Grounded my boat

[BlueH2Obound]

Dead slow, up at the end of one of the fjords off of Behm Channel East of Ketchikan, AK. 5 1/2' draft, 12' of water depth . . . . "Is that a Bear up at the end of the meadow?" All eyes on the "bear" . . . ummmmmph, boat goes from 2 knots to zero in about half a boat length . . . . EMBARASSING. Half an hour till dead low tide . . . .we put out a kedge anchor with the dinghy to keep the stern from broaching when the tide turned. When the tide started coming back in, took a strain and backed astern and off. No damage, except to our pride . . .

Takeaway, the person conning the boat should not be looking at the "bear" . . . but rather conning the boat . . . . a lesson I knew, but didn't follow.

For those who are curious, the "bear" was a rock . . . .

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by wholybee

I had a very hard grounding which fortunately didn't have a bad ending. I was in Fiji, following waypoints provided by a famous local who ensured that they were safe. Of, course, I am still keeping a close watch, sailing during midday, etc.

I am going about 5kts under motor. There is a lookout on the bow, but the water is very muddy, and we can't see anything. We are a good ways from the shore, maybe 1/2 a mile, in about 50 feet of water. I see way ahead of us waves breaking over a reef. Right on the course of our waypoints. I check both Navionics and CM93 charts. Both show reefs in the area, but don't agree where, and not where we were or where we were headed. But I knew we were headed to one because I could see it, even if it was still off in the distance.

So I decide to abort and stop, and plot a new course around. Just as I am reaching for the throttle to slow, bang. Dead stop. The bow dips under water we stopped so hard. All the crew gets thrown down. At this point, we are on a reef, and as the swell comes, I feel the boat lift off just an inch or so and thud back down.

I manage to back off, with lots of scraping noises. We make way to shore where we quickly anchor to assess the damage. I was quite sure at this point I would loose the boat. I hit a reef full on at 5 kts., that is BAD. I dive on the boat and inspect everything. My boat has an encapsulated keel, no keel bolts. So I inspect where the keel meets the hull, looking for cracks. I find none. The only indication of anything, was a small nick and indentation, about the size of a quarter, on the leading edge of the keel, about 2 inches from the bottom. No sign of the skeg having touched at all.

This was when I learned the value of Satellite maps. It wasn't until I reached Vuda marina that other sailors shared them with me, and I saw how much better they were than official charts. Having had them a week earlier, the incident never would have happened.

Of course, I have touched bottom both before and after that, but nothing dramatic. Usually when I touch it is known it will happen, as a result of tides with soft mud, or entering a marina at low tide, etc. And while if I get another boat I would look for a fin keel/spade rudder, I can attest to the value of a boat with no keel bolts and a skeg rudder.

Those big bangs can be scary, but depending on exactly what you hit and exactly how it hits the boat, it's amazing how bad something can sound and feel for minimal to no damage.

I whacked a piece of submerged debris a few years ago at about 7 kts. No clue what it was (it was never visible), but either it was a narrow object and I just happened to send the keel right over it or it moved when I hit it (as the props missed it and they hang about 5 inches below the keel). It was just a single, very loud bang that shook the boat but didn't noticeably slow us down (so we just clipped whatever it was). Bad enough that I immediately slammed the throttles to idle, handed off the helm and went below to look for any signs of major damage. Nothing found, and later on, despite carefully looking the boat over on land, I couldn't even tell where on the keel we hit the thing.

[randomgoat]

I tried to get grounding out of the way the first year I had a boat...and succeeded. The same year we also ticked the "leave the fuel cock off and sail back to the mooring scared and confused" and "might as well ground the dinghy while we're at it" boxes! I live to learn.

I was leaving the fuel dock and cut through the mooring field back to my mooring. I'm in a Sabre 28, and not 15 feet from another moored S28 I ran aground onto a bit of ledge, fortunately only traveling around 1 knot. It was an hour before low and the boat was listing more and more by the minute as the last foot of water drained away (~11 foot tide that day). She was never on her side, but it must have been pretty close.

