Running Aground

[sailingdog]

Are you speaking from personal experience???

Originally Posted by chucklesR

That must have taken what, 20 minutes to push it back off the mud bank?
I'll take that any day to running aground on a lowering tide and having the boat fall over on it's side because of the keel.

Running up onto a beach, dropping anchor onto dry sand is about as cool as it gets as long as you remember to do it at low not high tide.

[craigtoo]

I learned to sail in the LI Sound.... Smithtown bay is pretty bad... We've run aground several times... always managed to get unstuck..

The first time I took my new (to me) boat out a few weeks ago from Sailcraft in Oriental... it took all of 8 minutes to run aground. Thunk...

Dad and I laughed our butts off... we got unstuck... and ... promptly ran aground again 2 minutes later.

Drive by feel.... heh... l was being stupid and looking at my GPS saying.. "we should have 5 feet of water here!!!"

Dad gave me the "look at the damn markers and not at your stupid TV" speech...(well.. he's German so it was more like the "Look ver za hell your going and schtop wis zis TV bull$*&%..." speech... well deserved... heh...

We "bounce tack" my Dad's boat in the Bay while racing at least once a month. When you're healing.. the depth sounder reads a bit more water than is actually there...

Some of the best memories sailing are running aground...!

I've never hit a reef or a rock though... that's a bit different...

craig

[tjaldur]

I have often been aground in Denmark, because I forget the golden navigational rule of Denmark: "If you can see land, you are too close"

[sailingdog]

I think it is an all too common mistake to think that the icon on the screen of your chartplotter has anything to do with the reality of where your sailboat is. It doesn't. Using it as the sole navigation device is a bad idea. The icon on the chartplotter is an approximate representation of where electronic satellites are telling this black box where your boat is, set against an interpretation of reality by a cartographer who may or may not have been stoned while creating the chart, based on data that may be 100 years out of date. YMMV.

Originally Posted by craigtoo

I learned to sail in the LI Sound.... Smithtown bay is pretty bad... We've run aground several times... always managed to get unstuck..

The first time I took my new (to me) boat out a few weeks ago from Sailcraft in Oriental... it took all of 8 minutes to run aground. Thunk...

Dad and I laughed our butts off... we got unstuck... and ... promptly ran aground again 2 minutes later.

Drive by feel.... heh... l was being stupid and looking at my GPS saying.. "we should have 5 feet of water here!!!"

Dad gave me the "look at the damn markers and not at your stupid TV" speech...(well.. he's German so it was more like the "Look ver za hell your going and schtop wis zis TV bull$*&%..." speech... well deserved... heh...

We "bounce tack" my Dad's boat in the Bay while racing at least once a month. When you're healing.. the depth sounder reads a bit more water than is actually there...

Some of the best memories sailing are running aground...!

I've never hit a reef or a rock though... that's a bit different...

craig

[GBurton]

Mines not a sailboat grounding but I'll tell it anyway...
About 16 years ago in the service we were based in a port called Walvis bay which is in Namibia. There is a lighthouse at the tip of the horseshoe shaped bay that is only accessable at low tide by 4x4 via a very long drive or by boat. We used to ferry the lighthouse keepers accross the bay in our fast patrol boats.

We had a new cox and I was on the radar as it was a foggy morning kind of pre-dawn. I notice that we are a little to far to the port side of the bay and that this was an area that had numerous shoals. I tell the cox that we are to far over IMHO and as we are doing 35 knots maybe we should ease off a bit. He does outrank me of course and gives me the "you talking to me DA" look.
About 4 minutes later flamingoes start taking off in front of the boat...about a millisecond later the boat hits a shoal and throws roostertails of mud/sand about 100 feet into the air. We keep going and are lucky to get over the shoal into deeper water. The cox promptly makes a hard turn to stbd.

[sidney777]

See Lord Nelson's technique for "un-grounding"

[sailingdog]

Gburton-

You were lucky you didn't suck up enough sand/mud to screw up the impeller or cooling system.

[GBurton]

The props were a bit ragged and there was considerable vibration after. The mechanics hated the boat crews

[Boasun]

Hey the mechanics have a steady job from poor navigators who bounce off of everything out there. You would think that they would love them.

[CharlieCobra]

I grounded Oh Joy for the first time on my birthday during my first solo aboard her. Nice, soft mud. I put her in gear and wiggled around enough for that nice full keel to dig a trench and backed out. All while the CG Aux guys were waiting for permission to drag me off. I'd been through there before without grounding so I guess we had an extra low tide that day.