Fin keel in Thames estuary - Nonsense?

rsallo

rsallo

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Hi all!

I am planing to buy my first sail boat /forums/images/graemlins/laugh.gif. I've seen many, the last one being a Hurley 22 and I really love it. There is only one problem, though: it's a fin keeler.

As I've never sailed in the Thames estuary (I come from non-tidal waters) I was wondering if having such a boat in such a place makes any sense.

My sailing plan: the first season, sailing to nearby places to learn and get more confident. Then I would love to cross the channel and get even further north (Neetherlands) or south (Scilly). But my sailing ground for the weekends will be the Thames and east coast.

What do you think? Will it be a problem having a fin keeler in such a place?

Many thanks for your help!
 
No, it needn't be a problem. You need to be careful about tides and try not to go aground on a falling tide. Lots of people sail fin keelers in the Thames estuary. Lots of people go aground - in fact almost everyone does at some point, I suspect. It's just that the bilge and lift-keelers (and cats) can look as if they meant to, and sit it out until the next tide, while it's pretty obvious that the others sitting/lying on a sand or mudbank have made a mistake. It is sometimes possible to heel a fin-keeler to float off, unlike a bilge-keel though, so that can be an actual advantage. There are plenty of deep bits, so access for a fin-keel is not much limited by draft, except in the smallest creeks.
 
Thanks for sharing your thougths!

AliM, that's something that freaks me out. What do you do if you go aground on a falling tide with a finkeeler /forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif??
 
Running aground is a regular fact of life for some of us! You can either:-

Put the anchor out and escape in the dinghy before the water disappears completely.

or put the kettle on and do some of those little jobs you've been meaning to get around to.

A pair of yacht legs can make being aground in a fin keeler a much more pleasant experience!

Neil
 
Put the anchor out and escape in the dinghy before the water disappears completely.

Isn't it dangerous for the boat? I mean, what happens when it falls when the water has almost disappeared? A big crack on the side? Sorry if these questions look silly, I'm just starting
 
Going aground with a fin is no real problem so long as you haven't sailed or motered full tilt into the sticky stuff.

Can usually heel the boat to reduce draft and sail or motor off

Going aground on a blige keeler makes it a bit harder to get off, can't easily reduce draft, though changing trim might help.

When motoring or sailing against the tide I like to cheat the tide by keeping close to the river bank, so I expect to touch bottom. On east coast the worst is hard shingle, at best is soft mud.
 
There are only two kinds of sailors, those who have been aground and those who haven't yet. Being of the first sort is no guarantee that you won't again. It's not usually a tragedy although a choppy sea, a lee shore and a hard bottom are not to be reccommended.
 
I am not the best person to ask - we have a bilge keeler, but we have occasionally spent an hour or two immobile trying to look as if we meant it.

However, if you do go aground on something hard with a fin keel, you will usually be lowered slowly onto the sand/mud by the falling tide. Boats are quite tough, so unless its very rough and you are being pounded to pieces, you get lowered gently to lie at a nasty angle by the falling tide and when it comes in again, you float off again. The finesse is in trying to get the boat to lie uphill, so it doesn't fill with water before it floats (very rarely a problem, I believe), and putting out an anchor to stop you drifting back aground when you float off. There's a fin keeler on a drying mooring near us, which dries out on one side, the other side or perched precariously on its nose each tide, and no harm seems to come to it, though I'm not sure I'd be happy if it were mine!
 
The only time it would be dangerous is if there are largish waves about and you go aground on hard shingle. The boat's sides would then bounce against the bottom when the tide fell and when it rose again. That's not a very likely scenario, in practice.

Mostly you're on the way up some creek and hit soft mud and if you can't get out in the first few minutes and the tides falling then you gently lean over until the side is on the mud - and wait a few hours to gently lift up gain.

Ideally you try to use rising tides when entering unfamiliar areas then you know you've only a few minutes aground - not always easy to arrange.
 
I agree that going aground with a fin is rarely a big hassle, but I think that the first couple of years of boat ownership are all about gaining confidence and experience. So why not buy a bilge keeled Hurley 22 (good choice of boat by the way). That way you get to enjoy yourself and not worry too much about going aground. Go easy on yourself, they'll be plenty of years in which to own a single keeled boat with a 4' draft.
 