Figuring she couldn't go anywhere, we hopped in the dingy, bought some last minute provisions we missed earlier and stopped for a beer. Two hours later we returned to the boat, waited another 20 minutes and off we went. Some locals in our new-to-us harbor later informed us that we found the "bump."

[gonesail]

went aground at Hell Gate south of Savannah on ICW. i was supposed to hug the red markers but they were high and dry on the sand bank sat there for around an hour waiting on incoming tide.

[Rod Headlee]

There are 3 kinds of captains. Those that have been aground, those that are going to go aground and liars.

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Rod Headlee

There are 3 kinds of captains. Those that have been aground, those that are going to go aground and liars.

I'm definitely of the first kind. Might also be of the second kind. I try hard not to be of the 3rd kind (but not 100% successful) [emoji57]

[dan104]

In the mud again! My summer sailing ground is the Chesapeake, starting in South river out of Holiday Point, the second green is what we like to call Lying Green as the channel marker looks to be an opening but really is the start of 3 ft water.



I let learners helm the boat out and every once in a while they will treat that one like a real marker.

Once watching the start of the Annapolis to Bermuda race we were skirting the out bounds on a great tack when we missed the zag in the channel and found ourselves going from 6 knts to 0 in less than 20 feet and had to watch the outbound parade as they watched us push ourselves off the mud.


Last spring one of the Evergreen container ships did the same in that Zag, they drew 60' and plowed into 24'. The bay pilot onboard was reading texts on his phone!

[hpeer]

One of many incidents in my short sailing career. Not dramatic but unusual.

Coming into St Pierre (French territory off Newfoundland) and a 2-1/2 day single handed sail. SP has a very u usual harbor with a breakwater i. The middle and you can pass it on either side. Then there is a shoal area of substantial rocks, covered at high tide. And their is a long pier.

I came in and found myself disoriented, the pier was there but the aspect was wrong. So I cut the motor and was trying to sus out where I was because the charts did not agree with my eyes. Latter the problem became clear, they had parked 2 barges on the end of the pier, extending it some few hundred feet.

In the meantime, I hear a ominous bump, and realize that I had floated into the rock garden. Now they are under water, and I need to get out before the tide goes down. Safara has a very wide (27”) flat keel, and that flat extends to the cut water, narrowing as it rises. I would put her in gear, mive a few feet, and ride up a rock. Slide off, move a few feet, and repeat. This went on for a while and I began to panic a bit. I felt very trapped.

In desperation I eased her into reverse and let go the wheel. Moving as little as I could I touched a rock, which moved the wheel. I then turned the wheel to push off the rock and slide past. Using this method I was able to slowly work my way out into clear water.

Surely not a traditional method, nor recommended. But it worked.

Only possible because of her heavy steel construction with a keel hung rudder and a prop in an aperture, well inboard.


Another very different story. We spent a season in Edenton, NC. Wind driven tide. 6-1/2’ draft. We came into the marina on an “average” water level and touched mud a couple of times. When we went to leave we were a bit strapped for time and had to get out. The water level was down a few inches. Once I hit the muck I brought the engine up to about 1,300 and held it. She slowly slid through, sometimes you could feel her slide over a sunken tree. Progress was only measurable by lining up shoreside object. Once we were stopped, I backed her up, nosed over a little, and continued. It took maybe 15 minutes to go 3 to 400 yards. But we got through.

Had the water level been a 6” above normal it would have been a piece of cake. Luckily the State has a realtime water gauge in the town dock, so I can get very accurate water levels.

Again, only works because of our construction.

