Weird Experience - Boat just stopped

tillergirl said:
Further hunting shows that I haven't retained the text of the original Notice, only the cancellation:

HARWICH HARBOUR AND APPROACHES
SHOAL DEPTH – INNER RIDGE

Mariners are advised that following further ploughing operations the reduction of water depth identified on the Yacht Track between the Inner Ridge and Deane buoys in
position 51°55.23’N 001°19.58’E has been confirmed at CD-3.9m.

No further change to this surveyed depth is anticipated.

Notice to Mariners number 8 of 2013 is cancelled

Seriously it is probably worth telling. If you didn't have a jerk to stop and didn't hear of the sound while you were below, if it was shallowing it would have to be soft silt.
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Thanks Roger

It was a really gradual stop, as I said I didn't notice or hear anything.

I've never experienced being stopped by a pot, so I don't have anything to compare to.

If it was a grounding maybe we were just skimming the top of it in the troughs of the waves?
 
I was doing a night sail back from Cherbourg to Portsmouth on a Contessa 32 - we had a sailing club at work. I was off watch and Dave was giving instructions on helm to Small Sad Sam so I couldn't doze cos of all the talking. Dave was trying get him to understand the difference between bearing up and bearing away. (Dave does sometimes lurk on the Forum). Anyway to cut it short, we sailed over the pot buoy and hooked up on the rudder: The sensation was the boat bowing down... at the bow and then straightening up. Like bowing to the Queen. All quite polite and calm. Conveniently the sails were still drawing so no flapping or anything like that. There had been a dull thud on the hull. It wasn't fussy. Fortunately once we dropped the sails, we pivoted round the buoy and the rudder was released.

We went back below and I managed to get to sleep. I had initally a nice dream of water swishing - you know like you have in a wooden boat, where the bilge water swishes back and forth. I came to and looked over the side of the bunk and in the dim light I could see my boat shoes floating. I came too properly realising I am in a modern gliberfast boat and we shouldn't been swishing. Dead simples. Turn off the toilet seacocks on a starboard tack! Oh and replace the seals on the fresh water tank. The joys of a club boat!

I digress. Sorry. It could be some very soft mud; hence a rapid unexpected shoal possibly associated with colateral consequences from all the dredging. The 2013 shoaling was very sudden and unexpected.
 
I was sailing a year or two ago with a young man off Harwich and he became fairly disorientated for a while, with few visual references, so I wouldn't rule out a temporary loss of drive from a pinched boat. The bottom off Harwich is mostly something like concrete and I would have thought that a grounding would have been obvious, and six metres should have given plenty of margin. On the other hand. maybe it was something fouling the boat after all.
 
I agree it could be anything. But for Sea Dog being in the queue to being lifted (and well overdue), I would be trundling up the coast with the kit switched on. 6.6 on the 'ducer does suggest that it isn't anything to do with the sea bottom. But......
 
tillergirl said:
I agree it could be anything. But for Sea Dog being in the queue to being lifted (and well overdue), I would be trundling up the coast with the kit switched on. 6.6 on the 'ducer does suggest that it isn't anything to do with the sea bottom. But......
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Just to clarify, I don't know what depth the sounder was showing as we stupidly didn't look. 6.6 is what Navionics and the plotter "think" should be the depth there.
 
I caught a pot bouy on a fin keel boat, I think around Southwold, South of Lowestoft. There's an area round there just covered in the things. It was only a light boat, 24 foot and around 1.5 tons so it stopped fairly quickly. It didn't feel like running aground in mud. Like others I was lucky in just reversing off it. I haven't been past that way for years but at the time they were using anything as buoys, including old plastic bottles. I suppose I should have pulled it up and had breakfast,
 
johnalison said:
I was sailing a year or two ago with a young man off Harwich and he became fairly disorientated for a while, with few visual references, so I wouldn't rule out a temporary loss of drive from a pinched boat. The bottom off Harwich is mostly something like concrete and I would have thought that a grounding would have been obvious, and six metres should have given plenty of margin. On the other hand. maybe it was something fouling the boat after all.
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I wish I'd checked the depth, and also dug out the underwater camera when we got back to have a look at the keel and rudder for any signs of being caught on something.

