Drying Out

[ralay]

Has anybody here (with a monohull with a single keel) dried their boat out against a wall?  The water is mighty cold up here in  Boston, so Woody has suggested taking advantage of the 10' tide to dry the boat out against a wall here for our predeparture bottom scraping. 

Seems like it's something folks do everyday in England, but it makes me a little cringey.  Hopefully,  reading/hearing about how to avoid any pitfalls will increase my comfort level.  We have a Westsail 32 with a keel almost as long as the LWL.  We have a transom hung rudder with a bottom edge slightly above the bottom of the keel.  The bottom here is muddy, though the large intertidal zone is covered in small stones.  The wall has cleats and pilings and is tilted slightly back, at the angle you might want to lay a boat against it.  The bottom slopes away , though not dramatically. 

In reading some English sailing forums, it sounds like many of the popular walls have taken the uncertainty out of the situation by pouring level concrete slabs for each boat to sit on.  Folks cautioned that on soft bottoms, the receding tide can pull the bottom out from under you in the same way one's feet dig holes in the sand while standing at the edge of the beach.  Without a stable bottom, keels can kick out or boats can wind up tilted forward or leaning back with their weight on their rudders. 

Has anyone else tried this?  How did it go?  Any tips for success?

[Lars]

I used to dry out my herreshoff prudence with 2 anchors winched to the masthead on the spinnaker halyard.. but it had a full keel that was like a box and would dry out pretty much standing up on it's own. I think in boston you should be more concerned about law enforcement writting big tickets for the environmental disaster you are about to cause (in their minds anyway)

[Bob J (ex-misfits)]

Has anybody here (with a monohull with a single keel) dried their boat out against a wall?  The water is mighty cold up here in  Boston, so Woody has suggested taking advantage of the 10' tide to dry the boat out against a wall here for our predeparture bottom scraping. 

That has see you on the Channel 5 News at 6:00 written all over it :)

[ralay]

@misfits: For environmental reasons, you mean? 

[lance on cloud nine]

I wonder if there is a lift nearby where they would hoist your boat right before they leave for the weekend...let you work...and splash you Monday morning...for a reasonable charge. Best of luck.

[Bob J (ex-misfits)]

@misfits: For environmental reasons, you mean?

Nothing to do with environmental reasons from my point of view .
Living up here with the politically correct, tree/bunny hugger crowd for most of my adult life,
I'm sure someone would have a nutty  if they saw a boat against a seawall at low tide. Could have injured a clam or something.
Just getting to be a full fledged curmudgeon the older I get.......

[Jim_ME]

Found this article by James Baldwin interesting...

http://atomvoyages.com/articles/improvement-projects/261-giving-your-boat-some-legs.html

[ralay]

That is interesting.  I think the legs we'd need for our boat would have to be pretty substantial. Our boat is probably 3 Pearson Tritons when our tanks are full.  As we're not sailing around the world, it's probably easier just to haul out every couple years and dive the hull in between.  Our bottom paint is less than a year old, so I imagine what little growth there is will come off without much fuss.

[Bob J (ex-misfits)]

The climate & water temperature up this way is different than what you are accustomed to down south. I think you guys will be surprised at how little growth is on your hull. Of course it all depends on what type of bottom paint you put on last year.

[ralay]

Mostly we've grown an impressive amount of grass.  We've scraped the prop several times already this summer, but it's already obscured.  Same goes for the dinghy.  We've got a few barnacles too, but mostly green stuff.  Maybe it's because the water is much clearer here and more light gets through.  TX water is chocolate milk and NC water is black with tannins.