Do you REALLY have towing insurance?

A couple of days ago I wrote about some friends who ran aground while trying to solve a roller furler problem. I wish that the roller furler, followed by running aground, had been the end of their grief, but unfortunately it was not.

I won't name their insurance company because it isn't my goal here to promote one insurance company over another. But it is a lesson in reading the fine print.

My friends couldn't get their boat off the grounding, but their insurance covered towing by the standard towing companies, so they called Boat US, who had no trouble getting them off.

However, the bill was $1,000, which they had to pay upfront and then get reimbursed by their insurance company. They knew that and were not upset by that.

However, that "towing coverage" includes a $500 deductible, so they're only going to get $500 back. That they're not quite so thrilled about.

My car has similar towing insurance -- only worse, really. It covers eight miles, or to the closest Subaru dealership (the brand of my car) -- which ever is shorter. Fortunately, if I want to be towed a little farther the cost doesn't nearly approach the $500 my friends will have to swallow for their boat tow.

Read your insurance policy carefully. My personal recommendation is that you not only get Boat US towing insurance but that you get their best package. I had to be towed about ten days ago because of dead batteries. They towed me to the club, where I had the boat looked at. The great thing about Boat US's best package, which I have, is that if the boat couldn't have been fixed at the club, they would have towed me again, either to my home slip or to a boat yard where they could have fixed the boat. (I was lucky, by the way. I was afraid the alternator had gone bad since all three batteries had died within a couple of days even though the engine had been used a lot, but it turned out to just be coincidence. The alternator is fine.)

Anyone can run aground. If you have a sailboat in waters like Florida, it's not if -- it's when. You will run aground.

My friends now have Boat US towing insurance, and I urge all sailors to do so. Any number of things can happen that could disable your boat even if groundings aren't common where you are. This advice isn't just for beginners, either, but then I have no sympathy for the macho idea that one should never, ever turn the engine on. If I can't use my motor to get back into my slip, I'm not going to try to sail it in through a blind entrance, a narrow entry way, and a long fairway, counting on being able to use the wind in four different directions without hitting anytbing. I'm going to call Boat US. Then if they hit something it's their fault, and I do like that.

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Oops -- What Do We Do Now?

I have some sailing friends who, like me, are newer sailors. They're working hard to improve their skills and split their time between improving their boat and sailing it.

They were out a couple of weeks ago when they suddenly had trouble with their roller furler. They were jybing, and I suspect the headsail wrapped around the furler. Jybes can be easy, but you have to keep control of the lines. Of course, a sheet can slip out of anyone's hands (gloves help, but ... stuff happens.)

So they did the logical thing. One stayed on the helm, and one went forward to straighten out the sail.

While they were doing that, they ran aground. Oops. Things tend to cascade like that.

What could they have done to avoid it?

Sometimes there's nothing you can do. One time as I was leaving a marina, my outboard died. It was a lowering tide, and I knew there was a shallow area just to starboard. Unfortunately there was a strong wind from the east. When the engine died, that wind had us solidly aground within five seconds. There was nothing we could have done.

However, in retrospect, my friends had some choices. Here's what I and others recommended to them for next time:

1) quickly check for lines in the water (a real possibility when the headsail is out of control)

2) start the engine

3) notice where you are before deciding what to do.

If they'd stopped to think about where they were, they would have known they were near shallow spots. A better option probably would have been to turn around and move to a place with room to work. The sail would flap around a bit, but that's not the end of the world. Engine power would keep the boat from "sailing crazy" while the headsail was tangled (the time this happened to me, the boat sailed in circles until I got it untangled).

What if you have a different problem, and you don't have power, or you can't steer? I told a story a week or so ago where someone ended up with a line wrapped around both the rudder and the propeller. They were in very deep water, but if you aren't, put the anchor down.

Your goal should be to prevent things from getting worse as well as solving the original problem. If you're lucky you may prevent one thing from leading to another and another and another ...

