Boats staying in Ice ... winters coming !

Refueler

Refueler

Well-Known Member
Joined
13 Sep 2008
Messages
24,014
Location
Far away from hooray henrys
Visit site
Thought people would like a quick view of my 'backyard' and some of my boats and their winter 'home' .....


The ice is pretty thin at moment - about 4 - 5mm .... but if temp drops any more - then it will start to thicken and eventually river as well will freeze over. My channel averages about 40+cms thick but can odd winters when temps really drop and stay down - reach 1m thick.

The red speedboat - Soviet era Progress 4 is aluminium (yes aluminium not alloy !) ... the 5m cabin daysailer is a Kormoran and GRP with twin hinged dagger plates .... Superanne of course is my Sunrider 25 with bilge keels. Her lower hull is solid 50mm GRP - I know for certain having cut to fit a speed log. It destroyed 3 hole cutters to do it !

Once ice sets in - that's it till about mid April .... sometimes later.

Temps ? We get down to about -20C on average .. with -30C as lowest I've seen here .. but usually we will sit most days at about -10C. This year has been strange with temps till today of +4 .. +5 ...
Forecast shows bouncing along the 0 ... -4C this coming week ... very strange.
 
Jealous. I'd like to dig my own dock as an arm of The Solent, but the two foot wide stream at the bottom of the garden goes the wrong flipping way and eventually ends up in The Thames.

Edit. I've just checked. All the other streams I'm used to around here join the Wey, but this one that I moved to a few years ago goes to the Arun. All hope is not lost.
 
Last edited:
The funny part is - I used Superanne more when she was in UK !! Maybe because I was paying marina fees etc. so made me use to justify it.

Now she is at bottom of garden - I've had a number of trips across Baltic and cruises in Swedish / Finnish Islands ... but too often she sits and doesn't move. Last year - she was used for day fishing trips on the river ... alternating with the speedboat.

There are periods especially at end of winter when water level drops and she is then sitting on bottom.
 
Refueler said:
Thought people would like a quick view of my 'backyard' and some of my boats and their winter 'home' .....


The ice is pretty thin at moment - about 4 - 5mm .... but if temp drops any more - then it will start to thicken and eventually river as well will freeze over. My channel averages about 40+cms thick but can odd winters when temps really drop and stay down - reach 1m thick.

The red speedboat - Soviet era Progress 4 is aluminium (yes aluminium not alloy !) ... the 5m cabin daysailer is a Kormoran and GRP with twin hinged dagger plates .... Superanne of course is my Sunrider 25 with bilge keels. Her lower hull is solid 50mm GRP - I know for certain having cut to fit a speed log. It destroyed 3 hole cutters to do it !

Once ice sets in - that's it till about mid April .... sometimes later.

Temps ? We get down to about -20C on average .. with -30C as lowest I've seen here .. but usually we will sit most days at about -10C. This year has been strange with temps till today of +4 .. +5 ...
Forecast shows bouncing along the 0 ... -4C this coming week ... very strange.
Click to expand...
Over in the US, they have water pumps at each boat in a marina, circulating the water around each boat to prevent icing.
 
scotty123 said:
Over in the US, they have water pumps at each boat in a marina, circulating the water around each boat to prevent icing.
Click to expand...

:D Good ol USA !!

SA has been in for getting on 7 winters now ... and she's fine. The Bilge keels are not as splayed as Westerlys and that helps .. plus they are seriously bonded and bolted that a battleship would be proud !
The boats actually rise with the ice as it forms ... I'll try get some shots of it through winter if I remember ... due to the round bilge hull form.

I have a Frost Protector heater inside turned down low ... about 250W ... and a timer on the battery charger that gives a n hour or so charge each day.
My electric bill is high enough at home as it is .. to have a pump circulating water round the boat ? I know UK and other places have boats in 'bags' in the water with chemicals in the water to reduce fouling .. so I suppose sticking a pump in can work ...

Dunno bout my channel ... -20C and fresh water ? That's some cooling to counter. Even the river freezes to over 30cms on average .. sometimes over 50cm. Ice fishing guys use extended drills to get through ..
 
That's a beautiful place. Glad you are saying that the speedboat is Aluminium and not Alloy because Alloy has nothing to do with aluminium as many people think. Our house is on the banks of the Brecon canal and so far we have had no ice and some of our fruit trees are flowering already; it has been a warm winter.
 
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC said:
That's a beautiful place. Glad you are saying that the speedboat is Aluminium and not Alloy because Alloy has nothing to do with aluminium as many people think. Our house is on the banks of the Brecon canal and so far we have had no ice and some of our fruit trees are flowering already; it has been a warm winter.
Click to expand...
Very Unlikely to be pure aluminium because that has very little strength

Almost certainly an aluminium alloy containing small/very small percentages of other elements including Mg, Fe, Si, Zn , Mn, Ti, Cu, & Cr
 
VicS said:
Very Unlikely to be pure aluminium because that has very little strength

Almost certainly an aluminium alloy containing small/very small percentages of other elements including Mg, Fe, Si, Zn , Mn, Ti, Cu, & Cr
Click to expand...
Agree; Very rarely there are metal in their pure form. However, people refer to Alloy and they mean Aluminium which totally different thing.. An alloy could be copper based, aluminium based, mild steel based etc
 
Refueler said:
:D Good ol USA !!

SA has been in for getting on 7 winters now ... and she's fine. The Bilge keels are not as splayed as Westerlys and that helps .. plus they are seriously bonded and bolted that a battleship would be proud !
The boats actually rise with the ice as it forms ... I'll try get some shots of it through winter if I remember ... due to the round bilge hull form.

