Mysterious Humming Sound

[Lightwave99]

Ha ha. No tracker on our beautiful but humble west coast catamaran! Anyone else have any ideas?

[Lightwave99]

Originally Posted by Franziska

Sounds like a shoreside underwater pump or turbine.

Are there any water power stations with a reservoir close by?
They may pump water up with "daylight" electric power and have it go through a turbine at night to produce electricity at night.

Or tidal power turbines?

Hello FrAnziska.
There are no reservoirs or hydro electric Turbines close by and there is no road access for powerlines in this area. So we don’t think this is the answer to the mystery.

[Scorpius]

I get hum like that on Scorpius when I'm anchored where there is considerable current - and here in BC there are lots and lots of places with considerable current! The hum comes from the anchor rode vibrating with the current. It of course stops, for a time, at slack water.

It could be that.

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

I get hum like that on Scorpius when I'm anchored where there is considerable current - and here in BC there are lots and lots of places with considerable current! The hum comes from the anchor rode vibrating with the current. It of course stops, for a time, at slack water.

It could be that.

Not much current up in Pendrell Sound, however....

[eheffa]

There are many oyster farms in Pendrell sound.

My guess would be transmitted sound from generators running at night.

- evan

[richbeck]

Sounds familiar to a noise we were hearing on my sailboat. Moved the shift lever from neutral to in gear. Noise stopped instantly.

[Lightwave99]

Thank you to recent posters. Firstly, it was not just in Pendrell Sound that we heard this humming sound. And we are aware of no oyster farms in the area.

Re the vibrating anchor rode suggestion: no, the wind was not particularly strong, if anything when it occurred all the times we heard it.

I don't think it is a gear shifting thing because we have an outboard engine which we lift right out of the water when at anchor or at a marina.

You can actually go online and find that people have hard this sound worldwide...

Thanks to all interested parties. Looks like there is no ready solution!

Carllie & Garett
Light Wave
Vancouver, BC Canada

[DShant]

You are near the submarine base. Submarines?

[HopCar]

At least teach it the words so it can sing instead of hum!

[bdurham49]

It may not be your rigging, but I’d bet with almost certainty that it’s someone’s rigging. Case in point, I have a go fast boat with carbon fiber standing rigging and carbon fiber mast and boom. At certain wind speeds, anything over 12 knots, my boat resonates and it sounds like a jet engine or high pitched piece of electronic equipment. It’s so loud, I’ve had people on other boats call me to let me know that I have some electronics on that are really loud. A real problem if I’m in a harbor as this can be heard for over half a mile. I can even hold the standing rigging in my hand and feel it’s oscillation but my hand does not dampen the noise. Also, my boat is cold molded wood which tends to amplify the noise. Hope this helps. In a quiet anchorage, I can hear my boat more than a mile away.

[Lightwave99]

There are no submarine bases in the area. This is Canada, not the US.

[BlueH2Obound]

The mountains next to you are hollowed out to contain the secret lair of an evil genius, working on developing a doomsday device to blackmail the developed countries of the world into keep him in twinkies, cupcakes, and Starbucks coffee for the rest of his life. The humming will go away permanently when the next 007 movie is released when all will be told about how the evil genius met his end in the nick of time, 007 triumphing! Beware, if you are in the anchorage at the time the mountain explodes, we may never hear from you again!

Or, it COULD be shrimp. . . . just sayin'

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Lightwave99

There are no submarine bases in the area. This is Canada, not the US.

Ah, that explains it! It’s Trudeau, ordering Canadian dolphins to hum instead of squeak

[southseasailor2]

Originally Posted by Lightwave99

Do you know what this weird humming noise is? We were up in Desolation Sound and Pendrell Sound on the British Columbia coast this June (about 100 miles north of Vancouver), and a few times we heard a mysterious humming noise. It was not our rigging! We could particularly hear it in the hulls of our catamaran. We know we were not imaging it as when we were in Oyster Cove at Pendrell Sound, a fellow who had just anchored a little ways away from us rowed over and asked us if we had heard this humming sound. He had heard it the night before at a nearby anchorage just before he came into Pendrell Sound.

The sound was continuous starting about 9 o'clock at night. It was continuous, never varied in pitch and and seemed to stop abruptly around 4 or 5 in the morning.

We wondered if it might be fish-farm related, but the fish farms are a long ways away. We know that in Robson Bight up here there is an ongoing whale/Orca study and we wondered if that might be the source, but that would be a long ways away and we doubt they would do such a thing as it would only disturb the Orcas, whales and dolphins.

We have done a bit of web surfing and it seems to be an international phenomenon. Does anyone have any ideas what it could be?

We were anchored close in in Boston harbour. Starting about 5 am every morning there was an in hull noise like a pump or electric motor running. It would last a few minutes, stop and then repeat. Nearly drove us mad searching the boat (Amel SM 2000). One morning, determined to find it I got up and went and sat in the engine room where all the pumps and electric motors are located. Then at last it dawned on me. It was the subway running under the harbour.

[TorronnaPwr]

Hi - If you go to Wikipedia and search for "The Hum" you can see how common it is worldwide. There are lots of ideas on the source as well as the ones noted there Have fun exploring.