Timing and Tides

Mother Earth is not very maternal.  She is, in fact, an indifferent mother.

So indifferent is she that last week for example, on my return from the library, she left me stranded on the quayside in the cold and drizzle. 

Well of course, Mother Earth will blame The Moon and why not?  She does have a lot to answer for.   Her beauty and shape-shifting and silvery bewitchments cannot be a refuge for all her mischief.   In this case they were both culpable.  And there was an accomplice – another orb needing a beady eye kept upon in matters nautical - The Sun.

When these three are aligned, they create exceptionally strong gravitational forces, which cause extremely high and low tides. They are, I have learned, called Spring Tides although they have nothing to do with the season of Spring and everything to do with the Full Moon and the New Moon during whose appearance they occur.

This high water was a 6.6 metre – the highest yet since being at the quayside.

 As you you see, the day before, I was (very happily) marooned aboard Davenham. 

I sought shelter with our neighbours, Rolf and Genevieve (that's Genevieve on the quayside the day of the marooning), until the water (and the gangplank) was low enough to board again and made a note to self to always check the tide tables before leaving home.

When Best of Brothers Mark and Lovely Sister Sandra met the Captain and I at Brentford Creek – Davenham’s temporary mooring while waiting to go into dry-dock – this, their first visit, was similarly poorly timed.   So excited was I, that it hadn’t crossed my mind that the creek, being on the River Thames, would also be subject to its tide which, contrary to our expectations, was out on our arrival and not due in again for about six hours.   Needless to say, Davenham was not lying quite where we had planned and by the time they arrived, we had already determined that boarding would demand some serious acrobatics.

These were duly performed by the Captain, setting an example once again as a captain should:  a vertiginous descent down a wall on a rope ladder attached to the railings, across a lighter, up an old bit of ladder and a climb up the tyre fenders to the deck.
I spectated at the good example he was setting. 
Then, as Best of Brothers Mark records in the Sappers Log, dated January 15th 2012, I boarded “gracefully and in a fully dignified manner”.

 

In May, Davenham moved from her mooring in the middle of the river to our permanent berth at the quayside.  The appellation “quayside” was, perhaps, rather a premature title to give the mud bank and retaining wall that has since subsided  but that’s another story.    Here, Davenham is almost always dry.  We miss being constantly afloat.   This only happens about once a month and then sometimes for less than an hour.   But when it does, Davenham feels like a dormant creature rousing, her hull reverberating with bubbles and gurglings, creaks and thuds as the water loosens her from the mud to be, for a short while, in her natural state.

During the first few weeks, while she was bedding in, she listed to port; not so obviously that looking at her from the quayside would cause one to gasp in alarm but to knees and backs it was very obvious indeed.   It was with not a little effort that a circuit around the breakfast table was made - half uphill, the other down.  It was disconcerting and exhausting; my visual-spatial awareness was out of kilter.  Genevieve, whose neighbouring barge, Janette, had been at the quayside for months, was waking during the night with knees in howling agony. You can imagine what a reprieve a high tide was. 

The forty-five degree angle of the miniature chandelier was our gauge. 

The Captain and I were convinced that Davenham would never settle - by what laws of physics was she going to right herself? Nostalgic - and physically aching - for the stability of walking on water, we asked to be returned to the outer mooring.

“She will bed in.”  We were reassured,  “Give it time.”

“Hmmm…….” ,  our sceptical eyebrows said to each other.

We have monitored the miniature chandelier closely and indeed it is, to our delight, now hanging straight. 
Time and  Tides are the laws, Time and Tides.