Anchor Diving with ZERO

Possibly my favourite aspect to cruising under sail is the people you meet and the cruising community. Imagine a group of people who share the same passions, have little to no money and encounter all the same problems you do. It means everyone is incredibly open, friendly and helpful. To illustrate my point I'm going to tell you about how I lost our anchor (for the second time but that's another story) and the attempts to recover it with a little help from our friends.  

We spent the last week in Cabo San Lucas anchored just outside the marina (80$ a night if you want to go in!). This anchorage was a bit tough because of its depth and the swimming areas near the beach. We wanted to get as close as possible to the beach so we could swim ashore without getting hit by the swarms of jet skis or penga taxi boats. So we set two anchors, one to keep us close and one to keep us from ending up on the beach if the wind turned. In the process I tied a length of line to the anchor chain using a knot I had read was good for that. I must've misread or done it wrong because when it came to lifting the anchor there was no chain on the end of it! (Double sheet bend is for line to line only!) Luckily the wind hadn't shifted or we would've ended up on the beach! 

Since we were leaving to meet with our friends Marie and Victor in Santa Maria Bay we decided to leave it and come back to recover it in a couple of days. Two days later we anchored with our secondary anchor about where we thought it was. I freedived down to see if I could find it but quickly gave up, way too deep! We cracked a beer and started  discussing how to get it back, the anchor and chain is worth about 1500$! We could pay a diver but we knew that would cost loads or we could try trailing a big hook around to see if we catch it but what we both really wanted, the ideal situation, would be to just meet some cool people who happen to have diving gear onboard. 

That evening ZERO, a 50 foot ketch flying a German flag anchored up just next to us. The next morning they hollered across to us "come round for a sundowner!". At this point we had almost resigned ourselves to losing the anchor for good, more tax claimed by Posiedon. We went over and after a few beers we started telling them about our sunken treasure and sure enough they immediately told us they had dive gear and would be happy to help us find it the next day! We didn't even have a chance to ask! 

That night we all went out in Cabo and later had drinks back on Lacuna until late. Marie, Victor and their friend Benjamin also joined us so it was a party with eight people crammed onboard! 

The next morning Christian and his brother Frank rowed over with all their gear. Frank was a bit worse for wear from the night before so wasn't keen to dive so I offered to go down with Christian. We faced a few problems; we didn't really know exactly where to look, it was very deep (we ended up going a bit too deep at 37m) which meant the tanks only lasted 10 min on the bottom and it was dark and freezing down there! So we came back up unsuccessful, because of how hard it was I was pretty sure the anchor was lost, we gave it our best shot! We also didn't want to waste any more of our new friends time so didn't ask to try again but later that evening Frank offered to give it another shot with me the next morning. 

This time Max studied our tracks on the gps from when we had been on anchor and worked out where he thought it was most likely to be. We dinghyed over there to save air and because orientation at the bottom is pretty difficult (we had a compass but you can't really swim to a specific spot). We weren't even sure how deep this spot was, we were just hoping we would hit bottom before our maximum depth of 35m. 

Frank and I started to descend, I'll admit it was pretty spooky, looking down all you can see is total darkness and your fins slowly sinking down into it. So instead I looked up towards the surface, occasionally checking my dive watch to see our depth. At about 20m I decided to look down in case we were close to the bottom, an enormous sea lion chose that moment to swim out of the blackness and right by my legs! I jumped and bubbles went everywhere but it was gone before I really even registered it. Heart pumping we continued down. At 25m we still couldn't see the bottom and I was worried it would be too deep but then as we hit 30 we could see the sand and sat there, just under our feet, was the anchor! I honestly couldn't believe it and was certain it was someone else's or just our secondary I was seeing. Sure enough it was ours! We had a little dance and high fives, tied a line to it and started making our way to the surface. 

That night we invited ZERO over to celebrate and went all out! Not this time Posiedon! All that to say, when you're out travelling, especially sailing, I have found that by simply being friendly and trying to meet the people around you great things happen! Luckily we were able to do something small to repay the favour since Frank was lacking a good life jacket, something we had spare. 

Thanks ZERO and hope the crossing to Hawaii is going well! 

Check them out at www.sy-zero.de