Next time I'm up at the boat I'll dig out the camera and take a look, just in case.
 
johnalison said:
I was sailing a year or two ago with a young man off Harwich and he became fairly disorientated for a while, with few visual references, so I wouldn't rule out a temporary loss of drive from a pinched boat. The bottom off Harwich is mostly something like concrete and I would have thought that a grounding would have been obvious, and six metres should have given plenty of margin. On the other hand. maybe it was something fouling the boat after all.
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Just to clarify, as crap a sailor as I am, it wasn't a temporary loss of drive. We couldn't get any forward motion, the boat just sat there.
 
I hope it was bottom. The alternative - sunken netting, submerged pot etc is worse.

You could of course have a trip out and see if you ........... No, daft idea, best not ?
 
tillergirl said:
I hope it was bottom. The alternative - sunken netting, submerged pot etc is worse.

You could of course have a trip out and see if you ........... No, daft idea, best not ?
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I was actually looking at the weather this week and thinking ... if it's fairly flat water, and a rising tide, I might make some sweeps over the area and see what the depth sounder says... but then again :cautious:
 
tillergirl said:
Ah (referring to the sounder). Do we tend to get pots on the Ridge? Outside of my knowledge.
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I have sailed and raced in that area many times and never seen a pot marker. Nearest are the ones that lurk near the harbour entrance off the end of the breakwater and occasionally further in. We came to a gentle halt in a race somewhat inshore of the Guard buoy, couldn't work out at first what had happened as the wind was very light but the others in the class were still moving and our sails were filling. I prodded around the keel with a boathook and suddenly we were off again. Never saw the marker, it was just short of HW springs and I assumed it must have been below the surface!
 
The other thing that caught me out was many years ago when we had our Devon Yawl, we were sailing downwind and downriver between the Orwell Bridge and Freston, on the edge of the shipping channel. The boat slowed to a halt and the centre plate came up, but gently without any bump or graunching noises! It turned out to be an enormous plastic bag, possibly off a double mattress, that sort of size anyway, that was below the surface which surfaced after we got free. At least with a lifting plate and rudder that was easy.

On another occasion we spotted near Pin Mill a sofa floating downstream! Luckily the Police boat the Ian Jacob was nearby and I managed to attract her attention and they got it on board, it could have given someone a nasty surprise.
 
Leighb said:
I have sailed and raced in that area many times and never seen a pot marker. Nearest are the ones that lurk near the harbour entrance off the end of the breakwater and occasionally further in. We came to a gentle halt in a race somewhat inshore of the Guard buoy, couldn't work out at first what had happened as the wind was very light but the others in the class were still moving and our sails were filling. I prodded around the keel with a boathook and suddenly we were off again. Never saw the marker, it was just short of HW springs and I assumed it must have been below the surface!
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Unfortunately, there have been pot/net buoys in the area where Dave got "stuck". This is the first year i can recall seeing them there though.
 
I had the misfortune to pick up a pot earlier in the year, nothing gentle about the resulting motion of the boat, I experienced a severe slewing to one side, no mistaking it was a pot as I was tethered to the ground, nor forward progress possible. Hopefully not to be repeated.

But nothing to say yours wasn't a smaller pot, different configuration etc.
 
PaulRainbow said:
Unfortunately, there have been pot/net buoys in the area where Dave got "stuck". This is the first year i can recall seeing them there though.
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This year, for the first time, I've often seen pots to the west of where we were, almost on the straight track between Stone Banks PHB and Languard NCB.

But I haven't seen anything in the vicinity of where we were. That's not to say they weren't there tho!
 
Leighb said:
On another occasion we spotted near Pin Mill a sofa floating downstream! Luckily the Police boat the Ian Jacob was nearby and I managed to attract her attention and they got it on board, it could have given someone a nasty surprise.
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Not least the poor so and so who fell asleep on it earlier!
 
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