Sailing through weed

[hovepier]

Suppose you sail through a load of floating weed in a boat with a lifting keel. On leaving the weed you can see and remove the weed from your rudder. My question is whether you should lift your keel to remove any weed or could this lead to locking your keel in an 'up' position?

 

[Judders]

Frankly, my lifting keel (on my Feeling) gets stuck if you simply look at it the wrong way.

Northshore on the other hand assure me that it can not happen on a Southerly... although they struggled to explain why.

 

[lw395]

I think this depends on your boat, whether the keel is prone to jamming. Certainly raise the board on a dinghy to lose the weed.

 

[aquaplane]

It's that time of year again. On Windermere the weed is about as long as it gets about now. Since the bl00dy tourists feed all the ducks and swans "lucky duck" food they don't have to graze the weed in the lake. Bowness bay is only 6 or 7 feet deep in the main so it can be a problem.

I sail backwards for a few yards, that shifts it and it's easier and quicker than winding the keel up and down again (Jaguar 25 and First 18).

Before anyone else mentions it, Sailing a Centaur I'm used to going backwards.

 

[oldsaltoz]

I did see a yacht with a length of bungee cord running from the mast base to a small roller on the bow, this was fixed to a length of fishing line that runs down to the bottom of the lifting keel.

The idea is that the fishing line will guide the weed to and past the bottom of the keel regardless of depth at the time.

Avagoodweekend......