East Coast mud question.

[Oscarpop]

So our plan was to lift the boat, scrub, antifoul and then leave. Never allowing the tide to go out and having our hull and prop settle back in the mud.
However the weather gods have conspired and it would seem as if next week is not ideal for a channel passage, so we are going back to our berth for a week until the weather brightens.

The questions I have are as follow.

1. If we are on a mud berth for a couple of weeks, will the mud simply wash away under passage, or will it start to stick again.

2.as our berth is about 20m from the lift, if we smother the prop and prop cutter in Vaseline , will it provide some protection while we wait.

Cheers

 

[Halo]

Unless it bakes on I expect the mud will either wash off or not matter.
Lanolin should be better than vaseline but that either of these may take in mud and be counter productive - a sort of grinding paste in the rope cutter bearings?

 

[Concerto]

Last May I ran aground in Medway mud with the keel going in by about 15". When lifted in January after a lot of sailing, the mud line was still there. So I doubt if the mud will wash off.

 

[NUTMEG]

My boat is kept in Maldon, the home of East Coast mud. I have kept a bilge keeler and two long keelers here and have never seen any mud stuck on on lift out. Just a bit of staining that's all.

All my boats, including the current one live on a drying pontoon, well not on it, but next to it

 

[Concerto]

The difference may be due to the mud being always being kept soft by constant movement in the mud berth as the firm mud has formed into a loose hull shape, whereas I ploughed into very firmly settled mud.

 

[J Neeves]

We slipped a couple of months ago here in a little yard next to oyster farms, so the water may be similar - very murky lots of suspended organics. We had to drop back in the water before finishing the work, we had done the new AF bot only ground the sail drive and prop down, no anodes, no coating on the prop nor sail drive. We were in the water on a swing mooring for 2 weeks.

When we were re-slipped the hulls were smothered with a thin layer of slime, which was easy to wipe (I wiped by hand then hosed off).. The extraordinary feature was that the aluminium sail dives had already started to corrode. I'd greased the shafts but it never occurred to cover the saildrives with anything - but then I did not know it was to be 2 weeks and had no idea surface corrosion would start so quickly. Longer term no harm done but it was a lesson on the value of anodes!

We had beached on sand some 1 month before slipping and the mini keels settled into the sand. The sand would have had some clay in it - but it looks like sand. When we slipped you could see exactly how far we had settled in (there was no mud but you could see what looked like a 'tide line' and the AF was a slightly different colour) - and we had sailed on and off since including 70nm to the slip and we were making 8 knots. I think to get back to the same colour as the rest of the hull you need to wipe and reveal a fresh layer of AF (assuming you are using a soft AF), or scour if hard AF.

Jonathan

 

[NUTMEG]

The difference may be due to the mud being always being kept soft by constant movement in the mud berth as the firm mud has formed into a loose hull shape, whereas I ploughed into very firmly settled mud.

Very good point, I think you may have something there.

 

[FulmarJeddo]

The difference may be due to the mud being always being kept soft by constant movement in the mud berth as the firm mud has formed into a loose hull shape, whereas I ploughed into very firmly settled mud.

My twin keel Fulmar settles twice a day in soft Medway mud on my swinging mooring, so rarely in the same hole. I get a very stubborn brown staining where the hull is in contact with the mud, but that's after a whole season and never any mud stuck. I suspect you found some very firm sticky clay. My previous boat was a wing keeled MG Spring 25, not the ideal boat for Medway mud but that's another story, use to leave a black cloud in the water as I slipped my mooring until the mud washed off the wing.