The bilge keel Hurley 22 sails almost as well as the fin and may be less worrying for you and more convenient with about a foot less water needed to float in.

A fin keel will settle ok in mud but on hard sand will lean over to a dramatic angle that makes life aboard uncomfortable.Also the possibility of hull damage if there are any waves as she refloats. Plenty of people have fin keelers but I think that for a beginner in an area strewn with shallow bits a bilge may be better.
 
here's a clue:
Tomorrow, I am taking my lift keel 35 across Ray Sand channel on the ebb, with about 4 feet of water from Burnham to Bradwell.
My friends are taking their 25 foot fin keel (ish) Stella on the same journey. They will be going out to the Wallet and then back up the Blackwater.
Difference: I will be in the tied up, lunched and in the pub for about 4 hours before they arrive.
Think smart. Buy the Bilge/Lift Keeler, unless you have racing pretensions. Mudway is quite shallow, and all the cheap moorings dry out.
 
[ QUOTE ]
here's a clue:
Tomorrow, I am taking my lift keel 35 across Ray Sand channel on the ebb, with about 4 feet of water from Burnham to Bradwell.
My friends are taking their 25 foot fin keel (ish) Stella on the same journey. They will be going out to the Wallet and then back up the Blackwater.
Difference: I will be in the tied up, lunched and in the pub for about 4 hours before they arrive.


[/ QUOTE ]

Might as well buy a mobo if all you want to do is get there first /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

A fin keel on the east Coast is no problem at all - the key to happy sailing on a fin or bilge keeler is to have your depth on a large display visible from the helm
 
So the Stella gets 4 hrs extra playtime while you languish in port, no contest.
Taking Stellas through the Raysn is no problem, used to do it regularly even before echo sounders [yes there was a time]. We used a long bamboo pole.
It helped to have castors fitted to the bottom of the keel.
 
If money is a consideration, another reason to go for the bilge keel Hurley is that drying moorings are much cheaper and more readily available in the Thames/Medway estuary than the deep water moorings you would be restricted to with a fin keel.
 
You can't argue with the fact that a bilge keeler will be easier to find a drying mooring for. A fin keeler would need some pretty good legs to be able to dry out once or twice per day with any sort of dignity.

As for running aground I seem to do it accidentally every few weeks while racing. I joke that we are not trying hard enough if we don't run aground.
The boat is 21 ft with a lifting keel. The keel is always locked down and never retracted on grounding.
The rules for running aground are.... Quick thinking as to the direction you need to go to escape. Have a stout pole (spinnacker pole) handy. Go to the bow and use this to rotate the boat until it is heading in the right direction.
Keep the sails set and use them plus body weight all on one side to heel the boat and hopefully sail off.
You must be aware of the danger of being blown or washed onto more shallow water if you heel the boat. That is a great danger if it is a lee shore. Get the boat turned so that escape is a beam reach to run as it will not point well to sail off into the wind. If necessary use the pole to help you steer and move. Sadly this doesn't work with a heavy boat.
Practice is the key. And also you should think about what you would do if you hit a bank as you sail past the bank. I reckon I can escape a grounding in a few seconds if we don't panic.
Yes and the fin keel has remarkably good sailing qualities to windward especially. olewill
 
Fins are fine - my first yot was a fin keeler and I sail out of the Walton backwaters. Ok sometimess one polishes the bottom of the fin - just to remove the weeks growth you understand - but just remember to calibrate the sounder and if aground on the edge of a channel make her lean towards the side - not the channel
 
We have a fin keel in the same area as you intend to sail & we draw almost 2m & ITS NOT A PROBLEM. If you want to sail to windward then you need a fin; the deeper the better.
The only reason for a bilge keeler is cheap drying moorings.
We had a Sadler 32 (ifn again) & in a YM article the different keel versions were tested aginst each other -deep fin, shallow, lift & twin - & the deep fin won on all sailing abilities - over 5 degrees better to windward.
Go for it & buy the fin keler.
 
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