Long fin keel berthing overnight in the mud and long term on a pontoon?

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steve yates

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Call me dense, but it's only recently occurred to me that my longbow long fin keel could potentially take the ground upright in soft mud!
A few searches showed some old threads on here which seemed to confirm that fin keels and halftime berths were not actually mutually exclusive.
This is quite exciting for two reasons,
1) Does this open up mud moorings and berths along the south coast and in the Thames for overnight stops enroute to Essex from Cornwall? And if so which ones do you folk reccomend, that has lovely soft glutinous mud to settle into?

2) once she has been in dauntless yard, my ideal berth is really Leigh marina, anyone kept a fin keeled on those pontoons?
Additionally, it would be a great place to berth for up to a week on arrival in the Thames as the yard may be rammed with lifting in by then and I could face a good wait.

Any particular techniques/tips/hazards/avoids in doing this?

More specifically, anyone else in a fin do this regularly overnight or have a mud-berth? For reassurance :)
 
I'd have thought a Longbow would be perfectly happy in soft mud. You don't so much land on it as have it solidify around you as the water runs out.

Some people worry about seacocks getting blocked with mud, but we never had a problem with the Cornish Yawl we kept in a soft-mud drying berth with the seacocks open.

One gotcha to watch out for is the pontoon dropping down below its normal level relative to the boat, such that it ends up trying to hang from your warps. This'll either pull the boat over towards it, strain the cleats etc, or at best result in alarmingly bar-tight lines. Try to make sure there's a reasonable amount of fore and aft run to all the warps to take up the movement.

Pete
 
Portsmouth Harbour is very soft. There's a pontoon at Hardway SC which you can go onto as a visitor...it dries at LW but is absolutely fine for a fin keeler. The only precaution I take is to close the seacocks before she settles. In actual fact you're better in mud with a fin keeler anyway...I've heard rumours settling into mud in a bilge keeler can force the keels apart slightly (debatable, depends on the viscosity of the mud I guess), and on a pontoon a bilgey can sometimes settle with heel on, if she puts one of her keels in a hole previously vacated by a fin keeler.

And there's absolutely loads of East Coast berths that happily have fin keelers residing in them...
 
I often take the mud with my fin keel. Make sure you are somewhere that you can lean against the pontoon/wall at about 5 degrees. If it is really soft mud the boat will survive at 30 degrees away from the pontoon (don't ask how I know). If your crew say "this mooring is all tide" and you are woken at 0220 at 45 degrees by the crashing of pots and pans on the cabin sole the boat will be safe. You will be amazed how well your crew sleep in those situations!
 
Sandy said:
I often take the mud with my fin keel. Make sure you are somewhere that you can lean against the pontoon/wall at about 5 degrees. If it is really soft mud the boat will survive at 30 degrees away from the pontoon (don't ask how I know). If your crew say "this mooring is all tide" and you are woken at 0220 at 45 degrees by the crashing of pots and pans on the cabin sole the boat will be safe. You will be amazed how well your crew sleep in those situations!
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:) :) I thought Devon was all rocks sandy?
 
"....I thought Devon was all rocks sandy?"


As you say there is a lot of deep water so drying out is not so popular.

These people have two drying marinas on the Tamar, from as little as £2 per ft per week if you are staying a month or more:

http://southdownmarina.com/

Southdown has a number of fin keel boats drying out to soft mud, you can see it well on Google Maps.
 
steve yates said:
2) once she has been in dauntless yard, my ideal berth is really Leigh marina, anyone kept a fin keeled on those pontoons?
Additionally, it would be a great place to berth for up to a week on arrival in the Thames as the yard may be rammed with lifting in by then and I could face a good wait.

Any particular techniques/tips/hazards/avoids in doing this?

More specifically, anyone else in a fin do this regularly overnight or have a mud-berth? For reassurance :)
Click to expand...

Would you like me to pop down there and ask them?

What does your boat draw?

Having played in Leigh mud as a kid it is soft on top but not deep. In that corner things may be different.
 
