What would you do?

[thecommander]

Early on a crisp winter morning you are motoring along a river (think Hamble, Beaulieu, Medina, Itchen, River Fal) and the engine suddenly cuts out. You go to restart but nothing, you try again and again, but nothing.
The river is ebbing quickly and the wind is gusting up to 15 knots in an unhelpful direction for sailing in the river. You have no time to fiddle around down below trying to restart the engine.
There are plenty of empty pontoons and mooring buoys nearby.

Your vessel is over 25ft and fully laden...
You are single handed...
You have no experience sailing onto a pontoon or a mooring buoy...
You are not a member of a marine breakdown or rescue service...

So what do you do?
Attempt to anchor in the middle of the river with the tide and wind blowing you all over the shop? Then what?
Attempt to sail onto the nearest pontoon?
Call the RNLI?
Call the Harbour Master and seek help?
Sail to open water and attempt to fix the engine problem?
Call a marine towage service to tow you home?
Phone a friend?

 

[Sandy]

Get some training. You should be able to pick up a mooring/get to a pontoon single handed under sail.

 

[dolabriform]

Options in order or preference
1. Attempt to sail to pontoon / buoy. take it slowly with a small amount of sail and learn fast!
2. Call the harbour master and see if there is a tow available if sailing is not an option.
3. Anchor in the middle of the river... how much scope do you need? Take a deep breath and then try and sort the engine.

Other options:
1. RNLI - is it a mayday?
2. Sail to open water... you are single handed, what if you can't fix it and you are now out in open water and can't return. Surely that's a worse problem?
3. Do you have the number of the towage service?
4. What can the friend do?

 

[Hambleite]

This situation could happen just as easily on motorboat - but you'd have potentially less options....

Another option not listed is take a look around and see if anyone can help and ask for their assistance.

 

[Poignard]

"fully laden" with what?

 

[lw395]

Get some training. You should be able to pick up a mooring/get to a pontoon single handed under sail.

I think 'wind blowing you all over the shop' shows a need for some fairly basic training.
You could anchor but among moorings that can be a high risk strategy.
Taking a tow from anyone who's offering is not the worst idea.

 

[lw395]

"fully laden" with what?

Plastic gadgets from the boat show I expect.

 

[lpdsn]

1) Sail somewhere sheltered and pick up a buoy or if none conveniently situated for your sailing skills, anchor.

2) Fix engine

3) If making no progress with 2) drop buoy or sail anchor out (or at 25' just pull the thing up by hand). Sail to better buoy or pontoon and get tools, bits or professional help to fix engine.

 

[greggron]

Over 25ft could mean absolutely anything 25'6" up to 50'+.

My preference would be to get sufficient canvass up to provide steerage to the nearest mooring buoy, or if I am unlikely to cause damage to other boats, a pontoon. Take stock, diagnose the problem and either fix it if you can, or arrange a tow to a yard than can fix it for you.

 

[lw395]

If I was leaving anyway, I might carry on.
I've twice had to stop the engine due to blocked cooling water intake.
The first time I had just left Yarmouth, so we got the sails up and carried on. Sorted it out once we were clear of the Shingles.
Second time I picked up the nearest buoy, but HM needed it for a big boat just coming in, so I got them to tow me to another mooring out of the way.
But that was a problem I knew I could fix with the tools etc on board.

 

[Dipper]

Having had an unreliable Stuart Turner in my previous sailing boat I practiced this scenario by putting the engine in neutral whilst amongst our moorings to see what I could manage. I soon realised that provided the boat was moving (wind is helpful here) I could steer quite sucessfully and even make some very slight headway upwind. This was in a bilge keel Hurley 22! I've repeated the exercise in my fin keel Seawolf 26 with similar results except that I could only manage sailing within a 180° arc downwind.

If your boat has a rudder and it is moving relative to the water all is not lost. You will have some limited steerage.

In the case of the OP's original question, one option would be to steer into clear water and anchor.

