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Cruising in ice


Angela962

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We are in our first winter of owning a boat and have woken to find the canal frozen

 

The boat is easily breaking through the few millimeters that has formed but I am worried that we might be damaging the boat

 

Any advice?

 

Forecast says warmer today but colder again Wednesday and Thursday

 

Thanks

 

Angela

 

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Assuming your boat is steel it will cause no harm to the hull but it will damage your blacking. Take very great care if you have to pass any moored plastic or wooden boats though as the ice you push ahead of you may damage their hulls.

 

Enjoy the trip - it gets noisy and beware that you may find you cannot steer on tight bends and have to take a few runs at them

  • Greenie 1
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Depending upon the type of blacking you have, you may damage it, especially pushing through ice more than a couple of millimetres thick.

 

If your blacking is two pack epoxy blacking, it is unlikely to come to any harm. If it is bitumen based, then the ice will remove it at the waterline.

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Welcome Angela,

 

Assuming you have a 'conventional ' narrowboat then you'll be doing no structural damage, but the bitumen blacking (paint) on the hull will be taking a beating, and will bring forward the day it needs re-blacking.


Depending upon the type of blacking you have, you may damage it, especially pushing through ice more than a couple of millimetres thick.

If your blacking is two pack epoxy blacking, it is unlikely to come to any harm. If it is bitumen based, then the ice will remove it at the waterline.

 

 

I think this needs qualifying. I have bitumen blacking and did a bit of cruising through ice 3 to 10mm thick the other day and mine still looks fine. I think it takes more than a bit of light ice breaking here and there to damage even bitumen.

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I spent 2 days ice breaking in early December and the Comastic is still all there. The ice was up to 3/4 " thick in places.

I went through much thicker ice in 2010, probably 2 "plus, which was hard work, but again, comastic was ok

Edited by matty40s
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"Sickle" is an ex ice-breaker, so will have done rather more of this than most boats over the years.

 

It has just had a lot of steelwork carried out on its front end, including replacement of plate at the point it would be forging through the ice.

 

There was definite evidence that some of the scoring and damage to the steel was as a result of its former use. Our boatbuilder and surveyor had ittle doubt this was the cause of some of the thinning.

 

So whilst I fully agree that occasional breaking of thin ice by a modern steel leisure boat is highly unlikely to damage the steel, I do believe that done persistently it did. (In much the same way that if you scrape the edges of your chine angle in shallow waters occasionally it is unlikely to wear away significantly, but if you buy a 20 year old hire boat where it has happened continually over the years, then it may be significantly worn, and ultimately need repairs).

 

On the other hand, in my experience you don't need to break very much ice before bitumen blacking is being removed at the waterline. Even though I have an icebreaker, I generally choose to try not to do it.

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I spent 2 days ice breaking in early December and the Comastic is still all there. The ice was up to 3/4 " thick in places.

I went through much thicker ice in 2010, probably 2 "plus, which was hard work, but again, comastic was ok

 

" Comastic " ohmy.png Posh git.

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" Comastic " :o Posh git.

It's been on the hull from 2004, I've just slapped some more on top on two occasions. For the small extra cost it's well worth it looking at the state of some "every two year blacked" bitumen hulls.

 

I'm from Lancashire, we don't do posh...☺

Edited by matty40s
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A point to bear in mind: When cruising through ice it is not unusual for a sheet to break off and skim over the unbroken ice. As well as potentially damaging plastic boats it can also chop the legs off water fowl if they happen to be sitting in an unfrozen space. Think two sheets of ice crossing like scissor blades.

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It's been on the hull from 2004, I've just slapped some more on top on two occasions. For the small extra cost it's well worth it looking at the state of some "every two year blacked" bitumen hulls.

 

I'm from Lancashire, we don't do posh...☺

 

Lancashire? Ive heard of it but were exactly is it?

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A point to bear in mind: When cruising through ice it is not unusual for a sheet to break off and skim over the unbroken ice. As well as potentially damaging plastic boats it can also chop the legs off water fowl if they happen to be sitting in an unfrozen space. Think two sheets of ice crossing like scissor blades.

I've recently seen this recently, the front edge of the top being two boat lengths ahead!

ETA:

(Skim in the sense of being steadily propelled by the boat pushing it along, not in the sense of being ejected like a missile at high speed.)

Edited by system 4-50
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I'm Leicestershire born and mostly bred but in my possession- actually in a clip frame on the landing wall - an O S 6" county series map from circa 1890 This shows what aa Yorkshire mans view of the rest of the world is !! The map is approx A0 in size the small area that is Yorkshire is less than A4!! It is part of Barbondale. post-3364-0-69013100-1483456793_thumb.jpg

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A point to bear in mind: When cruising through ice it is not unusual for a sheet to break off and skim over the unbroken ice. As well as potentially damaging plastic boats it can also chop the legs off water fowl if they happen to be sitting in an unfrozen space. Think two sheets of ice crossing like scissor blades.

 

Do you know this for a fact?

