By Captain Hank Munnikhuysen, CO, (’59-’61)
Virginia Beach, Va.
Regarding the stern anchor situation. It seems that the navigator and quartermaster each figured out the distance the stern anchor should be let go. The first one marked the sport on the chart. Unfortunately, the other one thought the mark was the final position at the beach, and added his calculation to the other. That doubled the let-go distance.
Needless to say, we ran out of cable, and fortunately no one was hurt when the end came flying off. Obviously, we couldn’t stop the ship.
Our beaching was fine. The Marines conducted some sort of unloading training out the bow doors on the beach. While that was going on, Barry Sutton, RD3, and McCoy, SM2, and many others (including the Navigator and his assistant) were involved in successfully locating and recovering the anchor cable.
When the beach training exercise was completed, we backed off, reconnected the cable to the drum, and reeled in the anchor as if nothing had gone wrong!
Unfortunately, I cannot remember names and other details; but I sure appreciated the efforts of all concerned. It was just like we had planned it that way.