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Actual use of anchors in emergencies on UK canal/river network


IanD

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Just now, Proper Charlie said:

Others have said lots of sensible things on my behalf but the truth is... I have no idea. There wasn't much flow so I might have been OK. But the lack of flow would have been luck and not part of a cunning plan of mine.

 

Who knows what would have happened if I didn't have an anchor. But I'm 100% glad I didn't have to find out.

 

I think your chosen action is what most boaters would have done.

 

 

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Just now, M_JG said:

 

Takes two to tango.

I asked the question (now answered). You piped up stating the blindingly obvious, that had already been said several times further up the thread. That contributed heat but no light... 😉

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1 minute ago, IanD said:

I asked the question (now answered). You piped up stating the blindingly obvious, that had already been said several times further up the thread. That contributed heat but no light... 😉

 

Its a 12 page thread, I dont intend to read each and every post before responding.

 

 

 

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Just now, M_JG said:

 

I think your chosen action is what most boaters would have done.

 

 

Yes it is, and I'm not arguing with that in the slightest 🙂

 

But there was a discussion upthread about what happens if you don't have an anchor or fail to deploy it and it slips, and some comments on the lines of the usual result being ending up in the trees or the bank with no damage except to pride.

 

All I was asking was if that could have been the case here, or whether the boat would undoubtedly have plummeted over the Niagara Falls to a horrible death... 😉

1 minute ago, M_JG said:

 

Its a 12 page thread, I dont intend to read each and every post before responding.

 

 

That's fine, don't bother if you don't want to. But don't then protest if someone tells you that you're just repeating what was said several times previously... 😉

4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

Better to have and not to need, than need and not to have !

 

You're repeating yourself... 😉

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There have been a few - I know of two - on the Trent where narrowboats get stuck across the flow and held against the Dolphins (yes we have had this discussion before) because a NB is so long relative to its beam and draft it takes very little flow to roll it under the (boom) dolphins and over the weir.

"River" boats will generally have a greater draft and will not be 'rolled' under the boom (dolphins) so easily.

 

Yes dozens of narrowboats negotiate Rivers every year but on some of the major rivers they are operating on a 'knife edge' being generally underpowered, unprepared and a bit top-heavy. It just takes a slight 'beyond the norm' situation and a NB is in trouble.

 

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9 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Yes it is, and I'm not arguing with that in the slightest 🙂

 

But there was a discussion upthread about what happens if you don't have an anchor or fail to deploy it and it slips, and some comments on the lines of the usual result being ending up in the trees or the bank with no damage except to pride.

 

All I was asking was if that could have been the case here, or whether the boat would undoubtedly have plummeted over the Niagara Falls to a horrible death... 😉

 

That's fine, don't bother if you don't want to. But don't then protest if someone tells you that you're just repeating what was said several times previously... 😉

 

The tone and sarcasm about the risk is a bit silly and frankly childish.

 

A boat that rolls under or over a wier boom or actually gets stuck on a wier doesnt have to plunge the height of Niagra falls to sustain considerable damage or be a total loss.

 

 

Edited by M_JG
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4 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

There have been a few - I know of two - on the Trent where narrowboats get stuck across the flow and held against the Dolphins (yes we have had this discussion before) because a NB is so long relative to its beam and draft it takes very little flow to roll it under the (boom) dolphins and over the weir.

"River" boats will generally have a greater draft and will not be 'rolled' under the boom (dolphins) so easily.

 

Yes dozens of narrowboats negotiate Rivers every year but on some of the major rivers they are operating on a 'knife edge' being generally underpowered, unprepared and a bit top-heavy. It just takes a slight 'beyond the norm' situation and a NB is in trouble.

 

If this is a circular argument, can I use the 'bitter end' joke again?

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8 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

There have been a few - I know of two - on the Trent where narrowboats get stuck across the flow and held against the Dolphins (yes we have had this discussion before) because a NB is so long relative to its beam and draft it takes very little flow to roll it under the (boom) dolphins and over the weir.

"River" boats will generally have a greater draft and will not be 'rolled' under the boom (dolphins) so easily.

 

Yes dozens of narrowboats negotiate Rivers every year but on some of the major rivers they are operating on a 'knife edge' being generally underpowered, unprepared and a bit top-heavy. It just takes a slight 'beyond the norm' situation and a NB is in trouble.

 

 

Nobody is arguing with what you just wrote or saying that the risk is zero, because it obviously isn't. Yes boats have ended up against them. Most of the time they just get stuck there until they're pulled off so no harm done, very occasionally they get rolled underneath and sink.

 

How often has this happened? How does this number compare with the number of boats sunk in locks, or because overloaded/overplated or the weed hatch was off?

 

 

7 minutes ago, M_JG said:

 

The tone and sarcasm about the risk is a bit silly and frankly childish.

