Overwhelmed by water
13 July 2009
Bristol
Overwhelmed by water
Here’s a quote from today’s Indie:
“Ten divers and two crewmen had a lucky escape when they were rescued from their sinking boat. The divers were set to dive in waters off Bolt Head, South Hams, near Plymouth, when their boat became overwhelmed by water yesterday.”
It’s an odd use of the word 'overwhelmed', but I think I know what they mean. I felt overwhelmed by water during our last day out with Snork Maiden on 27 June. We left Ile d’Oleron with a plan to sail back to the Sevre Niortaise (the river leading up to our port of Marans) and spend the night on a waiting buoy, ready to pass into the lock at 1030 the next morning. The river and its estuary are hugely tidal, and it’s necessary to reach the buoy marking the estuary channel approach on time - two hours before high water. Calculations made, we left Boyardville around 10 am catching the open tidal gate about an hour and a half after HW. We had plenty of time to spare, so went to the buoys off Boyardville beach and had lunch, lazed around, waited for the afternoon breeze and then took off in the general direction of La Rochelle. We had little luck with the wind more or less on the nose. We made a reasonable course to windward, but the hoped-for shift never came, and mid-afternoon found us debating whether to go into La Rochelle one last time, or to put the motor on and head for our rendezvous with ATT (the Aguillon safe water buoy). By this time we had used up our decision time, and applied ¾ throttle to motor at around 4.5 Knots. We passed the buoy promptly at 1800, and all should have been plane sailing from there on.
The channel is not too hard to follow, and by the time we reached the upper part of the river, it was a beautiful evening with birdsong, fields of bleached corn - as bucolic as it comes. There are a few buoys just downstream of the lifting bridge - it lifts in synchrony with the Bruallt lock, to allow boats to enter and exit around HW during daylight hours. There’s only one buoy that isn’t broken in the area close to the bridge on the starboard bank, and that was occupied. There are a couple of others, but the water seemed too shallow at 15 feet or so (our depth gauge is steadfastly Imperial, in feet and fathoms). There is a tidal drop of around 2.5 metres, so that means we have, hmmm, about 5 feet of water left… (We draw 5ft = 1.52 metres.) I am suddenly a bit less confident about this decision, and Al asks me how I knew we had enough depth. I say, a bit weakly, ‘I just know.’ Well, nobody is going to take that for much of an answer, so Al, being somebody, gets on the phone to the lock keeper (they are almost on first-name terms by now, so often has he checked the lock times) and asks about the depth. The lock keeper asks how much water we have now, what we draw, then consults some oracle, and says we should be all right for the night. We just about have time to turn tail and run for the sea, but we don’t, opting to stay the night in this very pretty place. After all, the worst that can happen to us is that we sink gently into the mud for a few centimetres (or inches if you are of the Imperial persuasion). So we thought.
Low water was 0200, so I stayed awake, periodically looking at the depth meter, shining a torch on the ever-approaching bank (we woke the snoozing ducklings) and now and again slept nervously until that critical time was past. Or so I thought. We settled, as predicted. I checked the mooring buoy - all fine.
I go back to sleep, soundly now, until Al woke me around 0400 to tell me the boat was tilting, and did I want to have a look. I did. I put my sailing jacket on and went out to see a roiling, boiling whirlpool on the upstream side of the boat, away from the current. The poor Snork Maiden was trapped between her mooring buoy, on the upstream side, and the pushing current on the downstream side - the force of the incoming tide shoving her sideways. It was not nice. The water streamed past at what looked like a good 5 knots, and the whirlpool effect was probably caused by the yacht’s underwater profile. The noise was quite disturbing, and the power of the water undeniable. It was quite different from any of the river experiences we’ve had before. I added the lifejacket and harness to the sailing jacket and checked the buoy once more. It looked robust, with a strong welded metal loop and a steel bolt fastening it to what lay beneath (hopefully a big lump of concrete). I put a second mooring line on, slacker than the first so it wouldn’t rub, and so that the second would hold if the first gave way. Al, having dome his bit as watchdog, went back to bed while I read my book, listened to the water, monitored the rise of the tide, and hoped that nothing bad had happened. By 0800 a few more boats had arrived full of sensible people who had anchored somewhere quiet, or spent the evening eating seafood in La Rochelle. Their boats obediently turned their bows to the stream, but Snork Maiden remained obstinately and ungracefully stuck crossways in the river. We hoped that she would break free from her entrapment, and swing to the tide, but it was not to be! And now the wind was in the game, blowing from the East and opposing the tide.
