hunnsattiller
New Member
I would be interested in your legs if you have them still, drop me a line at devonboatworks@gmail.com
Yacht legs / beaching legs
- Thread starter snowbird30ds
- Start date
stevie69p
Well-Known Member
Sorry to hijack the thread slightly...
New to me boat (LM 27) came with a pair of pukka beaching legs from when it lived down South. They are adjustable for length and have padded lower hull supports. Is there any special technique for deploying these? Boat lives on the Clyde estuary and it would be nice to be able to dry out on a suitable sandy area to give her bum a scrub!
New to me boat (LM 27) came with a pair of pukka beaching legs from when it lived down South. They are adjustable for length and have padded lower hull supports. Is there any special technique for deploying these? Boat lives on the Clyde estuary and it would be nice to be able to dry out on a suitable sandy area to give her bum a scrub!
Kelpie
Well-Known Member
1) go for a walk on the drying area the day before, pick a safe spot and a way of identifying it (GPS, transit, etc)
2) get the legs assembled and on deck. You'll need to know what length to make them on the crude adjustment- you do NOT want them too long. Ideally set the crude adjustment so that they would be just touching the ground with the fine adjustment about half out. It can be quite tricky to set this, safest way is probably with the boat on the hard the winter before, or by drying against a wall to give you a chance to set things up.
3) Motor to your chosen spot, ideally on a rising tide to tive you maximum working time. Get boat in position with fore and aft anchors so she is on the safe spot. Make sure you've got lines attached to the feet before you lift each leg over the rail and fix it in place using the attached U-piece. The 'roller' T pieces should be lightly touching the hull.
4) Keeping each leg upright, gently take in the slack in the lines to cleats fore and aft. You don't need a whole lot of tension on these, and the worst thing you can do is to pull the leg out of plumb. Do a once-around in the dinghy to check that the legs are genuinely upright.
5) Wait for the boat to settle onto her keel. At this stage neither of the legs should be touching- give them a shoogle to check. If you have a preference for which side you want her to lean to, try to arrange that by using buckets of water, moving jerry cans, anchors, etc.
6) Viewing from the dinghy can help you see how far above the ground each foot is. You want the keel to touch with the feet being about 6" higher than that. Keep the legs the same length as each other by counting the number of turns you give on the wheel. She should settle to one side, leaving one of the feet about 12" off the ground.
7) Once she is settled, you can leave her unattended until the same point in the incoming tide. You really want to be aboard at this stage though especially if there has been a wind shift.
I dry out each spring for antifouling and other maintenance, and have set up a tide gauge and a small marker buoy at my spot. I still check it out on foot the day before, as the seabed shifts and you want to a oid setting her down in a puddle, or on top of a rock.
stevie69p
Well-Known Member
Thank you for your comprehensive instructions. I just need to find a good drying beach area now. I do know of one excellent spot that I have anchored at a couple of times this season, but it's about a 4 hour sail away from where I am based. I need to go and scope out a couple of the other contenders more locally. First time is going to be a bit nerve wracking...
Kelpie
Well-Known Member
You don't need a very big spot at all, in my experience. If you put four anchors out you can hold the boat in place very accurately, within about three feet I would say. Obviously you need clear, safe approaches to the spot.
Oh and course you really want it to be nice and level, if possible. Good water visibility is a help as well if you are trying to set her down on a particular spot.
I was pretty nervous the first time as well, especially as I missed the tide and was doing it on the ebb. I'd fitted the leg brackets with the boat on the mooring so there was no chance to try everything out on the hard beforehand, which I would have preferred.
Gunfleet
Well-Known Member
Wouldn’t a couple of lengths of oak or iroko do in place of all that technology?
vyv_cox
Well-Known Member
Of course they would, and some people use something similar. The beauty of Yacht Legs is their unobtrusive attachment to the boat, light weight, adjustable length, disassembly into short lengths for stowage, manufacturer support.
Little Dorrit
Well-Known Member
Agree with Kelpie to check at low water if possible where you intend to beach but I don't bother anchoring; I simply run aground just after HW and then put the legs on which are both pre set to the keel depth. I think you will find that after about 30 minutes or so the boat will develop a lean in one direction and be resting on one leg only, after which you simply wind the other leg down so it is touching the bottom too. Loads are surprisingly low (in my case about 60% of the weight is the keel) so a slight lean is perfectly acceptable and in my opinion desirable.
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vyv_cox
Well-Known Member
Yes, fully agree with this. I usually put out an anchor later to cope with the returning tide, although if this is going to be while I am awake in daylight I have sometimes not bothered. I knew someone who kept his boat, which had a longish keel, permanently on legs in a drying sandy bay. He reckoned to have one leg about 6 inches above the bottom when dried out so that the boat would not trip over a leg as the tide moved the boat.
davidej
Well-Known Member
I see several of you use them for overwintering.
