Humber River Blues - not going anywhere until Friday 13th June.

by Yorkshire Post/Sail-World on 21 May 2014 Whoops! If you will take your sailing boat into tidal rivers, be careful where you anchor. Two British sailors on the River Humber only left the boat for an hour for a drink at the local, but now face a three-week wait to get their boat back after it was left high and dry on a mudbank in the middle of the Humber.

The two sailors, a man and woman, set sail from Brough but the incident brought their sailing adventure to a sudden halt. The pair waited for 12 hours until the next high tide but were unable to get off and called the inshore lifeboat Humber Rescue for help.

The lifeboat rescued them but couldn’t get the yacht off either, and after a second attempt on Monday decided it would have to wait, ironically, until Friday, June 13, when the tide should be high enough to lift the six-tonne yacht clear of the bar.

Mandy Ramsden, from Hessle-based Humber Rescue, told the Yorkshire Post: 'They are yachting friends who came out of Brough for an hour’s jolly. The keel of the yacht is stuck 2ft into the mud, but it should just sit there.

'It is not in a shipping channel, it has a couple of anchors and it’s not going anywhere.

'It won’t come off and refloat until it has the same depth of water it had and that’s not until June 13.'

Mrs Ramsden said the female owner of the yacht was understanding about what had happened, adding: 'Unfortunately she wasn't at the helm, he was.

'She was there at both attempts to refloat it and they fully understand we gave it the best shot.'

The Humber is well known for its shifting shipping channels and the lifeboat attends boats running aground on a 'fairly frequent' basis.

'It happens more of a weekend when people have time off, but it can happen at any time, ' said crewmember Phil Ramsden.