BrianH
Well-Known Member
Here in the northern Adriatic for the past week we have been blasted by rain and gale-force winds straight off the nearby Alpine peaks. I have been snug and well-provisioned enough on board in my marina but when the rain partially stopped on Monday afternoon I decided I had to get out of the boat for some exercise after two days of confinement. I walked around the triple marina complex with a total of over 2000 boat places, admiring some of the craft well beyond my modest means. With a limited tidal range of about a metre, all the piers are fixed ones and boats are moored stern or bow-to to them with two outer posts with vertical bars for mooring rings to slide up and down with the tidal range.
I strolled along to the very end of one pier looking at the yachts. As I came slowly back along the line of boats, I noticed something in the water under the stern of one large sailing boat. At first I thought it was a blue plastic rubbish sack but coming closer saw it was a blue jacket with a head, floating just between the stern and pier. It was an old man clinging with one hand to the folding ladder on the back of his boat and unable to release it or, it proved, even cry out, which prior to my arrival would have been fruitless as all the neighbouring boats were unoccupied.
I kneeled down on the pier and grasped his coat collar to pull him up, unlashed the top part of the ladder with my other hand and swung it down into the water after pushing the boat slightly away to clear the pier, then hauled him high enough for him to get his foot onto the lowest rung of the ladder and slowly climb up it. He had fallen into the harbour when trying to get ashore across the gap between boat and pier. He didn't respond to me when I addressed him, seemingly dazed by his experience - only eventually when I asked him how long he had been in the water - not long, he answered. Hmm, I had been at least five minutes on the pier walking to the end and back and he must have been in the water all that time. There are a few pier ladders in some boat places but they are intended for boat boarding and left too high to reach from the water and the sloping harbour wall is too angled and slimy to climb up, if he could have even reached it, which I doubt.
In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have eventually lost his grip and drowned if I hadn't, by the greatest chance, happened along and seen him. He was too weak to do much; invisible but for a very limited angle and position on the pier. At a guess he must have been about 80 years old; one of many such older denizens living alone on board. Hey, I guess that rather fits me too.
I strolled along to the very end of one pier looking at the yachts. As I came slowly back along the line of boats, I noticed something in the water under the stern of one large sailing boat. At first I thought it was a blue plastic rubbish sack but coming closer saw it was a blue jacket with a head, floating just between the stern and pier. It was an old man clinging with one hand to the folding ladder on the back of his boat and unable to release it or, it proved, even cry out, which prior to my arrival would have been fruitless as all the neighbouring boats were unoccupied.
I kneeled down on the pier and grasped his coat collar to pull him up, unlashed the top part of the ladder with my other hand and swung it down into the water after pushing the boat slightly away to clear the pier, then hauled him high enough for him to get his foot onto the lowest rung of the ladder and slowly climb up it. He had fallen into the harbour when trying to get ashore across the gap between boat and pier. He didn't respond to me when I addressed him, seemingly dazed by his experience - only eventually when I asked him how long he had been in the water - not long, he answered. Hmm, I had been at least five minutes on the pier walking to the end and back and he must have been in the water all that time. There are a few pier ladders in some boat places but they are intended for boat boarding and left too high to reach from the water and the sloping harbour wall is too angled and slimy to climb up, if he could have even reached it, which I doubt.
In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever that he would have eventually lost his grip and drowned if I hadn't, by the greatest chance, happened along and seen him. He was too weak to do much; invisible but for a very limited angle and position on the pier. At a guess he must have been about 80 years old; one of many such older denizens living alone on board. Hey, I guess that rather fits me too.