Are they really OK if you get a gale on the beam? What if Orphelia came your way? is the insurance cover OK?
Are they really OK if you get a gale on the beam? What if Orphelia came your way? is the insurance cover OK?
stevie69p
Well-Known Member
Tidal range is only around 3 metres, so I am tempted to put her aground around 1 hour after high water. She only draws 1 metre, and is long keeled so hopefully that will make finding the right spot a bit easier too...
vyv_cox
Well-Known Member
One of my full winterings was at Dinas Boatyard, right on the edge of the wall where the full effect of northerlies is received, no shelter whatsoever. During that winter the whole yard flooded due to storm surge in winds of F 10 or so. We had no problems but a couple of bilge keelers on timber baulks went walkabout. The only additional action we took was to tie the legs together beneath the boat in case somebody managed to knock one away.
duncan99210
Well-Known Member
I don't have the manufactured legs but I do have some wooden beaching legs for my Hurley 18. They fit to the boat using a bolt that goes through a fitting miships. I use the legs through the winter on a half tide berth: the boat is secured by fore and aft lines so it doesn't move on the flood tide. That said the tide only lifts her right off the berth for a few days either side of springs. I did have a problem last year when one of the aft moorings came adrift in a storm but that was resolved before the next high tide.
jeanpaulcopie
Well-Known Member
No value, but good offer...: No worry, I'll make them my self! Bye
LittleSister
Well-Known Member
I had big heavy wooden legs for my Hurley 22 (long fin keel). I only used them once in the water (because they were too bulky to carry around all the time), but used them every winter to layup the boat (with a light prop under the bow and transom to be sure it couldn't tip forward or backwards in high winds or when I was walking about the deck). I put a small 'plate' of wood under each leg's foot ashore so the boat was level. The boat was very stable like this: far more rigid than the props and some of the cradles I've had 'professionally' set up in yards for other boats.
The legs were not as much as 6" shorter than the keel, which I would think excessive for a boat of that size, but (from memory) about 3" to 4". There was also far more than the 60% of the weight of the boat (someone mentioned above) taken by the keel. In my view it should be nearly the whole of the weight - the legs should just be keeping the boat upright, not taking any great load. I could easily push my 1.8 tonne displacement boat upright and off its leg(s).
The legs were not as much as 6" shorter than the keel, which I would think excessive for a boat of that size, but (from memory) about 3" to 4". There was also far more than the 60% of the weight of the boat (someone mentioned above) taken by the keel. In my view it should be nearly the whole of the weight - the legs should just be keeping the boat upright, not taking any great load. I could easily push my 1.8 tonne displacement boat upright and off its leg(s).
Little Dorrit
Well-Known Member
It's an interesting calculation on the best time to actually go aground. Your thinking seems to be fine but obviously if you need to maximise the time you have available dried out the earlier after HW that you beach the better. In my suggestion (of beaching just after HW) you're aground for nearly 12 hours. I prefer to have time on my side. Whenever you do it make sure you don't get Neaped...now that would be embarrassing!
MarcJ
Well-Known Member
Yep we used our timber legs for the first time this year, bit nerve wracking the first time! 
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnTfH9NpYEvt0zi32YjeKobUX1xO
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnTfH9NpYEvt0zi32YjeKobUX1xO
Kelpie
Well-Known Member
Just on the point about driving the boat aground rather than anchoring- I've never tried that since my drying spot is a big mud flat at the head of the loch. I suppose if you had a gently sloping beach you could put the boat onto that, but I'd still worry that you're not 100% in control of where she ends up. I think there may be more peace of mind in getting to a spot nice and early and putting out some anchors to make sure you land where you want.
Gunfleet
Well-Known Member
<<Yep we used our timber legs for the first time this year, bit nerve wracking the first time!
image: http://www.ybw.com/forums/images/smilies/redface.png
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnTfH9NpYEvt0zi32YjeKobUX1xO >>
That's rather tempting. My boat (Nicholson 26) is similar. There are plenty of harbours you can't use on the NE coast with a deep long keel and I'd like to explore them.
image: http://www.ybw.com/forums/images/smilies/redface.png
https://1drv.ms/i/s!AnTfH9NpYEvt0zi32YjeKobUX1xO >>
That's rather tempting. My boat (Nicholson 26) is similar. There are plenty of harbours you can't use on the NE coast with a deep long keel and I'd like to explore them.
Little Dorrit
Well-Known Member
Yep it's 'horses for courses'. I would no doubt use the anchoring technique in similar circumstances. Fortunately for me my usual spot has a steeply sloping shingle bank making it easy, as you say, to leave the anchors in the locker!
