When does a bilge keeler fall over?

Bristolfashion

Bristolfashion

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Well, after a sensational sail Newhaven to Rye and a gorgeous trip up the river - sloping bottom!

Yep, I know, check the depth both sides.

Anyway, during the sleepless and sloping evening, when my wife was claiming a lean of 30°, I measured it with a level - 18°.

So, brains trust, at what angle am I likely to tip over when dried out? Sadler 29 bilge keeler.

We have moved to the other side at a stately lean of just under 1°.

Oh, and if you're in Rye, be careful of choosing the inviting looking ladder No7 on the Eastern side. A quick survey showed that we were by far the leaniest vessel!

A photo taken from the mooring of evil! On t'other side behind the local boats is much better - but there isn't much water, so don't get neaped!IMG_20210603_195559_compress47.jpg
 
Lovely town Rye. Do find the sweet shop!

You'll be perfectly balanced when the vertical centre of gravity is directly above the tip of the downhill keel. At that point I'd believe anything you wife says about the angle, and wouldn't be reaching to the downhill side for the spirit level. Rule of thumb is that the VCG will be at about the waterline.
 
Can you still phone the harbourmaster there? We arrived early in the morning and there was nobody in the office down at the river mouth so we called him when we got to Strand Quay and said we're on ladder so-and-so with a bilge keeler. He told us not to stay there but to move to ladder something-or-other to be more level.

So if your centre of gravity is at the waterline, your draft is 1.0m and your keel tips are 0.6m off the centreline the falling over angle is arctan(0.6 / 1.0) which is 31 degrees!
 
Bristolfashion said:
Well, after a sensational sail Newhaven to Rye and a gorgeous trip up the river - sloping bottom!

Yep, I know, check the depth both sides.

Anyway, during the sleepless and sloping evening, when my wife was claiming a lean of 30°, I measured it with a level - 18°.

So, brains trust, at what angle am I likely to tip over when dried out? Sadler 29 bilge keeler.

We have moved to the other side at a stately lean of just under 1°.

Oh, and if you're in Rye, be careful of choosing the inviting looking ladder No7 on the Eastern side. A quick survey showed that we were by far the leaniest vessel!

A photo taken from the mooring of evil! On t'other side behind the local boats is much better - but there isn't much water, so don't get neaped!View attachment 116778
Click to expand...
Errr .... is that your boat actually sloping or was it taken after the tide returned? :unsure:

Richard
 
Yes the quay at Rye has a slope but the worst I have seen is at Truro. We fortuitously moored by the supermarket wall to port and was ok. If we had moored 30ft further forward there was a bank sloping downwards at a good 50 degrees and sideways perhaps 60 degrees which would not have been good even in a cat.
 
Nothing useful to add but coincidentally last night I ended up slightly bow up and leaning to the Starboard side. Nothing extreme, and perfect for the kids but left me feet in the air half falling out of my bunk. ? Mind you, I still slept through. ?
 
This was a long time ago but we settled like this:-

RYE1.JPG


But the view behind at low tide looked like this:-

RYE2.JPG


So we were well advised by the man on the phone!
 
I tied up to the pontoon in Wells Harbour and came back to the boat having taken a little light refreshments in town. She was leaning out from the pontoon with the mooring lines tight as bow strings, with the tide still going out.
We should have been able to settle level but discovered that we had been moored where a fin Keeler had been for several weeks and a scour hole was beneath the outside keel. I had a similar experience, but nose down in Brancaster.
Bilge keelers still need care where you park.
 
WoodyP said:
I tied up to the pontoon in Wells Harbour and came back to the boat having taken a little light refreshments in town. She was leaning out from the pontoon with the mooring lines tight as bow strings, with the tide still going out.
We should have been able to settle level but discovered that we had been moored where a fin Keeler had been for several weeks and a scour hole was beneath the outside keel. I had a similar experience, but nose down in Brancaster.
Bilge keelers still need care where you park.
Click to expand...
Indeed. I have a photo somewhere of a Westerly on the grid in St Peter Port with one of its bilge keels about an inch from the edge. A drop would only have been about a foot but the damage considerable.
 
Yup
Eastern side is better and a bit quieter too

I think part of the problem is that under all that soft mud it is an irregular ‘ditch’having been tinkered with by human engineering over the centuries .

They even tried for a while to reverse the flow and direction of the river and build a new channel to what was dubbed Smeetons Harbour !
Engineering Timelines - Rye Harbour
 
WoodyP said:
I tied up to the pontoon in Wells Harbour and came back to the boat having taken a little light refreshments in town. She was leaning out from the pontoon with the mooring lines tight as bow strings, with the tide still going out.
We should have been able to settle level but discovered that we had been moored where a fin Keeler had been for several weeks and a scour hole was beneath the outside keel. I had a similar experience, but nose down in Brancaster.
Bilge keelers still need care where you park.
Click to expand...
I get this all the time. Jissel is a little boat, with quite closely spaced, vertical keels. When I'm alongside where a bigger fin keeler has been, I very often have one keel on the mud the fin has pushed out of the way and the other in the hole left by the keel. we've never been close to tipping, but has made for a few uncomfortable nights.
 
On advice from the HM we always took a line from the masthead to the dock at precisely the correct height to take pedestrians' caps off or decapitate errant cyclists, but that was before elf'nsafety...It's the only harbour in which I have knowingly taken the ground where I would be happier in a fin keeled boat than one with bilge keels.
 
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