It is very early in the morning; Betty is on the way from bed to kitchen - Bang - Betty first thinks of an earthquake, but since we are not anymore in San Francisco and since earthquakes are rare on water it must be something else.

A large freighter was tied up for the night in front of us, just waiting to head over to the other side of the river to load grain in the morning. A two person crew, husband and wife; I'm not going to say who was on the wheel and who was handling the ropes. Anyway the ropes were let go and it seems the person at the wheel was distracted by some down-stream traffic and did not realize that were were behind. Turning the wheel at the last moment made things go by without greater damage. The aft anchor of the freighter briefly caught our anchor and within an instant our spring lines became our forward lines and our forward lines became garbage.

I never made it from bed to wheelhouse as fast as that morning; even in Pajamas I was able to find the key to turn on the engine.