Water Shortage (or how not to park your boat)

11^th July 2006
Cupido lives at the Orwell Yacht Club in Ipswich. Her mooring at the time was up the creek on a drying mooring and she was only afloat for around 2 hours either side of high tide so to get maximum sailing time in we have often cut it a little fine getting back. On this occasion I was sailing with my friend Ken.

We've been having trouble starting the old Yamaha outboard the last few times out and this day was no different – it ran fine once she was started, and after much sucking of teeth and poking around we settled on the fact the fuel was past it's use by day we so decide to use it up. There was a good breeze on the nose when we left so we motored down the River Orwell to Levington Creek intending to sail back nice and quickly as we'd be reaching and running most all the way home. Unfortunately by the time we turned round the wind had died down and we were just gently easing along at 1.5Knts over the ground instead of the 3knt we did on the way up. We ended up motor-sailing from Pin Mill but couldn't make up the lost time.

There are waiting posts at the OYC which I got us ready to use but as we entered the creek I noticed that all the boats along the moorings in line with ours, and the pontoon that sits in front of those, looked like they where all still afloat so I though I'd give it ago. We motored gently past the waiting posts and turned gently towards our mooring spot which is between two posts, bow to the bank. Then it happened the characteristic slowing as we ploughed in to the mud and went aground. This is should be quite hard to do in a boat that is only supposed to draw 13” with the keel up. I did the obvious – put her in reverse but she wouldn’t budge, thankfully some other club members where around to lend a hand and we ran a line back to the waiting posts to try and haul her of, after lighting the load a little. One thing I hadn’t noticed straight away was that the keel wasn’t all the way up, it’s just a piece of rope used to haul it up and a jammer to keep it that way, I thought I'd pulled it up as I headed towards the waiting posts - obviously not quite all the way - D'oh! After lots of huffing and puffing and testing the breaking strain of the various ropes, winches and muscle to exhaustion she had to stay where it was. The anchor placed out as far as it would go and we left her until the next tide, around 1am the next morning.

We went home, made excuses to the wives and returned that night around 10pm, tided every thing away and put her back on the mooring and was driving over the Orwell Bridge by 11pm. I think one of the reasons for not being able to get it off was the keel being still slightly down and worked as an anchor, digging in as we tried to move her backwards, we could not lift that keel the last few inches until she refloated.

Whether this incident helped but I was given the use of a mooring in the river, not so convenient but 4 hours water each tide, yippee! Unfortunately I only had that mooring for the rest of that season.