Boat sinks off Gt Yarmouth

GEM43 said:
I was at the Falmouth shanty festival a few years back when Short Drag Roger sang a shanty by the name of "Norfolk n' good". Amusing if those words are conjoined and repeated.
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I'm of the generation that understood 'Eezer Goode, Eezer Goode, he's Ebeneezer Goode'
 
Horrendous photos.

Looks like a really terrible situation.

Could have been very bad.

Hooray for the RNLI (who had a hard time getting to them owing to sandbank).

No one entered liferaft as it ‘disappeared’ (not tied on to pullpit?)

Photos show hull totally submerged so sitting in a liferaft floating but still tied to pushpit sounds better, but somehow all survived by staying with what ‘appears’ to be a submerged hull whilst liferaft drifted away? Unsure.
 
I would be interested to know what caused the grounding, assuming it can only be a nav error or gear failure. Presumably as they were on their way to Cape Verde and from Denmark they'd have a good level of experience and a well found vessel.

I'll admit to occasionally rolling my eyes at RNLI rescues involving sailing vessels in 10 knots of wind with non working engines but this looks entirely different.

Shows how quickly things can go wrong, very sobering.
 
There was a very good piece of video on the BBC News East on thursday evening which shew that it was very nasty. The Lifeboats did well. It certainly suggested there was a lot of wind. There are constant NtMs about those sands; far more frequently than anywhere else on our south-east coast. The image shows the location of each reduction of depth in 2024:

1757747939625.png

Note that NtMs show the location of 'strategic' changes. More detail are, of course used in new editions of UKHO SNCs. There have been recent new editions of UKHO charts this year
 
Cerebus said:
Horrendous photos.

Looks like a really terrible situation.

Could have been very bad.

Hooray for the RNLI (who had a hard time getting to them owing to sandbank).

No one entered liferaft as it ‘disappeared’ (not tied on to pullpit?)

Photos show hull totally submerged so sitting in a liferaft floating but still tied to pushpit sounds better, but somehow all survived by staying with what ‘appears’ to be a submerged hull whilst liferaft drifted away? Unsure.
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I think you will find that it was the Caister Lifeboat that was mainly involved, a RNLI Lifeboat was also in attendance and may have brought the casualties ashore? The Caister boat is entirely a volunteer organisation. I am not decrying the RNLI, but credit should go where it is due.
 
It is indeed a very 'dynamic' bit of the coast and seabed.

I would guess, though, that the immediate problem was most likely keeping the boat under control in the conditions, perhaps and/or knowing quite where they were in relation to the shoals, rather than getting caught out by reduced depths when cutting it too fine for the accuracy/recency of the charting.

The whole of that coast has been retreating for at least 10,000 years. Great Yarmouth itself only survives by dint of a lot of engineering. It is built on what is basically a sandbank spit between the River Yare and the sea. The river (perhaps also the Bure?) used to keep breaking through to the sea at different points, threatening to cut off, and perhaps destroy, the town until it was confined to its current path. The town is on borrowed time, if one takes a long term view, and a fortune is being spent on flood protection trying to give it a medium term future. Current (arf, arf) plans for that stretch of the coast aim, very broadly speaking, to protect only Yarmouth, Lowestoft and the Bacton gas terminal, but that is a difficult, er, line to hold politically, echoing struggles between private/individual interests and public/royal funds and flood/coast protection measures going back centuries.

There's a phenomenal amount of sand, aggregate silt and mud circulated every tide, the sandbanks and shoals are broadly the plumes of material being eroded from the remaining headlands ('nesses' and 'nazes') and low cliffs, overlaying the remnants of former ranges of inland hills and river beds, and shaped by the circulating tides and the outflow of the rivers, many of which have historically radically changed where they break through to the sea. The area still hasn't completed its transition from being the Rhine estuary (with the Thames etc. as tributaries) to the North Sea, following the Dover Staits opening up to connect with the English Channel. Meanwhile it is also acting as a conveyor belt for amazing daily amounts of Southern England and Western Europe that are being slowly washed away.
 
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SaltIre said:
They did.:rolleyes:
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They should think themselves lucky, they'll be out if there soon enough.

A few years back there were a crew, mainly Indian IIRC, of a ship abandoned there by its overseas owners, stuck there for a couple of years, not getting paid, unable to get home, and only surviving with donations (food, fuel, Christmas etc. gifts and money) by local people, charities, businesses, union, etc. The crew eventually did get home, at long last, and IIRC the port was trying to sell the ship (for scrap?) to get rid of it and recover some of the unpaid berthing fees.

Actually, Great Yarmouth is not too bad. I loathed the place when I first when there, finding it the most unwelcoming and poorly provided port I'd ever sailed to in a yacht, but fate later found me working in the town, and I came to have affection for it. Think of it like a scruffy, mildly eccentric, slightly smelly distant relative who is a bit of a hoot and has some wonderful stories to tell.