 

A boat that rolls under or over a wier boom or actually gets stuck on a wier doesnt have to plunge the height of Niagra falls to sustain considerable damage or be a total loss.

 

So how often has this happened?

 

You can't have a sensible discussion about risk without taking into account what the risk of something going wrong is, what the likely consequences are if it does go wrong, what can be done to avoid it, and what the cost of taking precautions is. This is how risk analysis works, and it's what all insurance companies do formally, and a lot of people do informally. It's not good enough to say "OMG, this disaster happened once to somebody, everyone needs to be really careful, it could happen to you".

 

If you don't see that, you don't understand risk.

Edited by IanD
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3 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Nobody is arguing with what you just wrote or saying that the risk is zero, because it obviously isn't. Yes boats have ended up against them. Most of the time they just get stuck there until they're pulled off so no harm done, very occasionally they get rolled underneath and sink.

 

How often has this happened? How does this number compare with the number of boats sunk in locks, or because overloaded/overplated or the weed hatch was off?

 

 

So how often has this happened?

 

You can't have a sensible discussion about risk without taking into account what the risk of something going wrong is, what the likely consequences are if it does go wrong, what can be done to avoid it, and what the cost of taking precautions is. This is how risk analysis works, and it's what all insurance companies do formally, and a lot of people do informally.

 

That's why I said what I did. If you don't see that, you don't understand risk.

 

I dont understand your resitence to deploying an anchor as an initial way of stopping the boat and using the boom as a safety chute if the deployment fails.

 

Two chances to prevent potential disaster rather than just one.

 

Its completely illogical to me.

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17 minutes ago, M_JG said:

 

I dont understand your resitence to deploying an anchor as an initial way of stopping the boat and using the boom as a safety chute if the deployment fails.

 

Two chances to prevent potential disaster rather than just one.

 

Its completely illogical to me.

 

You've got completely the wrong end of the stick, I really suggest you go back and read the thread. The first page would be a good start... 😉

 

I'm not saying anybody should not fit or deploy an anchor, I was asking how often it actually turned out to not only be useful but avoided disaster -- meaning, something worse than ending up in the trees. For a boat that spends most of its time on canals, is it actually worth having an anchor for the few times you might venture out onto a river? If it is, is it worth paying out for a high-performance one or is a cheapo Danforth good enough?

 

If you say "yes, definitely" without having any answers to the above questions, you clearly don't understand how "risk" works -- in insurance, or in real life... 😉

Edited by IanD
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8 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

You've got completely the wrong end of the stick, I really suggest you go back and read the thread. The first page would be a good start... 😉

 

I'm not saying anybody should not fit or deploy an anchor, I was asking how often it actually turned out to not only be useful but avoided disaster -- meaning, something worse than ending up in the trees. For a boat that spends most of its time on canals, is it actually worth having an anchor for the few times you might venture out onto a river?

 

If you say "yes, definitely" without having any answers to the above questions, you clearly don't understand how "risk" works -- in insurance, or in real life... 😉

 

Yes definitely.

 

I do understand risk. Risk assessment was a big part of my job.

 

I just have a different opinion as to the level of risk I am prepared to accept and the methods used to mitigate that risk.

 

These are opinions not facts.

 

Obviously if you are never going to venture on a river or a river section then yes I personally wouldnt bother with an anchor. Ours was a pain to stow when we werent on a river or river section.

Edited by M_JG
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4 minutes ago, Midnight said:

We could easily find out if a narrowboat will roll under a weir boom if only we knew somebody getting a very expensive all singing all dancing - cos I can afford it - 60ft boat. Just take it onto a river and switch the engine off (electric or otherwise) and see what happens. Apparently there's very little risk so it should be easy to persuade new boat owner to participate. I'll sell the popcorn anyone want to supply the deckchairs?

Just can't resist the personal digs, can you?

 

How about making a sensible contribution to the debate instead of the same old ad hominem tactics?

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2 minutes ago, IanD said:

Just can't resist the personal digs, can you?

 

How about making a sensible contribution to the debate instead of the same old ad hominem tactics?

 

SOHF?

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25 minutes ago, M_JG said:

 

Yes definitely.

 

I do understand risk. Risk assessment was a big part of my job.

 

I just have a different opinion as to the level of risk I am prepared to accept and the methods used to mitigate that risk.

 

These are opinions not facts.

 

Obviously if you are never going to venture on a river or a river section then yes I personally wouldnt bother with an anchor. Ours was a pain to stow.

 

Aha, now we're getting somewhere!