 

[Poignard]

If you don't know how to handle your boat under sail in that situation, you are in command of what is, in effect, a motor boat and should do what a motor boat driver would do - seek help.

Better to suffer the humiliation of being ridiculed on the YBW next day than damaging your boat or worse still, someone else's.

You could, of course, try drudging towards the nearest vacant buoy or to an anchorage but by the time you've got that set up you'd probably have crashed into something anyway!

While you wait, put plenty of fenders out.

 

[thecommander]

Anywhere from 25' to 50'...
Fully laden with water, fuel, crap from the boat show...
You know how to sail in open water, but you've never picked up a mooring buoy under sail or manoeuvred in close quarters under sail

 

[DJE]

Turn the fuel on?

 

[[163233]]

Turn the fuel on?

Heh heh I did that first time out...

Got the main up so I could sail and called up the marina asking about a tow, the Sea Cadets very kindly offered and I sorted out my idiocy at the fuel pontoon.

 

[reginaldon]

Turn the fuel on?

My first time out with a 2st 5 hp Yamaha, after a few minutes I found I had not opened the vent in the petrol cap of the tank.

 

[dolabriform]

My first time out with a 2st 5 hp Yamaha, after a few minutes I found I had not opened the vent in the petrol cap of the tank.

Guilty as accused!

 

[Poignard]

Years ago I went to watch the London to Brighton veteran car run. An American car that had been shipped over to take part was stopped by the roadside a few miles from London with the owner and his mechanic peering into the engine. The owner told me the car had stopped many times since leaving Hyde Park. His mechanic couldn't find out what was wrong. I noticed there was a wine bottle cork in place of the original fuel cap which he had lost somewhere. I told the owner that was probably the trouble and suggested he carry on without it. He thanked me and roundly cursed the useless mechanic whose air fare and hotel bills he was paying for. I later heard he had arrived at Brighton without any more stops.

 

[TLouth7]

If I can get to a mooring with what way I have left then that would be a lot less faff than getting sails up. If not then assess what I will blow/drift onto first, and how long I have.

In a 25 footer without much wind I might just grab onto the first thing I drift against, trusting that I could fend off adequately and then get a warp on. Not ideal if the first thing is a sandbank.

With more time and space I would turn downwind and roll out a bit of genoa to maintain steerage and control. But then the priority has to be to stop asap, preferably on a mooring not a pontoon (easier and less committing).

Once stopped I would be able to look at the engine, but unless it is something easy I probably can't do much on a mooring, so it's time to decide whether to risk sailing back to my berth or bite the bullet and call the local harbourmaster/a friendly passer by for help.

Sometimes though there simply isn't enough time to do anything but fend off, and you have to trust to the fact that you aren't moving very fast, and that GRP is quite resilient.

 

[lw395]

If you don't know how to handle your boat under sail in that situation, you are in command of what is, in effect, a motor boat and should do what a motor boat driver would do - seek help.

Better to suffer the humiliation of being ridiculed on the YBW next day than damaging your boat or worse still, someone else's.

You could, of course, try drudging towards the nearest vacant buoy or to an anchorage but by the time you've got that set up you'd probably have crashed into something anyway!

While you wait, put plenty of fenders out.

Fair comment, but if you still have way on when you give up trying to restart the motor, you still have control.
Once you are just drifting, you have no control unless you can sail, anchor or row.
Depending on where you are, drifting for a little while may be no problem. Help may or may not be available in before you drift into danger.
Some places you could drift away from the moorings and chuck the hook, then get on the phone or VHF. Other places you'd likely get swept into pile moorings/piers/shallows/path of cross channel ferry.
It might be fine to anchor, or there might be a lot of ground chains or signs about high voltage cables. Losing an anchor on a ground chain is just an expensive trip to the chandlers, dragging small boat moorings around the place could get messy. The holding might be non existent in soupy mud. You might swing into moored boats.
So like all these things, you have to deal with the individual incident as best you can.

Perhaps one really should not be out there in several tons of unreliable boat you can't handle, particularly singlehanded?