Power Lines

[Don Crowther]

Hello

Does anyone know the min. height power lines have to be above the high water mark. Or if they are below a certain height do they have to be marked?

I ran into a set of power lines last weekend and luckly only my vhf ant. touched the lines. But it sent a current down the mast and burnt off the ant. From what I can see only the ant. and nav and deck lights were affected. There was some molten ant. parts falling on the deck and they did burn a hole in the seat cushions.

These lines were not marked. We were motoring down an inlet with powerlines on both shores. We hadn't noticed the lines crossing overhead.
Scared the hell out of everyone onboard except the dog who slept though the entire event!!
Because we are on a lake our maps aren't very clear about the powerline heights. Also our water levels are very high this year the highest I've ever seen them.

Do I put in an insurance claim and let them fight with the utlity company?
Thanks

 

[Chilidog]

Just my humble opinion, but you are going to have a hard time convincing anyone it wasn't your fault. (no pun intended)

 

[Chilidog]

See Table 4.1 here

http://www.usda.gov/rus/electric/pubs/1724e200.pdf

of course if you are in Canada, the rules may be different.

 

[Ross]

I know of some powerlines that are less than 35 feet but you can's sail into them because the railroad has only 12 feet vertical clearance. count yourself very lucky. We have had two boats burned to the waterline when they touched the powerlines on the Bush River. One boat draged anchor into them and the other sailed into them. There were no deaths. I can't say about injuries.

 

[Steve Dion]

Don: I don't know about the regulations, but we are still happy to know you are around to tell us about your experience.

I would contact the utility company and ask them about this. You will need to determine on your own the extent of the damage to see if it is worth filing a claim.

 

[kloudie1]

In the US, those are normally marked on a chart or map with an authorized clearance .. Your boat is taller than most , with 51 feet above water plus the antenna height.. We had a boat burn in our bayou a few years back when it struck a power line that was marked and was on the chart as having a clearance of 65 feet.. He was 55 feet to top.. The lines weren't at charted clearance.. he got a settlement.

 

[Steve Dion]

We just had a ocean freighter touch some "high power" lines in the slough near our harbor. It also only touched the antennas. They tripped a breaker and shut down all the power on the island for a period of time.

 

[Chilidog]

We had a boat burn in our bayou a few years back when it struck a power line that was marked and was on the chart as having a clearance of 65 feet.. He was 55 feet to top.. The lines weren't at charted clearance.. he got a settlement.

did the mast touch the line, or was it too close and just arced?

10 feet is cutting it kind of close if it was a high voltage line.

 

[kloudie1]

Don, looking at Elbow on Google Earth.. Pretty place.. I see you had very fresh electricity from the powerplant close by. !
ChiliDawg.. that was the "Authorized Clearance" from the NOAA chart. the lines are supposed to be high enough to allow passage of something at the stated height. His mast hit.. the tripper didn't trip.. Worse than a lightning strike because of the duration of the fault. The company removed the lines after the incident and fed the load by a different path.

 

[ChuckThomas]

Claude where did the boat hit in the area? We went to the Ticfaw this past weekend and there was a line that was on the chart as 75 feet but it sure looked a lot closer to 50.

 

[kloudie1]

That was a few years ago (maybe 20!) on Bayou Castine ! The guys got off OK with only the laundry people being able to tell how frightened they were!. The little crook at the boatyard used to have a powerline across right there.. I think it used to feed the park .. They re-ran it out to the highway ..

 

[Gail R]

Just make a claim to your own insurance company and let them do the dirty, nasty legwork of subrogating to the power company. That is what you pay premiums for. People come into contact with power lines often enough, and there is no shortage of insurance adjusters calling the evil power company's risk management department and reaching into its deep pockets. Sometimes it ends up in a settlement; sometimes it goes to court. Don't ask me how i know this.

Glad to hear you came out of this intact. You are very, very lucky.

As we say in the biz, look up and live.

 

[Doug Arey]

Wanted to share a story of a friend who ran into serious problems with powerlines as well. The charts indicated a height that was supposed to have been sufficient for my friend's boat to pass under safely. It was an exceptionally hot day, and apparently the power lines sagged lower than normal because of the heat expansion. My friend's mast didn't touch the lines directly, but there was an arc that instanctly turned the mast into dripping molten metal. The boat caught fire and burned to the waterline, and a section of Boston was without power for several hours. My friend and one of his passengers suffered only minor burns because they were smart enough to jump into the water.
I guess the moral of this story is: don't trust what's listed on the charts in terms of clearance. I think there still is a battle going on about who was liable, now over three years later.

 

[philwsailz]

I deal with a powerline over a fresh water lake where I sail. My C-22 will go under the power line at the east edge, but line sag and water level fluctuations make crossing under at the middle rather dicey. With my new 27 I am concerned whether or not I will have clearance.

Sort of on a side note, I learned a few years ago a relatively easy way to range-gage a clearance under an obstacle. While on approach to a highway bridge we were guessing the probability of getting under. Relizing that there were trucks going over the bridge, we realized that semi trailers are largely a known length. I don't recall if we used a straight piece of wire, or something similar but we quickly gaged the length of a few trailers going over the bridge and noted it on the found device. Rotating our gage device 90 degrees, we took a look at bridge height with respect to the apparent length of the truck trailers marked on our gage. The trucks, trailers, and bridge were all at a same distance away from us, so their relative lengths and heights were similar, and we determined it was safe to go under by almost a 2:1 margin.

I have played with the same concept when approaching the wires on our local lake, by using known boats and their lengths as a relative gage, again using a found straight item as a marker to move transfer the relative lengths and heights. The thing that prevents me from using this comfortably and reliably is the fact that there is no way of ensuring range between the wires and the reference boat are the same.

As I type this, it would be really nice if the power companies just had a calibrated stripe on the wire, of some constant length. This would allow us to safely determine height above water regardless of temperature or water level. All you would have to do would be to line up more or less perpendicular to the wires, transfer the stripe's apparent length to something onboard, and then flip the device to vertical to get a fairly accurate, (within a few feet) reading of the height of the wire at that very instant.

I kow it would be impossible to get the power companies to do this, but given thought, there might be some other way to use a similar known length of something on the wire or towers or nearby structure to gage wire/cable height?