I'll try to keep this one short. I find I frequently tell it to other's when making a point about tidal currents. The tides in our area can move as much as 12ft in a cycle. This kind of movement will create some good currents, even in a protected harbor like ours.
As usual, this happened at the fully occupied public dock. We were on the windward side of the dock, with our bow pointed out into the harbor, and no boats in front of us. My plan was simple. push away from the dock and do a beam reach out. That was the plan, but not what happened.
What happened was that as soon as we cleared the dock we immediately shot sideways towards the marina next to it. I'd expected some drift because we were on a beam reach, but this was substantial. In fact, I barely had time to grab and oar and fend off a piling. Within a minute or two, we had been pushed into an empty slip at the private marina. I hadn't taken the current into consideration. Luckily, no boats were damaged other than a couple of scrapes to our own. AFter a little thinking, I was able to leverage the boat out of the slip and we were away. Lesson learned - always know where and what the currents are.
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