Snags

Lake Champlain

Good advice I got once is that a blog filled by too much "Here we are having fun while you're stuck at home," is a recipe for losing blog readers.  I'm afraid we've been doing too much of that this summer.  Especially considering the plight of others.  For example, our friend Randy in Dallas Texas is about to suffer his 40th consecutive day with temperatures over 100 F.

So I won't write that we're sailing down the lake right now with 15-20 knots breeze on the beam.  Instead, I'll write about a hazard -- snags.

The word snag has many meanings.  In life it can mean any unexpected obstacle.  When anchoring, it can mean any object on the bottom that your anchor might catch on.  In this article I mean a solid object with one end stuck on the bottom and the other end at or near the surface.   Most snags are formed by logs, but really nasty ones are made by sharp spears made of iron.

When under way, we are used to hitting floating pieces of wood or other debris.  That's pretty common.  For a boat like Tarwathie with a solid hull, and a skeg rudder protecting the propeller, such strikes are usually no problem.   However, power boats and some sailboats are more vulnerable to propeller damage.  For them, floating debris is a worry.   For example, 90% of the north-south traffic in Virginia refuses to use the Dismal Swamp Canal route because of worries about floating bits of wood.

On the other hand, a snag is a much more serious threat.  If you hit it, it will not simply be pushed aside.  Because it is embedded in the bottom it acts like a spear with the butt end stuck in the dirt.  Think of Hollywood movies where the great hunter kills the charging lion or elephant by simply sticking the butt of his spear in the ground and aiming the point toward the attacker.

A Westsail 32's hull is so thick and strong that wooden snags should not be a mortal threat.   Hitting a snagged tree at full speed might cause quite a bump, but I don't think it would hole the hull.  Such is not true though in less well founded vessels.   It is also not true in the case of a sharply pointed steel snag.  Last spring we heard of such a steel snag which was the remains of a broken day marker pole.  It was up by Coinjock NC.  A big and well founded sailboat hit it and was holed.  The skipper managed to steer for shallow water and ground the boat before she sunk.   We feel for the skipper, there was no reasonable way for her to anticipate and avoid that hazard.

So, what should you do to avoid the hazard of snags?  If the tip is invisible, there's very little you can do. If it is visible, the tip-off is that the log or the spear will normally tip at an angle of 45-75 degrees from horizontal.   A floating log, not snagged on the bottom is likely to float either horizontally or vertically.  A vertical tree stump may also stick more than a foot above the surface, but a vertically floating log will not.

A similar hazard, crab/lobster traps I'll address another day.

Snag Lake California, Source, Free Campgrounds