Unusual things that happen on a pontoon!

wizard

wizard

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Getting ready to leave Chantereyne last Sunday morning for Portsmouth on P pontoon when there was a wild engine noise followed by a bang and the yacht jumping to the side and back again.

Going forward there was a young frenchman lying on the pontoon entangled with a motorbike having hit the stemhead of my yacht after avoiding an upturned tender also on the pontoon.

No damage to my stem head, and I had absolutely no sympathy for the young lad who was fortunately ok.

If there had have been damage to my yacht I cant imagine how the claim form would sound to the insurance underwriter ' yacht hit by motorbike!'

So what strange things have happened to you on a pontoon ...
 
Had fourteen bodies suddenly descend down the boat & someone proceeded to change her name ...... which I didn't notice until the next morning after breakfast when the passengers were coming off the ferry, pointing, taking photo's & having a jolly-good laugh! :rolleyes:
 
wizard said:
Getting ready to leave Chantereyne last Sunday morning for Portsmouth on P pontoon when there was a wild engine noise followed by a bang and the yacht jumping to the side and back again.

Going forward there was a young frenchman lying on the pontoon entangled with a motorbike having hit the stemhead of my yacht after avoiding an upturned tender also on the pontoon.

No damage to my stem head, and I had absolutely no sympathy for the young lad who was fortunately ok.

If there had have been damage to my yacht I cant imagine how the claim form would sound to the insurance underwriter ' yacht hit by motorbike!'

So what strange things have happened to you on a pontoon ...
Click to expand...

Hmm, which is worse: riding a motorbike down a pontoon (just once?), or (persistently?) obstructing a pontoon with dinghies and overlapping boat-parts...

Mike.
 
Strange noise
sort of wheezing
sort of hissing

Then recognised something that sounded like a word......... help

Some poor chap in the water clinging on to a rope....
Very glad we had decided to go down to the boat for something or whatever...
 
Not quite a pontoon , but had a mate that was crewing for a delivery skipper , went into a harbour and the bowsprit on this 55 footer rode up on the wall as he lost a bit of control and went straight through the engine of a Ford Granada and wrote it off !!! ..... still have a chuckle over that all these years later
 
A friend was at Cherbourg marina when a Joint Services Nicholson 43 turned up; apparently the engine was known to be duff, but the opinion was 'we're all rufty tufty soldiers, and it's a sailing boat '.

My chum saw this boat approaching downwind under just the - still huge - genoa.

At a yelled ' Naiye ! ( Now ) the genoa was let fly - but still caused huge windage.

As they came alongside a Heavenly Twins cat' on a finger pontoon - still at a fair rate of knots -, another ' Naiye! '

Half a dozen squaddies on the side deck grabbed the cat's stanchions.

Which broke off immediately under the unfair load; the squaddies fell all along the deck like dominos.

The Nic' went straight into the pontoon, the raked bow making it soar up in the air...
 
Last edited:
mjcoon said:
Hmm, which is worse: riding a motorbike down a pontoon (just once?), or (persistently?) obstructing a pontoon with dinghies and overlapping boat-parts...

Mike.
Click to expand...

Just for the record my stem head was 2 feet away from the pontoon edge.

I was surprised that he or the motorbike did not end up in the drink!
 
Port Dinorwick (now Felinhli?) a guy road down the hill straight into the 1/2 tide dock :S

Also some Idiot sailed his Cadet over the marine wall to tie to the jetty for racing on the lake later. Miss judged the location of pontoon took chunk out of centerboard. I thought it was cool trick dad did not...
 
SamanthaTabs said:
Swansea, someone riding bicycle down the pontoon and misjudged the corner. Splash then he surfaced still holding the handle bars :)
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Ditto at Haslar, some years ago. A young lady cycled around the corner but her bicycle didn't. She was on the pontoon one minute, the next minute not and there was a splash. Surprisingly few folk heard the splash, I think I was one of a few who actually saw it. A helpful chap fished the bicycle out with a boathook afterwards, I think.
 
Syracuse Sicily back in 1995, we were on a friends boat, a Van de Stat 46ft steel ketch. We were still making fast stern too when a bride and groom plus photographer and a couple of hanger on's came aboard for a photo session. Didnt like to object being err, Sicily.
 
