having several pumps because of my experience of running up onto the reef at the entrance of Puerto Platta in the Dominican Republic. Luckily, it wasn't my boat but my friends that I was buddy boating with. We had left Cuba and sailed through the Windward Passage around Haiti working our way towards the Virgin Islands but were separated during some bad weather in the Passage. He arrived at Puerto Platta 2 hours ahead of me and as I had the chart of the harbor (way pre GPS) he should have waited but decided to go on in. He got some bad information from someone inside and ended up missing the channel in the dark and landed on the reef under the old Spanish Fort. He got an anchor down which spun him around facing the waves but took a hell of a beating. The rudder was driven up and out of the lower gudgeon and bent off to the side from the bouncing. When I arrived I found the range markers and had my crew stand off while I took my surfboard over to my friends boat. By that time he had contracted with a fishing boat in the harbor to come out and pull him off. I assisted in retrieving in the heaving line with my surfboard and then we pulled in the tow line. It took the fishing boat three pulls to get us off and while doing so ripped the Danforth anchor out of it chocks when the tow line swept across the bow. It fell in front of the boat and we dragged right across it punching a hole in the hull that the reef hadn't. We were taking on water through that hole and the hole from the anchor as well as along the side where the fiberglass hull had been breached. It was a lot of water but he had several spare pumps that we were able to hard wire to the batteries with portable hoses. We were able to save the boat with a lot of work but his redundant and spare bilge pumps were certainly a key factor.