At around 10.00 the bridge began to lift to let the upstream boats out. There were several of these, since there had been some sort of vintage boat rally the day before in Marans. This complicated things, since some vessels were under sail, and therefore all over the place. We decided to start the engine, and wait until everyone else had got clear before casting off. By now we were expecting the unexpected! Actually, nothing bad did happen - we just slipped away from the buoy, and made full-speed ahead for the bridge. By now we were well in the rear of the small flotilla, and I was terrified that the bridge was going to close before we could get through. Fortunately a human bridge keeper grinned at us, and waited. (Speculate, dear reader, on what it must be like to have a job that only demands that you be at your post twice a day for about half-an-hour!)
The lock went smoothly. We were rafted on the lock pontoon with three other boats, including a couple of people we had met before, including Jaques, from Marans, and another bloke with a very loud voice who we had locked through with last year.
Given all the things that can go wrong, none of them did, and there was a lot of companionable chatting about future sailing plans and destinations
Soon we were out and into the canal. We were met by M.Coindeau, looking less impassive than usual as he skidded around in an aluminium skiff. He told us the harbour was pretty full, but if he could, he would find us a place on an empty finger pontoon. He skidded off, leaving us to the herons, the ducks and jumping fish as we ambled up to what we now think of as our homeport. Twenty minutes later he was back to shepherd us in. Snork Maiden is back home, at least for a while.
The river adventure was scary, but in hindsight, there was no danger apart from the obvious one of being swept away. But the boat is uneasy, and stressed in those conditions - not something I’d like to repeat. I had faith that the waiting buoys would have depth, but hadn’t checked this - it would have been easy enough to have put the question to the lock-keeper the previous day. When I re-checked our pilot book and almanacs, there was only one piece of information, and that said that the moorings were good for 1.2 m. Now that is a generality, and if we had re-read this we might have taken a view that we could have let the keel settle the remaining 30 cms and not minded too much. It was a lesson in river tides that we’ll be bearing in mind for the future - and more generally, not to take rivers for granted - ever.
Now we’re home and talking about future sailing plans - more soon.
Now if you find you forget to check out the adventures of the Snork Maiden, you can use an RSS feed to deliver them to you. (I know some of you do.)
About RSS - this is a way to get yourself automatic updates from sites that interest you, but that update intermittently - like my blog, heh heh!
I use Google:
http://www.google.com/reader
but there are many more.
You can also add Picasa albums in the same way.
http://picasaweb.google.com/wikidrat/SNORKMAIDEN2009#
Bristol
Overwhelmed by water
Here’s a quote from today’s Indie:
“Ten divers and two crewmen had a lucky escape when they were rescued from their sinking boat. The divers were set to dive in waters off Bolt Head, South Hams, near Plymouth, when their boat became overwhelmed by water yesterday.”
It’s an odd use of the word 'overwhelmed', but I think I know what they mean. I felt overwhelmed by water during our last day out with Snork Maiden on 27 June. We left Ile d’Oleron with a plan to sail back to the Sevre Niortaise (the river leading up to our port of Marans) and spend the night on a waiting buoy, ready to pass into the lock at 1030 the next morning. The river and its estuary are hugely tidal, and it’s necessary to reach the buoy marking the estuary channel approach on time - two hours before high water. Calculations made, we left Boyardville around 10 am catching the open tidal gate about an hour and a half after HW. We had plenty of time to spare, so went to the buoys off Boyardville beach and had lunch, lazed around, waited for the afternoon breeze and then took off in the general direction of La Rochelle. We had little luck with the wind more or less on the nose. We made a reasonable course to windward, but the hoped-for shift never came, and mid-afternoon found us debating whether to go into La Rochelle one last time, or to put the motor on and head for our rendezvous with ATT (the Aguillon safe water buoy). By this time we had used up our decision time, and applied ¾ throttle to motor at around 4.5 Knots. We passed the buoy promptly at 1800, and all should have been plane sailing from there on.
The channel is not too hard to follow, and by the time we reached the upper part of the river, it was a beautiful evening with birdsong, fields of bleached corn - as bucolic as it comes. There are a few buoys just downstream of the lifting bridge - it lifts in synchrony with the Bruallt lock, to allow boats to enter and exit around HW during daylight hours. There’s only one buoy that isn’t broken in the area close to the bridge on the starboard bank, and that was occupied. There are a couple of others, but the water seemed too shallow at 15 feet or so (our depth gauge is steadfastly Imperial, in feet and fathoms). There is a tidal drop of around 2.5 metres, so that means we have, hmmm, about 5 feet of water left… (We draw 5ft = 1.52 metres.) I am suddenly a bit less confident about this decision, and Al asks me how I knew we had enough depth. I say, a bit weakly, ‘I just know.’ Well, nobody is going to take that for much of an answer, so Al, being somebody, gets on the phone to the lock keeper (they are almost on first-name terms by now, so often has he checked the lock times) and asks about the depth. The lock keeper asks how much water we have now, what we draw, then consults some oracle, and says we should be all right for the night. We just about have time to turn tail and run for the sea, but we don’t, opting to stay the night in this very pretty place. After all, the worst that can happen to us is that we sink gently into the mud for a few centimetres (or inches if you are of the Imperial persuasion). So we thought.
