admin Date , 2024 Sailing Previous Blog Safety boat in the Rain Comments (0)
It's happened in the past but it is a little unusual to have the floods this early. The summer series barely over and the Autumn races not likely to be
Should we move the boats to higher ground on the riverside? With more rain on the way, it’s hard to say if this is just a warning of what's to come, or if the river levels will remain manageable, allowing us to soon return to green boards and racing. Last year, we faced similar conditions, with the powerboat and safety boat courses being cancelled—will we have to go through that again? Or could the club arrange for them elsewhere if the river floods?
It all depends on how much more rain we get. Over the past year, the jet stream has been sitting further south than usual, bringing us endless rain, cold winds, and what felt like no summer at all. Is this a pattern we'll continue to see? Could it be linked to global warming? It’s probably too early to know for sure. But for now, we’re back to RED boards, and unfortunately, no sailing on the river.
Over the course of one day looking at the pole we can see that the water is still rising. the boats nearest the water have been moved.
A Sunday Call. Move the club boats. The club boats were queued to get across the railway line to Sin City, which will be above the possible flood line when the River Thames floods even higher this Autumn, Winter and Spring. It is unlikely that there will be much more sailing this year. A good number of members turned up so many hands made lighter work. The push up the the railway line was still as hard, but with several pushing and pulling it was easier. Thje only ones happy seem to be the swans who could swim over the netting and eat some of the submerged grass.
The water level has gone down a bit - the goose netting is just visible and the black mark on the pole shows about 8 cm of black, but more rain is on the way and we had some 12.6mm at the club last night and even more in the Thames valley so the river will probably rise again.
