I have a one year old boat with a winged keel. I have never run aground with the new boat. I have my share of experience running aground but not with a winged keel. Any suggestions of the best way to get out of that situation when you have a winged keel. When you sail in the Chesapeake it is not a matter of "if" you run aground but "when" you run aground. Thanks, Tom
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Running Around
Tom, I am no expert on this but last summer coming out of Montauk Harbor I ran aground on a sand bar with Angels' Grace my 361. I guess I was lucky in that as soon I felt it "touch" I reversed the engine and I didn't bury myself too deep. What I did was kind of jockey the boat back and forth with going backwards and then forwards until I was able to get to deeper water. It took a while but it worked. What you need to be really careful of is if you are kicking up a lot of sand that it doesn't get pulled into your engine through the raw water intake. I was just a meeting of the Long Island Sound Beneteau group and a guy is having a new engine in his boat for that very reason. To me the best $100 I spend every year is SEA-TOW for the times I could get really jammed up. I hope this helps a little Charlie
Tom, I am no expert on this but last summer coming out of Montauk Harbor I ran aground on a sand bar with Angels' Grace my 361. I guess I was lucky in that as soon I felt it "touch" I reversed the engine and I didn't bury myself too deep. What I did was kind of jockey the boat back and forth with going backwards and then forwards until I was able to get to deeper water. It took a while but it worked. What you need to be really careful of is if you are kicking up a lot of sand that it doesn't get pulled into your engine through the raw water intake. I was just a meeting of the Long Island Sound Beneteau group and a guy is having a new engine in his boat for that very reason. To me the best $100 I spend every year is SEA-TOW for the times I could get really jammed up. I hope this helps a little Charlie
Thanks Charlie
Charlie, I have a 361 also. In my past experiences when I ran aground I tilted the boat to one side and drifted off but that was when I had a standard keel. It doesn't look like that approach would work. Thanks, Tom
Charlie, I have a 361 also. In my past experiences when I ran aground I tilted the boat to one side and drifted off but that was when I had a standard keel. It doesn't look like that approach would work. Thanks, Tom
Tilting woks,Tom
In our 361 we ran aground twice coming up the ICW from Ft.Lauderdale to JAX. In both cases I was able to “walk” around the boat to check which way I should move the boat to get to deeper waters. Not surprisingly, in both cases the best way was to back up!!
. In the first case, I was able to stand on the ground and push the bow until I had spun the boat 180. Then, I turned the engine in forward as I moved the rudder back and forth effectively ungluing her from the bottom and moving her forward with some help of small waves coming from passing by motor boats. I did not think then about the dirt coming into the engine intake, but I guess it did not happen in this case, perhaps due to the composition of the bottom or the fact that the prop was forward and there was a relatively large distance between keel and intake. I am sure this method would not have worked if I had tried to back up before spinning the boat since the rudder does not get the prop wash. The second time, I was more aground and could not spin her around but I was lucky and I was able to pass a line attached to a halyard to a motorboat. As I turned the engine in reverse and the motorboat pulled sideways tilting the mast, the boat began to move back and the motorboat accompanied us still pulling diagonally backwards until we were back in the main channel. A side story to this episode: we saw another sailboat well starboard of us and even farther from the channel that never ran aground. Two days later we caught up with them again and asked them by VHF how much they draw since I could not understand how we got stuck and they didn’t. He said they drew 7 ft !!! but his wife quickly took the mic and clarified that they had ran aground 5 times so far. The pix is from a little mooning we were exposed to up the ICW in the same trip.
In our 361 we ran aground twice coming up the ICW from Ft.Lauderdale to JAX. In both cases I was able to “walk” around the boat to check which way I should move the boat to get to deeper waters. Not surprisingly, in both cases the best way was to back up!!
. In the first case, I was able to stand on the ground and push the bow until I had spun the boat 180. Then, I turned the engine in forward as I moved the rudder back and forth effectively ungluing her from the bottom and moving her forward with some help of small waves coming from passing by motor boats. I did not think then about the dirt coming into the engine intake, but I guess it did not happen in this case, perhaps due to the composition of the bottom or the fact that the prop was forward and there was a relatively large distance between keel and intake. I am sure this method would not have worked if I had tried to back up before spinning the boat since the rudder does not get the prop wash. The second time, I was more aground and could not spin her around but I was lucky and I was able to pass a line attached to a halyard to a motorboat. As I turned the engine in reverse and the motorboat pulled sideways tilting the mast, the boat began to move back and the motorboat accompanied us still pulling diagonally backwards until we were back in the main channel. A side story to this episode: we saw another sailboat well starboard of us and even farther from the channel that never ran aground. Two days later we caught up with them again and asked them by VHF how much they draw since I could not understand how we got stuck and they didn’t. He said they drew 7 ft !!! but his wife quickly took the mic and clarified that they had ran aground 5 times so far. The pix is from a little mooning we were exposed to up the ICW in the same trip.- Status