I wonder if through the good offices of your monthly page in The Resident I could make a small request to owners of Motor Cruisers and Power Boats coming up the Guadiana River to occasionally look behind them to check their wash.
Those of us who live here have seen a large increase in pleasure traffic in the river during the past few years, which is great; many of them are very large power boats. A lot of them are UK flagged vessels but also a lot of Portuguese and Spanish. We enjoy the river being busy and it is good to see it being used. We also know there is no speed limit on the river so you can come up at full pelt with impunity, which is fine.
The problem though is that many boats come up and down the river at just the wrong speed, ie just below planning speed, and the wash they leave behind can be horrendous. This applies to all nationalities including British although the locals are not exempt.
As you will know there have been two very large dams completed in recent years which we hope will have reduced the likelihood of flooding but a side issue of this is that when once the river banks were replenished by flood waters this is now less likely to happen and severe erosion of the river banks is beginning.
I know from the UK that boring old farts keep going on about the wash created by powerboats but an incident last weekend left me gasping. A large 50 foot or so UK flagged Sunseeker having spent the night at Alcoutim came downriver at about low water at what they no doubt thought was a sensible speed of around 12 knots, but which in fact left a Tsunami when the wash came into the shallow waters by the bank. The resultant wave destroyed my pontoon. Reports from others down river also indicated that the boats moored on pontoons were tossed about so violently that it is difficult to see how damage was averted.
This is material damage which can be rectified but there are many families who live on the river with small children that like to swim on the shallows at the edge. The loss of a child would be more difficult to cope with.
Another incident last year also made my blood boil, during the annual regatta upriver a lovely old wooden boat got it wrong and impaled itself on the bowsprit of my schooner ‘Siesta Key’ as she lay on her mooring. This resulted in damage to the small yachts rigging. As he was struggling to free himself in a strong tide, with just a small engine, I went out to assist. At the critical moment of getting him untangled a large Spanish motorboat went past creating such a wash that all three boats smashed together resulting in damage to both Siesta Key and my launch, destroying the mast on the small yacht and punching a hole through his deck by the dolphin striker under Siesta Key’s bowsprit. Naturally the owner was distraught but the owners of the powerboat just did not look to see what was happening behind them and continued on their way no doubt creating more mayhem in their wake.
I have to say that the GNR and Guardia Civil are not exempt from this problem but it could be argued they have a job to do and we do not wish to get in their way but surely foreign visitors can show a little more thought. Skippers of motor cruisers should also realise that they are responsible for any damage they cause whether
to people or property.
I don't want to appear like a whingeing old 'B' and know it will be difficult to stop altogether but a word from a respected nautical journalist like yourself to skippers and owners to drive with a bit more care and to look behind might just assist.
I have attached an official notice that was originally in English, Portuguese and Spanish that has been placed on all marina notice boards in and near the Guadiana.
Many thanks
Steve and Anne Mehlmann
Casa Amarilla www.casaamarilla.net
Dear Steve and Anne,
Thank you very much for your email, I think that you are completely right in everything that you have said.
I have often seen motor cruisers travelling at what they probably thought was a safe and sensible speed (about 8 to 12 knots!) and leaving behind them a wake as much as two metres in height, even out at sea this can be dangerous when passing within 200 metres of another boat, but in the Guardiana or the Arade, such a wake is bound to cause damage, injury or even death to a child playing near the river bank.
It could be that some skippers do not realise that there is no speed limit in the Guadiana or the Arade, and therefore keep their speed down to around 12 knots in order to keep within a possible speed limit that doesn’t in fact exist. Whereas if they were to go considerably faster they would in fact make much less wash. The photograph above I took recently when travelling up the ‘Arade’ river at about 22 knots, as can be seen our wash was minimal and would not have done any damage to either the river bank or property.
Something else that a lot of skippers may not realise is that when slowing down on entering a river to perhaps 5 or 6 knots a boat will still have a considerable wash rather like a tail. But if you stop almost completely and then accelerate up to 5 or 6 knots you will find that you have lost your ‘tail’ and the wash is perfectly acceptable.
I have travelled many times up and down the Guadiana and the Arade, travelling at over 20 knots is fun. However, particularly at Spring tides and when there has been heavy rainfall a lot of branches and even quite substantial logs are washed off the rivers banks, and at that speed if you were to go over a log you would not fail to do serious damage to a boat.
In a yacht of course you are limited to 5 to 8 knots, but if you are pushing a yacht along at its maximum speed then you will also be making an unacceptably large wash, just a couple of knots slower and the wash will be fine.
My view is that both the Guadiana and the Arade are rivers that go through countryside that is more stunningly beautiful than any other that I know, so why not enjoy it by going slowly. Leaving either Vila Real St Antonio or Portimão travelling at about five knots just after low water should give around two knots of flood tide to help us along, giving us an actual speed of around seven knots over the ground making Alcoutim in the Guadiana reachable in less than three hours and Silves in the Arade in little more than an hour. Coming back may take a little longer unless you stop for a nice long lunch and come back on the ebb! That’s of course assuming that high water is around lunch time and from November 18th to the 22nd 2006 it is!
Best regards, Martin Northey.
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