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Your Chart is Probably Out of Date--Updated

PS: I just spent the weekend with club friends in a little cove off the Manatee River. There's a very high spot shown on both paper and electronic charts that's supposed to only be 3.3' deep at mean low tide.

I had difficulty getting the anchor up, and in the process, according to my chart plotter my boat drifted all over that spot, but the chart plotter, which I checked frequently because I knew about that supposed bump, showed I never had less than 9..4' water to work in. There's another example of how wrong charts can be. Someone had told me with great confidence that this "bump" wouldn't change because there was no current in there, but of course, since it's on the south side of the river, a lot of storms will stir that water up. In any event, the bump seems to be gone. This is actually the most dramatic case of change I've come across so far.


I've shown pictures of floating buoys in a major channel in the Tampa Bay area before:

 

This photo faces east. This is Channel Marker #10 in the Sunshine Skyway Channel. You can see exposed sand beyond. Channel Markers #8 and #12 are significantly farther east than this one is. The Channel is shoaling, or filling in with loose sand, at this spot. I took this picture some months ago. Since then I've seen a sailboat aground, in the channel, north of this spot. In addition, to the south, another piling has been taken down and another floating buoy moved significantly west. The eastern edge of this channel is starting to get a bit zig-zaggy!

I ran lightly aground between markers 2 and 4 a couple of weeks ago. We had a lower than average low tide, partly influenced by the 25 mph north wind that apparently blew a fair amount of Tampa Bay's water to Venezuela. I got off fairly easily; sand that has just moved hasn't had a chance to compact yet and gives way fairly easily. I've also "skipped bottom" at other spots in the channel.

I don't know when the powers that be will get around to redredging this channel, but probably it takes a while. Meanwhile, what do I have to go by? One thing is for sure: my chart still shows both channel markers in their old places. So does my chart plotter.

Meanwhile, we've had a run of unusually low tides here. The lowest point doesn't typically go below mean low tide (except for that one very windy day), but we're not having full high tides. Since the typical distance from low to high tide around here is only two feet, when the tide only rises one foot "high tide" isn't a lot of help in very shallow places.

But the problem with charts and chart plotters lagging behind real life is more complicated than just where the channel markers are. At the southern end of the Skyway Bridge Channel, it appears that there is deeper water -- 8' - 10' -- just to the west of Channel Marker 2. So it would *appear* that one could just bypass the southern entrance by going west of it, and then enter the channel past that shoaling spot.

However, if the channel is filling in to that degree, perhaps the area to the west of it is filling in as well.

When faced with such situations, local knowledge can be a great help. Local fishermen may know, or local dockmasters, charter captains, etc. You can get on the radio and see if you can raise someone. or put someone, preferably someone with experience in shallow water, on the bow. Proceed very slowly, so if you do run aground, your boat's speed doesn't make it worse. 

For now, I'm just avoiding that patch of water at low tide. I'm not going to go through there at night by myself unless I have a full-out high tide, and even then it wouldn't be my first choice, because being aground in a narrow channel at night is not exactly an ideal situation. 

So don't trust your chart plotter 100%. Don't completely trust the routes you've plotted on it unless it's all through known deep water. Keep your eyes open, and reduce your speed at night. Keep a log of such instances so you're not left scratching your head next time, thinking, "Now where was that high spot?" You don't want it under your keel!

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Running Aground in the Slip

     Or, Was my face red!

I’d had my Hunter and had been living aboard for about three months. It was February, and there was a full moon.

I didn’t think anything of it. I certainly didn’t connect that full moon with what the dockmaster had told me when I first took my slip, that one reason to keep the boat bow in was that the sand had built up at the end of the slip.

I looked at how the boat was tied up before I left for the evening, but I’d been on the boat for three months now, and I thought I had it all pretty well figured out.

I came home about 10PM and looked at the boat sitting perfectly centered in the slip. “Man, I’m getting good at this!” I thought. I grabbed the breast line to pull the boat over to the finger pier.

Nothing happened.

I pulled harder. Nothing happened

The boat wasn’t perfectly tied up at all. She was aground! She was actually tilting.