[hpeer]

Final story. Running down the Delaware River/Bay. A real noobie at this time. I was following the 17’ contour and was zoomed in too close on the Navonix display. Tide was running hard down river. Suddenly the depth decreased and we struck a sandbar. It is called Bombay Hook and is on the charts, it is a sand bar that runs from the shore right to the dredged 40’ channel. But I was zoomed in and did not see it coming. DUH!

I called for a tow and they said “Wait until the tide comes in and call then if you still need us.” So we waited.

The water went down, we healed over, less water more heel. Water was up to the toe rail, I was fairly panicked. Then I noticed the water was further down on the hull. She was as far over as she would go. We were sitting on the seat backs, cooling our heels.

Then the tide came in and there was great agitation around the boat. As soon as she stood up near vertical I powered out of there now assisted by the tide.

No harm, no foul, but a very pointed learning experience.

[Montanan]

Pretty much everyone takes their turn at touching bottom and somewhat lesser actually become grounded for a spell. Some will not admit it, or it has YET to happen.

When one runs into soft sand or muddy bottom, one has run amuck, when one runs into rocks or coral, well that is running a ground. The difference being that the hard bottom grinds and makes grounds of your hull. Just saying.

Therein lies the benefit of a swing keel, wherein if it is left unpinned it gently pivots when you touch bottom. Have hit a few rocks entering our marina with our swing keel when I have left the steel keel fully lowered, tends to be a bit of an abrupt jerk and slowing until the keel rises and slides over the impediment. Makes for a bit of a bang when it strikes something hard as the sound of allision on metal transmits up to the hull. But if it contacts sand or mud or stoney bottom it makes for a gentle stopping. I purposefully use the swing keel to stop forward progress when desiring to bring the bow up close to shore by just sailing or motoring right up to the islands to tie up for a lunch break or to stay overnight. I discharge an anchor off the stern about 50 to 100 meters and lay out rode until the boat's keel causes the boat to pause proceeding toward shore then I tighten the rode to keep the stern pointed away from shore and the keel holds the center until the bow can be tied to shore and the swing keel is then raised to no longer touch bottom.

Swing keelers call that navigating by braille.

A bit like driving on the Bott's Dots on the highways in California when it is foggy, just place one tire on each side of the raised lane markers so as to occupy two lanes using the dots as a centering device and when one drifts to one side or the other you can distinguish by the bouncing and the noise which tire is off center and shift back to occupying the two lanes. The Bott's dots being like raised rumble strips, instead of cut depression rumble strips.

[Don C L]

Sounds like you ran aground in mud or soft sand in an estuary right? Not much shame or damage in that. Now if it had been rocks, then it's a different story. Many years ago I was motoring along a kelp forest on a very calm day out at the local islands. There were, unbeknownst to me and the chart, some rock outcrops that came up within 5 or 6 feet of the surface. I happened to be up on the bow looking down into the kelp when I saw a large pinnacle pass underneath us, very close. We didn't hit it, but my heart stopped.

[Chotu]

Oooh! I have a doozy!

I may not have had a grounding, but I certainly have been on a boat that has.

Let’s go all the way back to the college years. We didn’t have GPS. We didn’t have chart plotters. We had LORAN and a couple of new high tech GPS units that were coming out at the time. We did not have a GPS on board.

We had paper charts, a compass, and weed.

This was my friends dad‘s boat. My friend decided to take us all out on it. All of his college buddies and mixed with girls and stuff. I think we had about eight people.

We were socked in completely with fog. So much that you had to have a lookout on the bow and that was me.

He decided we should press on and see if we can get through the fog bank to come out on the other side where there was potentially some visibility. Toward the open water.

I was on bow watch because I was the second most experienced person behind him.

I already had a boat at this time. A very much smaller one. This was a nice Pearson that we were on.

So we are heading through the fog bank and I am listening and looking carefully as well as using the air horn for sound signals. I can only see about 20 feet in front of the boat? Maximum. This was thick fog.