Benalmadena. A bunch of guys managed to lock themselves out of their mobo. The locksmith turned up on his brand new big scooter thingy and tooted, but the guys were not in the vicinity. El lokko started revving his new bike in anger, forgetting it had a centrifugal clutch. It shot forward but he refused to let go, thus revving it further, and over it went - ending suspended on mooring lines. He got soaked. After getting help to retrieve the bike, he pushed it home. Not a good day at the office.
 
I snore.. I know I do, its a design fault. So......... one night it was blowing a gale and getting late. SWMBO retires to bed (in fact to read for a while) whilst I finish my tea and generally get ready for bed. I decided to check the lines before retiring and, very casually went onto the pontoon, pipe clamped between teeth, phone in pocket etc; to look. Decided one line needed tightening and pulled. There was a gust of wind and for reasons I still don't understand, rather than doing the sensible thing and letting go, I held on!

Head first into the water, no boarding ladder down, no convenient pontoon ladder, midnight (lost pipe and soggy phone!) I could not get out. Tried pulling myself onto the pontoon, no chance!

No problem I thought, get the SWMBO. I shouted, I yelled I banged on the side of the hull.... nothing...

So. treading water and deciding what to do next (contemplating the long swim to the slipway) along walks the club Bosun. Now a surreal conversation. along the lines of .

Hi,

Oh hi there, you alright?

Bit wet.

You taking a late night swim then?

Yeh, getting a bit cold now though,

Want a hand?

Yeah, that would be handy...

So. dragged up onto the pontoon I went back onto the boat, and into SWMBO's cabin, dripping, to find her sitting up in bed, reading WITH HER EARPLUGS IN!!!!!

I demanded tea!
 
In Villamoura twenty odd years ago there was a Frenchman with his family on the boat next door. He was teaching his kids how to use the tender with outboard. I was sitting having a coffee watching from the boat I was looking after.

The inflatable tender was attached to the pontoon with a 2m length painter and was attached at the bitter end. He carefully went through all the fuel system showing were the air vent was and fuel isolator then he went on the gear change showing forward neutral and reverse. The lecture was going on for some time and I was about to leave when he decided to start the outboard for real.

The tender by this stage had drifted away from the pontoon edge. The young lad 11ish I think was shouting at his Dad something (I do not speak French) anyhow he pulls the cored and the outboard fired. Well, he'd obviously left it in gear with the throttle fully open. The inevitable happened - the tender shot off he steered away from his family the boat shot into the air and ended up upside down.. I'm not an unkind person but the family fell silent but I could not help spitting the last of my coffee out whilst suppressing a laugh (I was 18).

They were a great family and I help put thing back together draining and cleaning the outboard. The son had been trying to tell his dad that the boat was still in gear! The rest of the holiday the son was chief tender skipper.
 
Thinking of "tender" stories and pontoons. When moored in Brixham, on the opposite side of the fairway was a very nice 55ftr. It had an inflated tender attached to it which was being towed. We could see they were making preparation to depart with all the pointing and raised voices for checks etc. They were virtually out of the berth going astern and to stbd when they stopped and there was shouting which made us look. The tender was tied to the pontoon and had a line tied to the boat. This had caused the boat to stop and the bow to veer to port with the incumbent anchor now heading for boat next door. The skipper gave it loads of throttle astern to avoid hitting the anything with the anchor hoping presumably to pull the boat out and swivel it into the middle of the fairway. This did work but, the tender lines were now straining (no-one had time to untie or cut anything) and it literally exploded with a hell of a bang. This, of course, alerted everyone to the problem and a crowd gathered to help. But... apart from that nothing else was damaged. I know we have all done it (left things tied bewteen mooring and boat and tried to leave) but it was a rude reminder to check and double check.
 
nigelmercier said:
Don't you hate it when people fend off using your stanchions :(
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Fend-off! ..... my old neighbor (shared fore & aft Trot) rarely put any fenders down & used one specific stanchion to pull himself alongside ..... net result one slightly bent stanchion with cracked Gellcoat around the base with no offer of repair ... he's now moved.
 
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