SWMBO and containers

Piddy

Piddy

Well-Known Member
Joined
18 Jan 2005
Messages
892
Location
Hampshire
Visit site
Mrs Piddy is suffering from pre-season trepidation about hitting partly submerged containers and sailing by night. It comes just as our kids are old enough and capable of stretching our sailing horizons a bit further.

She has even had nightmares with containers falling through our bedroom ceiling after seeing an YM article a few years ago where a boat looking very like ours was about to crash down onto one. The Napoli incident has re-awakened the 'container issue' along with this months YM article.

Having seen this boat last year, where the owner apparently claimed he hit a submerged container (although I'm not sure how he knew as it was at least 8' down and he was suspiciously close to Alderney), she is not too happy at setting off to cross the Channel in the evening as I would prefer to do. Other concerns she has are the dreaded lobster pots and particularly the joined-together type we have seen in mid channel making her sailing much more stressful than it should be.

Do other SWMBO’s have these concerns? Mrs Piddy is very experienced as crew, after 25 years of sailing with me seeing lots of good times (and a few bad!), so it won’t put her off but I’m finding it difficult to keep her off this subject.


P8070008.jpg


and

P8070009.jpg


and

P8070012.jpg


I don't know who's boat it was, but it did hit something very hard!

Cheers
 
That looks suspiciously like rock hopping to me.

Yes, Madame also displaying symptoms of IFOC (Irrational Fear of Containers).

Just keep repeating "99.99% of them eventually sink, and there aren't that many in the first place".

I reality, seems to me we're far more likely to hit something that normally floats, like a baulk of timber, tree trunk, etc.

PS, thanx for your pic, great argument for a full keel!
 
There is often a great difference betwen perception of a risk (which can be coloured by something you have read or heard) and the re-ification of a risk (turning it into a reality)

On the macro-scale at which you and SWMBO are operating, it makes no difference between the two. You'll be adding stress to a working partnership, which doesn't need stress.

If you want to change the perception of risk, you'll need to get chapter and verse on how many container/lobster pot incident there have been relative to a time of year and location. If you then establish that, say, 5 boats every year out of 5000 heading to Jersey are towed in with fouled props, and you (together) deem that this is not an acceptable risk, you have to move to the next stage of risk management, and mitigate (diminish, or remove the risk).

This means rope cutters round the prop, or sailing in daylight with a good lookout, or choosing a route which avoids the pots if possible.

Avoiding half-sunk containers is another matter; the probablity is pretty damned low, but the consequences are reasonably high. Mitigation: forward looking sonar (I don't know if it works), Notices to Mariners, follow a bigger boat, have a liferaft drill and equioment.

Knowledge and preparation dimishes the chance of failure when something goes wrong. A modification to the passaage plan might make a big difference to SWMBO's risk perception.
 
Excellent photos - I am just amazed that the keel is still there! Doesn't look like there is much structure left to attach it to.

The photos do suggest that the (bottom of the) keel came into heavy contact with something that was reluctant to budge out of the way when requested to do so.....

Photos like these are excellent reminders of the advantages of a nice long, strong, encapsulated keel - I am very pleased that we have one!
 
Speaking as a SWMBO myself, we are currently looking into buying our first boat and I am extremely keen on a long, fully encapsulated keel'd HR 352, this thread has added to my arguement for a HR352 against my husbands desire for a Westerly Corsair, thanks:-)
 
It ws quite a big boat, something like 41' and it must have hit whatever it was very hard. The gap in the hull foreward and abft of the keel was about 1" - I'm amazed they kept it afloat!

At least we get a good chunk of the season before we go crossing channels.

Cheers
 
Car hits car driving to the marina, passenger dies. A real tragedy, we mourn, shame it had to happen.

Boat hits (container?) crew man dies, tragedy, such a waste of a life. We all talk about it.

Which is the most likely?
 
Thanks for that

The strange thing is, I quite undertstand her concerns - I don't mind admitting it shook me up when we nearly sailed over a floating line joining 2 buoys almost exactly halfway across the Channel. I was in a 'comfort zone' as the echo sounder was showing 200' and there were no ships in sight and we were having a lovely trip across. The ramifications of a rope between the keel and rudder in over 2knots of tide are not worth thinking about.
I keep a super sharp knife aboard, but whether I would be able to cut a large rope bouncing about mid channel is another matter.

I have experienced a rope round the prop without a cutter on our last boat and wouldn't want to go without again - however we do seem to be a hoover of the seas judging by the plastic bags and neeting we have picked up over the last few years!


I guess I'll keep up the confident 'don't worry' stuff!


Cheers
 
Having sailed / skied / backpacked / rock-climbed / hiked etc etc with men and women, my experience is that men and women tend to be wired differently with regard to risks. In broad generalisations, if a particular risk is 1 in 5000, women tend to think that they will be the 1 in 5000, whereas men tend to think they will be one of the 4,999.

My own attitude is not to take unnecessary risks, and if a risk is necessary, to mitigate it as far as reasonably possible. Why do you want to cross the Channel at night? With modern GPS systems, good charts, experienced crew etc, I would suggest a long sail during the day would be better risk management than sailing at night. Traditionally night passages were so you could arrive at dawn to check the light house signals (to ensure you were actually where you thought you were!), with daylight approaching for safe entry to harbour. Nowadays, you're more likely to find everyone is still sleeping when you get there and no-one is leaving to free up a berth / mooring buoy for you /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I can't imagine you have any greater chance of hitting a submerged container at night than during the day - but if you do have any sort of emergency, given the option, I would prefer to be in daylight with all crew awake when trying to sort it out.

So I'm with Mrs Piddy, unless you've got a good reason to night sail.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top