The hair raising voyage from Hull Marina to York through the thick Yorkshire Ouse muddy water, winding along the outside bends for depth in tidal water right up to Naburn. There a misunderstanding led to the swing bridge being closed on me and with steering failure we eventually spiralled until I got the mud weight and chain down to regain control, moor and fix the steering. Eventually through the lock and to moor in Naburn Marina
The journey called for an early start, and we had not done as much preparation as I would have ideally liked but we felt that we were ready and were up early for our trip from Hull to York. The first problem was that Daniella became sick during the night and was actually sick several times in the boat which gave Diana and I a rather troubled and wakeful time. I was the first to rise this morning and listened to the weather forecast and had to persuade Di that we should still stick to our plans as Della's condition needed a day to develop and we could nurse her just as well as we were cruising along. We therefore set off and locked through the Hull Marina Lock at 7.20am and began our trip up the rest of the Humber and then the Yorkshire Ouse. It began well with the course across the Humber well marked with buoys and the flood tide fully in our direction and speeding us along.
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The sea was slight and not a problem and the weather was fine as well. The course wove from one side of the Humber to the other and was full of water with the tide well in. Then up the Yorkshire Ouse where the difficulties began. The water was thick with sediment and almost like gravy or oxtail soup! It was swirling everywhere and shallow in places so that we had to stick right to the outside of bends to keep to the deeper water. The river is tidal right up to Naburn, near York itself, and the tide floods for only a couple of hours and then ebbs for ten. In a couple of places at sharp bends, the Ouse has forced separate channels for the flood and ebb tide with an island in between and the course is quite difficult to find with swirling whirlpools. Then our worse hazard was at Selby Rail and Road Toll Bridge.
The bridge-keepers were not responding to VHF channels 16 or 12 as I was advised in the river guides but, as I had later found out, was actually listening to channel 9! Getting no response to my calls and following a barge downstream, the bridges opened and we expected to be able to go through after the barge. We safely negotiated the rail bridge but then the road toll bridge closed on us as we were being swept forward by a 4/5 knot current. I just managed to stop in time and got Daniel to lower the mast and aerial but we side-swiped the quay heading and then experienced the worst thing possible - compete steering failure! Whether it be a weak linkage or too much stress from the emergency manoeuvres, one of the hydraulic pipes came off and the system depressurised with fluid loss. What made it worse was that the rudders were stuck on full lock and so we could not steer with the engines and were left spinning down the river being carried by a four knot tide totally out of control.
The moored barges of the BOCM Selby Wharf were looming and so I swapped the anchor over for a mud weight and lowered this with several fathoms of chain to bring the Paxton Princess under control. This held the bows up stream although we were still being dragged along backwards but I could now use the engines going ahead to stop the boat by the barges and keep it still whilst I took stock of the situation. I found out that I could re-secure the pipe but, although I had some replacement fluid, it was not enough. I used the VHF and cellnet telephone to inform Selby lock and bridges as to what happened and also complained about having the bridge closed on me. I then contacted Naburn Marina and found out that neither them nor anyone else could really help me nor had steering hydraulic fluid but that they agreed that I should use engine oil or anything else I had to make a temporary repair and use that to get our of the tideway whilst the river was still flooding.
We were soon under control and on our way again, albeit with rather dodgy steering to cope with the many twists and turns of current that the Yorkshire Ouse possesses. We eventually made it through Naburn Lock and up to Naburn Marina where we negotiated a temporary berth and set about finding supplies of hydraulic oil. This we did and settled down for the night with the problems solved at lest for the time being. We slept well after all of the stress and exertions of the day in a blissfully-quiet marina.