Boating and Sailing.pdf - Moja ladja

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Part 5: Staying Safe Afloat
But it’s also true that a short hop across a quiet suburban pond can very quickly and unexpectedly
become what everyone would agree is an emergency, a disaster in the making.
Note that having an emergency does not necessarily mean a tragedy. It’s often your rapid
response to the situation that determines the outcome. This chapter touches on both the
mild and the serious forms of emergencies and how to deal with them.
You’re Grounded—Now What?
There are times in every boatman’s life when the bottom is too close to the top. You’re
grounded, for the first time since you were a teenager. It happens to everybody, from boat
designers to skippers with 20 years under their belts, and sooner or later it will happen to
you.
One approach to the situation is to pretend it hasn’t happened. Just tell your crew that
this looks like a good place to drop anchor for a few hours and have lunch. Then assess
the situation. How bad is it? If the motors sporadically
Boat Bytes
The first step when you go
aground is to determine
where the nearest water
deep enough to float your
boat lies. There’s probably
good water behind you, but
there may be a drop-off just
ahead or to one side, and sometimes
it’s easier to go forward
than back if you’ve slid to the
back side of a bar.
Boat Bytes
If you’re aground but
barely so, a likely solution
in boats powered with outboards
or stern drives is to
tilt up the lower unit to the
point where the prop is just
beneath the surface and try to
back off. Many times, this is all it
takes.
started laboring, the boat bumped a few times and then
slid to a stop, you’re probably going to be fine. You’re
stuck, but not bad, and the bottom is soft. However, if
the boat suddenly came to a halt and flopped over on
one side of the bottom, this is not a good sign. You are
up where only the flounder and stingrays can swim.
If there were loud crunching or grinding noises when
you hit and you stopped with a jolt, you may have
struck rock rather than soft sand or mud. There could
be damage to the prop, lower unit, skeg, rudder, shaft,
or even the hull itself. This is the worst-case scenario.
The tides are also a factor to consider. If it’s low tide
and you had a soft grounding, you’re probably in luck.
Just relax, do lunch, tell a few grounding jokes, and the
tide will come back within a short time and float you
off.
Props pull better in forward than in reverse. So, if the
deep water lies behind you, you may want to try spinning
the boat 180 degrees so that you can leave the bar
with the gears in forward. On small boats, this can be
done with muscle power, sometimes via a stout push
pole or oar, but more often by going over the side and
putting your shoulder to the bow.