I used to stop overnight at the Hardway Sailing Club pontoon in a heavy 32ft long keeler and never had any problems. Sometimes we stopped for 2/3 days and she just went up and down in the same hole! I think they've extended the pontoons since then so maybe if you get at the seaward end you won't even touch bottom ... or maybe they just replaced the old ones ... can't remember!
 
Pagan is a W33 so the next generation of westerly but very similar and she lives all year round in a mud berth

The only "issue" is that the intake sea cocks do get a plug of mud in them which is quickly washed through and so far hasn't caused any problems

We are though, after two years in the berth, starting to dig in a bit deep compared to the pontoon especially at the stern and I may need to figure out a solution to this in due course
 
In quite a few tidal or part tidal east coat marinas the requirement for mooring lines is negated to a large extent by the tide leaving - Tollesbury & Tidemill are two in which we enter afloat but often settle in as the tide falls... never an issue
 
Not all mud is equal :)

Our berth has a layer of soft mud about 3 to 4 feet deep and then heavy mud with a lot of clay in it below that.

It took a couple of weeks for the keel to create a deep enough hole for the boat to sit (fairly) level and that was despite my having dug a hole in the mud by hand before putting the boat on the berth

So I'd be cautious when putting a boat onto a particular mud berth the first time unless it is known for certain that the mud is soft all the way down

Oh and I should also mention that in the process of clearing the berth ready to put the boat in it, I removed a number of potentially damaging pieces of wood, some upright. It helps to know the history of the location (in our case we knew that there had once been a hard across one end of the berth which we had to clear, the rest was natural but not entirely clear of the detritus of a century or more of boating activity)
 
We kept our Mystere with a 4' 6" fin on a drying berth at Maylandsea for many years without a problem Potentially, the engine inlet might get blocked, but this never happened to us, though I have heard of a boat with a saildrive having a little trouble in the Colne.

Most drying berths, if occupied regularly, develop a large hole from previous hulls. Your boat will normally settle into this hole which will hold the hull securely, and also provide a space for the keel to slot into. You may have little choice about how the boat actually sits, since this will be dictated by the hole.
 
One practical but obvious gotcha is not to use the heads when settled in the mud. If you forget, don't flush or your porcelain will take on an unfashionable chocolate appearance. And bits of mud trapped in the rim will reappear from time to time for at least the next year or two...
 
MoodySabre said:
Would you like me to pop down there and ask them?

What does your boat draw?

Having played in Leigh mud as a kid it is soft on top but not deep. In that corner things may be different.
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Thank you, I don't want to put you out. I will give them a quick ring tomorrow, or pop down in the afternoon if I have time, I'm just in benfleet. She draws 1.5m.
 
I have a long keeled boat and we dry completely on a pontoon in soft mud. No problem. Close the seacocks - and I always lash the helm as I have a heavily angled keel hung rudder. I like the mud. It is kind to the boat and when we are dried out there is no banging against the pontoon in a breeze. Also inhibits marine growth! Pretty rubbish for going sailing though.....
 
We winter our long keel heavy Motor Sailer at Hayling Yacht Co. Hayling mud is known for being particularly soft and deep!

I agree with the above, but as we disapear in May or early June for 5 months to go cruising with the boat tidal consraints are not a problem.

Our previous boat came from Watchet. That was muddy too......................................
 
Of course the good thing with nice soft Pompey mud is that tidal calculations/echo sounder readings/draught/running aground all have, shall we say, a degree of flexibility...

18193876_10154465769147411_1367785039210614649_n.jpg
 
RivalRedwing said:
a few more revs than normal to get alongside ? ;)
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Possibly...but not many! TBH it really is soooo soft it's very hard to tell if you're aground or not. And fear not, no engine impellers or strainers were harmed in the attempt!

I have seen the coastguard do some mud rescue exercises, and people soon become unrecognisable blobs of goop. TBH I've always been far more fearful of falling off the boat into the goop, than into the water...I assume you'd "float" to a degree but I really don't fancy finding out...
 
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