Quandary
Well-Known Member
Coming south yesterday the tide turned and with lightish winds we diverted to Oban Marina on Kerrera, had a walk round and they already have quite a few boats ashore nearly all with the rig still in place, apparently, despite the windy location, this is their normal practice. Some still have sails on the forestay or boom as well but I presume most owners will deal with this. (They charge £120/metre ashore for up to six months which I presume includes the hull props and two rides in the travel hoist)
When our boat was being commissioned at Largs after delivery I slept on the boat ashore on the night after the 16m. mast was stepped, no boom or sails, just the bare spar; it was a summer 'gale', about force 7 for a few hours and the vibration inside the hull was enough to shake your teeth out, the boat was well secured on the shipping cradle but the wind on the rigidly supported keel stepped mast transmitted a lot of energy to the hull. Since then the mast has been extracted and stripped every winter and then endures a perilous return trolley journey from the yard across the road and the canal, then through a cunningly disguised gap in the boundary hedge (via a roller made from a foot of telegraph pole) to rest front up on trestles in the front garden. Craning it out and then in costs me £70 each way but since the clubs boat lift and storage is only a couple of hundred I am happy enough to pay that. (I go up and take the windex, aerials and transducers etc down myself, well, not myself! I sit in a bosuns chair while my wife winds the winch; amazing how much safer you feel at height over water than on land even though in either place it is the deck you would hit.)
I did store our old Sigma 38 ashore with the similar height mast up once for a couple of months but we took off the boom and eased the rig a few turns and it was on a lorry wheeled yard trolley which we deliberately did not jack it that year to let the tyres absorb some movement.
Surely continuous exposure to months of intermiitent vibration can not be good for the structure of a boat, particularly the keel joint, or am I just far too cautious?
When our boat was being commissioned at Largs after delivery I slept on the boat ashore on the night after the 16m. mast was stepped, no boom or sails, just the bare spar; it was a summer 'gale', about force 7 for a few hours and the vibration inside the hull was enough to shake your teeth out, the boat was well secured on the shipping cradle but the wind on the rigidly supported keel stepped mast transmitted a lot of energy to the hull. Since then the mast has been extracted and stripped every winter and then endures a perilous return trolley journey from the yard across the road and the canal, then through a cunningly disguised gap in the boundary hedge (via a roller made from a foot of telegraph pole) to rest front up on trestles in the front garden. Craning it out and then in costs me £70 each way but since the clubs boat lift and storage is only a couple of hundred I am happy enough to pay that. (I go up and take the windex, aerials and transducers etc down myself, well, not myself! I sit in a bosuns chair while my wife winds the winch; amazing how much safer you feel at height over water than on land even though in either place it is the deck you would hit.)
I did store our old Sigma 38 ashore with the similar height mast up once for a couple of months but we took off the boom and eased the rig a few turns and it was on a lorry wheeled yard trolley which we deliberately did not jack it that year to let the tyres absorb some movement.
Surely continuous exposure to months of intermiitent vibration can not be good for the structure of a boat, particularly the keel joint, or am I just far too cautious?
