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Beach Kept Boats Taking Some Extra Precautions By Brian Hollinger Keeping your boat on the beach is great. No trailering for a day or two of sailing, the mast is always up, and everything is ready for you to raise the sails and take off at your whim. But you do have to keep a watch on the storms more closely and take appropriate measures to keep your boat from drifting off the beach or putting the mast through a bedroom window. |
| I live in Southern Florida on the Gulf Coast, about an hour south of Tampa. I am fortunate enough to have a friend in the catamaran/PWC rental business who allows me to keep my boat with his rental fleet of G-Cats because it blends in (I have a G-Cat 5.7M). During the weekend of October 25 we had a cold front move in and it brought some incredible winds. My friend Dan Burton had just bought a used G-Cat 5.0M, and was also keeping it at the rentals. My boat was out of service for repairs, so we were going to take his out. This would be the third time he had ever been on a beach cat, and the first time on his boat. We "Cat Tracked" Dan's boat up to the beach in 10mhp wind and began setting up, the surf was 1-2 feet with an occasional 3 footer |
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rolling in. By
the time we were ready to leave the beach the wind was up to 20mph with the
surf steady at 2-3 feet. We were apprehensive to say the least.
We were watching the waves, trying to find a break in the surf to push off through when Ralph Cole, the owner of Bradenton Beach Sailboat Rentals, came by on his 4wheeler pulling a PWC with sailbags and a wetsuit on it. He decided there was too much surf to put the PWCs in the water and too much wind to rent the sailboats out. He told us we really shouldn't go out on an untested boat on a day like this. We were only too happy to agree. Instead we took his Worrell 1000 veteran G-Cat 6.1 (Sail# 77) out for an hour of high hull-flying fun double trapped the entire time. (He is planning on installing a third trapeze). Unfortunately, the wind died down so much there was no way we could fly a hull so we hit the beach and Dan and I went back out on the 5 meter. The waves were great to surf on. We sailed pretty much all day and then went to a restaurant just down the beach from the rentals. The next day the wind and waves stayed high, so when John Kloss showed up Dan and I went out on John's Prindle 19 that sits on the beach near our boats. The ride was of a different kind altogether. We went for speed today instead of just playing around putting a hull in the air like yesterday. The P19 definitely does not have the "Cadillac Ride" of a G-Cat. Every time we went up a wave, half the boat would come out of the water and you could expect a jarring impact when it touched down. It was still fun, though. We surfed in to the beach on the perfect wave and slid almost clear of the water. The wind never went down enough for us to take Dan's 5 meter out. Neither John's P19, Dan's G-Cat 5M, or my G-Cat 5.7M were anchored to the beach, as all the rentals were. Dan and I decided to come back tomorrow with three cinder blocks, a couple shovels, and a lot of rope to make some beach anchors. Dan and I were out of school Monday (10/27) because of Record Day, so we had planned on getting to the beach around 10 to sink the blocks and tie the boats down. A friend of mine picked us up and we got to the beach around 11 in the morning to the dismal sight of two big hulls in the air above the dunes. We unpacked the tools and went to see how bad it was. Johns mast was still in the upright position, even though his boat is around 100lbs lighter. Both of our boats had spun ninety degrees and flipped over, then slid with the masts in the sand for about twenty feet. On first glance everything looked fine, we would just sink the block, pull the boats back down, and tie them in place. Then we noticed my spreader was broken and there was a large nick in the keel of my starboard bow. We decided it was the large front tramp which had cause our boats to go over while John's boat lay unmoved so we took off both trampolines on both boats. Then I went to the end of Dan's mast, dug it up from the sand, and walked it to the upright position. It started raining, hard and cold, and we had just taken the tramps, our only cover, off the boats. I was the only one dressed for the occasion with jeans, coat, and Thinsulate waterproof boots. Both my friends were in shorts, T-shirts, and sandals. Now we had to deal with my boat, I opted to take the mast off in its current position. With one person holding the boat, and another lifting the mast to take the strain off the shroud adjuster on the hull in the air I disconnected the side-stay. We then disconnected the front stay and gently dropped the boat back on the beach. I then disconnected all the trapeze wires and the remaining side-stay, wrapped them around the mast, and laid the mast on my boat. John showed up and inspected his boat for damage. Both his rudders were broken, and the horn of each was split wide open. That was where the large nick on my boat had come from, but that meant my boat had to have gone completely airborne! We buried the three blocks, now spacing the boats further apart, and "Cat Tracked" Dan's boat and mine to the new location. My Cat-Traks, by the way, had remained chain beneath my hulls the entire time. All the rental boats had moved, but only as far as their tie-down ropes would allow them. More importantly, they were all still upright. Dan and I took our boats home the next day and are planning some major upgrades/repairs to be ready in time for Spring. Brian Hollinger Sycho15@aol.com Back to Features |