Low water was 0200, so I stayed awake, periodically looking at the depth meter, shining a torch on the ever-approaching bank (we woke the snoozing ducklings) and now and again slept nervously until that critical time was past. Or so I thought. We settled, as predicted. I checked the mooring buoy - all fine.
I go back to sleep, soundly now, until Al woke me around 0400 to tell me the boat was tilting, and did I want to have a look. I did. I put my sailing jacket on and went out to see a roiling, boiling whirlpool on the upstream side of the boat, away from the current. The poor Snork Maiden was trapped between her mooring buoy, on the upstream side, and the pushing current on the downstream side - the force of the incoming tide shoving her sideways. It was not nice. The water streamed past at what looked like a good 5 knots, and the whirlpool effect was probably caused by the yacht’s underwater profile. The noise was quite disturbing, and the power of the water undeniable. It was quite different from any of the river experiences we’ve had before. I added the lifejacket and harness to the sailing jacket and checked the buoy once more. It looked robust, with a strong welded metal loop and a steel bolt fastening it to what lay beneath (hopefully a big lump of concrete). I put a second mooring line on, slacker than the first so it wouldn’t rub, and so that the second would hold if the first gave way. Al, having dome his bit as watchdog, went back to bed while I read my book, listened to the water, monitored the rise of the tide, and hoped that nothing bad had happened. By 0800 a few more boats had arrived full of sensible people who had anchored somewhere quiet, or spent the evening eating seafood in La Rochelle. Their boats obediently turned their bows to the stream, but Snork Maiden remained obstinately and ungracefully stuck crossways in the river. We hoped that she would break free from her entrapment, and swing to the tide, but it was not to be! And now the wind was in the game, blowing from the East and opposing the tide.
At around 10.00 the bridge began to lift to let the upstream boats out. There were several of these, since there had been some sort of vintage boat rally the day before in Marans. This complicated things, since some vessels were under sail, and therefore all over the place. We decided to start the engine, and wait until everyone else had got clear before casting off. By now we were expecting the unexpected! Actually, nothing bad did happen - we just slipped away from the buoy, and made full-speed ahead for the bridge. By now we were well in the rear of the small flotilla, and I was terrified that the bridge was going to close before we could get through. Fortunately a human bridge keeper grinned at us, and waited. (Speculate, dear reader, on what it must be like to have a job that only demands that you be at your post twice a day for about half-an-hour!)
The lock went smoothly. We were rafted on the lock pontoon with three other boats, including a couple of people we had met before, including Jaques, from Marans, and another bloke with a very loud voice who we had locked through with last year.
Given all the things that can go wrong, none of them did, and there was a lot of companionable chatting about future sailing plans and destinations
Soon we were out and into the canal. We were met by M.Coindeau, looking less impassive than usual as he skidded around in an aluminium skiff. He told us the harbour was pretty full, but if he could, he would find us a place on an empty finger pontoon. He skidded off, leaving us to the herons, the ducks and jumping fish as we ambled up to what we now think of as our homeport. Twenty minutes later he was back to shepherd us in. Snork Maiden is back home, at least for a while.
The river adventure was scary, but in hindsight, there was no danger apart from the obvious one of being swept away. But the boat is uneasy, and stressed in those conditions - not something I’d like to repeat. I had faith that the waiting buoys would have depth, but hadn’t checked this - it would have been easy enough to have put the question to the lock-keeper the previous day. When I re-checked our pilot book and almanacs, there was only one piece of information, and that said that the moorings were good for 1.2 m. Now that is a generality, and if we had re-read this we might have taken a view that we could have let the keel settle the remaining 30 cms and not minded too much. It was a lesson in river tides that we’ll be bearing in mind for the future - and more generally, not to take rivers for granted - ever.
Now we’re home and talking about future sailing plans - more soon.
Now if you find you forget to check out the adventures of the Snork Maiden, you can use an RSS feed to deliver them to you. (I know some of you do.)
About RSS - this is a way to get yourself automatic updates from sites that interest you, but that update intermittently - like my blog, heh heh!
I use Google:
http://www.google.com/reader
but there are many more.
You can also add Picasa albums in the same way.
http://picasaweb.google.com/wikidrat/SNORKMAIDEN2009#
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