Navigand pe râul Blackwater, am reușit să-mi fac țiganul Norfolk de 20 de picioare blocat pe malul unui pârâu în cel mai rău moment posibil: vârful valului înalt. Pe măsură ce valul a scăzut, barca mea a rămas blocată la patru picioare deasupra albiei râului. Și nu eram sigur dacă voi putea s-o scot din nou. Așa a ieșit și lecțiile pe care le-am învățat.
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Eșuat la maree înaltă
Liked the little sketches to illustrate where you have no photos. A good tale, you have a great skill to put that together.
Experiential knowledge and story telling….great learning opportunity. Thank you.
Only go up the creek when the incoming tide has reached the salts.
Might have spent my afternoon relieving the soft mud around the keel where I could, and would have definitely tried to get the anchor as far out astern as possible.
Enjoyed watching 👍 glad all turned out ok in the end
Thank you very much for this video and the advices you give at the end.
We had the same problem on our 6.30 meters wooden old gaffer.
As it was no use to puch her, we dig up under the keel with a hand pickaxe. And it worked !
Since that, we always have an old pickaxe in the boat…
A lesson well learned. Thank you.
What a great story and well explained you should right a book you have a good speaking voice; and you explained your situation very very well I to have had the same happen to my father and I in Plymouth sound With thick soft black mud all around and a 5 hr wait in a 18ft boat my father and I had a long long talk about our lives and I found out a lot of war story’s so all in all not to bad a experience,, be it on a warm July day. Happy sailing Colin commander. Yes that right commander 😅 should have known better lol
Superb!
You can try to quickly heel the boat when aground, with the engine in moderate reverse, this will usually reduce the draught, on a small boat you can hang from the shroud. On a larger yacht the boom can be eased out and used to get some crew weight off to the side , once heeled getting the more agile ones to go up the mast helps a lot. . This worked a few times for me, both with 22 foot boats or up to 45 feet (and a crew). For many just admitting this, will qualify me as a careless sailor 😀. Let's say it's just being a little adventurous. However when executed quickly and smoothly this can look like a proper sailing manoeuvre done by an expert crew to onlookers who had too eagerly written you off.
High and dry indeed.
Poole Harbour ( some say Poole Puddle) has similar Hazards.. so glad you had a happy ending to this problem.
Tide and time wait for no man!
Cheers .
A good story, well told. If you had seen my 41 footer on a semi famous Sydney side beach, you would wonder at the sanity of the skipper. The Instagrammers taking selfies, laughing and joking alongside. But my boat takes the ground, we had the prop shaft out and at the engineers before the tide rose. And at a saving of $550 for a lift out, who was laughing the mostest. That would be the skipper mad enough to deliberately run aground.
A real Maurice Griffith adventure…👍
Fantástica historia, le felicito por compartirla y le aseguro que recordaré su aventura siempre que navegué en aguas poco profundas, gracias desde Las Islas Canarias, un abrazo
Lovely boat, fortunate escape. Have not done much with your life if you have not had one or two though hey ? Well done keeping calm and sorting yourself out. It truly is a lesson to us all especially as you do not come across as a massive risk taker nor fool. 🙂
Hi Tony, very nice story and channel! I think you would be fine even if the next tide would be lower. 1.5 tonnes is not the end of the world on the soft ground 🙂 There are some powerful motorboats on the river that would be able to pull you out. Anyway, in addition to anchor methods, I would call PanPan on the radio. A lot of boats around, so there would be a chance to pull you quicker. Very often during PanPan coast guard is finding a vessel that is happy to assist in the rescue. I am looking forward to seeing more sailing around the river on your channel!
A well told story with thankfully a happy ending. It's easy to share your successes but rather harder to share your lessons so thank you.
It happened to me on the River Wyre near Fleetwood at Skipool Creek back in the 1980s In my case as the tide dropped I found the boat was percariously balanced on the edge of a deep chanel which is the outfall for Blackpool sewerage works.
Just as in the story the following night tide was the highest tide for several months.I carried the anchor and chain out about 100 ft to the chanel mouth and came back in time for the 23.00 tide.With the help of a friend we hauled the boat off the salt marsh and out to the chanel mouth.
The only damage a grazed hand which had become entangled with the chain.
That was until the next day when it went septic from the sewerage outfall.
The fun of boating!
Brilliant and really enjoyable. Glad it ended well.
Like many, holding my breath as you freed her. Another teeshirt holder, estuary shifting sandbank had piled up unusually and could only wait marooned, praying she would not splodge into the mud. You must have been freezing that night and very determined. I wonder what the walker thought? "There's another one!" seems not unlikely. But the area is stunning. Hope we see more from you.
The last piece of wisdom was the most important! 🤗
❤❤❤ Thank you for sharing your experiences with us. It's very helpful I think and might prevent me from ending up in the same situation one day! Very nice storytelling b.t.w. 👍
very nice story and good drawings!
Running aground, and dealing with it is part of small boat ownership.
Well Done . Jim
Ale przygoda!
Cracking stuff. Not read all the comments so apologies if this is repeated. Roger Barnes has a little toy inflatable dinghy on his Ilur. Might seem pathetic and the garish colours don't really go with the boat 😉 but so what ? It could have been instrumental in your case to set an anchor off the stern and run a line from it round a winch. I assume the state of the mud meant trying to walk one out very dangerous to even start; a dinghy like that would float in about 1/4 mm of water so plenty of time to try and get it aligned given inky blackness you were in. Deflate and roll away when done. Safer than getting in and out and also it would pull a great deal harder than you could ever push. Subscribed !!
Nice story, thanks. I've done pretty much the same. Could you have walked an anchor out in the channel and then winched yourself out when the tide came?
Thats a really excellent video, thank you. I went aground in the entrance to Bradwell Creek when departing the marina back in 2000 on a falling tide, when I had a year off to go sailing. I was right on the edge of the channel too, and was seriously worried about tipping down into the channel, but luckily my bilge keels got into the soft mud and held the boat upright. Going aground is a real wake-up call . . .
I landed on little COB at Tollesbury by slightly missing buoy, lifeboat came towed me off by pulling me off backwards..
Brilliant… I sense the reality of both the situation… and the interplay with nature 🙂
The tide did it, not you. Cool story bro.
Been there, done almost exactly that. Stuck on a salt marsh's bank with a 5' draft. My high tide came in around 2:30am and I got stuck there around 5pm. I was half a mile out from the "shore" and thought I was fine. Besides, i had been motoring a very straight course and figured nothing would change. Wrong I was.
My engine proved to be useless and I thought it had actually sucked in sand or something, lost power and began cavitating. The tide soon rushed out until I was left high and dry, with my poor boat heeling over 30° to starboard. It was at that moment that I laughed at the situation and played Radiohead's song by the same name as the ground beneath me. Fitting soundtrack.
I decided to move all my stuff over to port and sit on that side to prevent the boat rolling onto its side. It's a Cal with a thick fiberglass hull, but I was still worried since it's 50yo.
The tide began rushing in around 1:30 and I decided I would sleep in the berth and set an alarm. CG/Seatow was aware of my situation and had kept contact with me. I was exhausted and fell asleep quickly.
When I woke up, I checked the depth. 2m, or 6'. I started my engine and puttered to my marina, ecstatic that this boat I bought a month ago wasn't going to wind up part of the marsh.
Must have been a hell of a high tide, the boat is on the grass!