So I start to hear the waves crashing on the rocks as you normally do as you’re leaving this area in Maine. It’s part of what helps orient you in the fog. You can hear the waves crashing on the rocks. You can hear the gongs and the bells. And it helps you figure out where you are in the fog without radar Or gps.

So it felt like my ears and eyes were playing tricks on me. Of course I couldn’t see anything but it sounded like those rocks were right in front of us. It really did. But I thought I was just a little turned around in the fog. So we kept motoring along and all of a sudden I saw some kelp. Then I saw some rocks.

I’m like, LAND!!!!!!!

And he quickly put it into reverse. Boom! hit the rocks. He wasn’t able to slow down in time. It was like the bridge of the starship Enterprise. Everyone lost their balance.

I rushed back to find out what was going on since my job is now over. And I helped him look through the charts to figure out where things went wrong. We looked at the course he took and everything.

Well, thanks to him smoking weed, he read the depth instead of the heading number off the compass rose on the chart. So we were supposed to go something like 270. And he read 102 or something. Right into the rocks.

Once we got everything figured out on how he made the mistake, we then plotted a new course got through the fog bank and had a pretty nice day actually.

As you can imagine there was some damage to the boat. Not really too bad. The keel hit. And it didn’t hit hard enough to separate from the hull. So apparently there was a ding out of the keel.

My friend never told his dad because he was way too scared. His dad blamed it on the marina.

[steffan]

Mine's pretty tame. Isle Royale National Park is more remote, rockier, and less familiar than our usual stomping grounds so we are generally very cautious. But last time we came into Washington Harbor at sunset and couldn't get the space on the Park Service dock that we wanted. Rather than move the fenders and come up with a new docking plan we rashly decided to anchor as we have here before. I pointed us over to the creek delta at a couple of knots and handed the helm over to the admiral so I could go prep the anchor. No sooner had I reached the spreaders than the boat stopped quickly but smoothly and without noise in silt. Navionics is generally very good around there regarding the hard bits, but is off by 15 feet here as a lot of silting has obviously happened since the last chart update. I should have been watching the depth sounder rather than the chart of course, and we shouldn't have even been there without everything prepped. No damage of course except to my pride in front of the sunset-watching audience on the dock, and 30 seconds of reverse got us out.

[edventuredad]

I've hit the bottom several times, never to any great disaster, but some to a good deal of work and time lost. Once that came close to real trouble. Most often has been touching the muddy/sandy bottom in the Chesapeake and down the ICW when learning. Now that I know the systems better, it's only happened due to inattention.

The weirdest was in a canal somewhere... I think it was the C&D, but I can't remember precisely. We were off the center of the channel, thinking that was a good idea to keep to our own side. There was a bit of inattention as well. Suddenly a whomp that lifted the boat, then it dropped and, bam, complete stop. We couldn't move off of it no matter what way we went, even though it was clear the boat was floating free and not sitting on the bottom. Eventually we took the anchor out to the center of the channel with the dinghy and managed to pull ourselves free. What we figure happened was ran into a sunken tree, went over one log and wedged into a fork of another. Fortunately, there was no damage and it was just time lost. What was more time lost was because a kind person asked if we needed help and, as he turned his boat around, got stuck in the same situation ahead of us. We ended up helping him (single-handing) to get free and that took much more time than it took us to get free.

