Russian sailors maroon themselves in Bristol Channel after drunken dinghy ride goes awry Ah, the sea! The salty spray, the sunlight sparkling off the bay... but three foolhardy Russian sailors anchored near Minehead, southwest England, clearly fancied a change of scenery – to their misfortune. The trio were employed aboard the Dutch-registered cargo vessel Alana Evita moored just over 3km (2 miles) off the coast …
Apparently it was two Russian sailors and the Dutch captain, not three Russians. Seems a right friendly captain if he takes his crew along on a booze-up. Also seems to be not the captain I'd want if he manages to get lost in the Bristol Channel. God help him in the Atlantic, or even the North Sea.
The Bristol channel is well known as a right nasty bit of water it has a lot of nasty tides, sandbars and rocks just below the surface.
All told as long as you have sufficient food and water you are far safer lost in deep water where theirs nothing to hit than something like the Bristol channel.
Something fishy about the story? They left the ship in the dark just before 4am, were able to find their way across 8km of channel to Barry (not necessarily the place I'd have headed for - what was wrong with the much closer Minehead?) without getting lost, managed to find a boozer still open at that time of the morning (in March in Barry???) and the alarm had been raised by 7am?
"Inflatable dinghy" implies something small and basic and probably without a motor but three hours to travel all that distance, find an open hostelry, have a few drinks and get back onto Flat Holm sounds not-terribly-long to me even if the dinghy did have an outboard.
Not that I'd ever doubt the Telegraph, but it would sound more believable to me if they had climbed into the dinghy with booze they'd stashed on the ship (possibly against regulations), drifted (or paddled deliberately) to Flat Holm to party on the beach with the notoriously strong tide in the channel and made up the bit about Barry to hide the regulation-breaking.
If I've found a sensible tide table, at 4am the tide would have been in full flow and the general direction would have made it possible to get to Either Barry or Flat Holm from Minehead in an underpowered dinghy.
The tide had turned by 6.15am which would have made it easier to get back to Minehead from Barry, but Flat Holm is in the opposite direction and they'd have been powering against the tide. Surely even an inebriated ship's captain in heavy fog would know the difference between going with and against the tide?
Completely unqualified to make these kinds of statements of course - the extent of my water-borne experience is limited to Llyn Tegid (Bala, mostly Optimists) and Ponsticill reservoir (GP14) back in the 1980s and 1990s. Prepared for people to point out the flaws in my argument...
M.
"Inflatable dinghy" implies something small and basic and probably without a motor
Report from Aunty Beeb said it was a "rigid inflatable" - they can be fairly robust craft, and equipped with decent motors. For example, they can be successfully piloted across short stretches of the North Sea between the mainland and small islands by a heavily inebriated crew of 4 while carrying 6 further cases of beer....apparently....according to a friend....
Of course the RIB was invented in South Wales, at Atlantic College in fact, which is not far around the coast from Barry (almost directly opposite Minehead, in fact). Maybe they were trying to take it home?
M.
Absolutely. An acquaintance of mine might have, after a few bevies, accidentally fallen onto the throttle of a rib as it negotiated a set of moorings, late one night...
The rib accelerated viciously, mounted a small yacht, demasted and literally broke it in half.
Noone on the rib or yacht was injured seriously - though someone had to pay 6K for being being a knob and replacing the yacht.
The rib was fine - strengthened bows.
You can go surprisingly fast in a 13 foot Avon or Zodiac with a 35hp motor on it. We put a 120hp Chrysler onto an 18 foot Avon once. Squirrely doesn't even begin to describe it at full throttle, but with a little self control it was quite manageable. With the right prop it topped out at just a tick over 75 knots. (Don't try this at home. Trained professionals[0] on a closed course (South SF Bay), on glass water at slack tide.)
The inflatables have very little drag, so when under power tides and currents don't affect them as much as you might think ... I have been blown by the wind back into SF Bay against an outgoing tide in a small Zodiac when the small outboard quit on me. (Tidal flow under the Golden Gate is horrendous.)
Which brings up my alternate explanation. Our heroes, finding nothing much of interest in Barry (let's face it ...), decided to head for the bright lights of Weston-super-Mare and set a course directly for it. In the dark and fog, they didn't see the island in front of them, and ran aground. This is easy to do in the dark, especially when the island is essentially a flat rock on a mud-flat.