 

I never said that anyone else should have an anchor or not (your decision!), I was trying to find out how useful it was really likely to be going by what had actually happened to people, not what they'd heard about or read in the press. Otherwise we're back in the "Don't ever moor in Stoke, I got stoned there once" level of argument -- yes it happened, but this ignores the thousands of people who moored there where nothing bad happened to them. Similarly, every time the anchor question comes up Alan brings up the "boat rolled over the weir" event -- what was this, one occurrence in ten years? Two? Of the 35000 boats on the canals? Is this 20x or 50x less common than a boat sinking in a lock?

 

Quite a few people have (helpfully) answered the original question; if you go on a river engine failure does happen occasionally, some have ended up in the bushes, some have deployed anchors successfully, usually Danforths or similar in spite of the fact these are supposed to be rubbish, and usually these worked and held the boat. No reported disasters, everyone was fine, nobody sank.

 

If you spend a lot (or all) of your time on rivers then they're worth the cost and hassle, but if you spend most of your time on canals (most narrowboaters!) and only a few days a year on rivers the chances of anything going wrong must be *very* small (negligible?) or there would be hundreds or thousands of such incidents every year.

 

Your last point is what I was kind of getting at -- you use "never", I would use "so occasionally that the risk is negligible (see above)" but the end result is probably the same -- no anchor (unless you want to fit one and never use it)... 🙂

Edited by IanD
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27 minutes ago, IanD said:

 

Aha, now we're getting somewhere!

 

I never said that anyone else should have an anchor or not (your decision!), I was trying to find out how useful it was really likely to be going by what had actually happened to people, not what they'd heard about or read in the press. Otherwise we're back in the "Don't ever moor in Stoke, I got stoned there once" level of argument -- yes it happened, but this ignores the thousands of people who moored there where nothing bad happened to them. Similarly, every time the anchor question comes up Alan brings up the "boat rolled over the weir" event -- what was this, one occurrence in ten years? Two? Of the 35000 boats on the canals? Is this 20x or 50x less common than a boat sinking in a lock?

 

Quite a few people have (helpfully) answered the original question; if you go on a river engine failure does happen occasionally, some have ended up in the bushes, some have deployed anchors successfully, usually Danforths or similar in spite of the fact these are supposed to be rubbish, and usually these worked and held the boat. No reported disasters, everyone was fine, nobody sank.

 

If you spend a lot (or all) of your time on rivers then they're worth the cost and hassle, but if you spend most of your time on canals (most narrowboaters!) and only a few days a year on rivers the chances of anything going wrong must be *very* small (negligible?) or there would be hundreds or thousands of such incidents every year.

 

Your last point is what I was kind of getting at -- you use "never", I would use "so occasionally that the risk is negligible (see above)" but the end result is probably the same -- no anchor (unless you want to fit one and never use it)... 🙂

 

No its not the same.

 

I would advocate having an anchor if you plan to venture on a river or river section all be it occasionally.

 

That is not the same as 'no anchor' at all "because you may never use it".

 

 

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2 hours ago, IanD said:

Nope, we had this discussion before... 😉

 

Not being sarky here, a genuine question -- if you'd ended up on the boom , how would this have been worse than being anchored in mid-stream?

Our boom at what we call Asda lock broke the other year! So I think I would rather deploy my anchor than take a chance on a boom!!!!

I can assure you with my luck I would be over the weir!

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24 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

Considering the very remote chance of me needing it - I wonder if I should not bother paying for insurance, likewise the chance of the boat bursting into flames is pretty remote so why clutter it up with fire extinguishers.

Because the BSS says you have to have them. It would be better if they insisted you had something more useful like as a minimum 5Kg water

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3 minutes ago, peterboat said:

Our boom at what we call Asda lock broke the other year! So I think I would rather deploy my anchor than take a chance on a boom!!!!

I can assure you with my luck I would be over the weir!

 

I recall our first time on the Trent and misjudging completely ballsing up the approach to the bottom of the lock at Beeston.

 

The river was flowing quite fast and I just managed to get to the correct side of the lock landing.

 

As we were hurtling along I remember thinking 'I hope that boom will hold us if we dont pass the correct side'. It possibly would have done but thinking about a 60' boat hitting the boom side on and looking at said boom I was not confident it would have done.

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4 minutes ago, M_JG said:

 

I recall our first time on the Trent and misjudging completely ballsing up the approach to the bottom of the lock at Beeston.

 

The river was flowing quite fast and I just managed to get to the correct side of the lock landing.

 

As we were hurtling along I remember thinking 'I hope that boom will hold us if we dont pass the correct side'. It possibly would have done but thinking about a 60' boat hitting the boom side on and looking at said boom I was not confident it would have done.

Ours went after yet another flood! Its broke before in floods but has been repaired quickly not this time though. 

Interestingly the exol pride was up this week even with high river levels, the skipper commented that it was hard work pushing the current, I noticed he didn't go back down very fast, in fact he moored up at Eastwood rather than going down with the current. 

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