So I was thinking of a way to clean the bottom of my boat with out hauling it out. cant I gust attach a halyard to a mooring and lean the boat over to pressure wash the hull? has any one tried this and how did it work for you .
list over let me clean your bottom
- Thread starter jleblanc31
- Start date
You may not be able to get it over far enough to expose the keel. Why don't you try careening it. Anchor in shallow water, wait for tide to go out.... scrub down the exposed side when the boat lays over... tide comes in.... boat floats... turn it around before tide starts out again to get the other side. My friend in Florida cleans his Island Packet 31.... except he has a center board... he pulls the boat right next to shoreline... wades in the water up to his thighs... and gets most of it with a long handled brush.
If you have a trailer... do as Gunni said... if not you can do what Joe said but it really is easier than true careening. A Mac 25 is designed to be beached. Run it up to a shore and stand in the shrouds to lean it over... pull the mast to the ground, set something heavy on the mast while the boat is on its side and clean the bottom. Easy peasy. I've done this with a Mac 22 before.
I wonder why you don't just try it. I tried it on my O'Day Mariner by pulling the halyard from a dock. I weigh 210 pounds and that proved to be not enough to get the Mariner over far enough. A winch might have worked, but I don't have one.
A person I trust to tell the truth once told me that while he was living in the Bahamas he knew a guy that had a girlfriend that would clean the bottom of their boat. She did not know how to swim so he would tie a line around her waist with a weight belt. She would tug on the line when she needed to come up for air and he would bring her up. That type of trust and commitment is indeed rare. I hope for her sake that at the very least the bitter end of the line would have been cleated so she could pull herself up if the guy left to get a beer.
There was an old Magregor factory promotional video floating around within the last month or so which was extolling the self righting ability of the Mac 25. The boat was at a dock where it had been pulled down by the main halyard to the neighboring dock. it was being held down past 90* by one (large) guy . I believe they were saying it took about 175 pounds at the very top of the mast to hold it over that way. If the keel was winched up, that amount would be a bit less yet, so I'd say it is certainly doable. When the guy got off the mast top the boat shot up like an old "rock-em-sock-em" toy BTW 
. I'm not suggesting you do it this way, just saying it's possible.
. I'm not suggesting you do it this way, just saying it's possible.
Sorry guys haven't changed my avatar its not a Macgregor its a Ranger 33 sold the Mcgregor to put my son through school years ago . just got the Ranger .
There is no way you are going to be able to pull a Ranger 33 over an appreciable amount. You are trying to cheap-out on a job that needs to be done in the water. Hire a diver, get your hull and running gear properly cleaned and your anodes replaced if necessary. Anything less is not proper boat maintenance.
Sounds fairly ingenious to me if you can actually make it work. Why not give it a try if you've got a mooring that won't pull out? I suppose that if you can get it to list 30 to 40 degrees, you might expose a fair amount of the hull on each side by alternating sides, but not the keel. Perhaps you can expose the hull down to just about the base of the keel. I'd try it on a calm day, for sure. Do you plan to work off a pontoon boat or something similar? You might find an audience while you try something unusual like that. How do you plan on working the halyard ... from on or off the boat? Releasing the halyard after you're done might be tricky! That might be the most dangerous part of the operation.
Be sure to post a post-mortem with pictures!
Be sure to post a post-mortem with pictures!