[0] Or fucking idiots with too much time on their hands, if you prefer. Hold my beer and watch this!
You can go surprisingly fast in a 13 foot Avon or Zodiac with a 35hp motor on it. We put a 120hp Chrysler onto an 18 foot Avon once. Squirrely doesn't even begin to describe it at full throttle, but with a little self control it was quite manageable. With the right prop it topped out at just a tick over 75 knots. (Don't try this at home. Trained professionals[0] on a closed course (South SF Bay), on glass water at slack tide.)
Zodiacs (they're Avon now too aren't they) do plane quickly so yes should be plenty fast with 35hp outboard. Popping on a 120hp and trying it flat out sounds brave (I'd be inclined to say foolish, but given the opportunity would probably feel compelled to give it a go). Not sure how comfortable I'd be feeling about doing 75 knots in a RIB though.
> managed to find a boozer still open at that time of the morning
This had me too flailing backwards, mouth agape and eyes out on stalks, arms windmilling for balance even as I reached for the strictly-for-medicininal-purposes as I struggled to cope with the shock.
Something open? At 3:45am? In BRITAIN????
Good luck finding something open even in the middle of London at that time.
I... I... *glug*
I salute the heretofore unwitted magnificence of the Russian merchant sailor.
My next door neighbor is a scuba diver. He has a dinghy to get to where he's diving, its a medium sized Zodiac 'rigid inflatable' which he called "E-Ticket" because its got two very large outboard motors. It goes about at 30-40 knots, car speed, so it would cover 8Km in next to no time.
I'd guess the problem with the return journey was a combination of tidal geography and drink. Where I live drinking and boating is regarded by the law as exactly the same as drinking and driving (and the penalties are the same) because drink is often associated with serious accidents, both on land and on the water.
Once did something similar. Was living on Haling Island at the time, went to Portsmouth for a rather boozy night out, and for some reason decided the best way to get home was to steal a rowing boat and row back across.
He got well and truly nicked when it sunk and he had to be rescued. I don't think he made it more than about 50 feet from shore.
A true story from the Darwin Awards - a group of four men were drinking in a bar on the banks of the Nile. To avoid paying the bill, all four ran out of the bar, jumped into the Nile and began swimming to the opposite shore. Three drowned. The fourth made it across only to find the Egyptian police waiting patiently for him.
I figured "drowning" was just a euphemism...
Although it raises a question what do you actually die of if you get taken by a croc? Since they barrel roll you until you run out of air, I guess technically you do drown before you get eaten. So I guess drowning could be correct after all...
Technically, you die of heart failure. Unless they manage to accidentally bash your head in on a rock, of course. The barrel roll isn't to drown you, per se, rather it's to stop you struggling. A live victim with a busted neck is just as useful to a croc as a dead, drowned one.
You'd think so, but actually lighthouses are just general navigation beacons.
You get big powerful ones that you can spot from far away as you approach the coast from the sea, these tell you basically which part of the coast you're approaching. Then you might get a smaller lighthouse to signal the clear water channel to approach a port. Any dangers they warn about are basically irrelevant to a boat of less than a ton.
Also many lighthouses don't illuminate 360 degrees. If only because then the local villagers can't sleep, but also to only cover a particular danger or channel. So even if it was working its feasible that it wasn't identifiable in the fog.
The Flatholm light is a 360 deg flashing light visible for 15 nautical miles [1], i.e. almost 28 km. In good visibility it would have been visible from their anchorage off Minehead, and clearly visible from Barry. There are also foghorns for when it's too murky for the light. I suspect that they did not so much 'run aground' as take the smart option and get themselves onto dry land until daybreak.
[1] Trinity House - Flatholm Lighthouse
What are you suggesting they should have done with the sheep?
* Knitted themselves some woollies?
* Set them on fire and gathered round to keep warm, just like Grandma did in the Great Patriotic War?
* Eviscerated them and curled up inside the nice warm bodies, like Han Solo and Luke Skywalker (hint: sheep are smaller than taun-tauns).
* Something NSFW to keep their extremities warm?
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
