How to spoil a perfectly good anchorage

Dave_Snelson

Dave_Snelson

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OK, I am going to utilise my position as "honarary yottie" to have a rant about the feckwits in Llanbedrog anchorage over the weekend.

There was this fat Narwal look-alike on a black and yellow jetski making the stupid thing jump up and down and then thrashing it through the boats at full speed. Why?? The sea was flat calm and he had a million square miles of sea to play with????

He got chased out by the local coast guard (also on a jetski, but that's excusable!) but came back later. He would have made the perfect target for a spear-gun. Then we could have spit roasted the fat pig on the beach and used the not inconsiderable amount of dripping to make something useful like candles.

The final straw though was the speed boat and knee-boarder. I was rafted up with a friend in a nearly new Searay 19BR. The speed boat came past about 8-10 meters away and the wash set mine and my friends boat rocking so much, that even with 4 fenders out, my friends boat hit mine against a metallic part and the resultant damage was 3 sizable chunks taken out of his top-sides.

Why do these brain-dead moronic numb-nuts think that we at anchor are in any way interested in their antics?? Or do they do it deliberately to annoy us? The jetskier seemed to!

I can appreciate why some people grow an extreme dislike for power craft and on that Saturday afternoon, I was definately with the raggies in shouting down these [--word removed--].

Rant over!
 
Dave

I had the same problem many years ago at Llanbedrog with a jet skier. On his third pass I held the boat hook out, it missed him by about 6". After a few words of wisdom he decided to go and play elsewhere! /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

I had a sailboat then and now have a MOBO but I still get pissed about the water fleas.

Tom /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif
 
We had an incident in Priory Bay. It wasn't so much the ringo-towers or water skiers, they didn't create too much wash. It was some [--word removed--] twat in a 30 foot hard-topped powerboat that left the anchorage just on the plane, passing by us about 30 feet away. I don't think we've rolled so much ever! SWMBO had only just finished her blood testing and injections - so could have done herself an injury if she'd be dealing with the sharps at the time.

It was dark, so I didn't get a boat name - but if I had, I'd be filling in the complaint to QHM now. What an ignorant dangerous dickhead.

Why aren't the magazines doing articles on ettiquette along with all the boat handling ones they repeat ad nauseam?

Rick
 
A worthy rant! Last week at Conwy while I was careening I had plenty of time to watch the antics on the water. I noticed that the raggies caused no problems, nor did the bigger mobos but the smaller speedboats, mainly crewed by young men with no necks and no shirts and loud unintelligible voices, were a royal pain, as were most of the PWCs and 3 of the RIBs. I did see two PWCs being used respectfully, but this was out of many. The PWC problem became worse after 17.00, when the harbour staff knocked off.
 
I had a similar problem at Studland last year. Despite shouting, arm waving, etc, the prats in a speed boat insisted on repeatedly doing the same to us. In the end, I upped anchor and, when they were stationary clear of other boats, opened up my (much bigger) boat close to them and enjoyed the look on their faces. I stopped before I swamped them and said a few choice words and a warning They didn't do it again.
 
If its any consolation, after a week in Majorca, its the same there - and its mainly smaller boats and Jetskis that cause the problems, the larger Mobos and Raggies are pretty good.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I had the same problem many years ago at Llanbedrog with a jet skier. On his third pass I held the boat hook out, it missed him by about 6". After a few words of wisdom he decided to go and play elsewhere!

[/ QUOTE ] Am I the only person who thinks this was a dangerous and unseamanlike thing to do? And no, I don't make a habit of belting through anchorages myself.

However irritating - and sometimes dangerous - these people may be, and however much you might argue that he'd brought the danger on himself by being so close, surely two wrongs never make a right? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

If he'd come into contact with the boat hook- at (say) 25 knots, you could have been facing a charge of manslaughter.
 
Trouble is Dave, its arseholes like that who will end up causing us all to have to be licenced or registered with the authorities and therefore losing a lot of the freedom we have. Luckily we don't ge t it much in Falmouth where I go as they tend to play off the beaches and thats away from the anchorages. On the flip side though, when i am going at full chat and a wakeboarder or a PWC comes up and plays in my wake, they can be quite impressive. Still agree with your rant though.

JH
 
I once knew a bloke who thought of tieing a long length of cheeswire between two friendly boats and yanking it tight just before the jetskier passed through. I told him I didn't think it was a good idea but the thought of a headless 'jetski nuisance' had him in stiches.
 
Same issues in Alum Bay two weekends back. First a large RIB did a 270° about 10 metres of us at around 10 knots with predictable results...it was catch the breakfast time as the mugs, plates and so on slid backwards and forwards. Then his mate in a Sunseeker decided it was a good idea to head straight for us on the plane, then drop off to around 10 knots still half a mile out. He did finally slow right down but by then the damage was done and we got rolled a minute later. Fortunately by then we'd worked out who would field the butter and who would stand silly mid off for the marmalade.

They later tied up together further inshore...it would have been sooo tempting to show them what 17 tons dragging along at 10 knots looks like as we left but there were others around and life is, in any event, too short for that kind of hassle.
 
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