A Cruise On The Ouse

[dom]

EA have a dedicated flood team who deal with these things. They obviously have a reasonable grasp on things, to be able to get the levels down so quickly. It was staggering to see how quickly it fell. Earith fell by a foot or so in 24 hours, so thankfully we now have a road again.

Just a shame that in the meantime, at least one boat went down and several went adrift. There was a cruiser loose up on the Old West, which I suspect may still be drifting around on its own.

[Smoggy]

In fairness EA don't have much choice at Earith as by then they are at the mercy of the tides,  from there down there's no sluices to control. 

And upstream from there they have to keep residential flooding in check. 

From my view they've done OK.

[mikeyboy1966]

Hi Daniel,

Where abouts in the marina did you get a berth in the end?

EA have move to caution from SSA but I’m not 100% certain that st ives lock has been reopened,

I think the upstream locks are open now.

I’ll be down Friday to do some jobs,then back on Sunday for a cruise up to hemingford meadows ,if all goes well we will carry on upto godmanchester on Monday,back to Jones on Tuesday.

have you made plans yet?

[dom]

St.Ives is apparently open - but I've not been past to confirm, so don't take that as 100% gospel.

[Bikertov]

17 hours ago, mikeyboy1966 said:

Hi Daniel,

Where abouts in the marina did you get a berth in the end?

EA have move to caution from SSA but I’m not 100% certain that st ives lock has been reopened,

I think the upstream locks are open now.

I’ll be down Friday to do some jobs,then back on Sunday for a cruise up to hemingford meadows ,if all goes well we will carry on upto godmanchester on Monday,back to Jones on Tuesday.

have you made plans yet?

They have given me a mooring at the end of the sales pontoon, until a 'better' one is available

I was up last Sunday again, doing a few bits, and did go out on the river just up to St. Ives bridge and back a few times, to make sure everything was OK.

At the time, the lock was still closed with a red 'X', but not reversed, and the river flow was quite slow. I now own a windlass, so in theory if the lock was working I could go through - if I was feeling brave enough !

Our plan is to be up on Sunday too, and spend the night aboard returning home on Monday. Hopefully that will include getting out on the river one way or another.

 

[Smoggy]

Do you have the ea key as well as the windlass?

[Bikertov]

Just now, Smoggy said:

Do you have the ea key as well as the windlass?

Yes, there was one on the boat, and Jones gave me another that had spare.

[Bikertov]

On 27/03/2024 at 18:50, mikeyboy1966 said:

I’ll be down Friday to do some jobs,then back on Sunday for a cruise up to hemingford meadows ,if all goes well we will carry on upto godmanchester on Monday,back to Jones on Tuesday.

have you made plans yet?

How long are you around for today Mike ?

I popped by your mooring yesterday evening but there didn't seem to be anyone on board 

[kpnut]

Are you back in the water Biker? So looking forward to reading your tales. 

[dom]

I suspect that might be a bit of a sore point. The EA re-opened all the locks at the end of last week, but then put out a strong stream alert Saturday morning, effectively closing down the Great Ouse upstream from Earith. A lot of RGO boaters are complaining about paying a full season's toll, only to be stuck in the marina for months. There are a lot of parallels with the Broads situation, ie. moaning about EA funding for dredging, etc.

[Bikertov]

1 hour ago, kpnut said:

Are you back in the water Biker? So looking forward to reading your tales. 

Yes, we were back in a couple of weeks ago

Unfortunately, as Dom has said, we have a Strong Stream Advice in place which means no navigation and the St.Ives lock is closed again having been open for only a few days 

I did get out briefly last week - up to St.Ives bridge and back, just to check everything out

We are onboard this weekend and have just spent our first night on the boat !

But no Cruising on the Ouse for now 

[kpnut]

That’s a shame, but being on the boat is the biggest step forward, even if going nowhere. Home away from home!

[Bikertov]

It's been a while since my last post, and I hadn’t even been to the boat for 3 weeks now, as we were away in Tenerife for a week and got back end of last week, so missed some weekends here

But now the time had come – the weather has improved, and the Strong Stream Advice (SSA) had finally been reduced to “just” a Caution, so time to properly get on the water.