The worst was on the weekend I purchased the boat that the rest of the stories came from. It was May... Mother's Day weekend, actually. I bought the boat in Toronto and sailed it to the Thousand Islands. My two sons and I making the trip and we were complete noobs. My eldest son had the most experience, but was also young and all of his decision making software hadn't been installed yet. We had a horrible trip on so many levels. But, finally, getting toward "home" and we were headed into a bay that is not well charted but I'd been in and out several times on a different boat, so we thought it'd be fine. Nope. We ran up onto flat rock bottom and the wind just kept pushing us further up it. The boat was heeled over about 15º and nothing we could do got it to move in a good direction. Finally, inflated the dinghy and got the motor on it (first time doing that onboard, and in pretty choppy waters no less), and I worked to tow the boat around to get it loose. If you've never tried towing from a dinghy, as I hadn't, it can be tricky business because the motor is pushing from the transom, of course, and if the tow line is not attached near that, you get swung around a lot. Thinking back, I could've lassoed the motor and been in pretty good shape, but I was holding the line thinking I wanted to be able to let it go quick if needed. So, what I ended up doing was essentially lying down on the dinghy floor, holding the line in my hands and pinning it to the transom with my foot. Recall, it's May and it's the St. Lawrence river and it's blowing and choppy. I was in a bathtub of 45º water. Eventually, I got it spun around and moving... the boys put up a scrap of jib to help pull. It came free and then, bam... into another and the same situation, though at least facing the right direction. A little more pulling and it came free and then they took off with that scrap of jib faster than I could keep up, heading into the shipping channel. Eventually we got back together and I got on the boat. At that point, once the emergency was over, I went below and stripped all the soaking wet clothes off, wrapped up in a blanket, and lay on the floor, hypothermic. Obviously, we survived and the boat was fine... took it to The Bahamas and back after that and it's been going strong... my son just sold it this year, seven years later and I'm sitting writing this from my boat having single-handed to The Bahamas.

The points I want to make with those stories is that old fiberglass boats are pretty darn tough and, while running aground can be a really bad thing, most of the time it's a learning experience and worse on the people than the boat. Learn from it, think on the things that you might've done different, find the tools that help prevent such things (Navionics Sonarcharts were the big thing for me), and carry on. This year, I've single-handed from Ontario to The Bahamas. I touched bottom 2x, both due to stupid inattention, both a simple matter of backing off of the mud and carrying on. Remember... you almost never die.

[SV__Grace]

I grounded my first keel boat (Ericson 25) on the rocks of Alcatraz in SF Bay.

Not my first grounding as I would occasionally get stuck in the mud in the Redwood City channel at low tide- very narrow and shallow and hard to follow the nav bouys accurately, but I was a newbie. Panicked the first time but then started to enjoy the enforced 6-8 hour vacation for the tide to come in.

Here's my true story of ending up on the rocks of Alcatraz:

December 1982 I took a week off work between Christmas and New Year's for my very first single-handed foray out of the Golden Gate/SF Bay to Half Moon Bay along the coast.

Left at midnight to ride a strong ebb tide from the South Bay to San Francisco, a trip that normally would take 8 hours only took 4 hours. Conditions were perfect- clear night full of stars, plenty of wind for a beam reach (but not too much), the best sailing trip of my life at that point and I was ecstatic.

Turned the tiller west and kept my bow pointed to the Golden Gate Bridge, tripping out on the lights of the city and the absolutely beautiful night along with my music turned up and the wind filling the sails, a peak experience for sure.

It was freezing in the cockpit and I was snugged into a sleeping bag focused on (more like mesmerized by) the Golden Gate Bridge ahead of me and the lit up city to Port. When I finally got around to looking to Starboard I was scary close to Alcatraz and scrambled to put the outboard in the water but was on the rocks before I could start it. A soft landing, but stuck.

Called the Coast Guard on the VHF and they arrived pretty quick (USCG Golden Gate is only 2 miles away) and towed me off. In the process my rudder post was bent and I couldn't steer, so spent the night in Horseshoe Cove, got a tow to a boatyard in Richmond and spent the rest of my vacation waiting for my boat to be fixed.

I learned many lessons that night, here's 3 of them:

1. Sailing and everything else in Life doesn't work the way you want, think or expect. Since "you don't know what you don't know" you gotta pay full attention, especially when new to something.

2. Current trumps wind. The same current that is your friend in one direction can be dangerous in another direction.

3. Navigating a boat is NOT like driving a car! You can't simply "turn left" and the boat will go where you point it!