I promised to send you any interesting incidents we encountered when using our new Spade 100 anchor on our Moody 46 in the Mediterranean.
On the night of Wednesday May 21st., the night of the Algerian earthquake, we were securely anchored in the cove of Porto Petro on the south east coast of Mallorca in the Balearic Islands in hard sand and sea grass – our most difficult anchoring type of bottom.
At about 21.30 or so the eleven boats in our anchorage started wild gyrations as a bore of water came racing out of the nearby marina. Yachts started tearing past us as they dragged their anchors and then came racing back again as the surge of water came back into the cove (or Cala as they are named in the Balearics) from out at sea.
We found out over the VHF that this frightening happening was caused by the severe earthquake 150 miles away in Algeria. For two hours were were swirled violently in all directions, but, our new Spade 100 held firm and did not drag one iota. We know this as we were monitoring our anchoring position electronically as other yachts dragged all over the place. We could only start the engine and steer around the anchor in order to avoid the other boats most of which were totally out of control.
We came through this frightening night unscathed thanks to our trusty Spade which stood up to its severest test yet, unmoved. Other yachts were not so lucky as we understand since that there was quite a lot of damage in the coves and marinas in the Balearic Islands that night. Hope this information is of interest to you. As far as we could tell we were the only boat using a Spade anchor that night.