Birvidik

Now, where were we?

Ah Yes - perched precariously on a rocky spit like a giant basking lizard. On reflection, 'precarious' is not le mot juste. 'Precarious' implies an element of instability, a tendency to change of position, a risk of falling, dislodging.

Birvidik wasn't going anywhere, not without the application of gargantuan amounts of force. I took stock; information gathering and prioritising were the order of the day. First, a nose in the bilges - no obvious leaks. Or leeks, for that matter. Engine ticking over in neutral - OK. Rudder moving freely? Check. Gently put it into gear; prop rotating smoothly. Gearbox not making a noise like a sack full of spanners in a washing machine. It was beginning to look like we might, just, have got away with it. We were stuck fast (- 10 marks) and now had time to think. Time gradually returned to its customary pace and living life in slo-mo faded into normal.

Plan A was to come out the way we went in. This is reductionist reasoning at its finest; simple, elegant, logical, and in full accordance with the laws of physics; the epitome of the reasoned application of scientific principles.

Or common sense, as most people would call it.

Shame it didn't work.

A hundred and thirty-five horse is a powerful engine for a small boat, but even at full astern it produced not a jot of movement. Well, not a jot of movement of Birvidik. It scoured the riverbed quite effectively, and sand-blasted the hull, rudder and prop with a staccato of assorted rocks and pebbles, but Birvidik remained defiantly in place. It was time to call in the cavalry; I phoned the harbour office.

In less than 10 minutes, two blokes strolled down the spit, looked at the boat, shrugged in that inimitable French fashion, turned to each other, gesticulated, shrugged again, and walked off. Ten minutes later, an eight-metre power boat steamed out of the harbour, did a handbrake turn, and settled in his wash behind us. The skipper handed me a rope and indicated that I should make it fast to a stern-cleat, which I did.

We gradually wound up the revs on both engines. Both boats were shuddering and the rope was bar-tight and starting to sing a top F. No movement. We upped the revs. At full astern both, Birvidik broke free.

A couple of questions for you:

1. Can you explain the difference between the coefficient of static friction and the coefficient of dynamic friction?

2. Can you explain, in terms of rate of change of energy transfer with respect to time, how a catapult works?

No? Doesn't surprise me. Don't worry, though; I can.

And a fat lot of good it did me.

As soon as Birvidik broke free there was little other than her inertia left to oppose the combined forces of the two engines and the massive amounts of energy stored in the taut rope. She shot backwards like a, well, stone from a catapult. It's not easy manoeuvring a fast-moving boat in a confined space, especially when it's tied to another, equally out of control boat.

"Decrochez! Decrochez!" screeched the skipper, frantically. I was way ahead of him. Unfortunately, the huge forces applied to the rope had stretched it so much that it had welded to itself where it had been wound round the cleat and was impossible to untie. We always keep knives handy near ropes, precisely for this sort of eventuality, but I had never had to use one in anger, until now. I kept these knives razor-sharp and had visions of instantaneously severing the thickest of warps with one, deft, swipe. Not so. You can see why seafarers of old didn't fanny around with knives. They had strategically placed axes ready for this sort of malarkey. I did get it off in the end, but by the time I turned, grinning triumphantly, and held up the severed knot like an aristo's head, it was too late. Both boats had ploughed across the fairway and wedged themselves on the shoals. We now had two boats hard aground. - 24 marks.

It is a common practice in health services to give priority to treating their own employees. This makes sense. If staff are off sick, fewer treatments are carried out and patients end up waiting longer. In line with this thinking, it was sensible for our would-be rescuers to recover their own boat before returning to the task of bailing out idiot yotties from their own ineptitude.

Of course, to recover rescue boat number one, they had to deploy rescue boat number two. They also took the opportunity to up the ante. The throaty rumble of a couple of 120-horse diesels echoed from the marina and a twin-engined motor cruiser hove into view, passed a line to rescue boat 1, and took up the slack.