We got up early(ish) this morning, loaded up the car and headed off to St.Ives for the day. The weather was glorious, so I had the roof down the whole way there.

On arrival, we quickly put all our stuff on the boat, then headed up the road to Aldi to get some bits for lunch. Back to the boat again, disconnected shore power, switched on all the isolators, and fired up the engine. With the mooring lines taken in, we headed off into the unknown !

Now whilst the SSA was lifted, and the St.Ives lock was operational, the downstream water levels were still relatively high, so instead we headed upstream to St.Ives bridge and beyond, into the uncharted wilderness that is the River Great Ouse.

I approached the ancient stone arched bridge with a bit of trepidation, remembering my last solo encounter, but I had to be brave. As I got nearer, I lined myself up on the largest arch and with my OH as a spotter for clearance, and just went for it. This time, it was through without incident !

With that taken care of, we chugged upstream heading towards the next major obstacle – Hemingford Lock. It is about 2 or 3 miles upstream, so it took us about an hour, keeping our speed to 3mph or less, as there were a few paddle boarders and swimmers to avoid.

 

 

 

We passed some nice GOBA moorings along the way, but of course I realised I hadn’t yet got any mooring pins or rhond anchors, so I couldn’t stop.

When we got to the lock, I moored up at the waiting point to see if anyone was going through, so I could watch the process – I haven’t been through a lock yet, so it is all a bit alien to me. A few boats did go through, but I decided that was far enough for today, so we just stayed there for a bit and had our lunch

 

 

 

After lunch, it was time to turn round for the journey back to the marina. But Oh No, it wasn’t going to be that simple of course …

The river, and the entrance area to the lock, really isn’t that wide. I took in the mooring lines and spun the boat around, with the helm hard to port and slow revs on the engine. My boat can turn almost on it’s axis like that, but even so as I turned 180* I strayed slightly over to the other side of the river, and as I started to straighten out and move forwards, there was a horrible grinding sound from the hull and I stopped moving …

Yes – I had gone aground on a shallow gravel mound !!

Trying to stay calm (my OH was panicking a bit – “what if we are stuck here and can’t get off - ever …” I tried to reverse to no avail. Then I tried steering to port, and although the bow was pointing towards the other bank again, I still couldn’t free myself by going forwards. Trying to ‘punt’ with a boat hook was useless, as it just dug into the gravel bottom with no effective movement of the boat.

After a few more attempts with the engine hard forward and then astern, I eventually managed to break free enough to steer and move towards the bank again, and with a big sigh of relief we were on our way again.

With our bit of excitement over, I took it easy on the way back, being very cautious of any indication of shallows – vegetation etc sticking out of the water

Then it was time for the return passage through St.Ives bridge. Again, I took care to line myself up early on the correct arch, take a deep breath then just go for it. Luckily, the bridge was negotiated without incident, and we headed on back to our berth in the marina. I managed to moor stern on first time, without too much trouble (no-one next to me to hit at least)

The rest of the day was spend sitting in the rear cockpit area, soaking up some sun. It was then time to head home, so we turned everything off, locked up the boat and set off home around 6pm, again with the roof down all the way home.

So there we have it – my first proper Cruise on the Ouse. At last, I’m now a real boater !

 

[kpnut]

That looks a lovely stretch of river. 
 

Horrible feeling when you hear that certain noise and know you’ve hit bottom. I did it at Dilham in the winding circle, got too far over to the far bank as I didn’t want to frighten the folk moored up nearest the bridge by going too close. When I take the boat out in the autumn.winter, I’ll be interested to see if I took a chunk out of the rudder, doubt it but it was not a nice noise!

[dom]

Good to see you getting out properly at long last. Boat's looking good too.

Heading upstream was definitely the better option. I was down by the Pike & Eel yesterday and it's hard to tell where the river starts and ends. There's extensive flooding well outside the main channels still. Brownshill Staunch is also out of action until mid-June from what I've heard.

You should start seeing volunteers helping out with locks imminently - but you'll have to figure Hemingford out for yourself, as EA don't cover that one.

