Maitland

I’m anchored here.

Yesterday was a bit stressful. I didn’t get into any trouble, but have been on high alert for the last day or so, and slept fitfully last night.

Like the day before, I got underway too soon. The closest tide station for this area is Burnt Head, and I was planning around that. I approached the head about an hour after low tide, with a good tail current and a 15 kt following breeze.

What I hadn’t taken into account was the tidal bore phenomenon. As I rode along at 10 mph I went through a large patch of turbulent water, and as I approached the sand bars at the head of the basin I realized that I had less depth than I was expecting. A quick check of tidal bore times revealed that the bore doesn’t arrive here until almost three hours after low tide. I had driven through the front of the bore again. I kept going until I was in ten ft of water and anchored for a couple of hours, and saw a 15 ft rise in water level.

Getting across the bars to the river was the next challenge. The tail current and waves didn’t make running up on one a good prospect. The charts give a few clues, and the rest I gleaned from looking at Google Maps satellite images. I didn’t see less than 15 ft on the way in, so did a good job picking a route.

My charts all showed an area around here which would be deep enough to anchor and not be beached at low tide. The reported tidal range at Burnt Head was 30 ft, and I was seeing depths of 20-25 ft on my sounder.

Around dusk as the current went slack a local self-proclaimed river rat came by to check me out. Marty helped me identify the deepest part of the river in a bit closer to shore, and I settled there with 32 ft of depth as the tide changed at 9:00 pm.

I was awake until about 2 am, and with the incoming bore expected about 345 I dozed on the settee. When I woke up it was to a lot of current, with my anchor occasionally breaking loose on a rocky bottom. I added a long nylon snubber, had a look around, and went to bed. The tide change around 10:00 got me up.

It turns out that the tidal range here is only about 20 ft, and it’s a weird schedule. The incoming tide takes about 4 hours, and the outgoing 8.

I’m now waiting for the incoming bore due here in about 20 minutes. Will take some videos. Here are photos looking upstream and down at low tide