You might be surprised!
This is the worst year for flooding that we’ve had since we moved aboard. We have only had a few non-flooded days since Christmas and on Christmas Eve it felt like Planet Earth had given up with land. And on some of the non-flooded days, it was snowing! At least that was a change – I quite like a bit of snow!
Today, I am watching the detritus whoosh past the boat in the floodwater. Mainly bits of tree, some times most of a tree. Often bits of wood, from fences and moorings that are damaged by the flood. Lots of balls, I think there will be a lot of disappointed dogs! A curious amount of cabbage and the other day a fridge came flowing past! It looked very clean, quite new and in good condition – apart from being in the river!
But there is a question I am asked all the time. “Boats are good in floods, aren’t they?”
If I had a litre of water for everyone who says “You’re okay – in the best place”. I’d have a lot of showers and make lots of tea! I’d probably have enough for a bath, if only I had a bathtub!
I have heard it so much over the last month that I thought I’d explain the issues that flooding causes boaters. You know about the problems we have with getting water so I won’t go into that again (we haven’t filled up the tank since the 1st December. We have been filling up bottles at a friend’s outside tap). This is the actual problem of a boat staying safe in floodwater.
Mooring 1: Mooring Pins into a Grass Verge
During the summer months, you’ll see a lot of boats moored alongside rivers or canals with either metal pins hammered into the grass with the ropes tied to them, or attached to the metal edge of the mooring.
Not many boats will use these over the winter, but we were caught out using mooring pins in an unexpected flood at the end of March. We thought the risk of flooding was over. We were wrong!
When the river is fine, they work well. As you can see in the image above. But when the level rises they aren’t good. As you can see in the image below.
The boat is still joined to the mooring pin, but it can’t rise with the water, so it ends up at a jaunty angle. This is going to make everything fall off the shelves and the people will think they’re drunk. But it is worse than that.
Boats have drainage holes along the front and back to let out rainwater and holes to let the sinks drain into the river. If a boat is on the wonk the drainage holes let water in rather than out and the boat sinks.
Those logical people among you might have come up with a solution. Tie the rope to the pin with a lot more slack when you know there is a flood coming. Let’s look at that option.
As long as they have a board to get on, that will be fine…won’t it?
Nope. That’s not a good option, either. In reality, the boat would probably snag on something (the rope, the mooring pin, uneven grass) and tip sideways into the river. If I were clever enough to draw animations I would show you – but I’m not!
So – mooring pins is not the way to go in a flood. What else can we do?
Mooring 2: Flood Poles
This is what the BBB’s winter home has. You may have seen them. Boats tied up to scaffolding poles. Sometimes they are against the riverbank, sometimes as part of some staging.
In a flood! 
When we first started mooring against flood poles we tied the boat to the pole. Really securely – we didn’t want to boat to float away, did we?! Then we had a flood and realised that you shouldn’t tie to flood poles!
Looks nice and safe. When the river rises…?
Now, we don’t tie to the flood pole. Instead, we loop the rope around or use mooring rings (steel hoops that go over the pole and you join the rope to – there is one in the flood photo above) and the poles work much better.
Yay! The boat is moored in a flood and no one has drowned!
There is a thrid style of mooring that we haven’t looked at yet.
Mooring 3: Floating Staging
This is the kind of mooring that you often see in commercial marinas. The moorings are made of wood or a strange type of nonslip plastic stagings joined to vertical runners.
The staging floats up and down with the water 
The boat is tied to the plastic or wooden staging (or very occasionally concrete – who knew that would float!) and as the river rises, the staging rises with it. The boat floats up with the staging. Almost perfect!
Let’s look at a diagram.
And when it floods?
They don’t even get wet feet!
I have always thought that flood poles with hoops and floating staging style moorings were…as safe as houses! Until this winter. This winter has thrown a whole new load of challenges at us boaters!
Winter 2020/21 Problems
Can you spot the problem with this picture (other than the word ‘River’ not fitting in the picture)? Look at the rope and the flood pole. The river has risen so high that they have run out of pole. Now, the boat is in very fast-flowing flood water and not tied on.
This happened to the rear (stern) rope on the BBB on Christmas Eve. We woke up when it was still dark to find the back of the boat in the middle of the river. The river had risen so high that we ran out of pole at the back. Thankfully we were still joined at the front, but we had to find some other things to tie to. It was a very scary time and totally unexpected. If you’d have asked me a month ago whether I thought the poles were too short, I’d have laughed at you. It would take an inland tsunami to raise the boat high enough to have a problem. I was very wrong. We ran out of rear pole on Christmas Eve, secured the boat as best we could, assuming that the river couldn’t rise any higher and left (using an inflatable canoe – the land was underwater). The river went up a lot more over Christmas Day and Boxing Day and we probably wouldn’t still have the BBB if our neighbours hadn’t helped.
But we weren’t the only people to struggle. I always thought that people with floating moorings were invincible. Nothing could be a problem for them.
Do you remember the detritus that I mentioned at the beginning? The trees, wood, balls, cabbage and fridge? It’s not an issue when it flows down the middle of the river (for me – it’s a pain for the people who maintain the sluices), but at the edge of the river it can get caught up around the boats and that can cause big problems.
We had a big bit of wood wedged between the boat and the mooring which stopped the boat rising with the water. You don’t need a picture to know what happens if the boat doesn’t rise, do you? You’ve got the idea – glug, glug, glug! We have the same issue when the river starts to drop. Stuff can get stuck and stop the boat descending.
This is also a problem for floating staging. The staging doesn’t float because debris that comes with the floodwater gets stuck in the mechanism. This Christmas, some people spent a lot of their time clearing the rubbish from the mechanism, day and night.
And a lot of people found their stagings washed away with the flood.
Are boats always good in floods?
So – no. Boats aren’t always good in floods. We don’t have to worry about sandbags and barricades like houses do – but we definitely have our own problems.
Well, I’d better wrap this up now. I need to go canoeing to get some shopping, but first I have to work out why the boat is on the wonk. What is stuck under it, now?!
And it’s snowing again.
