Engineless sailing?

[vyv_cox]

Re: Sailing canals.

Have you seen Hellevoetsluis in August? You are fortunate if you can get through the rafted boats at all, with an engine! Sailing in would be utterly impossible, and probably banned, even with the wind dead astern.

I might accept sculling a 20 footer, but a 34 footer with radar pole, Windpilot and hinged up boarding ladder on the pushpit? No thanks.

We sail on wider canals when possible but upwind it's usually the depth that prevents. Did your wrinkle work with a draught of 1.5 metres? Many canals are dredged in the centre for industrial barge traffic but there is a shelf near the bank where depth is well under 1 metre.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Gunfleet]

Re: Sailing canals.

There is no commercial traffic on the Brittany canals. I expect if your mast went up and down pretty sharpish you could sail, though you'd be rigging & de-rigigging an awful lotand you'd need to keep your eyes open for electic cables and the like. I think I'd give up and tow it from the footpath. Re draft, 1 metre is the most realistic for making it through.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Peppermint]

Re: Not logical

Why are my skills suspect because I use an engine? Crikey it took me three goes to get in my berth WITH an engine.

An example happened on Thursday. I left Cowes in the morning and took a nice big tide to the West. Pottered about in Portsmouth and returned on the East going tide. Arriving at Calshot Spit,Southampton water I've got a dying wind and a strong ebb. Now years ago I'd have anchored at Calshot and waited the three hours or so for low water. This would have meant that instead of getting home for the start of the footie I'd have got in around midnight. So Mr. Diesels legacy is that I get a choice. I might have been a better person and watched less telly but in truth it was often a pain in the arse.

You really do need all the time in the world and a huge dose of flexibility in your plans if your engineless.

<hr width=100% size=1>

 

[Abigail]

Re: Not logical

My first boat had a very unreliable engine when I bought her - so in the first year (before I bought a diesel) I sailed her into Brightlingsea, Tollesbury, Gravesned, Erith, and on one very memorable occasion St Katherine's Lock!. Since then, on a range of other people's boats with reliable, serviced deisel engines, I've sailed into Signes, Brighton, Lymington, Newtown Creek, numerous anchorages and bouys and various others. Yes, I think I'm jinxed.

So I like having an engine while still (as rarely as possible) tied to a work deadline, but absolutely don't rely on it and regard it with great suspicion. I practice manoeuvres under sail (only just beginning in new much bigger boat). And it's like suddenly realising you're speeding/overtired just to make that meeting. It's not worth dying for. The same applies to doing silly things on the water for the bloody Monday!

That chequered history does illustrate that although most marinas won't make you a bertholder comfortably without alternative means of propulsion (hah!!) they will certainly get you in in safety due to an engine failure.

BTW as a liveaboard I can certainly think of enough stuff to replace the weight!

Finally - do read Charles Stock "Sailing Just for Fun'. He still sails his gaff cutter "Shoal Waters' which he built himself in the '60's on the East Coast, regularly sails over 100 miles in a w/e, all over the busy Thames Estuary (high tides, lots of shipping ..) and says he has never been late home for work.



<hr width=100% size=1>Sarah&Pip