Other people might have been able to take a flying leap, or climb over the bow, but I really felt the boat was too far away for either of those options. I knew the cats had enough food and water. I called it a night and slept elsewhere.

By the next morning when I came back to the boat, the water had risen and she was afloat again, and I thought, “I really don’t want this to happen again.” My solution was to re-tie her so that she moved some in the slip. I actually like the sensation of the boat rocking, so that didn’t bother me, and the keel had a chance to dig herself a hole. I lived at that marina for another 21 months and never again had this problem.

LESSON LEARNED: use your depth sounder and/or depth line when you first move your boat into a new slip. Talk to others in the marina, and of course, the dock master. If you have a shallow slip, you need to know about it and what kinds of problems it can make for you.

Or you can just wait for Mother Nature to surprise you.  :)

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Chart Plotter or No Chart Plotter? Update ...

     Or, Ooops -- I Just Ran Aground in the Center of the Channel!

Last Thursday I was bringing my boat through the Skyway Channel. At the south end, the piling for Channel Marker #2 had been removed, and there was a floating red nun with a 2 on it in its place -- or more accurately, halfway into the channel. I showed a picture of a similar change in that channel some time ago at Marker #10.

However, the combination of low tide and a lot of north wind had made things even worse, and I ran aground, fortunately in soft sand as it was still drifting, right by that floating nun.

The wind was to my back and there was plenty of wave action, and combining that with careful use of the engine, I was able to get off. It was dicey, though, because apparently even my rudder caught a couple of times, judging by how the wheel acted.

Now, on the chart -- and on my chart plotter -- there appears to be much deeper water -- 10 - 12 feet at low tide -- just west of that part of the channel. It would appear to be a better way in and out.

But here's the problem. Obviously paper charts aren't updated unless new surveys are done *and* you buy the updated chart ... and your chart plotter is just as dated. It uses the same data.

So what do you use?

Your eyes. Shallow water looks different than deep water. I don't think there's anything I could have done that day, but if the tide had been a little higher I could have probably visually picked my way through that spot. In such a situation, if you have another person with you, put him or her on the bow, if possible with a depth line. I'll show mine soon. By the time your depth sounder reads water too shallow, your keel has either found it or will in the next second or so.

Inch your way through.

This was a potentially bad situation -- I lost my rudder once before to shallow, rough water, and I was in a real bottleneck in the channel. If a power boat had come through there with a big wake, first of all the skipper might have assumed I was moving, and second of all a big wake could have banged my rudder around. I really don't want to go there again! But because the day was so blustery, few boats were out. In the five minutes it took me to pick my way through that 100 feet or so, I didn't encounter any other boats.

Always be watching for shallow water, no mater what the chart says, and no matter what the electronics say. By the way, my depth sounder said I was in 20.6' of water while the depth line said 4'. I draw 4 1/2', and I know which measure I believe. Either this is another sign of my chartplotter malfunctioning or somehow the container that holds my transducer needs more fluid. That's easy to check, and I'll be doing that, but meanwhile, this is more proof that while useful, electronics are not the whole answer for a sensible sailor.

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Aground and Comfy

     Or, Yes, it’s possible. 

You are more clever than you realize.

Fortune cookie

I actually had some pretty rough times with my first sailboat. Silver Girl was a 25’ Irwin “Citation,” only eight feet wide. She was a lot of fun to sail, but I was a beginner, and when I bought her I couldn’t imagine what scrapes I would get into, but I was sure there would be some.

I was right.

I’d learned the basics of sailing. The basics of using an outboard motor? That was more like a trial by fire. Hopelessly trying to save money, I had bought a used outboard motor. That proved to be disastrous, but I thought that motor was the exception, and bought a second used outboard motor to replace the first one. The unfortunate fact is that we don’t always learn from experience.

Exiting from the dock about 3PM on that day, we had wind from the east and a very high sandbar just to the west of us. Now, I knew that sandbar was there. Unfortunately the outboard motor died just as I was alongside that sandbar, and the wind immediately blew us aground. To make it worse, the deepest draft on my boat wasn’t the shoal keel but the very exposed rudder.