There's a lot of fabulous buildings and other heritage among the grot; about 5 good museums; a tour of the last steam trawler, the Lydia Eva, is a real treat - being shown round her by knowledgeable and engaging volunteers; nice parks and gardens; etc. and excellent beaches (though avoid in stiff/cold easterlies) Some nice restaurants and coffee shops if you search them out. Good range of shops and services. Though the town has a lot of problems - not least an area near the town centre and quay that is IIRC the fifth most deprived in the country (amazing to think these are alongside gorgeous buildings built as homes for wealthy merchants, etc., when this was a booming town) - colleagues who lived locally or were in more public facing roles were emphatic it was a friendly place with a lot of really good community spirit. The town has had some success in recent years in attracting businesses, including huge investments by multinationals, especially relating to marine engineering, wind farm construction and maintenance, gas platform dismantling, etc. You can quickly walk out into open countryside, e.g. via the path alongside the River Bure.

Still isn't a welcoming place to visit by yacht, and the new bridge across the river adds yet another deterrent to it becoming more of a gateway to the Broads, but I'd go back.
 
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"

The whole of that coast has been retreating for at least 10,000 years. "

LittleSister​


I was camping along the Norfolk Coast a couple of years ago and a walk along the beaches really illustrates just how much they are eroding. This Pill Box ( a lot bigger than the photo suggests) was way down the beach and had originally been sited some fair distance back from the low Cliff edge.


Great Yarmouth gets a (y) from me, but I'm just your every day Oik, so not Trip Advisor qualified..:ROFLMAO:
 
veshengro said:
"

The whole of that coast has been retreating for at least 10,000 years. "

LittleSister​


I was camping along the Norfolk Coast a couple of years ago and a walk along the beaches really illustrates just how much they are eroding. This Pill Box ( a lot bigger than the photo suggests) was way down the beach and had originally been sited some fair distance back from the low Cliff edge.
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Essex erosion too. This pillbox was once on the clifftop WW2 Pillbox at Walton on the Naze. Originally it was on the cliff top but has slid down onto the beach Stock Photo - Alamy
 
Leighb said:
I think you will find that it was the Caister Lifeboat that was mainly involved, a RNLI Lifeboat was also in attendance and may have brought the casualties ashore? The Caister boat is entirely a volunteer organisation. I am not decrying the RNLI, but credit should go where it is due.
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Caister Lifeboat couldn't approach the yacht due to lack of water. The RNLI lifeboat (an Atlantic 85) went in, picked up the occupants, then put them aboard Caister ALB for the passage to shore.
 
LittleSister said:
They should think themselves lucky, they'll be out if there soon enough.

A few years back there were a crew, mainly Indian IIRC, of a ship abandoned there by its overseas owners, stuck there for a couple of years, not getting paid, unable to get home, and only surviving with donations (food, fuel, Christmas etc. gifts and money) by local people, charities, businesses, union, etc. The crew eventually did get home, at long last, and IIRC the port was trying to sell the ship (for scrap?) to get rid of it and recover some of the unpaid berthing fees.

Actually, Great Yarmouth is not too bad. I loathed the place when I first when there, finding it the most unwelcoming and poorly provided port I'd ever sailed to in a yacht, but fate later found me working in the town, and I came to have affection for it. Think of it like a scruffy, mildly eccentric, slightly smelly distant relative who is a bit of a hoot and has some wonderful stories to tell.

There's a lot of fabulous buildings and other heritage among the grot; about 5 good museums; a tour of the last steam trawler, the Lydia Eva, is a real treat - being shown round her by knowledgeable and engaging volunteers; nice parks and gardens; etc. and excellent beaches (though avoid in stiff/cold easterlies) Some nice restaurants and coffee shops if you search them out. Good range of shops and services. Though the town has a lot of problems - not least an area near the town centre and quay that is IIRC the fifth most deprived in the country (amazing to think these are alongside gorgeous buildings built as homes for wealthy merchants, etc., when this was a booming town) - colleagues who lived locally or were in more public facing roles were emphatic it was a friendly place with a lot of really good community spirit. The town has had some success in recent years in attracting businesses, including huge investments by multinationals, especially relating to marine engineering, wind farm construction and maintenance, gas platform dismantling, etc. You can quickly walk out into open countryside, e.g. via the path alongside the River Bure.

Still isn't a welcoming place to visit by yacht, and the new bridge across the river adds yet another deterrent to it becoming more of a gateway to the Broads, but I'd go back.
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And don't forget the absolutely brilliant Hippodrome Circus!
 
ShaneO said:
Consistency would, of course, demand equal ire be directed at awesome’s synonyms marvellous and wonderful.
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Nah.

Those lack the associations with (a) teenagers and (b) Americans, seperately irksome but together, as in Teenage Americans, awesomely iresome
 
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