The 1987 storm - any boaty recollections?

[gravygraham]

This evening sees the 25th anniversary of the 1987 'hurricane' which hit southern and some central parts of Britain. Plenty of us have memories of downed trees and falling roof tiles, but can anyone here share any boaty stories of that night?

 

[Bandit]

My father had a motor boat with an alongside mooring in the Albert Marina in Guernsey.

I had a boat but no berth so I was alongside his boat somewhat illegally.

I was trying to see a passenger catamaran in Norway in rough weather trials but it was flat calm there.

We got back it was before the days of mobile phones so we didnt know the extent of the bad weather until we got home.

A tree had fallen down alongside my car in the airport car park so i had to get in the passenger side. I dropped a coleague back at his house and my parting words were it doesnt look like there is a tree in your house but there was around the back in the kitchen.

The next pontoon in the Albert Marina broke free and all the boats against the wall were also damaged including mine but my fathers wasnt.

 

[sailorman]

This evening sees the 25th anniversary of the 1987 'hurricane' which hit southern and some central parts of Britain. Plenty of us have memories of downed trees and falling roof tiles, but can anyone here share any boaty stories of that night?

our boat & its mooring went ashore, ended up on the salting edge. no damage at all she was retrieved 2 weeks later

we are the 5th one along the saltings

 

[Strake]

A little tenuous but I was standing on a dock in The Bay of Naples waiting for the Hydrofoil ferry whilst in Italy on business. My (then) boss sauntered down to say he'd received a call from his wife in Crawley to say all their trees had blown down. "Slightly excitable I think" was his remark, "we've five oak trees and they're not going to have gone...."
When he returned to the UK, obviously all became apparent. It took him a couple of hours to realise something else was wrong with his garden, his summer house had disappeared and was eventually found in a neighbours garden three houses down.
To bring it (slightly) back to boating, at the same time on that dock, another colleague was looking at the FT muttering about how something seemed to be going horribly wrong on the US stockmarket...

 

[burgundyben]

I was sleeping on board a Westerly Fulmar in Hamble Point Marina, stern facing the river entrance, the waves we're crashing into the cockpit....

An MG 335 'Miss Guided' blew over in the yard and at Port Hamble a row went over like dominoes.

A coaster, Sam G, was blown ashore outside the river entrance and we walked around it the next day.

 

[JSYmartini]

I went out in my little 12' With the next morning, into the small roads of St. Helier as far as the end of the Elizabeth Castle breakwater. The sort of daft thing you do when you're 13 years old and get the day off school

Nowhere near high tide but the swells were peeling over the top of the breakwater, awesome size.

Also, the tide never went out which was quite freaky.

 

[Tranona]

My house overlooks Poole Harbour, quite high up and 2 miles inland and facing roughly south. Silver birch trees at the bottom of my garden were horizontal and I looked out of my bedroom window knowing my boat would be dragging its mooring in Parkstone Bay, but powerless to do anything about it. Sure enough found it the next morning parked on the foreshore still attached to the sinker, but relatively undamaged. Surveyor reckoned wooden boats like mine had survived better than many GRP boats where damage was only found when trim was peeled back to reveal detached bulkheads and stringers etc.

 

[henryf]

I was living on board a narrow boat at the time in Kings Langley, near Watford.

Slept right through it.

Everyone was worrying about me but I was totally oblivious to it all !

Henry

 

[Bav34]

another colleague was looking at the FT muttering about how something seemed to be going horribly wrong on the US stockmarket...

Perversely my yacht survived the storm but my ownership of it didn't survive the stock market crash. Or my house.

 

[Glyn-2008]

I had an 18ft Dart catamaran that was blown 50ft from its normal resting point in the dinghy park and had broken one of the hulls clean in half. Insurance paid out on this one. There was a lot of other damage to other boats but ours was the worse. This was on the east coast of the Isle of Wight.

 

[AllanG]

I was the 2nd Engineer Officer onboard the P&O Ferry 'Pride of Kent' that night, and we had to spend a VERY uncomfortable 12 hours at sea in the 'relative' shelter of St. Margaret's cliffs as we couldn't berth in Dover.

The memory is still vivid even after all those years, as I'd never seen the Channel so wild!

Allan

 

[Jonmendez]

Close friend of mine was out in the Bristol Channel in a pilot boat when the radar operator asked for a hard turn (the sea was such that radar was the only way to lookout forward) and they were narrowly missed by a large beach chalet windmilling across the top off the waves!

 

[Mr Googler]

Shanklin Pier on the IOW was destroyed that night. Me and my brother went down to the beach the next day and found a quite a bit of coinage from the fruit machines sticking up out the sand.

Was quite a sight. We are a bit insignificant really!

 

[Strake]

"Perversely my yacht survived the storm but my ownership of it didn't survive the stock market crash. Or my house"

Strangely enough, the crash caused me to give up my aeroplane and take up boating

 

[n.herring]

Had a 32ft aquafibre/Broom built at Bells yard, Brundall by East Anglian Marine, before having it transported to the thames we had a weeks holiday on the broads to check it out and make sure everything worked ok. First day on the new boat we left Brundall and decided to stop the night at Loddon, stern to mooring under some very tall trees, all seemed fine when we went to bed. Got up in the middle of the night to find trees swaying, ropes creaking and blue lights flashing in the distant dark. Following morning calm returned but shops did not have power and phonelines were down. it was some time later we realised how widespread the damage had been being before the days of mobiles.
We will always remember that maiden voyage.

 

[boatmike]

No photos I am afraid but my boat, a Hurley 32 then, was taken all the way from Hardway in Portsmouth harbour and dumped, complete with mooring block high and dry on the other side near to the entrance to Portchester channel. No real damage apart from a knackered pulpit but it took about 3 weeks to get her floating again....

 

[pipemma]

My parents had owned a (fourth or fifth-hand) Shetland 535 from early 1981 which had been hauled out of the Medway for the winter a couple of weeks earlier and was in our tandem double garage for the winter. The tree that destroyed the garage missed the car completely - undamaged - but fell straight across the cabin of the boat, completely crushing it. Insurance claim read "Site of wreck - garage". My Skipper 12 dinghy was suspended in the roof of the same garage and was likewise undamaged (and is still sailing to this day on Lake Zurich now)