There are four types of skipper: Those who have been aground; those who are aground;
those who are about to go aground; and liars !! Harvey Bernard, August 2018

Running aground is one of the biggest fears of any sailor. At best, it’s highly embarrassing, and at worst it can lead to the loss of the vessel, serious injury or even fatalities.

Avoiding grounding is thus the single most important element of navigation and passage planning, and whenever land is near, it’s uppermost in a responsible skipper’s mind.

A common misconception by non-sailors is that crossing an ocean is much more dangerous than coastal sailing, but as any seasoned circumnavigator will tell you, it’s much more relaxing when you’re in the middle of nowhere, than when you’re surrounded by land, rocks, sand flats, coral bommies etc.

Even in a storm, you’d much rather be a 100 miles out to sea than 1 mile from the coast where the slightest wrong move or system failure on the boat could have you dashed against the rocks.

I’d been sailing for over twenty years before I ran aground for the first time. Sadly, I only had to wait a further three hours for the second!

The first one will live long in my memory.

We had chartered a boat for the day, and we decided to go to the Sydney Fish Markets to buy some lunch. Back then, there was a small floating pontoon at the Markets, with room for about a dozen boats. Right alongside this was a fleet of fishing boats.

As we motored down the channel between the fishing fleet and the pontoon, it was clear that the only vacant berth was the innermost one, right next to the veranda, which was packed without over 200 people eating their fish and chips and watching the boats come and go.

We were right on low tide, which gave me pause for thought, as I was in an unfamiliar boat, and couldn’t be sure whether the depth sounder was calibrated accurately.

I slowed down for my final approach, and as I watched the numbers fall on the depth gauge, I decided discretion was the better part of valour, and I stopped the boat and started to reverse back up the channel.

A fisherman on one of the trawlers, not more than 10 feet to my left, saw me back away, and called out to me, telling me that there was plenty of water in there, and I’d be absolutely fine.

Like an idiot, I believed him, and recommenced my approach towards the vacant berth, no doubt while he rushed below to get his camera and tell his mates to come and watch the impending fun.

Inevitably, I saw the oyster-shell encrusted bottom a few seconds too late, just as I swung the boat into the berth, and we ground to a halt in the mud, less than three feet from the pontoon. The fact that we were travelling at such a slow speed, and the bottom was mud, meant there was no damage to the boat. My pride, on the other hand, was another matter.

To compound the issue, we were close enough to the veranda that I could have leaned over and stolen a chip from the nearest diner.

Our friends Jacqui and Lorna were less than impressed at being asked to lend their weight to the efforts to unstick the boat by ignominiously hanging off the end of the boom in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to lean the boat over, thus unsticking the keel from the mud.

In the end, time was our friend, and the incoming tide floated us off a short while later, although not before we’d had three offers of chips, copious amounts of advice and even an oyster by mirthful members of the peanut gallery public.

Wonderful friends though they are, Jacqui and Lorna were not slow to tease me over the ensuing couple of hours, and were clearly unconvinced by my protestations that it was my first time ever running aground. I was still shaking my head ruefully and saying “I can’t believe it” three hours later, when I ran aground again – this time on a well charted shallow area in Sydney’s Middle Harbour. I have no excuse for this one other than inattentiveness to the chart and depth sounder. The girls however were less than impressed - they were downstairs making a cup of tea at the time and ended up head first in the mug cupboard.

The only thing worse than running aground in your own boat, is doing it when you’re skippering someone else’s.

I had been asked to helm another boat in our yacht club for a few races while the owner/skipper was recovering from heart surgery. It’s always lovely to be asked, but as this boat had always been our greatest rival in the club, it really meant a lot on this occasion. But not enough for me to pay sufficient attention when I was coming into an unfamiliar pontoon to pick up a crew member. I took a course closer to the shore than the skipper usually did, and none of the crew thought to mention it, trusting fools that they were.

Again we were going very slowly, and when a grounding happens like this, it’s a strange feeling. One moment, you are motoring slowly forward. The next moment you’re still motoring, but not going anywhere. The change from 1 knot to 0 knots is barely perceptible, so it takes a few seconds before the penny drops, and the blushes begin.

In this case we were pulled off the sand bank by a kind passing boat, and we resumed our preparations for the impending race. I think we did well enough on that day that at least I was able to look the skipper in the eye when he joined us in the pub afterwards. I suspect he’ll be reading this right now – Duncan, I’m still blushing!

So that was it. 3 groundings in 33 years of sailing, up until we started our circumnavigation 3 months ago.

Since then we’ve hit the bottom a further 4 times!

The first was in the Coomera River, when I was distracted during a sea trial, trying to replicate an issue with my engine for a specialist we had on board. This was when we discovered that I had incorrectly calibrated my new depth sounder a year previously. (for the yachties out there, I had set it up to add 1 metre of depth to the readout to offset the location of the transducer, rather than subtracting 1 metre). My gauge had been reading 2 metres more depth than there actually was for over a year.

