly the menacing rocks and volcanic slopes were illuminated with bright light from a blue sky. Palms, white sand and a cold jump into the Pacific water! This was Polinesian sand. Moais greeted ominously. Despite all, I was happy, and tired.
This images was not taken by me. I copied it from the Easter Island home page. I didn't have an eletronic camera back then. I have digitalized only a few of mine. Some shown in the posts.
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