[Bikertov]

There were 2 volunteers at St.Ives lock, but they said the river was still a bit high, and I could see the weir was quite active.

With the high water level, they thought the clearance was a bit low on the guillotine - hence my decision to head upstream.

[Gracie]

Did you really have to dodge the paddleboarders?  

So pleased you had such a lovely day on your first Cruise of the Ouse, hopefully, with the weather getting better you will soon be spending lots more time aboard her 

Grace x

[Bikertov]

3 hours ago, Gracie said:

Did you really have to dodge the paddleboarders?  

Yes, a few times. There were quite a few SUP's around, as well as people just swimming and bathing in the water just off the bank.

Bear in mind, the river is not that wide, and not knowing how shallow the water was close to the bank I was navigating the middle of the river most of the time. So when for instance another boat was coming the other way, I had to ensure that it was safe all round by not trying to squeeze past all at once.

Don't get me wrong - I didn't have any problems with them, but just wanted to give them a wide berth and low wash. We even spoke to a few of them - once on a bend to check there were not more of them out of our line of sight, and another pair when we were moored up at the lock and two were waiting to go through. One of them asked for some sun cream, duly provided, and I also offered them a top up of water for their water bottle.

[Smoggy]

One thing to note on RGO is locks with wiers beside often have a shallow  spot on the downstream lock entrance after high water flows as it's where the water swirls and slows down so it's dumps it's sediment there.

Also be careful if you stop at the ferryboat at holywell, it's a lovely spot but quite shallow and there's some concrete lumps down there, I seem to recall your prop is fairly well protected so you shouldn't take any real damage if careful, at St.Ives quay I once reversed back a but and found the steps below the surface, probably not an issue on a single engined boat but I was on twin outdrives, ended up reversing as far as I could on Jones slip with outdrives lifted so I could take a prop off and carry out a spot of "dendro-percussive maintenance" (hitting it violently with a lump of wood and a big hammer) to straighten a blade.

[SwanR]

Lovely looking boat Biker. You must be feeling great with the summer ahead. ☀️

[addicted]

The approach to Hemmingford lock has always been shallow especially on the bend approaching it. We always used to shoal  there on our Fairline Mirage. A word of warning  - mooring  on the lock pontoons on the RGO for anything olher than  going through the lock is a bit of a no no. No need to be nervous of the lock operating procedure  especially at  Hemmingford as it is really user friendly.  The lock to be wary of is Brownshill. my personal bete noir!  Enjoy your boat!

 

 

Carole

[Smoggy]

Brownshill is pretty much automated nowadays,  both ends have a delay built in.

[dom]

54 minutes ago, Smoggy said:

Brownshill is pretty much automated nowadays,  both ends have a delay built in.

The delay is currently rather long. EA have closed it "until further notice". Rumour locally is that it might be mid-June before it re-opens. 

There's some fairly serious discontent amongst RGO boaters. There's this issue, serious silting at Brandon, Denver and Salter's Lode and prolonged high water levels and SSAs have meant lots of people unable to get boats where they need them for moorings, maintenance, etc.

EA are saying they'll action what they can "within the scope of our available budget", whilst there are quite a few boaters saying they'll withhold tolls until the situation improves, so it's all very similar to the situation on the Broads.

 

[Bikertov]

2 hours ago, Smoggy said:

... I seem to recall your prop is fairly well protected so you shouldn't take any real damage if careful ..

Yes, my prop is quite well protected.

Knowing this, and realising I had gone forward or possible slightly sideways onto a gravel shallow, I was not too worried about damage. If anything, it was my lovely handiwork on the anti-foul that would have taken a scraping.

It was just a question of how to get myself off it, and whether I might need a tow off it from another passing boat.

[Bikertov]

2 hours ago, Smoggy said:

One thing to note on RGO is locks with wiers beside often have a shallow  spot on the downstream lock entrance after high water flows as it's where the water swirls and slows down so it's dumps it's sediment there.

Good to know this - I will try to remember

Whilst the weirs at Hemingford are not by the lock, I guess a similar effect could be had when the locks themselves are reversed, and you get the dumping effect of sediment and gravel