The tide was going out quite fast, so I wasted no time and called Eckerd College’s Search and Rescue program (EC-SAR). They had a very short distance to travel and got there quickly, but the water was already halfway between their feet and their knees, and still dropping. They walked around my boat with a depth pole, determined what my best path out would be, and took my anchor out. By now the water was so low that all they had to do was stomp it into the mud with their boots to set it.

They took my companion back to the dock to limit the amount of extra weight on the rudder. They made sure I had not only food and water but also a book and light to read by. They told me it would be a long wait. They were unwilling to tow my boat off because of the risk to the rudder, and they urged me to not let anyone else tow me off, either. They said something about 2AM. I thought, “OK, I’ll have to come back in at night.” I had battery powered green and red lights, and crawled carefully up to the bow (didn’t want any weight to shift on that rudder) and attached the running lights. The boat was already listing severely, but fortunately it seemed that the side of the boat was supporting it, and not the rudder.

So I read, and ate the prepackaged tuna fish and crackers I had on the boat, watched the sun set, and read some more. The boat kept listing further and further, and I thought, “How the heck am I going to be able to sleep?”

What I finally did was take a cockpit cushion and put it abeam in the cabin instead of pointing fore and aft. It stretched between the two settees below and was supported in the middle by a companionway step. Lying with my head to the high side, I was reasonably comfortable. I set my phone alarm for 2AM to bring the boat home, and drifted off to sleep.

Well, 2AM came. It was a glorious night with a full moon. I looked around the boat … and saw mud in every direction for at least 50 yards. I wish I had had a camera, because the scene was spectacularly beautiful. But -- EC-SAR had been telling me when LOW tide would be, not high tide.

This boat is almost as severely aground

as my poor Silver Girl was.

The tide had gone to Alaska. What could I do? I went back to sleep.

I had already bought line and a weight (a round zinc), and in the morning I made a sounding line. I put a knot in it every foot, with a double knot every three feet. I was able to see the water slowly rising. High tide was at noon that day, and at 11:45 AM, my boat FINALLY floated free.

LESSONS LEARNED: First, go ahead and make plans if you must, but always have a Plan B. Carry more food and water than you think you need, and be ready to tolerate long waits in good humor, because sooner or later, the act of sailing is going to cause you some major delays. If you’re due to arrive home on Sunday and absolutely have to be at work on Monday, you might want to plan on returning on Saturday instead. Sailboats are fundamentally undependable modes of transportation, and a big cushion of time is a good thing.

Second, when you first start to sail your own boat, look at tide predictions carefully. Mother Nature can change what the real high or low tides are for a given day, and the only way to judge that effect is by being familiar with what is typical for your area. I experienced an extreme low tide on this sail caused by the moon and the sun being lined up along with a fair amount of wind. Weather can also make tides either extremely high or extremely low.

Where I live, typically there is about  a two feet difference between high and low tides. Occasionally it’s as much as three feet. When Tropical Storm Debby came through, she blew a lot of water in front of her, and for three days, high tide was so high I couldn’t safely get off the boat. “Low” tide was what we typically experience on a very high tide. There was only about an hour in each tidal cycle where I could safely get on and off the boat. For most people, that would make it impossible for them to go to work. If you’re thinking about moving aboard, consider whether the combination of tide and weather will ever keep you from reporting to work. Most employers wouldn’t be happy about that as an excuse for not showing up.

OTHER LESSON LEARNED: The great majority of sailors simply do not sell an outboard motor they have found to be reliable. There are exceptions; I sold mine because it was just too big for my dinghy; but most of the used outboard motors out there are well past their prime. Shop cautiously!

*Source for photo: http://yachtpals.com/sailing-sailboat-aground-9100


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Who IS Lee Shore, Anyway?

      Or, There is more than one way to sink a boat …

 

For the last few months, every time I crossed the Skyway Bridge traveling north, between the Skyway Bridge and the Meisner Bridge I would see this boat aground on the east side. 

