Our anchoring adventure took place a few years ago as my family and I were nearing the end of a weeklong bareboat charter along the west coast of Florida. With me was my wife, Diane, our son and three of his high school classmates. The boys were all age 16 and inexperienced sailors. We had scheduled the charter out of St. Petersburg during the boys’ spring vacation.
Our Moorings charter boat was the Beneteau 51 monohull, Loo-sha Lady, with four berths and two heads. She was an older but clean and well-appointed boat that the Moorings was chartering out of its Florida base at the time.
We had traveled south uneventfully in good weather as
