Chain Ferry

[Andy]

After much considerable thought about harbour entrances, and other people coming my may, I have put my T40 up for sale on flebay, and just borrowed one of these for a couple weeks to get rid of the problems that surround our coastal harbours. The service cost me tons !

I feel happy now !

[mm289]

Hey Paul,

Have you tried the Navionics webapp? That's pretty handy, can tell you about tides, plot routes, etc - and you can run it on your mobile phone too. Free to use.

https://webapp.navionics.com/

James.

Hi @jimbo747, I had played with the mobile app but not the web based one. The mobile app they want to charge £35 for the map download so I had dismissed, yet bizzarely all that functionality is for free on the web app - although it doesn't have GPS so can't add your location I suppose.

The webapp is a usefull nav tool though as you say especially for passage planning.

Cheers,
Paul.

[chris moody]

The navionics boating app is great, well worth the £35 per year for the charts for the whole of the UK, Ireland and Holland. I believe you get a 14 day free trial period before you have to buy the charts.

Hey Paul,

Have you tried the Navionics webapp? That's pretty handy, can tell you about tides, plot routes, etc - and you can run it on your mobile phone too. Free to use.

https://webapp.navionics.com/

James.

Hi @jimbo747, I had played with the mobile app but not the web based one. The mobile app they want to charge £35 for the map download so I had dismissed, yet bizzarely all that functionality is for free on the web app - although it doesn't have GPS so can't add your location I suppose.

The webapp is a usefull nav tool though as you say especially for passage planning.

Cheers,
Paul.

[harrison]

After much considerable thought about harbour entrances, and other people coming my may, I have put my T40 up for sale on flebay, and just borrowed one of these for a couple weeks to get rid of the problems that surround our coastal harbours. The service cost me tons !

I feel happy now !

pageheader_ww2_torpedoboats.jpg

That looks great. I also bid on the same Torpeedo boat.

Got fleeced though. When it finally arrived turned out to be a Torqeedo boat. Bummer!

Bleeding useless for outrunning chain ferries - even on full charge.

[jimbo747]

A T40 will attract allot of wind

It’s the wind coming from the boat which is the real hazard

Let’s be realistic - if your main engine did fail and if if had an aux engine you wouldn’t attempt to get through a harbour mouth when the tide is in full flow. You would use the engine to get to safety and either recover the boat from there or wait a few hours for the tide to abate and then go through.

Too much what-if thinking can be bad - especially for anyone thinking about getting into SIBing who’s reading this!
Remember the old song?

If you’re happy and you know it overthink!
If you’re happy and you know it overthink!
If you’re happy and you know it give your brain a chance to blow it,
If you’re happy and you know it overthink!

[chris moody]

Heard my name mentioned earlier

we have spent much time around Poole harbour and, as Sarah suggests there is definitely an approach to the entrance. The tidal pattern is caused by a whole load of things, the shape and volume of the harbour gives us some of the strange characteristics and such a narrow entrance means it's going to be fast at times (as a really basic rule of thumb, the entrance is going to be worst between about two hours and half an hour either side of the Low Water time (actually navigating through at exactly Low water is actually quite easy too, just watch the shallow areas either side of the entrance. if you look at something like the easytide website for Poole- google 'easytide poole' then you can see the water level dip and rise to the low water time - easy now to figure out when to go out. - seriously though, if you're getting it wrong, there's loads of little escape routes into shallow water where you can drop anchor (or in a smaller boat - run up a beach)

The wind effect can be predicted - if the wind and tide are going in opposite directions, there will be short sharp waves, the stronger the wind, the bigger the waves.

My understanding is that the whole 'Double high water' effect is caused by, ultimately the shape of the whole country, the size of the english channel and all the bits in between, we are at what's called a 'nodal point' in the middle of the english channel (ish) - if you imagine walking along holding a washing bowl full of water, eventually it splashes loads around the outside but not much in the middle - apart from lots of smaller bumps from the reflected waves heading back - effectively the same as Poole in the middle of the english channel. this doesn't help us much to figure out when to leave the harbour though....

I think the most i've measured in the entrance to Poole is just under 5 knots of tide ebbing (going out) but we were in a powerful rib so not too worried, i think the chart suggests up to 5 knots. Ebbing/falling tide is usually stronger than a flooding/rising tide.

In our little 6m sailing boat, we used to have a 5hp engine on the back and we tried to come in once with about 3 knots of tide against us, with the engine on full power, we were struggling to make 1 knot through the entrance (normally easier to wander off to one side and anchor up with a sandwich.

The charts do give you some indication of how fast the water will travel on any given day and more precise timings, they don't take an enormous amount of practise to become happy with - I use small laminated photocopies on boats where I think a big paper chart is going to be in the way or get wet.

returning to the contigency (what if) scenario - my handheld radio attached to my lifejacket means I can call for help if it all goes wrong...... We've just ordered some new VHF handheld radios and VHF handheld training radios so I'm looking forward to testing them out over the next few weeks. If anyone is interested in joining us, drop myself or Sarah a line.. Andy, if you're considering buying a radio/ doing a course, come and have a play with some kit.

[Sarah]

Thanks Dom! Thought you might have an explanation.
(For those who haven't experienced a course Dom is teaching, you never know quite what demo kit he might use next particularly for theory courses - expect washing up bowls, demo model boats for stability or Playmobil boats with led lights which can be turned on and off for learning light characteristics)

[Andy]

Andy, if you're considering buying a radio/ doing a course, come and have a play with some kit.

Thanks for the offer.
I have actually done the online course, and I used to run a CB radio club way back when I was only 20, so I should really not have a problem "Good Buddy" and if i see you on the road with your "Anchor Clanker" Ill "Stick on me blinders"

[Dom]

see you out in the harbour soon

[harrison]

Andy,

Get down to Poole pronto. The chain ferry’s out of service.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... ction.html

In fact don’t think it was running for the sib outing when we were there earlier this month.

You’ve been all of a panic for nowt.