The first time I saw her, she still had both sails. Then about three weeks ago, the sails were gone.

Then two weekends ago, we had a big blow-up of a storm. It formed in the center of the state, and for some reason no sea breeze formed from the west to stop its movement, and it moved right over the greater Tampa Bay area. It was a  big storm with steady winds of over 40 mph and gusts higher.

Because this boat was on the east side of the highway, when the storm came in from the east, the boat was on the lee shore. 

 

 It gets confusing. If I were talking about an uninhabited desert island, the WEST side would have been the lee side of the island, because the weather was coming from the East. But in boating, “lee shore” has a different meaning. It means that your boat is between the wind and land. The lee shore is on the lee side of your boat. The geography of the land no longer matters in this terminology.

So this little boat (about 25’ is my guess) was aground on a lee shore for the storm we had that Sunday. If this boat had been aground on the West side of the highway she would have been somewhat safer.

Earlier in this blog I told about the man who fell asleep on the beach, and when the wind shifted, his boat was anchored on a lee shore. The wind blew his boat to the shallows and then the waves banged it up and down on the sand until the keel finally came through the bottom of the boat.

I was tempted, but I did not wade out to this boat to see if the keel was now inside the boat.  But I did drive by her again after the storm, and found her more severely aground (no surprise). I also found boat parts on the beach (not a surprise either – I’m surprised she held up as well as she did.)

 

The galley sink, now on the beach

What does this have to do with you? It’s bad enough to run aground, but if you run aground on a falling tide, you may want to consider calling a towboat as one of your first strategies. Keep working things and trying to get off the grounding, but the lower the tide gets, the harder it will be to get your boat freed safely. If you have to wait to get her off, you might want to consider staying with her. It can be uncomfortable, but your grounded boat might make a tempting target, an easy wade away for someone with sticky fingers.

Which leads me to my next comment: I drove over the bridge again a couple of days ago, and looked at this boat.  Both the mast and the boom were gone along with all the shrouds and stays. It’s possible that the owner has been coming back to get sails, and the mast, etc. (I hope he finds his sink on the beach), but gone is gone.

This is terrible for the boat, and terrible for the boat owner, who probably did not have towing insurance. He or she is also likely to get a fat bill from whichever county that stretch of land is in – the Skyway Bridge sits in three counties. So how do you keep this from happening to your boat?

First, study a paper chart of the area you will be sailing. Don’t rely only on a chart plotter. Except for very expensive ones, they have small screens, and dangerous shallows could be just off the edge of your screen. Have some idea of where the shallow spots are so you know what to look for. 

 

Second, pay attention to the waters around you. In the photo above, see the light green spot of water apparently near the horizon? The water there is probably less than one foot deep at low tide. You can also see another very shallow spot off to starboard.  A change in color will often tip you off to shallow water. In addition, over shallow water there will sometimes be breaking waves, just as you see on a beach. Neither of these are foolproof, but it should remind you to take another look at where you are.

Third, get towing insurance. There’s a very good chance that a towboat could have gotten this boat off the grounding, and nothing bad would have happened to her. Even if they couldn’t get her off in a low tide, it most likely would have been pretty easy at the next high tide. She’s not a big boat.

Fourth, know several ways to get your boat off a grounding yourself. That’s a huge topic and too much for this blog entry, but you’ll see several approaches very well explained in SAILING FOR DUMMIES.

Fifth, have some creature comforts on your boat. If she doesn’t have a head, get a porta-potty. They work extremely well. Have a flashlight and a good book to read so you have something to do while you stay with your boat. Always carry extra food and water, even if it’s only a can of Dinty Moore Stew. Creative arranging of cushions can make spending the night on a grounded boat fairly comfy. 

I’ll have to tell you how I know on another day.

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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.

_______

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.

Stay in the Channel!

     Or, Why aren't we moving?

April 23, 2013

    “You got to be careful if you don't know where
you're going, because you might not get there.”