This hadn’t been an issue previously as I‘d never been anywhere so shallow, but now the chickens came home to roost. Looking on the bright side, once aground, we were able to apply an exact calibration, meaning that I’d be spared from future issues…right?

Wrong!

A week later, we were motoring down the Brisbane River looking for somewhere to anchor when I spotted an unusual, and beautiful looking schooner permanently moored in a spot that would be great for us to spend the night. I motored over slowly to check the depth and find our position, but was sufficiently distracted checking out the other vessel to feel that now all-too-familiar slowing of the boat as our keel dug into the mud. Some quick thinking and immediate action allowed us to reverse straight back out, and 30 seconds later, we were on our way again, with me shaking my head ruefully, and Jen wisely deciding now was not the best time to point out what a colossal idiot I am.

Just a week later we were motoring into Mooloolaba Harbour, north of Brisbane. It’s a notoriously shallow harbour, and we were entering right on low tide. This was a double edged sword.

On the one hand, according to the charts there were definitely going to be places where we’d have less that 30 cm under our keel on the way into the slightly deeper water up-river that we had identified as the place to anchor.

On the plus side, however, we knew that if we did go aground the incoming tide would lift us off.

As we entered the river, we were going as slowly as possible and the depth sounder was reading less than half a meter below the keel. We were following closely behind a vessel of similar size to ourselves, who would likely have a keel as deep, if not deeper than ours.

He too was going slowly, so much so that it took a good 30 seconds for me to realise that the gap between us was shrinking rapidly. I steered off to one side, and as we drifted slowly past him, I hailed him and he confirmed my suspicions…he was aground, exactly on the track we would have taken in his absence.

As it was, we had 20cm below us, and so we pressed on, congratulating ourselves on our good fortune. Half a mile further upstream, and less than 100 metres from the deeper “pool” where we were going to drop our anchor, the inevitable happened, and we slowed to a complete halt. This time, our perfectly calibrated depth gauge was reading minus 0.3 metres – our keel was buried 30 cm into the mud.

Some quick tide calculations revealed that it would take 45 minutes for the tide to float us off, so we succumbed to our fate and cracked open a beer to wait for nature to take its course.

One week later, the latest of my litany of misadventures befell us at Rosslyn Marina in Yeppoon. We’d stopped there to do some grocery shopping and fill up the water tanks. While Jen went off to Coles, I was to wash down the boat and fill the tanks. Now when our tanks are 100% full, the boat lists a couple of degrees to port, a function of the fact that the tank is bigger on one side of the boat than the other. We could rebalance the boat to avoid this, but the list is small and only lasts for a couple of days until the tanks equalise, so we just live with it.

As I finished washing down the dinghy, I saw the boat listing, and was shaking my head at the design flaw that would allow this to happen when it suddenly occurred to me…I hadn’t started filling the tanks yet!

I jumped on board, ran down to the nav station where the depth gauge confirmed my stupidity – we were aground once more. This time, I’d made the mistake of believing the marina who said there was sufficient water in our berth. But still, it was MY mistake.

What all of the tales in this confessional have in common are that the various groundings all happened on soft bottoms at low speed – in each case, there was absolutely no damage other than to my self-esteem (and now thanks to this blog) my reputation.

By contrast, we recently spent a week with a young couple who answered our advert looking for crew to join us at Hamilton Island Race Week. We met them for a beer beforehand to make sure that we would enjoy spending an intense week together, and as they shared their story, our hearts went out to them. A year previously, they had purchased their first boat in Florida with the intention of sailing around the Caribbean for a bit, and then through the Panama Canal and home to Australia. Not unlike ourselves then.

Less than two months into their trip, they struck a reef, hard. They were fine, but the same couldn’t be said for the boat, and after some unsuccessful attempts at major repairs in one of the best shipyards in the US, they are now in protracted negotiations with their insurance company, their dreams on the verge of being shattered.

We’ve spent the last few weeks sailing up through the Great Barrier Reef and round the top of Australia into the Torres Straight. Along the way, we’ve been reading about the great explorers of our past, Captain Cook, Matthew Flinders et al, who charted these waters at significant risk to themselves and their crew. On our charts are innumerable shipwrecks, that make clear the ultimate price that was paid by thousands of seamen to enable Australia to be colonised.

Fear is a powerful barrier to us achieving anything in life, and for a sailor, there is no greater fear than going aground. But there are many different types of grounding, and if we allowed fear to totally dictate our decisions, we’d never be prepared to sail in new waters, our crew from Race Week would still be stuck in boring office jobs, and Australia as we know it would not exist.

So as I reflect on my brushes with the bottom over the last few weeks, I say confront those fears. Be prepared to make an idiot of yourself, and yes, even put your life at risk a little.

Because otherwise, what’s the point?