Smacking it

[pugwash]

You're the skipper of a fishing smack under sail offshore. No GPS, no plotter, no chart, no compass, only the stuff that's in your head and years of conditioning. This is the picture painted by Tom Cunliffe on p85 of the latest YM. "Working the offshore grounds with no tide table or watch, the hour might have been noted by the turn of the tide," Tom writes.

Question: Given these circs, and possibly a hat-full of wind that gives your vessel substantial leeway when hove-to and therefore negates the use of a lead-line as a current-measuring device, how would you know that the tide has turned?

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[benjenbav]

Solent CG mentioned it when you asked for a radio check

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[John_Lana]

If there is plenty of wind and fairly strong tide running, you would see the difference if the tide changed from wind against tide to wind with the tide, or vice versa /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

John

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.john-lana.com>http://www.john-lana.com</A> Mainly about boats, but also a bit about my other toy, my Caterham 7

 

[Nickel]

You'd notice it on the directional effect the tide was giving your lobster pot buoys.

Failing that your blood would feel the moon pulling it out of your left ear and pulling it into your right. So long as you didn't turn around, of course!

<hr width=100% size=1>Nickel

Being paranoid simply means - having all the facts.

 

[Guest]

In laying oiut any pots / long-lines / whatever - you would see the direction of line-out from smack when setting / hauling or if towing ...
If making enough leeway etc. - the water would change its look as its direction of current would alter the nett effect .....


<hr width=100% size=1>Nigel ... and of course Yahoo groups :
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/gps-navigator/

 

[Mirelle]

Stowboating, trawling, dredging, long lining?

With the exception of long lining for cod, all the fishing methods of the East Coast smacks involved a rope or two to something on the bottom - in the case of stowboating the boat actually fished at anchor.

<hr width=100% size=1>Que scais-je?

 

[peterb]

Re: Stowboating, trawling, dredging, long lining?

That raises an interesting point. If a trawler is bottom trawling, is she much affected by cross tide? Some of the trawlers I've seen seem to be only making 2-3 knots; in a cross tide of two knots that would make the sweep go out at an angle of nearly 45 degrees. Do they normally sweep in line with the tide? Could be useful information in predicting their movements.

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[Birdseye]

Re: Stowboating, trawling, dredging, long lining?

surely from a practical point of view, you would trawl into the tide not across it.

<hr width=100% size=1>this post is a personal opinion, and you should not base your actions on it.

 

[paulineb]

Drifting from your thread (slightly), there's a building by Ramsgate marina called "Home for Smack Boys" ..... always makes me smile.

<hr width=100% size=1>Pxx

<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.paulinebeddoes.co.uk/php-cgi/gallery2>Perils of Pauline in Pics</A>

 

[pugwash]

Re: Stowboating, trawling, dredging, long lining?

I'll e-mail Tom and ask him and let you know what he says.

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[Peppermint]

Re: That would be one of the things

in your head.

If you live next to the sea and work on it you should be able to work it out pretty well from observing the world around you. The world your part of.

There's a lot in Toms article The number of todays sailors who think the tide is flooding because thats what it says in the tide tables.

The guys who want to know what the weathers going to do from any source but their own observation.

Most yachtsmen are just visiting the sea. These blokes lived with it. They didn't work things out they just knew them.

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[pugwash]

Re: That would be one of the things

I'm not faulting anything Tom said. It's a great piece and full of wisdom. The answer to my question, as you seem to suggest, might be simply "gut instinct." If so, it's nearly impossible to explain. I'd be fascinated to try to break down "the look of things" into practical details that the rest of us might learn from. There must have been visual clues of some sort, even if it took a sort of gut instinct to recognise them.

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[windandwave]

Re: That would be one of the things

The reference to gut instinct suggests that it can't be taught, only developed. I think in reality it's developed by experience, but can be developed much faster with somebody else beside you pointing out what to look for.

Theory books can be poor on this, as they tend to point out general principles without explaining how they operate in particular situations. For example, we all know that the wind backs over (and near to) the land. But until it was pointed out to me recently, I never thought about what that meant for approaching windward marks close to the shore and the desirability of coming in on port.

An exception is Alan Watt's Instant Weather Forecasting: large photographs of typical skies, and notes on what to expect next make this immediately useful, and help in developing this type of instinct.

I also think that instruments, instead of being a crutch, can help you develop that gut instinct: if you know approx. when the tide will change, you can look out for the signs of slack water and hopefully train yourself to recognise it without tide tables next time.

I completely agree that the "look of things" can be broken down into practical details - I suspect, though, that these can only be taught effectively in context, out on the water.

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[Becky]

Re: That would be one of the things

My Grandfather, now long deceased, was a fisherman working out from Mevagissey, and he was brought up in the days before engines, RDF etc. Had a compass, but didn't use it that I ever saw. He just knew. A lifetime on the water, mainly the bit between Rame Head and the Dodman gave him a feel for what was going on. In the same vein, I remember being tied to a buoy in almost nil vis off the French coast, can't remeber where now, and we heard a single diesel puttering along, and out of the fog a few feet to port came a fisherman in a twenty-odd foot open boat, passed the buoy (and us) and disappeared into the mist to starboard. He obviously knew where he was, and where to go, and this was many years before Decca and GPS. And before anybody comments on us tying up to a navigation buoy, let me tell you we were very grateful to find anything that would protect us and give us a position at the time!

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[Peppermint]

Re: Well we know some of them already

We can judge the time of high water from observation at a port. We can get into the cycle of the tides and judge where we are on the cycle pretty well. We know that wind against tide looks different to wind with tide. We might get a visual clue to help us out too. Like a floating object or a rock reappearing as the tide turns.

I sailed with a real salty old boy who's home waters were from Chichester to Weymouth. He knew everything about every creek and harbour, wreck and sandbank between the two. He knew the bottom type and profile, all of the transits and clearing lines and instinct told him whether the tide was to prediction or off.

If we got a chart out and you asked him where we were he pointed at a place and you were more or less there. If viz were bad or weather was up he used more of his hand to point so his area of uncertainty grew in line with hard conditions, just like we all did pre GPS.

I took him to Salcombe and he was lost in space.

He was the guy who taught me the most about weather forecasting. If you asked him what the weather would do he'd answer "it'll do what it did last time it looked like that around here" He used to check sea and air temp. quite often, because of fog. Not that fog bothered him.

The funny thing was, though you'd never guess, he worked in the city. He was brought up on boats though, as were generations of his family.

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