Unfortunately, He made just a teensy error of judgement, and strayed just a tiny smidgin too far from the safety of the slack water channel and into the current, which promptly whipped him off downstream at eight knots. Countering this unexpected detour wasn't made any easier by his still being firmly attached to RB1. He bounced off one of the red, concrete pillar spars, and gave a plausible impression of an 8-ball on the rest, before he ran out of rope.

Have you ever done French knitting? You know, that mindless activity with four pins, a cotton reel and a ball of wool? The one where you waste twelve hours of your life that you'll never get back and all you have to show at the end is a four-metre woollen tube that is of absolutely no practical use whatsoever. Now try French un-knitting, only with three-metre concrete spars instead of pins, 28mm nylon rope instead of wool, and an 18-tonne boat instead of fingers.

He did an admirable job, and after nearly an hour of eno lrup eno tink, he was almost back where he started. He backed up to RB1 for another go.

He slowly increased the revs, using the rudder to counter the yawing motion. No luck. He brought the engines up to full power and held the boat shuddering, smoke billowing from the exhaust and the towrope quivering under the load. Still no joy. Something had to give. Either RB1 would come off the shoal, RB2's engines would blow up, or the tow warp would snap.

There was a loud bang, followed by an ear-piercing shriek and a high-pitched hiss as the tow line parted and the two ends flailed back. Those in the know ducked behind something solid. Those really in the know were already hiding below decks. You know how a strimmer works? Well, a snapping length of 28 mil 3-strand nylon is just a strimmer writ large. Well, bloody large, in fact. OK - absolutely gi-sodding-normous. When it breaks (at around 16 tonnes), it contracts and the ends accelerate to around 500 metres per second, which is faster than the speed of sound. The whip-crack bang is a sonic boom. Any part of you that happens to be in the ends' way will soon cease to be a part of you.

RB2 retired, hurt, and they called in RB3. They also upped the ante once more. Cue the throbbing of a brace of 200 HP Caterpillar diesels as The Beast rounded into the fairway. Our rescuers had also noted that the weakest link in the chain so far had been the towing warp. Coiled on the aft deck was around fifty metres of 32 mil, double-braided nylon. This is one serious mother of a rope, with a breaking strain of around 100 tonnes. The assembled onlookers, all of whom were now in the know, looked at The Beast, looked at the rope, looked back at The Beast, and sidled off to hide behind the nearest bit of 10 mil steel plate or left over WWII bunker.

The skipper of The Beast was having nothing to do with this namby-pamby aversion to long-range evisceration. He made his end of the rope fast to a cleat that looked as if it had been nicked from an aircraft carrier and passed the other end over to the skipper of RB1, who didn't seem overenamoured with the whole business.

I found that I had acquired an earworm:

♪There was an old lady who swallowed a fly♪

Off went the familiar prelude to the 'What's going to break first?' routine; much shouting, shrugging, and waving of arms, gradually giving way to steadily increasing engine revs and then faltering into nervous mutterings as the rope took up the strain until it started to sing that ominous screech, a frequency so high as to be barely audible to most people. It set off all the dogs in the neighbourhood, though.

It was a classic Mexican stand-off, a finely balanced tripod of forces. The Caterpillars held their own, belching smoke and roaring defiantly. RB1 squatted intransigently on the shoal and the rope screeched, squealed and creaked, but remained bravely intact.

The Beast's skipper, though, was a man to be reckoned with. He decided to try snatch loads. He backed up, leaving the line slack and then roared off at full throttle until the towline snapped tight. It was still a three-way draw. They all lost. The rope snapped, RB1 moved not an iota and The Beast was pulled over onto her beam ends and trashed their laptop when it slid off the saloon table. Just to put the cherry on the top, RB1 lost a couple of cleats and a few chunks of capping rail.

The carnage had been on for about five hours now, and our myrmidons were starting to lose their enthusiasm for the fight. Besides, they were at serious risk of being late for dinner - anathema to any self-respecting Frenchman. They started to wander off in dribs & drabs, muttering apologetically about 'tôt demain matin', and 'Le bœuf bourguignon sera ruiné!' Which left just Birvidik and RB1 squatting forlornly on the shoal as the light faded and night set in.