During the summer season we were hard aground for several weeks and even when we left port we had to essentially throttle the ship way up to pull ourselves off the mud. Aside from that the way we knew we were hard aground was the fact that the ship wasn’t moving at all when we were on it. This is common in the latter days of summer and fall since the water levels typically slowly get lower and lower. Fortunately Pathfinder has the umph to pull itself off (T-Boats of my sort were designed to do just that in war time).
Fast forward to now.
We have ice in the harbour. LOADS of it. In my previous post you can see the ice there. What you can’t see is how thick it was. 4 to 5 inches. Enough that one could stand on it even though one shouldn’t try (I tested my weight on it while holding onto the ship to make sure I wasn’t going to fall in). Oddly enough this had the same effect as being hard aground. The ship simply wasn’t moving anywhere and was even heeled over at about 5 to 10 degrees (this was probably due to the ice pushing against us which pushed us against the ice on the side of the concrete wall). Anyways we chopped away at the ice and Dad installed an agitator from our friends at HMP and we seem to have leveled out significantly. Thanks Dad!
Basically what an agitator is and does is that it’s a fan/propeller that you put below the ice and have it stir up the warmer water just below the surface. 2 things happen then. Ice doesn’t form on moving water so it keeps any new ice from forming. Secondly any existing ice will be turned to slush since it is warmer water below the ice (although it’s only just above freezing below the ice that is “warmer” than the ice. So it melts it.).
Until next time. Later all.