Unprepared teenager

RivalRedwing said:
I did wonder about this as an ILB callout, suppose it wasn't far from base and a useful training exercise on a Saturday... guess the teenager (and mum) learnt from it...

http://www.ybw.com/news-from-yachti...hy-sailor-grounded-at-queenborough-kent-58649
Click to expand...

This sounds more of a worthy reason for the ILB to launch than many of the call outs they get. The young lad obviously misjudged the depth on a falling tide. Not many who sail in the Medway and Swale, or much of the East Coast can honestly say they haven't touched the bottom at some time. The mud is extremely soft and deep in that area and he did the right thing staying on the boat. He probably was ill equipped for an extended stay aboard, he was probably just pottering around on a summers day close to his parents boat. I would hope he had a bouancy aid or Lifejacket, that's not clear.
When you hear or read about the amount of "AA" type break downs the lifeboat gets called to, a lot being sailing yachts with engine failure or ill equipped boats not even carrying an anchor. This certainly wasn't an unnecessary call.
Earlier this year I listened to a Mayday from a motor boat that had run aground on the mud under the M2 bridge on the Medway. It shouldn't have been a Mayday, I don't think the ILB could do anything when they got there other than wait for the tide to come back in.
 
Sounds like me aged 10 getting a lugsail dinghy stuck aground in Salcombe. I didn't have the brains to get out and push, as my Dad said when he came to rescue me!
 
WHen I was a teenager, we were at Stonehaven on the East coast of Scotland. At that time we had a small fibreglass tender that could be rigged for sailing, though it hardly had a sparkling performance! I took it for a jaunt out of the harbour, in light conditions. However, as I came back to windward, the wind strengthened a bit, and the windward performance - never good - disappeared so I could barely make ground to windward. It took me a VERY long time for me to make it back through the harbour entrance, with Dad and my brother shouting advice from the harbour wall! I guess that many of us have stories of adventures when we were younger where it COULD have gone pear-shaped. In my case, I suppose that at worst Dad would have had to bring our boat out to fetch me back - a nuisance, but not a problem, just as staying put for a tide was a nuisance rather than a problem for the lad in this case. As it is, he's got valuable experience!
 
I'm surprised some kind soul didn't think of throwing him a line and just pulling him off the mud back into deeper water. You wouldn't need to much horsepower, even the trot boat at Queensborough would have been up to it. Still, seven hours gave him plenty of time to consider his error and no doubt he won't make that mistake again...
 
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