After a week at anchor, it was time to head back to Salty Sam’s for the week. I had to take a business trip to Dallas and Wendy decided to head home to get our taxes and other things done.

We waited for the tide to come up as much as possible and weighed anchor at about 2:30 PM. With Wendy’s broken wrist, we changed roles. She took the helm and I managed the anchor. As I pulled up the anchor, it was really struggling to come off the bottom. When I finally got it up enough, I saw why… we had someone else’s chain laying on top of our rode.

I secured the anchor, grabbed a boat hook, and reached over the side to pull the chain off. Once that was clear, I could get the anchor the rest of the way up. Unfortunately, it looked like that chain had sawed through our anchor rode. The rode was terribly frayed. I am very thankful that it did not break loose. Our rode, however, had met the end of its line. We ordered a replacement to be shipped to Salty Sam’s and replaced it the next weekend.

The trip to Salty Sam’s was uneventful. We caught glimpses of a manatee and a dolphin, but that’s about it. We got back to our same slip and tied up for another week at what now feels like our home marina in Florida.