I have a Frost Protector heater inside turned down low ... about 250W ... and a timer on the battery charger that gives a n hour or so charge each day.
My electric bill is high enough at home as it is .. to have a pump circulating water round the boat ? I know UK and other places have boats in 'bags' in the water with chemicals in the water to reduce fouling .. so I suppose sticking a pump in can work ...

Dunno bout my channel ... -20C and fresh water ? That's some cooling to counter. Even the river freezes to over 30cms on average .. sometimes over 50cm. Ice fishing guys use extended drills to get through ..
Click to expand...
They don't actually circulate water per se, Canada, Great Lakes, but they pump air under the boats with a small compressor and you can do several boats at a time. The rising bubbles circulate the water.
 
In Ammersee, the boats are all taken out because the sheets of ice can get pretty big .... if the boats are trapped then when the ice-sheet moves, it rips all the moorings out. If prolonged cold weather is expected, they also remove the decking from all the jetties, and cut channels in the ice round the piles with chain-saws.
 
CAPTAIN FANTASTIC said:
Agree; Very rarely there are metal in their pure form. However, people refer to Alloy and they mean Aluminium which totally different thing.. An alloy could be copper based, aluminium based, mild steel based etc
Click to expand...
Goodness knows what Nigel is trying to tell us when he says it's aluminium not alloy.
 
We moved to live in the Netherlands in January 1997. In the whole month the temperature never rose above -10C. We visited Hellevoetsluis during the month, to find skaters in the marina on ice that was something like 20cm thick. Surprisingly, most boats were still berthed afloat. The harbourmaster told me later that he had not been told of any that had suffered damage.
 
Baggywrinkle said:
In Ammersee, the boats are all taken out because the sheets of ice can get pretty big .... if the boats are trapped then when the ice-sheet moves, it rips all the moorings out. If prolonged cold weather is expected, they also remove the decking from all the jetties, and cut channels in the ice round the piles with chain-saws.
Click to expand...

Thank you ... its why my BBQ / Boat deck is not out into the water. We had a section out = but even with deep driven piling - the ice just ripped it up ..

SA is left with slack lines and allowed to move with the ice as necessary. Luckily because of the narrow and only 1.5m deep there - the ice does not move too much.

But one year we had a different situation where they dynamited the ice to get river freed ... this created a 5m high water wall and higher ice wall behind it ... it travelled near 30 - 35kms down the river but they failed to dynamite it at points on its way down .. so it built up and I had a 14m high ice wall at end of my channel and it cracked .. lifted and piled up the ice which was anywhere up to 1m thick ....
Superanne was lifted and dropped halfway up the bank .... along with half the pontoon etc.

Trying to find photos ..
 
Refueler said:
Thank you ... its why my BBQ / Boat deck is not out into the water. We had a section out = but even with deep driven piling - the ice just ripped it up ..

SA is left with slack lines and allowed to move with the ice as necessary. Luckily because of the narrow and only 1.5m deep there - the ice does not move too much.

But one year we had a different situation where they dynamited the ice to get river freed ... this created a 5m high water wall and higher ice wall behind it ... it travelled near 30 - 35kms down the river but they failed to dynamite it at points on its way down .. so it built up and I had a 14m high ice wall at end of my channel and it cracked .. lifted and piled up the ice which was anywhere up to 1m thick ....
Superanne was lifted and dropped halfway up the bank .... along with half the pontoon etc.

Trying to find photos ..
Click to expand...

Shiiiiit!!!!! :eek:
 
VicS said:
Goodness knows what Nigel is trying to tell us when he says it's aluminium not alloy.
Click to expand...

They are not the alloys you see now ... the aluminium content of the old Progress boats is very high and is reason many of them never survived into ownership after soviet collapse ... they were sold for their metal value. That value was far above any value as a boat alone.
I managed to rescue two before they were scrapped ...
 
Wow. It's currently 23c outside and it did get down to 9c overnight. You can keep your ice, snow and low temperatures. No need for the A/C at the moment.

One thing that isn't so smart is that I'm in the middle of a desert (no, not dessert) and 4.5 hours from the nearest bit of Arabian Gulf so that rather spoils a weekend's sailing before it starts.

But I'm back to my native Portsmouth in July, so the Solent users better look out for me... :)
 
Ice breaking on a canal in winter can be quite good fun, though it make turning in particular difficult. Sensible GRP owners put boards out during winter as pucks of ice can fly about with some force.
 
Baggywrinkle said:
Shiiiiit!!!!! :eek:
Click to expand...

We got a call from a pal of mine upriver who was watching his dock and summer house get torn apart ..... that was on day 1.

We went out to have a look - thinking this would be fast moving .... nothing. We can see about 5 - 6kms up river. But we started to hear distant rumbling like excavators working. By evening time as light was fading - we could see the 'wall' approaching ... and its extent over the banks and land.
I live on the outside of the bend where it swings to the right ... with a protecting spit of ground on the upriver side.

During the night ... this is nearly 24hrs after first warning ... the water and then ice hit ... we stayed in the house ... house is on a rise of about 10m from the channel ... and water level is normally about 2 - 3m below that.

At about midnight 'ish ... the noise indicated it was over for us .... and we went out ... OH LORDY !!

Water had made its way over halfway up to house leaving trees and poles / debris strewn about ... we couldn't see the river for the Ice wall we now had ... even Latvian TV came to see it next day ! .... Superanne was stood half in the garden at alarming angle up the bank ... pontoon and dock smashed to firewood.



Note that I'm standing where channel depth is usually 2.5 - 3m ...

The ice blocks were up to 1m thick and mangled / stood up as though they were cardboard ...



Photos after some thawing .... note my lack of winter clothes !!

The ice wall took 3 months to thaw and clear to allow my boats out ... and of course I then had to clear the telegraph poles and broken trees out.



Govt of course ignored all of us who suffered ...

This was the summer decking we had :



Original pontoon

 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top