my three exciting moments sunday morning!

[chrisbitz]

Happily pottering in the boat on Sunday morning, I heard shouting near the shore, went out to look, and saw this!

http://youtu.be/77-P737rdEM

A dog had swam out to play fetch with a marker buoy in front of me! He'd been paddling for 5-10 minutes, and we were getting a bit worried about him!


Then a few minutes later, I saw a 20' elderly mobo owner struggling with the tide and wind with what looked like a 3hp or less engine, going round in circles for ages, and then his engine presumably died, and I saw him struggle and fail to grab a number of moorings as he drifted down the trot, bumping from boat to boat! :-( I managed to flag our club trot boat, and he went off to deal with it... Poor bloke, I bet he was having a horrible sunday morning.

Then finally, I went to the pontoon, and had a great chat with someone who'd dropped their bike in yesterday and was fishing it out with a magnet. And found it! Not particularly spectacular, but still fun when you see it happening for the first time.

And then I went for a sail and thankfully had no such "excitement" with fantastic hot sun and a steady 15kn wind.

 

[Lakesailor]

I was ready to believe you until you got to the hot sun bit.....

 

[A1Sailor]

Enjoyed the clip of the guy doing the doggy paddle.

 

[Seajet]

My ex-wife and I once saw a big dog swimming across Sweare Deep channel in Chichester harbour, we were worried so lifted the keel and gave chase into the shallows.

The dog eventually climbed out near Emsworth and shook himself then happily trotted away; it was a Newfoundland, a born swimmer !

 

[prv]

Then finally, I went to the pontoon, and had a great chat with someone who'd dropped their bike in yesterday and was fishing it out with a magnet. And found it! Not particularly spectacular, but still fun when you see it happening for the first time.

I found myself doing that last night. Managed to drop several hundred quid's worth of Spade anchor off the bow sans chain. Got to Force 4 a couple of minutes before they closed, to buy one of those Sea Searcher salvage magnets. About twenty nervous minutes of fishing, over an increasingly wide area, and eventually felt it clunk onto something heavy. A few failed lifting attempts, during which I wondered if I had found a heavy pontoon-mooring chain rather than the anchor, and then the rope came up with weight on it all the way and a very welcome sight.

Several lessons learned yesterday:

1. Anchors don't fall vertically down through the water. Anchors with a decent amount of fluke area will "glide" somewhat, and end up a couple of metres away from the bow even with only about 3m of depth.
2. Salvage magnets don't stick well to curved surfaces. Like, for example, the curved fluke of an anchor. I could only lift the thing all the way up when the magnet happened to stick to the flat side of the shank. Then it stuck powerfully (they claim 64kg in air).
3. Thick line is an embuggerance when working in a current. The magnet came with a hank of skinny blue polyprop, which I scorned in favour of one of my nice thick warps. But I found that the extra hydrodynamic resistance of the thicker line in the couple of knots of tide meant that I couldn't dangle the magnet straight down - it was flying out in a downtide curve. I swapped back to the thin polyprop which the water didn't catch anything like as much.
4. An anchor windlass can pull even a 10mm Wichard shackle apart, if you cut the head off the pin. This is how I dropped the thing in the first place. I'd cut the protruding head off the shackle pin to try to let it fit through the narrow bow roller. This particular design of shackle had no widened disk between the flat head (the bit you grip with pliers) and the shaft of the pin. So with the head cut off there was nothing to stop it being pulled through the hole (or rather, for the U of the shackle to be widened past the pin). I'd realised this, and already had a better-fitting shackle on order, with a countersink and an Allen socket, but I thought the Wichard would do for now in benign conditions. I think they were rated for several tonnes - shows how important the whole piece is to the design working properly. Apart from being cut about the shackle wasn't being abused - it was being pulled in its major direction, but the anchor caught against the roller fitting and the shackle instantly burst.

All's well that ends well, and a slightly more secure shackle is fitted pending the arrival of the proper item. Plus I now have a salvage magnet for the next time something goes overboard

Pete

 

[Vela2013]

Glad the dog was okay!

My Sunday lesson?
Lets get on the water!

I missed out on the beaches and sun yesterday But I'm sure there will be more this summer!