solent swinging mooring - will this determine our keel choice (fin v bilge)?

[Pitterpatter]

No 2 son has learning difficulties and ADHD, and although he is a bit younger than your son, we are in a slightly similar situation to yourself.

We have had a fin keel boat and now a bilge keel. The fin keel was kept first on a club mooring, then in a marina. The decision to move from the club was largely down to the attitude of that clubs members towards Jnr - which from an unacceptably large percentage was of non understanding/acceptance of Jnr as he is. Moving to the marina met a significant change in attitudes - for the better (in fact we have never met anyone in that situation who has an issue with Jnr's nature or behavior). However, one thing we did find was we worried about his behavior and peoples perception due to the close proximity in marinas. Jnr is loud and boisterous until the drugs kick in and we always felt aware that others could see and hear. Apologies for the noise have never been with anything other than understanding, but the worry was still there for us.

We now have our boat on a private mooring with no others about. This has been a perfect situation for us. We also launch the dinghy from a pier and have now started bringing the boat alongside to load up rather than take everything to the boat. We still have the morning worry when visiting other harbours, but the bilge keel does mean if we are having a bad weekend and are on the boat we can head to other smaller, drying harbours where we know we will either be alone or around less people.

As for dinghies, we've had a few. The best we have had was a small rib. All the advantages of a hard dinghy but the stability of an inflatable (this is important for us). Next best was an airdeck which is slightly less robust but has maneuverability out of the water. Least favourite was the hard dinghy.

So, my advice (for what it's worth - not much generally)
- If going for a club mooring, take your son to guage the members reaction if you think that may be an issue
- get the biggest, most stable dinghy you can which will still be practical.
- Aim to have a dinghy you use to get to the mooring and one that is kept on the boat. You don't want to have to tuck the dinghy away every time you want to head off
- Bilge keel any day, for many, many reasons
- Aim to moor somewhere that you can get the boat alongside rather than have to take everything to the boat all the time.

Hope that is useful.

PP

 

[philwebb]

Have a word with Gosport Boatyard - they run a very good ferry service out to their swinging moorings.

+1 Gosport Boatyard-plenty of depth for fin keel on most of their moorings.

 

[niccapotamus]

No 2 son has learning difficulties and ADHD, and although he is a bit younger than your son, we are in a slightly similar situation to yourself.

We have had a fin keel boat and now a bilge keel. The fin keel was kept first on a club mooring, then in a marina. The decision to move from the club was largely down to the attitude of that clubs members towards Jnr - which from an unacceptably large percentage was of non understanding/acceptance of Jnr as he is. Moving to the marina met a significant change in attitudes - for the better (in fact we have never met anyone in that situation who has an issue with Jnr's nature or behavior). However, one thing we did find was we worried about his behavior and peoples perception due to the close proximity in marinas. Jnr is loud and boisterous until the drugs kick in and we always felt aware that others could see and hear. Apologies for the noise have never been with anything other than understanding, but the worry was still there for us.

We now have our boat on a private mooring with no others about. This has been a perfect situation for us. We also launch the dinghy from a pier and have now started bringing the boat alongside to load up rather than take everything to the boat. We still have the morning worry when visiting other harbours, but the bilge keel does mean if we are having a bad weekend and are on the boat we can head to other smaller, drying harbours where we know we will either be alone or around less people.

As for dinghies, we've had a few. The best we have had was a small rib. All the advantages of a hard dinghy but the stability of an inflatable (this is important for us). Next best was an airdeck which is slightly less robust but has maneuverability out of the water. Least favourite was the hard dinghy.

So, my advice (for what it's worth - not much generally)
- If going for a club mooring, take your son to guage the members reaction if you think that may be an issue
- get the biggest, most stable dinghy you can which will still be practical.
- Aim to have a dinghy you use to get to the mooring and one that is kept on the boat. You don't want to have to tuck the dinghy away every time you want to head off
- Bilge keel any day, for many, many reasons
- Aim to moor somewhere that you can get the boat alongside rather than have to take everything to the boat all the time.

Hope that is useful.

PP

thanks a lot - our son is now much older - nearly 17 and has very violent episodes - such that we gave up sailing some time ago for his and our safety. Luckily he goes to a weekly residential boarding school, coming home at the weekends which gives us a breather so I'm hoping that we'll be able to skive off work midweek once or twice a month and go for a sail. So it isn't so much about coping whilst sailing as we failed on that score - coping with him in a bloody great house is bad enough !

good luck with yours!
nick

 

[niccapotamus]

right guys

thank you for everyone's considered responses. I think we will go for a bilge keel yacht to give us the option of cheaper moorings and ones that are up the creek (not mid-harbour) as well as the advantage of being able to nose into places that fin keelers can't reach - which is an advantage in Summer in the Solent I should think.

so fantastic - and thanks for the indication of costs - the swinging mooring prices of £600-900 should be fine (he says).

next is the conversation with Sue fleshing out the idea and looking through boatshed listings to get a shortlist of boats

I'm also thinking of chartering a centaur later this year for a few days - a long time ago we had a Jaguar 27 before we got married so the size should be fine - I'd just like to establish the baseline of performance - ie the centaur is probably the least performance bilge keeler on the planet (or is that the Macwester 26?) and therefore anything else is going to be slightly better - so if we get on OK with the centaur we'll know what we are doing.

roll on next year
nick