What to Do When Your Boat Runs Aground

 

     Or, If I’d only had one more day’s experience …

DISCLAIMER: THE SUGGESTIONS ON THIS BLOG (ALL ENTRIES, NOT JUST THIS ONE), ARE NOT INTENDED TO TELL ANY ONE INDIVIDUAL WHAT TO DO IN ANY SPECIFIC SITUATION. THEY ARE SIMPLY BASED ON MY EARLY EXPERIENCES SAILING, AND SHOULD ONLY BE A PART OF INFORMATION ANY SAILOR GATHERS ABOUT SAILING. FINAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTIONS TO TAKE OR NOT TAKE ALWAYS LAY WITH THE SKIPPER OF THE BOAT IN QUESTION.

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April 25, 2013

     "Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground.
One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar."

Don Bamford

It’s just a fact. If you sail, you’re going to run aground. Now, if you’re sailing a little boat with a centerboard, or a small boat like the 16.5’ Catalinas, you may be able to just pull the centerboard up, or get out and push the boat free (put an anchor down before leaving the boat, since you’re trying to make it move). But if you’re on a bigger boat, things may not be quite that simple.

You’ll find lots of strategies for getting your boat off a grounding in Sailing for Dummies. You’re not a dummy if you ran aground, though – you’re just a sailor.

Nevertheless, in my opinion many people take groundings too lightly. Groundings can damage the bottom of your boat. They can leave your boat stuck in a vulnerable place, such as a rough surf. If you’re on a falling tide, damage may occur to your boat later (ex: your rudder) as the boat leans more and more to one side. The lower the water gets, the harder it will be to get her off.

So take groundings seriously, while accepting the fact that – like some other things – groundings happen.

So what should you do?

1. GATHER INFORMATION

Check the inside of your boat for any signs of leak. If there’s any chance your boat is leaking, call for help immediately.

Study your chart and see what it says about the surrounding water.

Consider getting off and “walking the boat.”

Now, on a dropping tide, you may not have a lot of time to decide what you’re going to do. If you’re short on time, just get in the water with your clothes on. Don’t waste time changing clothes. You can always put on dry clothes afterwards (even if you don’t live on your boat, you should always have a couple of full changes of clothing on it for such situations).

Put on a PFD, and tie a long line to the boat. Tie it around your waist with a bowline. Don’t let yourself be separated from the boat in a current! You will find where the water gets more shallow, and where it gets deeper. You need to walk away from the boat as well as around it in order to find the deeper water. Consider your safety carefully as you consider doing that; your chart and chart plotter may tell you all you need to know. Don’t take unnecessary risks.

Put your waterproof hand-held radio in your fanny pack, and be sure the radio is secured to the fanny pack. Don’t hold it – wear it. It’s waterproof.

You don’t have to worry about anchoring the boat. It already did a dandy job of that itself.

2. DECIDE WHETHER OR NOT TO CALL FOR HELP

Did you find a good path out? Often the good path out is the way you came in. The day this happened to me, I had realized what was going to happen, and had managed to turn the boat around before the “thunk.” So although I was aground, I was pointed in the right direction.

Are you on a rising tide? If the tide is still going to come up a foot or more, Mother Nature may well float your boat off for you if you can be a little patient. That’s the safest way to get off. Put out some sodas and snacks for your crew (not liquor), and have a nice visit. 
 

I did call Boat US, because I was on a dropping tide, and I was near two busy channels. A big boat could have thrown a wake that would have banged my boat around in shallow water, and as I have pointed out before, that’s just a very bad thing.

3. EVALUATE WHAT THE RESCUE BOAT PLANS TO DO

When the first Boat US boat came to my boat, the driver refused my suggestion to pull me out in the direction I was pointed. He said, “No, I’m going to pull you abeam.”

If I’d had one more day’s experience I would have told him no. But although I had walked around the boat, I hadn’t walked away from the boat in any direction. If I had walked in the direction he wanted to tow me, I would have seen the water dropping lower and lower on my body, and I would have known that pulling the boat out that way was a very bad idea. But I trusted him (don’t get me wrong; the great majority of towboats are terrific).

So he dragged my boat across a sandbar, using a forward cleat. I’m fortunate that that cleat is in the toe rail and not fiberglass, or – backing plate or not – I’m sure this tow would have ripped it right out. My boat flip-flopped from port hull to starboard hull. It was bad, and scary, and then the rudder broke. No kidding. I had no steering. However, that tow was so badly executed that it could have broken a perfectly good rudder. It was just a very, very bad tow plan.

As it turned out, my rudder was already severely compromised, rusted through from the inside out. The best possible way for it to break was under tow. It could have broken in a storm or rough seas and left me in a very bad predicament, so in the end it was all good. The boat needed a new rudder, and the old one, although I didn’t know it at the time, was ready to go and just plain dangerous.

But YOU are the skipper of your boat, and YOU need to know what that towboat’s intentions for your boat are. Ask. If it doesn’t make sense, ask for an explanation. If it still doesn’t feel right, ask to talk to a supervisor. One of the reasons groundings are dangerous is that the person helping you may not have the best idea on the planet for your situation. Talk to lots of other sailors and find out how they have handled groundings. You need to know this stuff.

4. EVALUATE WHAT WENT WRONG

When it’s all over, take some time to figure out how it happened. In my case, I was at a point where two channels intersected, and I was steering for a red marker in the crossing channel instead of the channel I was in. I hadn’t paid attention the channel marker numbers, which would have told me that I was aiming for the wrong one. On my chart plotter, the zoom setting I was using did not give the marker numbers.

 On your chart plotter, experiment with zooming in and out, because at different resolutions you will get different pieces of information. I zoomed closer in 10 seconds too late to prevent the grounding, but it was the chart plotter that alerted me to my mistake.

WHAT I SHOULD HAVE DONE

Instead of letting the towboat pull me across a sand bar, I should have insisted that the towboat take me out the way I came in. I should have gotten out of the boat, walked to the sand bar and demonstrated the problem to him. Then I should have called a supervisor if he still refused to make a better plan.

This is what it means to skipper your own boat. Make sure you maintain authority over your boat – even in a grounding.