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People are very protective of their blacking in a lot of cases this is unwarranted. If your blacking is going to come off in ice there are a few factors to consider, The thickness of the ice the speed of the boat the ability of the blacking applier to do a good job and further what the blacking is applied to.

 

Basic blacking 'seems' not to stick well to red oxide paint. I have had two boat painters confirm this.

 

I ice break often. After ice breaking through some inch plus ice for about 12 miles a few years ago I was surprised to see in the dry dock that the blacking was virtually intact bar the stem post. Places where the blacking had been removed were well above the waterline and just a bit well below it. So based on my experience it is my opinion that putting blacking on is not an easy task, but done right it will not come off in ice below one inch. A millimetre or two will have no impact on blacking unless the blacking is not properly adhered to the hull.

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A point to bear in mind: When cruising through ice it is not unusual for a sheet to break off and skim over the unbroken ice. As well as potentially damaging plastic boats it can also chop the legs off water fowl if they happen to be sitting in an unfrozen space. Think two sheets of ice crossing like scissor blades.

 

 

 

Do you know this for a fact?

 

I must admit I thought this idea had been largely dismissed as improbable.

 

It sounds quite dramatic as a suggestion, but has anybody actually witnessed it in practice?

Edited by alan_fincher
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I must admit I thought this idea had been largely dismissed as improbable.

 

It sounds quite dramatic as a suggestion, but has anybody actually witnessed it in practice?

 

With regard to the waterfowl bit, We broke ice (quite thick) from Stourton Junction to Calf Heath some years ago. At one point we approached an area of water that was not frozen, it has a swan and a (full size) cygnet on it, swimming in circles which they have been known to do to keep an area of water ice free. As we approached we slowed right down as much as we could (it is impossible to go really slowly in ice as it just stops the boat moving at all) The birds were very clearly distressed by our very noisy approach but we assumed they would simply move away by climbing out of the water and walking or flying off as we got closer. They didn't. They seemed unable to climb out of the water, as they tried to pull their bulk up onto the edge of the ice it either crumbled or they slipped back in and so they were stuck on a small round patch of water that we were heading directly for with chunks of ice being thrown forward as our stem post broke it up. The ice would skid across the top of the frozen canal at some significant speed and I would not want to have been hit by a chunk of it, let alone if I was down at water level and only the size of a swan.

Thinking about how a swan usually takes off from the canal, they would need a long runway of ice free water to fly off and they only had a very small "pond" that was not frozen

 

We progressed as slowly as we possibly could and I do remember it being a particularly anxious time for me as the swans were getting more agitated the closer we got. Finally the bow broke through into their little "pond" or clear water and we put the brakes on to see how the stand off of boat against swans would pan out. Because we had now fractured the ice along the side of the boat the larger lumps of ice were easier for them to climb onto and with what was probably a surge of adrenalin telling them to get out of the way they both broke free of their confined area and made their way to the back of the boat.

 

They spent the next half hour following the boat with the "happy swan" wag of the tail. I read this to mean that despite the fact we had scared them half to death approaching with such a huge amount of noise and vibration they were actually really happy we had broken them out of their little confined hole in the ice. We were so relieved they reacted that way!

 

I watched very carefully and was pretty certain no chunks of ice had actually hit the birds but having had that experience I can completely understand how a sheet of ice breaking off could seriously hurt a bird in the water, in truth I m fairly sure any bird standing on the ice would be long gone before you got close enough to do it any harm but if you see water fowl on water that is not frozen it is possible a sheet of ice from the frozen part you are moving through could harm them and they may not be as able get away as easily as you expect them to

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I must admit I thought this idea had been largely dismissed as improbable.

 

It sounds quite dramatic as a suggestion, but has anybody actually witnessed it in practice?

 

Yes! I don't make a habit of posting made-up stories or apocryphal tales coming from a friend of a friend.

 

I have not caused it myself, but saw another boat ahead of me going through about 8 - 10mm of ice dislodge a large sheet of ice which skimmed over the unbroken ice and chopped the legs off two canada geese that were in a piece of clear water ahead of him. Not a pretty sight.

  • Greenie 1
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Yes! I don't make a habit of posting made-up stories or apocryphal tales coming from a friend of a friend.

 

I have not caused it myself, but saw another boat ahead of me going through about 8 - 10mm of ice dislodge a large sheet of ice which skimmed over the unbroken ice and chopped the legs off two canada geese that were in a piece of clear water ahead of him. Not a pretty sight.

 

Thanks,

 

That is, as far as I can recall, the first time I have ever heard of someone actually witnessing it, rather than it just being suggested it can happen.

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It's been on the hull from 2004, I've just slapped some more on top on two occasions. For the small extra cost it's well worth it looking at the state of some "every two year blacked" bitumen hulls.

 

I'm from Lancashire, we don't do posh...☺

I'll report on how my Comastic has done when we get it out of the water this year for the first time since 2010... It certainly seems fine round the waterline and we were very happy with how it lasted on Warrior (as, I think, were the subsequent owners...). So that's another vote for it being worth the money.

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