Yogi Berra

Staying in the channel can be trickier than it sounds. Basically, it means staying between the red and green markers, but channels are twisty, winding, and fickle. Mother Nature really doesn’t care what your chart says when she’s playing in the sandbox and moving the bottom under your boat around into big bumps that like to play tag with your keel.

See the photograph below. No zoom was used; those birds were sitting about 15 feet to the port of my boat. Where my boat was in the channel, the water depth read as 19 ft. These birds are sitting on what remains of a wooden boat that burned to the water line, leaving only some wooden ribs sticking out of the water. I’ve seen those ribs at low tide, and they aren’t more than three feet high. The point? Sometimes very shallow water is very close to the channel or deep water you’re in, something you can’t always predict by looking at the water. Water and sand are shifty things.

Moreover, channels often are not straight. They’re not highways. They’re dredged out based on how the water moves the bottom around. There will be bends, sometimes extreme, in most channels. When the channel runs through very shallow water, as this one does (it runs along west side of the Skyway Bridge, which crosses Tampa Bay), straying even a little outside the channel can result in a severe grounding.

Until you’re very comfortable with the process of spotting channel markers and comparing them to your charts, have a second person spotting them also. The channel markers in front of you and behind you should line up in a straight line (red in line with red and green in line with green, and on the same line with your boat), with you moving parallel to and inside those lines. Do that, and you will know to turn the boat when the channel bends.

Take a look at the markers below.  See the slight tilt to the green one? If you look at the horizon, you’ll see that it … leans a little. That marker  probably did some damage to the boat that it hit (notice I always blame the channel marker and not the boater.) By the way, don’t put the exact location of channel markers in your chart plotter, because then your chart plotter will plot a collision course for you. Save a point near the channel marker, inside the channel. That way your chart plotter won’t lead you out of the channel, either.

When I was test sailing the boat I have now, a broker was at the wheel while returning to the marina. She had a green marker to her left, and a red marker to her right. She steered the boat to the right of the red marker, and we didn’t go two feet before we were aground.

Finally, if you’re in an unfamiliar channel, get on the radio and call to other boaters. You may find out that an important marker was recently knocked down, or that a marker needs to be moved but hasn’t been yet, and that at a certain point it’s important to hug one side of the channel or the other. Sweep widely with your eyes as you look for markers, as channels make big turns sometimes – but make sure that the channel marker you have spotted is for your channel and not a different one. And importantly, both charts and chart plotters can be out of date.

LESSON LEARNED: motoring (or sailing) through a channel isn’t like driving on the highway. There are no lane markers, and roads follow more predictable paths than channels do. Keep your eyes open and have more than one pair of eyes on watch.

Finally, see the red buoy below. It is also a channel marker. This is a "floating buoy." They can be red or green. You may be able to see the “10” on this one. As you can see, there’s some very shallow water just beyond it. In this channel, both red marker #8 and red marker #12 are further east than this one is. This one is movable, and has been placed there because the bottom is shifting significantly in this area. In this stretch of the channel, the boater has to line her boat up with the green markers (#9 and #11), which will be in a straight line. This buoy is at a narrowing of the channel.

 

Local knowledge can be very important. The locals all know about this buoy, but you, being new to the area, do not. What if you’re moving by night? You of course have someone with a nice, bright spotlight looking for markers –- 4 – 6 feet above the water (in fact you really must have someone on your spotlight when negotiating a channel at night.) You could both easily overlook this marker … and get really stuck in the dark. Your chart plotter would say you were in the channel, and so would your paper chart. Try explaining that to the sand your keel is stuck in. (Be careful, because those spotlights can drain batteries pretty quickly. You probably shouldn't sail through an unknown channel at night anyway -- turn the engine on.)

Shine that spotlight across the surface of the water as well as at typical marker height. It can be really hard work to spot for channel markers, but don’t just rely on your charts or chart plotters. Using a spotlight is the best way to make sure that neither a channel marker nor a high spot on the bottom jump out at your boat in the dark.